House Natural Resources Chairman Doc Hastings (R-Wash.) — the lead sponsor of the House-passed drilling bills — called Obama’s actions “baby steps.”
“One weekend address announcing minor policy tinkering, while positive, does not erase the administration’s long, job-destroying record of locking-up America’s energy resources,” Hastings said in a statement.
...The GOP-passed bills (passed just this week) go further and would require lease sales off the coast of Virginia that the administration canceled in the wake of the BP spill. The measures would also require more areas off the Eastern Seaboard and the California and Alaska coastlines be opened to new drilling.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0511/54969.html