Representative Jeff Duncan (R-SC) offered an amendment to H.R. 3055, an appropriations bill funding various government agencies, which would have struck a provision in the underlying bill that effectively blocked oil and gas lease sales in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge by ensuring that the sales could not go forward unless they raised the large sums of revenues promised in the 2017 tax legislation that mandated those lease sales. Based on revenues generated by lease sales in lands adjacent to the Arctic Refuge, it is extremely unlikely that Arctic Refuge sales could generate the revenues promised, effectively blocking the sales from happening. Drilling in the Arctic Refuge would do irreparable damage to one of America’s most magnificent and wildest landscapes, which is home to polar and brown bears, muskoxen, and birds that migrate from all 50 states and six continents. The indigenous Gwich’in people call the Arctic Refuge’s coastal plain “the sacred place where life begins,” in part because the Porcupine Caribou Herd calves in the area and the Gwich’in rely on these caribou for subsistence food and their spiritual needs. On June 20, the House rejected the Duncan amendment by a vote of 198-233 (House roll call vote 384).  NO IS THE PRO-ENVIRONMENT VOTE.