WASHINGTON - California's senior U.S. Senator, Dianne Feinstein, took fellow Democrats in the House to the woodshed late Tuesday after they were seen to have caved to Republican pressure to begin oil exploration immediately off the Atlantic and Pacific coastlines.

House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey, D-Wis., told the Associated Press Tuesday that a provision continuing a moratorium preventing drilling within 50 miles of the coasts will be dropped this year from a stopgap spending bill to keep the government running after Congress recesses for the election.

Republicans have made lifting the ban a key campaign issue after gasoline prices spiked this summer and public opinion turned in favor of more drilling, the AP said. President Bush lifted an executive ban on offshore drilling in July.

Feinstein makes it clear that she believes House Democrats dropped the ball.  

"I think it's awful. This battle is not over.  We will come back and fight another day - that's for sure. I regret the House appropriations committee didn't see fit to go with a better, more widely accepted alternative, which would have kept in place a moratorium 50 miles or more off shore.  In my view, there were better options than this," Feinstein said.

The oil drilling ban off of the coasts - now 25 years old - was dropped in reaction to intense lobbying pressure by the White House and Congressional Republicans reacting to the severe spike in the price of gasoline at the pump this summer.