[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 87 (Thursday, June 10, 2010)]
[House]
[Pages H4379-H4383]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         BP OIL SPILL DISASTER

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 6, 2009, the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Connolly) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. CONNOLLY of Virginia. Mr. Speaker, in the United States right now 
we are experiencing an environmental catastrophe. We are experiencing 
with the BP oil rig the largest single oil spill in American history. 
It's a little hard to contemplate just how big this oil spill is; 21 
million to 44 million gallons of oil--four times the oil spilled in the 
Exxon Valdez disaster--have so far spilled into the Gulf of Mexico. 
12,000 to 25,000 barrels a day--that's a million gallons a day--are 
spilling, a rate 12 to 25 times higher than BP's original highest 
estimate of 4,600 gallons a day. The biggest oil spill in American 
history.
  If we want to know just how big that is, this is the extent of the 
oil spill today in the Gulf of Mexico. It is the equivalent in terms of 
size of Delaware, Rhode Island, and Connecticut combined. Think of that 
geography. Hundreds of square miles. That's what this is.
  Just recently it was announced that underwater plumes, not just the 
surface plume depicted here, have been detected 150 miles away in 
distance from the original site of the oil spill.
  Locally what that means is essentially we have an oil spill, a 
surface oil spill that covers the territory that would be the 
equivalent of the distance between Washington, D.C., and New York City. 
That's as of today. In my 11th Congressional District of Virginia, that 
would mean starting in Dale City near Manassas in Prince William County 
and going as far as Wilmington, Delaware. That's the thick oil spill.
  The broader oil spill, as I said, would go all the way to New York 
City. That's an extraordinary stretch in terms of this oil spill.
  This oil spill could have been prevented.
  In 1969, an oil well spilled 200,000 gallons of crude oil on the 
California coast. In response, like this and other environmental 
issues, like the burning of the Cuyahoga River, Congress passed the 
National Environmental Policy Act, known as NEPA, in 1969.

                              {time}  1700

  NEPA requires companies to plan to avoid environmental disasters like 
that 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill by conducting simple environmental 
impact statements. Ironically, the Minerals Management Service, known 
as the MMS, granted the Deepwater Horizon rig a categorical exclusion 
from this process so it did not have to conduct an environmental impact 
statement based on research in 2007 in which the MMS, the regulator, 
decided that a deepwater spill would not exceed 4,600 barrels and would 
never reach the shoreline. What a tragic, ironic twist of fate. None of 
that turned out to be true.
  Congressional Republican majorities and the Bush administration even 
directed agencies to use categorical exclusions for oil development. 
Action by the Secretary of the Interior in managing the public lands, 
it said, or the Secretary of Agriculture in managing national forest 
systems lands with respect to any of the activities described in 
subsection B shall be subject to a rebuttable presumption that the use 
of categorical exclusion under the NEPA of 1969 would apply if the 
activity is conducted pursuant to the Mineral Leasing Act for the 
purpose of exploration or development of oil or gas. An explicit 
exemption made for oil drilling in America by the previous 
administration. Just following the NEPA process could have led to a 
review that would have resulted in better safety equipment. Might have 
even resulted in an inspection that might have caught early the flaws 
in this design.
  The 2009 Government Accountability Office report said that during the 
previous administration categorical exclusions were issued far too 
frequently and it could lead to serious problems. Well, indeed, it did. 
I find this particularly ironical because, in my district, we have been 
fighting for a long time to get rail to Dulles, an extension of the 
rail system here in metropolitan Washington to Dulles International 
Airport. We finally got that process approved last year, but that 
process required a NEPA review. This is a public transit project, but 
it had to go through a 2-year environmental review that cost millions 
of dollars of taxpayer-funded money for a public project. But 
ironically, a private oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico was excluded from 
that process. It didn't have to do it.
  I see on the floor my friend from Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer). I yield to 
the gentleman.
  Mr. BLUMENAUER. I appreciate the gentleman's courtesy, as I 
appreciate his leadership, and I think it is important for people to 
understand the genesis of the problem that we are facing here now.
  We've heard some of our friends on the other side of the aisle come 
to the floor somehow trying to lay this at the feet of the President of 
the United States, but sadly, what has happened here in the gulf is a 
direct result of policies that we have seen implemented by our friends 
on the other side of the aisle when they were in charge, particularly 
under the watch of President Bush, where it was routine to come to the 
floor repeatedly in efforts to undercut environmental protections, 
where agencies that were supposed to regulate the industry were stopped 
with refugees from the very industries, from lobbyists and association 
executives who are going back now and looking at from whence they had 
come.
  We had situations that, by the end of the Bush administration, it was 
clear in the MMS that there were people in that critical agency tasked 
by law with the protection of the public interest who were not only 
avoiding that responsibility, they were literally in bed with the 
industry.
  I look forward to an opportunity in the course of the next few 
minutes to discuss with you further the genesis of the problem that we 
face and approaches that we should be taking to make sure that we're no 
longer held hostage to what even President Bush referred to as our 
addiction to oil.
  Mr. CONNOLLY of Virginia. I thank my colleague, and I think his point 
is a very cogent one, and it's even worse than we're discussing because 
not only did we consciously decide during the Bush administration and 
by previous Congresses, frankly controlled by our friends on the other 
side, consciously to exclude such oil drilling from the regular 
environmental review that could have detected problems, but it was 
worse than that.
  Let me give an example in terms of what measures that at least could 
have mitigated the impact of this disaster. Canada, as my friend from 
Oregon knows, requires deepwater rigs to have contingency plans for 
offshore oil drilling, including the capability to drill relief wells 
soon after constructing primary wells. If this well, this Deepwater 
Horizon well, had predrilled such relief wells, it would have allowed 
the closing of the leak weeks ago, but they weren't required to do so.
  Norway and Brazil require something called acoustic valves which are

[[Page H4380]]

backup devices for closing the pipe of a blowout preventer. In 2003, 
under the Bush administration, the Minerals Management Service 
concluded that the $550,000 acoustic system is not recommended because 
it tends to be very costly. I would say to my friend from Oregon, as he 
knows, as of June 7, the response to this oil spill cost $1.25 billion 
and climbing. That $550,000 investment in an acoustic valve could have 
saved billions of dollars and could have saved an ecosystem now at 
incredible jeopardy.
  I yield again to my friend from Oregon.
  Mr. BLUMENAUER. Thank you. As I am listening to your presentation, 
talking about what could have happened, what should have happened, and 
looking at the magnitude of the devastation that we are facing in an 
ongoing disaster, I was reflecting on my experience here in the House 
under Republican control and the Bush administration where their first 
instinct--the gentleman will recall because he was an important elected 
official just across the Potomac and had a front-row view of what was 
happening here--that the Vice President convened a secret energy 
consultation group, his energy task force, which to this day has not 
been revealed in terms of who were the members--although we're most 
certain that there were people from BP, for instance, that were there--
that from the outset it was all about trying to cut through these red 
tape items, the environmental protection, things that got in the way of 
energy production, and not focusing on priorities that would have 
reduced our reliance on fossil fuels.
  Indeed, there were 105 recommendations. Only 7 involved renewable 
energy. We watched, in the year that followed, the Bush administration 
actually propose cuts in the renewable energy budget and had tax breaks 
that they worked on with the Republican leadership to provide 
incentives for more dirty oil production and consistently fought 
against efforts that we brought to the floor, including in some 
instances bipartisan amendments to raise the fuel efficiency standards 
that hadn't been increased in a quarter century.
  I'm reflecting on that and saddened that that was the thrust for most 
of the last decade, instead of putting us in a position where we would 
be less reliant and have better protection.
  Mr. CONNOLLY of Virginia. Again, I agree with my friend from Oregon 
completely, and as he points out, this didn't happen by an act of God. 
This happened because of lax or no regulation, regulation we knew was 
necessary and we took a chance. We took a chance. And we took a chance, 
why? Because of the almighty dollar. We took a chance because of Big 
Oil money, making sure that it influenced the process and made sure 
that it was exempted from normal regulatory review. And you have to ask 
yourself in those kinds of circumstances, well, what could go wrong?

  Let me enumerate a little bit what has gone wrong: 200,000 commercial 
fishing, processing, and retail jobs in the gulf for fishing and 
seafood on ice; $659 million in annual value on 1.27 billion pounds of 
seafood caught in the gulf, the largest source of seafood in America, 
not including the value of fish processing or retail or people's 
salaries, in jeopardy; $5.5 billion annual value of commercial fishing 
industry in the gulf coast, including the value of fish harvest 
processing and retail, in jeopardy; $12 billion of expenditures for 
25.4 million recreational trips in the Gulf of Mexico at risk; $9 
billion in wages for tourism-related industries in the Gulf of Mexico, 
employing 600,000 people.
  That's what's at risk for a mindless, ``drill, Baby, drill'' 
approach, instead of a thoughtful, careful approach that balances this 
kind of sourcing of oil with the readily available alternative energy 
sources that we should have, could have been investing in as well.
  Since this oil spill, over 27,000 claims have been filed by people 
and businesses whose livelihoods have been harmed or lost entirely. 
They've filed claims for damages with BP. Through June, BP will have 
paid $84 million in lost income claims to people whose jobs already 
have been lost in the gulf. Over 78,000 square miles of the gulf are 
closed to fishing today because of this spill because it's not safe. 
The University of Central Florida estimates that the oil spill could 
cut Florida tourism in half, the largest single source of revenue for 
the State of Florida, eliminating 195,000 tourism-related jobs and 
eliminating $10.9 billion of tourist-generated economic activity in 
Florida alone.
  I see our colleague from Colorado (Mr. Polis) is on the floor, and I 
now yield to him.
  Mr. POLIS. I thank the gentleman from Virginia.
  This disaster of great proportion is indicative of the culture of 
deregulation and the influence of the special interests in the oil 
industry and the prevalence of those interests within the Bush 
administration, embedded into the regulatory structure. These interests 
within the Department of the Interior fought tooth and nail Secretary 
Salazar's attempts to bring balance back to the oil and gas industry. 
They fought with claims of severe economic hardship. Well, as the 
gentleman from Virginia talked about, I think the people of the gulf 
coast will be experiencing severe economic hardship, much worse than 
anything that these oil companies were worried about.
  All actors involved with this unmitigated disaster have taken steps 
to try to limit their own liability. BP and Transocean have tried to 
spread their profits among shareholders. They've been giving dividends. 
They have been trying to decentralize their coffers, already scheming 
to get themselves off the hook and to put taxpayers on the hook. These 
oil companies are now trying to maneuver to get taxpayer bailouts for 
their own bad practices and their own failure to prevent what was a 
preventable disaster.
  The use of highly toxic dispersants have exacerbated the damage, 
leading to underwater plumes of oil. It turns out that the emergency 
response plan of BP was riddled with errors, had falsities. It even 
listed people who were no longer alive as points of contact in the 
event of a disaster.
  We need, and I'm sure we will have, a full public accounting of the 
fallacies and the flaws in the planning process with BP and their 
contractors that have led to this disaster, and it's critical for our 
Congress to make sure that these maneuvers to get off the hook for 
their own failure to prevent this catastrophe will not meet with 
success and that the responsibility will reside with BP and their 
contractors.
  NEPA requires an assessment of environmental impact for any major 
project on Federal lands, but loopholes were placed in that policy in 
2005, including a categorical exclusion, saying that oil drilling 
doesn't have any risk and, therefore, shouldn't need to do an 
environmental assessment.

                              {time}  1715

  The Deepwater Horizon was granted a categorical exclusion in 2007 
under the Bush administration. Ironic, because NEPA was first initiated 
in 1968 as a response to an oil spill offshore, yes, off the coast of 
California, stripped of the very provisions that are one of the main 
reasons for its passage by the Bush administration.
  We as a Congress need to address the statutory side, and I know that 
Secretary Salazar is working hard to fight the entrenched interests 
from the oil and gas industry that seek to influence the actions of the 
Department of the Interior.
  I thank my colleague from Virginia for helping to raise this 
important issue.
  Mr. CONNOLLY of Virginia. I thank my colleague from Colorado.
  I yield again to our friend from Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer).
  Mr. BLUMENAUER. I do appreciate our friend from Colorado talking 
about the history here, because we hear people come to the floor to 
somehow lay this at the foot of President Obama, who has been busy 
since the moment he took office dealing with a series of disasters that 
he inherited.
  But the approach that has been taken by the Republicans when they 
were in the majority actually set the stage for this. In 2003, they 
added an exemption for all oil and gas construction activities from the 
provisions of the Clean Water Act. They had a stipulation that the BLM 
had only 10 days to make drilling permit decisions. They had new 
authority for the Department of the Interior to permit new energy 
projects in the Outer Continental

[[Page H4381]]

Shelf without adequate oversight or standards and then providing, on 
top of that, $2 billion for already profitable companies to drill in 
ultradeep water.
  It is absolutely scandalous that we have had this steady assault. 
Luckily, we stopped that in 2003 when the other body used the 
filibuster constructively. But we faced it in 2005, as they actually 
were able to put those provisions in place, which our friend from 
Colorado and you, sir, Mr. Connolly, have pointed out. It continues to 
bedevil us.
  Sadly, some of our friends on the other side of the aisle simply 
haven't gotten the point. In this Congress, the gentlewoman from 
Minnesota, Mrs. Bachmann, who has no shortage of opinions on this, 
introduced legislation that would have required, would have required 
that the Secretary of the Interior waive any application of Federal law 
that requires a permit under lease for drilling. It would require a 
waiver from all of those nagging little requirements any time oil got 
expensive, over $100 a barrel, throw it all out the window, and yet has 
the audacity to try and shift responsibility under this.
  I think it is something that we all need to be focusing on and not 
allow the people who helped create this problem to rewrite history.
  Mr. CONNOLLY of Virginia. I, again, am in complete concurrence. This 
didn't happen somehow by happenstance. This happened by virtue of a 
conscious decision, by Congress' control, by our friends on the other 
side, and by the Bush administration to find all kinds of waivers and 
exemptions from normal regulatory review and from simple commonsense 
protections in the event something did go wrong, all at the altar of 
oil exploration and fossil fuel energy dependence, quite frankly. It 
could have been prevented and it could have been mitigated.
  There was another one of our colleagues who, during the campaign of 
2008, accused the Democratic Congress that came into power after the 
elections of 2006 of being the drill-nothing Congress, and she called 
on Mr. McCain to open up ANWR and both the east and west coast to 
unrestrained oil drilling for the sake of energy independence, a worthy 
goal. But that's not the only answer, and we have to weigh the costs 
and the benefits when we open up unrestricted oil drilling on pristine 
coasts.
  Let me talk, if I may, just about my own home State of Virginia, what 
could go wrong in Virginia. I am a member of the Virginia delegation 
who has opposed unrestricted opening up of our shores to oil drilling 
because of the feared consequences if something went wrong.
  What's at stake? Tourism in Virginia Beach alone in Virginia 
generates $1.4 billion annually in economic activity. Tourism in 
Virginia Beach alone supports 15,000 jobs. Virginia has the longest 
stretch of undeveloped barrier islands on the east coast, irreplaceable 
habitat for birds in the east coast flyaway.
  All of these resources would be lost to an oil spill off Virginia's 
coast if it were comparable to the oil spill that has hit the gulf 
coast. In fact, closer to home, the entire Chesapeake Bay would be 
covered by a film of oil today if that oil spill had occurred here 
instead of occurring in the gulf coast.
  In addition, unrestricted oil drilling threatens the presence of the 
United States Navy in Virginia, terribly important in terms of military 
investment in the Commonwealth of Virginia. The Deputy Secretary of 
Defense for Readiness issued a report in May that stated explicitly 
that offshore oil development would impair Navy operations in 78 
percent of the area, in a recently proposed lease sale, to 20.
  The Department of Defense said that all development could preclude 
live ordnance testing, aircraft carrier movement, shipping trials, and 
other surface and subsurface training. Offshore oil development could 
result in the Navy moving an aircraft carrier out of Norfolk, reducing 
job opportunities and contractors in Virginia.
  We have a lot at stake economically in my State. There's the 
environmental consequences, but there is also the presence of the Navy 
that could be jeopardized if we moved to the ``drill, baby, drill'' 
philosophy of offshore oil drilling.
  Mr. BLUMENAUER. I appreciate your putting in context not just the 
potential threat to your State of Virginia, but to all of us here who 
work and celebrate our capital region and the Chesapeake Bay, having 
those precious resources at risk.
  I appreciate your exploring a dimension that I must admit I really 
hadn't thought through adequately: the threat unregulated, 
indiscriminate, offshore oil drilling could pose to military readiness. 
Your point about what could happen in terms of naval operations and 
training is one that I don't think has been given voice in this debate. 
I have been spending a lot of time working on it. This is new 
information to me, and I deeply appreciate your putting it out before 
the American public this evening.
  I think this issue that we are wrestling with has many dimensions 
that require us to step back and expand the scope of inquiry, the need 
for our fixing a broken regulatory system.
  We have referenced the fact that the administration, despite the 
previous administration talking about the addiction to foreign oil, did 
nothing about it, and, in fact, even after we regained control, worked 
against our efforts to try and increase efficiencies.
  It's going to take time. I agree that the administration needs to 
move quickly to weed out the MMS. I wish they could have cleaned house 
earlier, but obviously these things take time. It's hard to undo 12 
years of running roughshod over safety and environmental regulations in 
17 months. But it is also a vivid call for a new energy future in which 
the deepest water is the last place we look, not the first, for new 
energy sources.

  I would look forward to discussing that further, but I know you have, 
Mr. Connolly, some specifics in terms of some of the legislative 
provisions that we have been working on as Democrats in Congress.
  Mr. CONNOLLY of Virginia. Yes, we need to clean up the mess we 
inherited from previous Congresses and, frankly, from the previous 
administration. Today, for example, the House passed S. 3473, which 
increases advanced cleanup funding paid for by BP so that the Coast 
Guard can use those funds for oil cleanup.
  I have introduced a bill just tonight that would prevent the evasion 
of the NEPA process; moving forward, no more categorical exclusions for 
deepwater oil drilling. They have to pass the NEPA review process, just 
like my transit system and rail to Dulles did in a public project.
  H.R. 5214, the Big Oil Bailout Prevention Act, introduced by our 
colleague, Mr. Holt from New Jersey, would raise the oil liability cap 
from $75 million to $10 billion so the taxpayers aren't left holding 
the bag because of an accident caused by the negligence of an oil 
company such as BP.
  Our colleague from the State of Washington (Mr. Inslee) is 
introducing legislation to require oil wells to use the best available 
safety technology, which might borrow from technology that's already 
available and being used by countries like Canada, Brazil, and Norway. 
Of course, you, Mr. Blumenauer, have or will soon introduce legislation 
to repeal the oil and gas tax loopholes and direct funds to clean 
energy.
  The ultimate solution is to get off fossil fuel dependence and look 
to, in a meaningful way, those alternative sources of energy that could 
really help lessen our dependence, if not wean us entirely off, the 
dependence on foreign oil.
  In my own home State of Virginia, the potential offshore wind power 
is enormous, dwarfing the potential for offshore oil.
  For all of the sturm und drang in my State about whether we should 
drill, baby, drill off the shores of Virginia, the entire estimate of 
reserves, maximum, off the shore of Virginia, with the largest 
coastline, barrier island coastline on the east coast, is the 
equivalent of no more than 6 days of oil supply.
  Do we really want to risk the tourism industry, our environment, 
perhaps permanently, and the presence of the Navy in a State that has 
always been home to the United States Navy for 6 days' worth of supply? 
I think not.
  So the Democrats in this House have, in fact, introduced legislation 
that will address and remedy this situation and make sure that never 
again are American citizens put at risk by the negligent behavior and 
the unregulated behavior of Big Oil offshore oil drilling.

[[Page H4382]]

  Mr. BLUMENAUER. I must say how much I appreciate the legislative 
approach that you bring to the job. I can see the experience and 
leadership that you demonstrated in years of actual hands-on dealing 
with the public in a very direct and personal way in local government 
with some spectacular successes across the river from our Nation's 
Capitol, as evidenced in the simple, commonsense approach that you are 
taking here in terms of being practical, being direct, things that will 
make a difference. I really appreciate that spirit that you bring to 
the Capitol.
  Mr. CONNOLLY of Virginia. I thank you for your courtesy and 
graciousness, but I would say that clearly my colleague from Oregon is 
a model for all of us, especially those of us new here to the Congress, 
for his environmental leadership and for his legislative legerdemain.
  Mr. BLUMENAUER. I would like to pivot, if I could, just on the last 
point that you made, which I think, at the final analysis, is the most 
important.
  It is important to understand history. It's important to not allow 
people who got us into this mess to rewrite it, to point fingers, to 
obscure, to try and get partisan advantage from something that they, 
sadly, helped create in the first place. That would be a tragedy in and 
of itself.
  But it is where we go from here, what we learn from these lessons, 
what we understand is required. It is outrageous to me that the spill 
off the Santa Barbara coast that inspired the first Earth Day was 
fought with essentially the same technologies that we have available 
today.

                              {time}  1730

  All the time, all the energy, the resources that were thrown at it by 
the Federal Government was used basically by the industry to have more 
and more esoteric, sophisticated deep-drilling opportunities, not 
dealing with making sure that it was safe.
  So we are trapped in time 40 years at the negative end of this 
equation, when the ultimate disaster, which was predictable, perhaps 
not avoidable, but is much worse because of the focus.
  But it is the transition to clean energy technology that I would 
conclude my remarks. I see we've been joined by our friend we have 
referenced earlier, our colleague, Congressman Holt, who has some great 
legislation moving.
  But I would just conclude my observations that we don't want to be in 
a position where we continue to be tethered to the oil spigot, to have 
the United States consume 10 percent of the world's oil supply going 
back and forth to work every day, that it is past time for us to move 
forward.
  I appreciate the leadership of both you gentlemen in our livable 
communities issues, where we provide more tools to local government and 
more choices to people so they don't have to burn a gallon of gas to 
get a gallon of milk, that there are more sensitive land uses, that we 
fight against mindless sprawl, that we give people an alternative to 
the automobile in case they don't want to drive or can't afford to 
drive or maybe there are some people that we all know who probably 
shouldn't drive--giving them choices to walk and use transit, cycles; 
be able to make a system that is more sustainable, that is complemented 
by a clean energy future with tidal, wind, solar, geothermal, and 
investment in making our facilities now more energy-efficient.
  We have the capacity right now, with what we know how to do, things 
that we have off the shelf or almost ready for installation, we could 
be completely Kyoto-compliant, save consumers and taxpayers money, and 
preserve our national security.
  I hope that this is one of the lessons we carry away, not just 
understanding history, not just taking some of this terrific 
legislation that will help a difficult situation be a little better and 
take the taxpayer off the hook, but make sure that we are not in this 
dependency in the future.
  Thank you. And I really appreciate your leadership in presenting this 
today and your courtesy in permitting me to take part.
  Mr. CONNOLLY of Virginia. I thank you so much.
  I think our colleague from Oregon has done such an incredible job in 
this body on so many environmental fronts, not least of which, of 
course, the livable community initiative that he made reference to.
  Thank you so much for joining us tonight.
  I see our friend from New Jersey (Mr. Holt) is here, and I now yield 
to Mr. Holt.
  Mr. HOLT. I thank my good friend from Virginia.
  I, too, want to pay tribute to the work that our colleague from 
Oregon has done under the umbrella of liveability, having to do with 
transportation, housing, I mean, even such things as the location of 
post offices in town.
  There are so many things over the years that Mr. Blumenauer has 
worked on to try to make communities livable and sustainable--
sustainable in the way they produce and use energy, and livable in the 
sense of getting the best quality of life through our transportation 
decisions, our housing decisions.
  What is so heartbreaking about the catastrophe that is under way in 
the Gulf of Mexico right now is that it did not have to be.
  As I left to join you here on the floor, they were showing on one of 
the news networks fish flopping sadly, trying to get air, trying to get 
out of the oil, clearly doomed. We have seen the birds washing ashore.
  It did not have to happen.
  The oil spill is unprecedented in scale, but it is not unprecedented 
in kind, in our experience. In fact, I was talking with the 
Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency yesterday, and she 
said, do you know how many oil spills we're dealing with essentially 
daily? Not on this scale, but it should be expected, it can be 
expected, in fact it must be expected that, if you drill, you will 
spill.
  As our colleague from Oregon was saying, for BP to go into this with 
no preparation whatsoever--I mean, they talk about they are a company 
that manages risk. Well, if they manage risk, they know, by definition, 
things can go wrong. That's what risk means: There is a down side. 
Well, what preparations, what plans, what studies, what research did 
they do for the down side? None.
  Now, we are in the process of not only extending the liability 
limit--and today we removed the per-incident limit so that the Coast 
Guard is not constrained by the $150 million limit, which they are 
already pushing up against--but we also must make sure that there is an 
enforcement of standards within the Minerals Management Agency 
separating those who grant the leases from those who collect the 
royalties on the leases from those who enforce the standards. We 
haven't done that. So we must do that, and we must do that soon, so 
that if any oil drilling is going to continue, that preparations are 
made for the down side.
  I hope, in fact, that we wean ourselves from this archaic fuel as 
soon as possible. I mean, what does the word ``fossil'' mean to most 
people? That means out of date. What we are talking about here, what 
these companies have been developing ever-more-sophisticated 
technologies to do is to bind ourselves more strongly to an archaic way 
of powering our society and our economy. It is archaic. We should be 
moving away from it as rapidly as possible so that this won't happen 
again, because it need not happen again.
  I thank my friend for drawing our colleagues' attention to this and 
talking about those things that we will be doing over the next couple 
of weeks, lifting the liability limits to put in place research 
programs and regulatory programs for the future.
  Mr. CONNOLLY of Virginia. I thank our friend from New Jersey and 
thank him for his leadership as well.
  Let me close by pointing out that there is a danger to bumper-sticker 
public policy making. Those who lived by ``drill, baby, drill'' now 
have to examine not only their consciences but the consequences of the 
actions that flowed from that strident call. ``Drill, baby, drill'' has 
now become ``spill, baby, spill.''
  The Governor of Louisiana today, Bobby Jindal, when he was in this 
body in 2005 said the following: ``We have a choice. Many of my 
colleagues do not want us drilling for oil off the coast of Florida and 
do not want us to drill for oil off the coast of California. I would 
ask those colleagues to join with me in

[[Page H4383]]

providing incentives so that we can drill for oil in the deep waters of 
the Gulf of Mexico. The people of Louisiana,'' he said, ``welcome this 
production. We know it is good for our State, our country, and our 
economy.''
  I wonder if the Governor of Louisiana might pause today in calling 
for the government's assistance to clean up the worst oil spill, and 
arguably one of the worst environmental disasters ever to descend on 
our country, to consider whether that public policy statement made 
sense then and whether it makes sense now.
  The consequences of that philosophy of unrestricted oil drilling, 
irrespective of the environmental concerns, irrespective of the need 
for reasonable and prudent regulatory oversight to protect the public 
from precisely this kind of unmitigated disaster, have now actually 
happened because a whole bunch of people in a position to know better 
put oil ahead of everything else, including the public interests.
  I yield to my friend from New Jersey.
  Mr. HOLT. I thank the gentleman.
  You spoke earlier about the liability, a very important principle 
that has been to some extent and should be to the full extent of 
American law in this area, which is, ``polluter pays.'' That has been 
the basis of the Superfund program. That should be the basis for the 
oil liability legislation.
  BP has said they will pay reasonable costs and that sort of thing. We 
shouldn't have to take their word for it. We shouldn't have to take the 
word of a company that has flagrantly cut corners in the past at huge 
cost to life and natural environment, whether you're talking about the 
Texas City refinery, whether you're talking about the blowouts on the 
North Slope of Alaska, whether you're talking about the blowouts on the 
pipeline in Alaska, whether you're talking about failure to level with 
the American public and even with the Coast Guard and the experts on 
how much oil was escaping from this very well. The number keeps 
shifting, and the oil company, I think, has not been fully forthcoming.
  So this company asks us to take their word for it that they will pay, 
that they will pay for the cleanup, that they will pay for the 
environmental damages, they will pay for the economic damages and 
dislocation. I want that established in law. The liability limit should 
be raised to many billions of dollars, if there is a limit at all.
  Now, some here in the Congress, particularly from the other side, 
have said, ``Well, but you'll drive out the mom-and-pop, you'll drive 
out the small independents.'' Well, you have to have the ability to 
prevent and repair and pay for any damages when you go into business.
  The point of the oil liability legislation is not to protect small 
businesses; it's to protect our environment and the life of American 
citizens and the well being and economic opportunities for American 
citizens. And that means that the consideration should be how much 
damage can be done, and the liability limit should be large enough to 
cover the damage that can be done, not to ask whether this is going to 
put too much of a burden on a small company. The consideration should 
be, what is the damage? And there should be adequate liability to cover 
that.
  I'm hopeful that, in the next week or so, we will raise this 
liability limit from the laughably small number of $75 million to at 
least $10 billion. And I thank the gentleman for joining me in this 
effort. The American public is crying for it. They want to know that in 
law and in fact BP will be held responsible for the damage they have 
done.

                              {time}  1745

  Mr. CONNOLLY of Virginia. I thank my colleague from New Jersey. 
Again, I thank him so much for his participation tonight and for his 
leadership, especially in leading us in a legislative remedy.
  I want to end with this: on June 10, 2008, one of our colleagues 
actually said the following:
  There are 3,200 oil rigs off the coast of Louisiana. During Katrina, 
not a single drop was spilled. Actually, 600,000 gallons were spilled, 
but more than 7 billion barrels have been pumped from these wells over 
the past quarter century. Yet only 1-1/1000th of 1 percent was spilled. 
We would suggest that John McCain revisit his reservations about ANWR 
and run against the ``drill nothing'' Congress. Energy development and 
the environment are not mutually exclusive. In fact, this Republican 
colleague said, we would suggest that the first joint town hall meeting 
with Barack Obama, proposed by McCain, be held on one of those offshore 
Louisiana rigs.
  Surely, I hope our colleague did not mean this rig, the one that blew 
up, caught on fire, cost a number of lives, and led to the largest 
environmental disaster in American history.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back.

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