[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 156 (2010), Part 8]
[Senate]
[Pages 10620-10621]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                             GULF OILSPILL

  Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, the President will speak to the 
American people from the Oval Office tonight about a crisis in the gulf 
that is now in its ninth week. If early reports are accurate, the 
President will use his remarks not as an occasion to unite the Nation 
in a common effort to solve the immediate problem but to make his case 
for a new national energy tax commonly known as cap and trade. If true, 
this means the President plans to use this justifiable public outrage 
over an explosion that killed 11 people and the oilspill that followed 
as a tool for pushing a divisive new climate change policy even as 
hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil continue to spill into the gulf 
each day.
  Most Americans are baffled by all this. The crisis, as they see it, 
is a broken pipe at the bottom of the ocean, miles-long oil slicks, and 
threatened coastlines. The first thing they want to know is what the 
administration plans to do to plug the leak, clean up the oil, and 
mitigate the spill's effects on the livelihoods of those affected. Yet 
day after day, as the oil continues to flow, what we hear from the 
administration is how tough they plan to be with BP and now, 
apparently, how important it is that we institute a new tax which will 
raise energy costs for every single American but which will do 
absolutely nothing to plug the leak. Never has a mission statement fit 
an administration as perfectly as Rahm Emanuel's ``never allow a crisis 
to go to waste.'' Climate change policy is important, but first things 
first.
  Americans are saying two things at the moment: Stop this spill and 
clean it up. So with all due respect to the White House, the wetlands 
of the bayou, the beaches of the coast, and our waters in the gulf are 
far more important than the status of the Democrats' legislative agenda 
here in Washington. Americans want us to stop the oilspill first, and 
until this leak is plugged, they are not in any mood to hand over even 
more power in the form of a new national energy tax to a government 
that, so far at least, hasn't lived up to their expectations in its 
response to this crisis.
  Republicans are happy to have an energy debate. Like most Americans, 
we support an all-of-the-above agenda that seeks to produce more 
American energy and use less. But while American livelihoods are in 
immediate danger and we watch oil gush into our waters and wash up on 
our beaches, now is not the time to push ideology; it is the time to 
fix the problem.

[[Page 10621]]

  But if the White House insists on using this event as an opportunity 
to push the same kind of government-driven agenda that got us the 
health care bill, then they will need to answer some questions. Since 
the outset of this crisis, they have clearly been more focused on 
identifying a scapegoat than in taking charge. But questions persist 
about the administration's response. Here are just a few:
  First, the administration acknowledges that it took BP at its word 
early on about its ability to respond to a crisis such as this. The 
question is, Why? Why? Why did the Minerals Management Service under 
this administration accept BP's word that it was prepared to deal with 
a worst-case spill such as the one we are now experiencing in the gulf?
  Second, why were the inspections MMS performed on the Deepwater 
Horizon, and presumably on other rigs as well, unable to detect the 
problems that eventually became so apparent? What changes need to be 
made to make these inspections effective?
  Third, the law requires the President to ensure the effective cleanup 
of an oilspill when it occurs. Specifically, it requires the President 
to have a national contingency plan in place, and that plan is supposed 
to provide for sufficient personnel and equipment to clean up a spill. 
Clearly, the administration's National Contingency Plan was not up to 
the task. Why not? Did it rely too much on the oil companies to perform 
the cleanup?
  Also, why, as has been widely reported, has the administration been 
slow to accept offers of assistance from countries that have offered 
skimming vessels and other technologies to help clean up the spill? 
Since the cleanup is clearly not going as planned, shouldn't we be 
accepting legitimate offers of assistance wherever we can get them?
  The first priority, as I have said, is plugging the leak. Then we 
must turn our attention to questions such as these and to a thorough 
investigation of what went wrong on the Deepwater Horizon and how we 
can prevent anything like it from ever, ever happening again. That will 
be a monumental, months-long job, as there were so many failures at so 
many levels. Once that process begins, perhaps the administration can 
work to unite the country in the aftermath of this crisis in a way 
that, frankly, it has failed to do up to now.
  Legislation to respond to this oilspill should be an opportunity for 
genuine bipartisan cooperation of the kind the President so frequently 
says he wants and of the kind that has been sorely needed and sorely 
lacking in the midst of this calamity.
  Madam President, I yield the floor.

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