[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 156 (2010), Part 8]
[House]
[Pages 10950-10951]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                             THE OIL SPILL

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Burton) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Madam Speaker, my good friend Congressman Poe 
of Texas just a few minutes ago talked about the oil spill down in the 
Gulf and referred to the action or inaction of the administration in 
dealing with it. He quoted something from the L.A. Times that I thought 
was kind of interesting and a little humorous that my colleagues might 
like to hear again, and it quotes the LA Times as saying: ``Obama's 
speech: There's a pipe spewing a gazillion gobs of oil into the Gulf, 
so let's build more windmills.''
  Now, I know that sounds a little humorous, Madam Speaker, but that 
sounded like what the President's

[[Page 10951]]

speech was all about last night. There was no real solutions in dealing 
with the problem. Everybody's concerned about it. Everybody feels 
empathy and sympathy for the people in the Gulf, the thousands of 
people who have lost their jobs and who are out of work, the 
environmental problem that's been created. But what people want is they 
want a solution to the problem.
  It has now been 57 days, 57 days since this tragedy occurred. And 
what did the President do? He has suspended oil drilling in the Gulf 
for 6 months. Now, that's going to result in as many as 150,000 people 
losing their jobs, and for the oil people that work on those derricks 
out there in the Gulf, that's 150,000 jobs that it not only affects 
them, it affects almost six times that number of people who have 
ancillary jobs that work in the restaurants, that work on the beaches 
down there, all the things that are going on down in the Gulf. So 
you're looking at the potential of half a million to a million jobs 
being affected adversely because we haven't dealt with the problem.
  There have been other countries right after the spill took place that 
offered to send skimmers, ships over here to help skim up the oil on 
the surface of the ocean. We have had other countries that offered 
other help, and it's all been turned down. The Jones Act should have 
been suspended, but it was not suspended, and as a result, the oil 
crisis, the spill goes on and on and on.
  It is extremely important that we address the problem as quickly as 
possible. I'm not an engineer. I don't know what the answer is. But 
today we had a meeting with people who had talked to the BP oil company 
and had talked to other oil engineers, and there are things that are 
going on right now that they believe will address the problem, 
hopefully in the next 2 or 3 or 4 weeks or at least another month or 
month-and-a-half, but at least they're moving on the problem now with 
auxiliary wells being drilled down into the bottom of the Gulf to choke 
off the spill.
  All I'd like to say tonight, in addition to what's already been said, 
is that we have a tragedy down there that should not be compounded by 
what the problem has advocated, and that was he advocated last night 
that we come up with an energy bill, i.e., the cap-and-trade bill. And 
the cap-and-trade tax bill will tax all energy producers that emit 
CO2 emissions into the atmosphere. And if translated, that 
means that companies around this country will have to pay hundreds of 
thousands and maybe millions of dollars more for their utility bills 
which will be passed on to the consumer in the form of higher prices, 
and the average family is going to be affected to the tune of about 
$3,000 to $4,000 a year if cap-and-tax is passed.
  This is a time to deal with the crisis in the Gulf, not a time to 
start talking about the cap-and-tax bill which is going to cost jobs at 
a time when we need to create jobs. The unemployment rate in this 
country is at 10 percent or very close to it, and if you include the 
people who are unemployed and looking for work who are no longer 
counted, we're looking at 13, 14, 15 percent that are unemployed.
  So we need to address the economic problems, and we need to be 
dealing with that in a positive way and not going on with more taxes 
and more spending as the administration has talked about.
  What I'd love to see if I had my druthers right now, Madam Speaker, 
is somebody like Ronald Reagan who could come in and cut taxes and cut 
spending and stimulate economic growth like he did, and as a result, we 
had 20 years of economic growth.
  Right now what we're looking at is more unemployment, and now they're 
talking about, because of the way the Gulf is being handled, the 
possibility of more double-digit unemployment.

                              {time}  1730

  This is something that we can't tolerate right now. We need to be 
positive, we need to move ahead, and the President is not moving in 
that direction. And a perfect commentary is what was in the Los Angeles 
Times, not a conservative newspaper. And you heard liberal commentators 
all across the country last night saying the President is not 
addressing the problem, and he is way late in the first place, and in 
the second place, and in the third place.
  So I would like to end by saying once again, I think the Los Angeles 
Times was right on the money when they said of Obama's speech, There's 
a pipe spewing a gazillion gallons of oil in the gulf, and what's he 
talking about? More taxes, more spending, and more windmills.

                          ____________________