Video: Baucus openly questions Democrat grandstanding on BP; “I just hope…we know what the heck it is we’re doing”
A moment of candor from Democrat Sen. Max Baucus today at the Senate EPW Committee hearing on the Boxer-Menendez oil spill liability amendments. His comments are directed at grandstanding committee chairwoman Sen. Barbara Boxer, sitting next to him. His soliloquy on the Dems’ rush to pass legislation to send a Big Oil-bashing message comes in the context of debating liability limits and their consequences on smaller companies. More on that in a moment.
Watch:
Transcript:
BAUCUS: I know we had a hearing on this subject, Madame Chairman. It’s starting to bother me that last year, roughly, we don’t legislate very much. I’m speaking generally, and I’m speaking only from my own personal experience with the Finance Committee. We don’t have any mark-ups any more. We don’t burrow down and ask tough questions of witnesses, trying to establish proper policy, near as much as we used to. Rather, a lot of amendments and bills are more in the nature of message amendments and bills. And I find it disconcerting. I know there was a hearing on this subject, regrettably I wasn’t here for that hearing. But I do have some concern about a total removal, a total unlimited liability. I mean, there was a reason for Price Anderson [nuclear industry liability limits]. I don’t know if those policy reasons are still applicable today or not, but there was a reason, and it was passed. I’m going to vote against this amendment, but I just hope that in the future we know what the heck it is we’re doing. This amendment may have the effect of driving out some smaller companies, I don’t know. It may have the effect of allowing foreign outfits come in, I don’t know. But I do know that the current limit is too low, and the 10 billion dollar limit made sense to me. Unlimited liability may be the best policy. I also understand, on the other hand, that the top insurance companies, not brokers, but insurance companies say that oil companies price all this in anyways when they purchase policies. Now, of course, if it’s unlimited, the policy might be more expensive. I’m going to vote no, but I just urge us to think more deeply about what it is we’re doing on the margin, and little less offering message amendments and bills. I’m not casting disparagements on anybody here, it’s just my impression that I think we’re moving too much in the message direction in this Congress and not enough in the legislative side of it. Now, I’m not going to get into why that’s happened, I have strong reasons as to why that’s happened, but I’m going to avoid that for the moment and just caution us to think more substantively, try to burrow down and find out, so we’re doing a good job of doing what we’re doing.
Context from GOP Sen. Jim Inhofe here and here. From Sen. Inhofe’s statement:
Now I want to turn to S. 3305, and the Boxer substitute amendments to the Menendez bill. I sit here today profoundly disappointed that my offer of a compromise on liability limits under the Oil Pollution Act (OPA) was rejected. Let me explain what I offered.
First, I think everyone here agrees on a few core principles:
· The leak should be stopped;
· The environmental damage should be mitigated;
· Those suffering economic harm should be made whole; and
· BP must pay.And on the issue of liability caps under OPA, they must be raised. Sen. Murkowski has proposed a workable solution. I have taken language from her comprehensive oil spill legislation that empowers the President to set liability caps based on several risk factors, including water depth, estimated well pressure, the proximity of a lease to emergency response equipment and infrastructure, as well as a company’s safety record.
In other words, under this approach, the President could make distinctions between different wells and the different circumstances attendant to each-and then set the liability caps accordingly. This is a reasonable approach that allows for careful deliberation, one that balances the need for safety, environmental protection, domestic energy production, and jobs.
I should note that I was even willing to consider unlimited liability in specific cases-that is, if the President believed the risks of a specific project were too high, then a lessee would have to operate without a cap. So we weren’t far apart. Yet, at least at this point, there’s no desire on the other side to reach a compromise-I fear they may want a political issue, not a practical solution. I suppose it was paramount that today’s outcome conform to the talking point that one party stands with Big Oil while the other stands with “the people.”
But the irony is that if the Boxer substitute amendments become law, drilling in the Gulf will dry up, and the only players left standing will be BP and China’s National Offshore Oil Corporation. In other words, Big Oil.
Let’s set aside the liability caps for a moment: I can assure you that Boxer substitute #2, by itself, will push smaller producers out of the Gulf, as it creates so many hurdles, so many unreasonable obstacles, that safety-the ostensible purpose behind this amendment-won’t be an issue, because drilling will be so costly that few will be able to afford it. So who ultimately benefits? That’s right, Big Oil.
Again, let it be known for the record that my colleagues and I sought bipartisan compromise. We wanted the same outcome as in 1990, when OPA passed unanimously after Exxon Valdez. I thought the same could happen here. But now 1990 seems like eons ago.
Madame Chairman, I’m not ready to throw in the towel just yet; I will continue to try work with Democrats so we can reach agreement. That’s because I think the approach we have put before the committee contains the essential elements for compromise: polluters pay, victims are made whole, and the United States continues to have a robust domestic offshore energy industry that creates jobs and lessens our dependence on foreign oil.
Takeaway quotes from Baucus:
“It’s starting to bother me that last year, roughly, we don’t legislate very much. I’m speaking generally, and I’m speaking only from my own personal experience with the Finance Committee. We don’t have any mark-ups any more. We don’t burrow down and ask tough questions of witnesses, trying to establish proper policy, near as much as we used to. Rather, a lot of amendments and bills are more in the nature of message amendments and bills. And I find it disconcerting.”
Bothered by legislation getting rammed through to exploit a crisis? Worried about the unintended consequences of p.r.-driven legislation and politicized government intervention?
Careful there, Sen. Baucus. You’re beginning to sound like a Tea Party activist.
***
Related must-read: Heritage’s oil spill to-do list for Obama.
And speaking of “message” politicking instead of acting like responsible legislators…
Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.) wanted to fly 10 lawmakers down to the Gulf of Mexico to see the damage caused by BP’s gigantic oil spill first hand.
House Democrats said no.
Scalise’s trip was rejected for a variety of bureaucratic and logistical reasons, but it has also opened a new vein of partisan squabbling over who should be allowed to arrange a trip to view the impact of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.
Republicans want to be able to take trips using their office spending allowance. But Democrats have heard from the Department of Homeland Security, which has asked that Congress organize trips through committees of jurisdiction, to avoid having to cater to a ton of individual lawmakers in a disaster zone, Democratic aides say. GOP leaders say they’ve heard nothing of this.
The squabbling over who gets to travel to the Gulf on whose dime is the latest sign that congressional oversight of the oil spill oversight from Capitol Hill has been bogged down by partisanship.
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Related to the oil spill. Drudge has= d’s block r’s from visiting oil spill. They will not give the funds to do so. Guess they don’t want this mess to be seen first hand by the r’s. Can you imagine if a r did this to d’s?
L
Yep. Added that to the post.
When everything is delegated to a czar or existing agency to make the rules what can you expect? They only need the Senate or House to put the stamp on it. Everything else has been hammered out (read: Senate and House are irrelevant).
Baucus doesn’t come up for election anytime soon, but his buddy Tester does.
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Stop Gulf drilling and put 50,000 people out of work? Yes–this seems like a REALLY SMART DimocRAT plan to win the election in 2010 and to guarantee re-election for Comrade Obama (PBUH) in 2012.
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Clueless clowns–send them back to the Great Pumpkin for new “battle plan”. I don’t think the Green “Energy” is going to replace the lost jobs–or that it will keep gas from going over $4 a gallon soon.
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John Bibb
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Yeah you keep burrowing, you rodent, and no you are not doing a good job of whatever the heck you think you’re doing!
Senator Baucus had better watch his back in the Senate gymnasium, if you know what I mean.
Another shower buddy about to go down!
Oooh, that didn’t sound right.
ya think?
Rogue
As my Canadian friends would say; “No flies on you, eh?”
Everything the dimocrats have touched has turned to s*** for this country, what makes anyone think this will be different? The CBO announces that Obamacare WON’T reduce the deficit (duh) but dramatically increase it, our debt is the highest percentage of the GDP since WWII, and as a result of a democrat controlled Congress since 2006. The progressives have had 80 years to work this plan of destroying our free market economy and turning it into an entitlement paradise – but take a warning from Ayn Rand in Atlas Shrugged, it won’t work, it has never worked, and it can’t work – look at Greece and the European Union’s present crises. This Boxer amendment will do exactly as predicted, drive the small producer out of business to be taken over by the Chinese or Brazilian oil companies. Isn’t it bad enough that the Chinese almost own this country’s entire debt, now we are going to give them a strangle hold on our energy – what will happen when we start putting fair trade embargoes on Chinese imports into this country to make fair competition for our manufacturers? We will be looking a $4/gallon like some of us remember the days of $0.19/gallon.
Good man, that Inhofe. Wish we had him here in the People’s Republic of Aloha.
And who do they think will pay the increased insurance costs? Those greedy old ladies clipping their dividend coupons? You and I will by increased cost at the pump, that is the ‘cost’ side of doing business and is passed on to the consumer. Their hope for ‘Green Jobs’ is refuted by every country that has tried it where it accounted for a net loss of 2.2 jobs for every one created.
The bottom line is this:
The government that thinks it can manage the healthcare of 300 million people can’t manage one leaking oil pipe
Senator Inhof said “First, I think everyone here agrees on a few core principles:
· The environmental damage should be mitigated;”
·_______________________________________
Too late Senator, Obama has thwarted every plan brought forth to mitigate the environmental damage through bureaucratic manuvering and restrictions.
If fact he has gone out of his way to exacerbate the situation at every turn.
Obama must want the Gulf Coast covered in, and the Gulf of Mexico filled to overflowing with oil.
I assure you, they don’t.
The leftsist progressives really doesn’t care a whit if they can manage anything, they only desire to have complete control of everything. They care nothing about the consequences of their actions on us.
hawkeye54 said:
Yep, and the way things are headed whats happening to our country may not be able to be rectified short of a Major revamp of the entire Federal Government – with that Bloated MS. Jabba the Hut almost a shoe in at the SCOTUS the dirty Socialist Democrats are laying a road to perdition for the Majority of the US population.
stillontheroad said:
Welcome to the USSA Comrade.
What about the stupidity of the EPA demanding that the water discharge from skimmers be less than 15%.
Why not ask a pelican, would you rather have 99% less of the oil on you are do you want to leave it all on you?
What do you think the pelican would say.
Rahm’s not a Senator, is he allowed in their shower?
I still haven’t got over his standing up for Piglousi, after he said(para phrasing) “you don’t know her, she is a I nice woman”. Your kidding me, right?
oops, sorry, my mistake, that was Coburn
I wonder everyday why anyone would want to control everything that is a failure. why would you want to control the greatest country known to mankind and ruin it…I just don’t get. Anyone got that figured out, beyond the reasoning being psychotic?
Well, liberalism is a mental disorder. And isn’t the definition of insanity doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
Describes lefties to a T.
hawkeye54, not being a trained therapist, but I can’t come up with any other possible excuse…only different levels and types.
What was that Carol King lyric…
“I feel the earth move under my feet…
I feel the sky come tumblin’ down…”
Maybe Max is starting to remember what it was like…pre Nannie…
Ditto.
BTW, for those who don’t know, 187 year old Dan Inouye is now third in line to the Presidency…well he may be younger than that, but we’d need his birth certificate to prove it, and they aren’t available in Hawaii.
Once again, George Soros is calling the tune. He wants drilling in the Gulf to dry up because he’s heavily invested in Petrobras, which is drilling off the coast of Brazil.
Sinator Baucus doesn’t have a clue, Nancy Peelousy doesn’t have a clue, wait, no one in DC has a clue!
Puts small drillers out of business … they can’t afford the liability cap. One of the reasons it was so low is that it made it reasonable for small drillers …