MSNBC "The Ed Show" - Transcript
Interview
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SCHULTZ: Welcome back to THE ED SHOW.
And our "Battleground" story tonight, it"s about oil, of course.
President Obama is proving he is in charge of this crisis, although the Republicans aren"t going to be onboard with that. He"s on the offensive for sure and finally talking tough to BP. He called the company out. He says that you"re just not doing enough right now and need to do more to prepare--take care of the damage that you have caused in the Gulf Coast.
But this country"s resources should never be at the mercy of BP or any other oil corporation. Bottom line, we won"t have to worry about devastating spills if we aren"t drilling.
Congress is back from recess. I think the Democrats should push for a full moratorium on offshore drilling, make the Republicans defend their buddies, and let the American people see who really the cronies are and who really lines up with the oil industry.
For more, let me bring in California Congresswoman Maxine Waters. She wants to prohibit any new drilling and impose a moratorium on all offshore oil drilling.
Congresswoman, good to have you with us tonight. Thanks so much.
REP. MAXINE WATERS (D), CALIFORNIA: Delighted to be with you and I thank you so very much for giving me an opportunity to join with many others who are just outraged at this environmental disaster--the worst in our history as it relates to oil drilling. And to not only keep the pressure on BP, but to talk about this whole claims process.
I was down there and I talked with the small oyster fishermen and I don"t want them to have to jump through all kind of hoops in order to be paid. The first thing they did with these claims was they tried to make them settlements. And, of course, we had some smart pro bono lawyers down there who changed that and wouldn"t allow them to sign anything that looked like a settlement. We forced them to bring the claims office closer to the small fishermen and we"ve got to make sure that they don"t give them so many hoops to jump through in order to get a claim resolved that they never get anything.
So, we want the federal government to do some oversight on that also.
SCHULTZ: Who in the federal government, Congresswoman? How would this be administered? How--I mean, I"ve heard comments coming from politicians saying that BP is going to make the people of the region whole. Who in the heck is going to have the oversight of that? This is going to go on for years, if not a decade or two.
I mean, how are you going to make this people whole?
WATERS: No, we cannot--we have to--number one, what we have to do is quickly construct a system by which we not only use our government resources and power to put together a claims process that will force them to have to pay the money, and even if we have to step in, we have to make sure that we have a system where we get our money back from them. But the first thing to do is to make sure that these billions of dollars that is going to cost them will be paid in the claims process in a way that"s expedited to keep them from having to jump through too many hoops. We can do that.
SCHULTZ: OK. Well, so you can order a multinational corporation, via legislation, for them to write checks? I mean, this is going to be interesting. And I"m all for it.
WATERS: Sure we can. Sure we can.
SCHULTZ: I mean--OK. Well, it didn"t happen with the Exxon Valdez.
I mean, that was--
WATERS: No, as a matter of fact--
SCHULTZ: -- a fraction of what the damage was.
WATERS: Well, let me just say this. All of those members of Congress and public policymakers who have been standing up for the oil companies and making sure that they protected them, you know, screaming about our dependence on foreign oil and talking about "drill, baby, drill," their mouths have been shut now with this disaster. They cannot credibly stand up and support them. They"re going to have to vote to have a claims process that makes good sense and that will reimburse all of these fishermen whose livelihoods depend on this.
And so, we"re in a good position to demand a moratorium at this point.
SCHULTZ: OK.
WATERS: A good position.
SCHULTZ: All right. Let"s talk about offshore drilling. There"s a CBS News poll out there and it seems that a week ago, 45 percent of the people favored it. Now it"s down to 40 percent. The opposition is growing from 46 percent up to 51 percent of the American people oppose offshore drilling.
What is this mean? If you listen to Bobby Jindal, if you listen to Melancon, the congressman from down there, and also, Haley Barbour, he doesn"t think there was a spill going on down there--I mean, you listen to Republicans and some Democrats, they want to continue to drill.
Exactly what do you want to do now that public opinion is on your side?
WATERS: We want the moratorium. Listen, let me tell you, these people that you"re referring to, you know, they"re late in catching up with what the public is saying.
I was at a senior citizens meeting where I went to talk about Medicare. The seniors said, uh-uh, we want to talk about this oil spill. And they said we don"t want the citizens to have to pay for it. We want BP to have to pay for it. And so, they want us to set up a process where we can force BP to pay for it.
These people will probably end up making about, what, $27 billion this year. What we have to be careful about is they"re going to set aside amount, you know, to pay dividends and all of that, but we can"t let them come back to us and say, "Uh-oh, we ran out of money." No, we can"t allow that to happen.
SCHULTZ: Congresswoman Waters, great to have you with us tonight.
Thanks for keeping up the fight for the folks down there in the Gulf.
Thank you.
WATERS: You"re so welcome.
SCHULTZ: You bet.
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