The Economy and Other Current Issues
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. SCALISE. Well, obviously you've been studying this. I know you, and I have spoken about the problems on the ground, and I appreciate your concern and the interest you have in trying to help us. I wish that the President had that much interest in helping us in the day-to-day problems we're facing. Just the other day I was talking to one of the local fire chiefs who was there on the ground after Katrina, who is there on the ground right now battling the oil, and he said that the level of government dysfunction is higher today--more dysfunction today--than it was during Katrina. A case in point just happened yesterday when this sand barrier plan that our Governor and our entire congressional delegation fought for over 3 weeks to get the President to finally approve. In fact, last week, when the President gave his address to the Nation from the Oval Office, he actually bragged about the fact that he approved this sand barrier plan. Well, yesterday the Federal Government shut it down.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. SCALISE. It was shut down yesterday by the Federal Government. Spoke to our Governor's office about it. They basically said it was a Federal agency that shut them down. I talked to the Federal agency today, and they said they didn't shut them down. We went round and round, and of course they were shut down by the Federal agency. Again, this is a classic problem we have had every day.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. SCALISE. Yes. I don't know whether the people in D.C. didn't know what their Federal agents on the ground in south Louisiana knew what they were doing, but it's happening every single day. It seems like we have problems like this every day, so you can't just say it's miscommunication. Clearly, it's a lack of leadership. The President, under the law, is responsible for that leadership, and clearly, he is not doing his job, and he is not engaged.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. SCALISE. It is very sad that it is a vacuum of leadership, because the law is clear that, under the Oil Pollution Act, when there is a spill, the President is responsible for directing the recovery, and the responsible party, in this case BP, is responsible for writing the check.
Now, for whatever reason, the President is allowing BP to still make decisions on the ground even though they have proven they are incompetent. Yet he is not doing his job. The President is not doing his job under the law. Now, if he doesn't like that law, he should try to repeal it, but in the meantime, he ought to follow the law.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. SCALISE. You know, the gentleman is correct about not only the Governor but about the people, who all throughout the gulf coast are jumping up mad because they're seeing this kind of dysfunction, this lack of leadership from the President, every day in different ways, and there is no reason for it. The President is giving speeches, talking about how he is in charge, but any time anything goes wrong, you can't find anybody who is in charge. Nobody takes responsibility. Nobody wants to be held accountable. Yet nobody wants to actually help us solve the problem.
You were talking about food. Just Monday, I was in New Orleans. I ate at one of the great restaurants, Drago's, and I was eating my shrimp po-boy. The seafood is still great to eat. Unfortunately, a lot of the seafood beds are closed right now. There are still seafood beds open, and when you can find good seafood, it's still good to eat, and the shrimp po-boy I ate was wonderful. The problem, though, is with some of those seafood beds we've been trying to protect. Just weeks ago, some of those seafood beds had no oil. Today, oil is starting to come in.
That's what this whole barrier plan is about--protecting our marshes, our estuaries, and the pelican nesting areas. In some of the other areas that haven't been affected by oil, we are trying to keep the oil out, and so we've come up with a plan. Unfortunately, the Federal Government didn't have a plan. So you would think that they would be working with us to help us implement our plan. In fact, they've been fighting us. It took us over 3 weeks to get the President to finally approve the Governor's plan, but he only approved 25 percent of it. He spoke last week in his national address as if he'd approved the whole plan. There is still 75 percent of that sand barrier plan that has not been approved, so there are still a whole lot of seafood beds and marshes that haven't been protected.
Here we had at least 25 percent that we were working with to build up these barriers. Then yesterday the Federal Government comes and shuts it down. Again, this is something we fought for for over 3 weeks, and the Federal Government finally permitted. They were so successful, supposedly, that the President bragged about it on national TV. Then yesterday they just shut it down quietly, but we're not going to let this go by quietly because this is something that is their job, and they're not doing it.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. SCALISE. That's exactly correct.
In fact, when the President came out with this ban--and he calls it a temporary pause--if they do what the President said he wanted to do, which is for 6 months to allow no drilling in the gulf, ultimately, those rigs, each of them, will lose about $1 million a day. They're being lured by other countries, countries that want these valuable assets and the skilled workers that go with them. Now some of them are starting to go to places like Brazil and West Africa. So, over the next couple of weeks, you will see a chipping away of not only the ability to generate natural resources in America, which provides billions--$6 billion by last estimates--of Federal revenues that will go away but of also the jobs. In Louisiana alone, it will be over 40,000 jobs that we will lose.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. SCALISE. Just directly related to those rigs. Of course, you've got service industries, and you've got restaurants. You've got all of the secondary spending that goes along that you can't even calculate because it's so big. These are high-paying jobs. These are skilled jobs that will leave our country, and some of them are already starting to.
Ultimately, if you go back, the President is trying to say this is a fight between safety and jobs. Unfortunately, he probably--or maybe he hasn't even read the recommendations of his own scientists who came up with a report. Right after the explosion on the rig, they asked to have a panel of scientific experts, who were assembled by the President and by the Secretary of the Interior, put together a report. They asked for a 30-day report. Sure enough, this panel of scientists came back with a 30-day report of specific recommendations to increase safety, to make sure you go and you inspect every rig. For the ones that are working, fine, like every other one is, and you allow them to do what they're doing. If there are any problems you find, you address those problems, but you don't shut down an entire industry because one company didn't follow the rules.
In fact, the Federal regulator, under President Obama, didn't enforce the laws that were on the books. The recommendation came back and said to look at these safety guidelines we're giving you, but don't shut the industry down. Well, the President conveniently discarded, threw away, the recommendations of the scientific panel, and he recommended the moratorium. They actually pointed out, No, we didn't. You're misstating what we said. They apologized for that, but they still went forward with this moratorium.
Then, just yesterday, a Federal judge in New Orleans said, You cannot have this moratorium because it's not based on fact; it's not based on science, and it doesn't help safety. In fact, it could decrease safety. Yet they still continue to ignore the fact that they are throwing away science and are trumping it with politics. They are playing politics with this decision, and they are still going to try to ignore now a ruling of a Federal judge and of their own scientific experts to run 40-plus thousand jobs in Louisiana and over 150,000 good, high-paying jobs in this country to foreign countries and are going to make us more dependent on Middle Eastern oil.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. SCALISE. You know, if you look at what the President said in his speech last week, I and many others were angered by the fact that he spent almost as much time trying to exploit this crisis to promote his cap-and-trade energy tax as he did in talking about the oil spill and how we can battle the oil and keep it out of our marsh. In fact, if he just were doing his job and were focusing on what his responsibility is under the law, then he actually would be focusing exclusively on helping us battle the oil instead of, not only blocking our attempts on the ground, but of then diverting it and trying to exploit it to talk about this cap-and-trade energy tax.
Then you go into so many of the other things that are happening on the ground that are causing so much frustration for our local leaders, who should all be not only working with the government to battle the oil, but they should be empowered. They should be given ideas from Federal agencies.
Look, I'm for smaller government. Right now, we've got the largest government in the history of our country, but whether you're for bigger government or for smaller government, I think we should all be able to expect competent government. Clearly, we are not getting that now.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. SCALISE. No. Another thing that needs to happen is you need to have a real clear command structure on the ground where decisions are made quickly and decisively; and if things go wrong, there are people you can hold accountable to go fix them. Not to sit around and point fingers, but to get things done. The problem that we continue to have--and we're over 2 months into this now and there was no excuse for these kinds of delays 3 or 4 days after the rig exploded, but especially 2 months later, when everybody knows how important this is, how much national significance it has not only for the 11 lives lost, for the environmental damage, but now for the economic and energy security issues that are being raised, you would think that this would be the number one priority of this President and he would be focusing all of his resources.
And when local leaders have ideas like our local leaders have had ideas, the Federal Government is right there working with them saying, How do we get this done today instead of 3 weeks going by, fighting with the Federal Government to get approval for things that should have been approved on day one, if this was the top focus. And then where the Federal Government is even coming up with ideas.
I watched the movie ``Apollo 13,'' and it's an inspiring movie. It's one of those movies you watch if you really want to get your juices boiling. And you can see what American ingenuity is all about. This was a case where the American spirit was alive and well and those NASA folks sat in that room and said, We're not leaving until we get our men back home safely. ``No'' was not going to be an answer and no excuse was going to be accepted. You don't have that same can-do spirit today by the Federal bureaucrats, who continue to block our attempts to protect our marsh, to keep the oil out of those seafood beds, to protect those pelicans and the other wildlife that are threatened every day, when we have ideas to protect them.
Again, if they've got a better idea, wonderful. We'd love to hear. Unfortunately, not only did they not have any ideas to help us, but they're spending their time blocking our attempts to save our marsh. And there's no excuse for that.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Source