Granting Subpoena Power to Commission Investigating BP Deepwater Oil Spill

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Mr. SCALISE. I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Madam Speaker, I rise in support of the legislation to give subpoena powers to the commission. I would hope the commission would be an objective commission that actually looks into and helps us find out just what went wrong because I think we all need to know what went wrong on that rig to lead to the explosion that, unfortunately, took the lives of 11 people and has led to not only this human loss but this environmental loss.

I would hope that they would be objective in their deliberations. I think I do have concerns that some of the members appear to maybe come to this with a predisposed outcome. And they would be well served and the country would be well served if they put their political agendas on the side and actually focused on finding out what went wrong and coming up with real recommendations.

Now, if we look at the legislation not only here before us but also some of the problems we're dealing with on the ground, we continue to have problems and we seem to be spending more of our time fighting against this administration rather than fighting the oil because we're not getting the leadership we need from the President. Just yesterday, the sand barrier plan brought forward by our Governor that the President himself bragged about helping approve last week was stopped, halted by the Federal Government. Yet again, this kind of administrative red tape is something that's holding us back from properly responding to this disaster.

But if you look at what's happening with this ban on drilling in general, Secretary Salazar had initially put a commission together to come up with recommendations. They had a 30-day report that they issued. And these were scientists that were put together on recommendation by the National Academy of Engineers, and they came up with some solid recommendations to improve safety; but they opposed a ban on drilling. Unfortunately, Secretary Salazar set that ruling on the side, set that report on the side, and ignored the reports of scientists and put politics over safety and science and went forward with the ban that yesterday a judge ruled was not legal, not proper.

And so as this commission moves forward, I would hope that they would actually follow the rule of law and come up with objective decisions. But I think the Secretary would be well served and the President would be well served to go back to the report that was issued by his own scientific panel that came up with suggestions to improve safety on rigs without shutting down an entire industry.

Unfortunately, the President and the Secretary continue to set those kinds of scientific recommendations on the side and allow politics to trump the science by continuing to pursue this ban, even though the judge said that their decision was arbitrary and capricious; that they did not have the legal authority to have a complete ban on drilling. In fact, the scientists recommended and suggested that a complete ban, as this moratorium that's in effect would currently have, would actually decrease safety on rigs.

So, again, I would urge the President and the Secretary to go back and read that report and follow the recommendations of his own scientists.

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