MSNBC "The Rachel Maddow Show" - Transcript

Interview

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REP. ED MARKEY (D), MASSACHUSETTS: Thank you. Glad to be on.

MADDOW: Have you received any response from BP on your letter to BP America"s CEO about this?

MARKEY: Yes, BP actually forgot to mention hurricanes or tropical storms in their spill response plan. That is what would happen if there was an accident, an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, and as we know, they do have plans to evacuate walruses from the Gulf of Mexico, which have not lived there in 3 million years, they just forgot to mention hurricanes or tropical storms and, by the way, so did ExxonMobil and Conoco Phillips in their spill response plan.

So, the level of seriousness with which these oil companies took their responsibility to insure that in the event something went wrong, that a spill occurred is obviously very low.

MADDOW: Do you have more hope that the oil companies could be made to care about these things or do you have more hope that the government will stop saying yes to disaster response plans that say don"t mention the possibility of hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico? Which is going to improve first?

MARKEY: I actually think that this nightly, daily televising of this catastrophe and the abysmal response of the oil industry is going to make them accountable. Maybe a few years from, they"ll try to get away again from their responsibilities. But I do think it is going to catalyze the Congress to finally put on the books the minimum standards which the oil companies must have in order to respond to this kind of a catastrophic spill. They basically were owning and operating the regulator, but I don"t think it"s going to happen for the rest of this year and for the foreseeable future.

MADDOW: Congressman Markey, you and I have talked before about the issue of oil spill response technology, how bad it is, trying to get oil companies to invest in that. What"s the status of those efforts in Congress right now?

MARKEY: Well, I"ll introduce legislation so that we can have 21st century technology to deal with oil spills at ultra-deep depths. Right now, these wells are not ultra-safe. There is not an ultra-fast response with 21st century technologies which is possible.

And I"ve introduced legislation which will create that fund, which will create the impetus for the development of these technologies, because we just can"t allow either the federal government or the oil industry in their cozy cooperation, their complacency to allow a situation like this occur again where people look on helplessly without the technology necessary to bring a rapid end to this kind of a catastrophic event.

MADDOW: I"d also like to get your response, Congressman, to something that happened--something that happened this week that I"m quite surprised by. Republican Senator Jim DeMint is blocking attempts to give the oil spill commission subpoena power. So, the president is appointing this commission to investigate the oil spill to talk about what to change in terms of our policy so this never happens again. Jim DeMint does not want them to be able to subpoena anybody. I don"t understand this.

I wonder what your response to it is.

MARKEY: Well, as you know, in the Senate, they have a system of holds, secret holds. In "Godfather Part I," it would a code of omerta. No one gets to learn why a single senator puts a hold on a bill.

Here, Senator DeMint is placing a hold on the bill which will give subpoena powers to the commission that is going to investigate this spill which, by the way, is co-chaired by the President Bush"s head of the Environmental Protection Agency. But he still doesn"t trust it. He says that he"s putting the hold on this bill, on the subpoena power on behalf of other senators who are unnamed.

Now, could they be unnamed senators from Oklahoma? Unnamed senators from Texas who might just have the oil industry interest at heart? We don"t know. But all the ultimate result is of this is that the commission won"t have the subpoena power they know that they need to get to the bottom of this scandal.

MADDOW: We will give those senators from Oklahoma and from Texas a call. See if they"ll answer--see if they"ll answer your queries, Congressman Markey. Thank you very much for your time, sir.

MARKEY: Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you.

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