This incident is clearly a major human disaster, and again, I repeat, my heart and prayers go out with all of ours to the families directly involved starting with the 11 deceased or missing, all their families. And it is a major…

I think is a mistake, and I think by definition is pulling some amount of focus and resources away from that ongoing disaster.

Clearly, we need to learn an enormous amount from these events, and significant changes will have to be made to Federal law and policy and procedure in light of that.

between the task of stopping the flow and cleaning up the oil, there is a critical challenge that I am very focused on with folks in Louisiana

The problem is in practice we are seeing a lot of cases where it is not happening.

it is an order of magnitude difference.

Another big concern, Mr. McKay, as you can imagine, is using as much local labor and assets in the response as possible because these are the people hurting from the spill.

I want to call on this committee again to relook at the revenue-sharing proposals that have been put before this committee.

Thank you, Madam Chair, thank you for taking the initiative to hold this hearing today.

We want to make sure that the government agencies like the Small Business Administration, like Commerce, like other industries, can step up and help us through this difficult time.

We need to ensure that techniques utilized in recovery efforts are safe and that we continue to do everything possible to protect our environmentally sensitive areas.

As the responsible party, BP must be held accountable, and the Federal Government should ensure that BP upholds its financial obligations.

the Small Business Administration yesterday has made clear that on an individual basis the 6,000 small business disaster loans that are still pending in the same area from the last disasters we had can be deferred

So you would say that the requirements that--and this committee has a great deal of responsibility in this regard as the oversight for Interior and MMS.

I think because of the opportunity that the administration and the Congress have to influence the way things are done in the U.S., it does have international implications.

But we need the oil that comes from offshore to keep this economy moving.

We need to plan for the long-term impacts this accident will have on the Gulf Coast.

The commercial fishermen in the Gulf of Mexico harvested 1.27 million pounds of fish and shellfish, generated $659 million in revenue.