On the recordJune 23, 2010
Let us note that this catastrophe could well have been avoided in a number of ways. What we are talking about now is the fact that standards that already are in place were not followed, and we had best practices that, of course, are required of the industry that were not being followed. And I think we're going to find that out. So the last thing we want to do is cripple the United States' production of domestic energy in order to find out and hold a certain group of people accountable for the fact that they did not follow the practices or the standards. But let's put it this way: Congress has not done its job as well. We have spent billions of dollars on research and development for the Department of Energy. That money has been channeled into nonsense, like proving global warming rather than spending some money--which we have-- spending money on research and development to make the technology that we need to have safe oil and gas production, which our country currently depends upon for our standard of living. So we haven't done our job here. We haven't set our priorities here. And on top of that, we did not develop the technology necessary to deal with a spill of this magnitude. Kevin Costner came to our office and testified at a hearing. He's put his own money into this. So we need to set our own priorities. We need to deal with this crisis.
