Political Quotes

“This mantra that started from the Republican Party, I think it was the Presidential candidate, if I recall correctly. It was called ``drill baby drill.'' And what we found out was that this drill baby drill results in ``spill baby spill.'' It is a terrible situation. It's not new, though; and it's not unusual. In the last 17, 18 years in the Gulf of Mexico in these shallow water, deepwater drilling operations, there have been 38 blowouts. None as catastrophic as this. But this is not a new situation. In the Indian Ocean, west of Australia last year, there was a blowout of similar size by one of the international drilling oil companies. And it took them even longer--I think it was over 120 days, maybe a little longer than that--to drill a relief well to finally stop that blowout. There was another major blowout on the Mexican side of the Gulf of Mexico several years back that resulted in a huge oil spill for a long time, and there was yet another off the coast of Brazil. This is not new. But what is new is the extraordinary damage that's taken place and the irresponsibility of BP in this particular case where they cut corners, where they did the least that they thought they needed, instead of maximum, to be prepared; they did exactly the opposite. And now we're faced with this catastrophic event. Our colleagues across the aisle were talking about nothing happening. In fact, numerous efforts have been made, unsuccessful to date.…”