Political Quotes

“Mr. President, tomorrow marks another somber occasion. Eight years ago, the news ticker came across our televisions saying that an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico, off of Louisiana, was on fire, the Coast Guard was on the scene, and workers were missing. It was a Tuesday night. It was nearly midnight on April 20, 2010. By morning light, we knew 11 men would not be going home again. For 87 days, the oil gushed into one of the most productive marine environments in the world. The studies show the oil impacted the deepwater corals and fish at the bottom of the food chain, all the way from the bottom up to the dolphins and sea turtles at the top. Here is one example. This is one in the bayous. You can see the marsh grasses in the distance. You can see the oil as it is coming up, and it is literally covering everything. They did studies on fish that would be in a bayou like this. A little fish, about as big is this, is called a killifish. LSU professors did this study, and they compared them to the bayous where there was not this kind of oil, compared it to similar killifish. What they found over time was the little fish in bayous like this were stunted. They didn't reproduce. They mutated because of this. Nearly 5 million barrels of oil gushed for 3 months. A lot of it is still there. Some of it is at the bottom where that well was, and that wellhead on the sea floor below the rig was a mile deep. We worked as one gulf community in a bipartisan way.…”