On the recordAugust 5, 2010
In addition to fighting for Main Street, I am going to come back here in September--and continue through the August recess with many hearings in my State and meetings in my State--to fight for justice for the gulf coast. I have not spent a lot of time in the last week or two here on the floor on this issue because I have been handling this small business bill, but I have been spending an awful lot of time on the phone, in meetings, and in Louisiana and will continue around the country to talk about this tragedy that has occurred. As shown on this chart I have in the Chamber, this is what the gulf coast looked like before the moratorium was put in place--this blanket moratorium, unnecessary moratorium--by the administration. We had 33 deepwater rigs in the Gulf of Mexico. As you can see, many of them were off the coast of New Orleans and Louisiana. As shown on this other chart, this is what it looks like today. Nobody is working. There is one rig being drilled. It is the Deepwater Horizon current site of the relief well. Everybody else has been put out of business in the Gulf of Mexico. This represents, at a minimum, 40,000 direct jobs--40,000 direct jobs.
