Mary Landrieu

I mean, on one hand, I understand about not having these classifications so tightly drawn that you limit flexibility in the event that something like Tennessee is so obvious.

Well, I think it is a very important question to answer because it is just so troubling.

We are going to take a very close look at the recommendations that you have made in your report and weave them into the proposals that we are going to have in this piece of legislation.

One of the things that helped the people of Louisiana and the Gulf Coast feel more normal as quickly as possible was getting their children back into schools.

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.

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.

Are the requirements, Mr. Newman, which you say you exceeded, that MMS requires for this deepwater drilling--are our requirements the highest internationally or are there other nations that require higher safety standards than what MMS is…

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.

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

Any constriction of domestic oil and gas production either onshore or offshore will only further put us in a perilous situation.

Mr. Chairman, in this instance it may or may not have, but I do think that this committee has to give some focus to the merging of some of these companies and to the extent in which they operate to make sure that they have consistent…

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

I just have some documentation about the value of the Louisiana seafood industry, which is more than $3.4 billion.

The last thing we want to do is for a region that has been hammered by storms and other disasters, is to have this be another economic disaster for the people of this region.

We owe a debt of gratitude to the people that work in this industry.

Will BP pay? ... if you're not found to be grossly negligent, is BP prepared to pay the full extent of real economic damage?

We will also be looking to identify any problems or risks that might exist for operations that are ongoing.

Transporting larger quantities of oil from far away places will increase, not decrease, our risks.

I believe it would be a terrible mistake to retreat from domestic energy production.

I intend to work with Senator Murkowski, the ranking member, and other members of the committee on a bipartisan basis.

I believe that the right course is reducing our oil consumption by promoting safe and clean alternative energy while increasing our domestic production.

We need to examine closely the extent to which each of these systems failed to do what it was supposed to do.

Banning offshore drilling will not keep industry workers safe and it won't prevent our shores from the threat of an oil spill.

America must reduce its oil consumption, for national security, and yes, for environmental reasons.