Bill Keating: “I thank the gentleman for yielding the time. I don't have a lot of time to watch television these days. But I think most…”

“I thank the gentleman for yielding the time. I don't have a lot of time to watch television these days. But I think most of us have seen on television a commercial comes up time and time again. It's a commercial with beautiful coastal scenes in it, telling people, Come to Louisiana, Come to Mississippi, Come to Florida, Come to the coast. And I looked at that. And I said, That's great marketing. At the end of the commercial, I was surprised to see it was sponsored by BP. Now why was that sponsored by BP? It was sponsored by BP because of Deepwater Horizon and the damage that that did. And this bill is just another attempt at giving Big Oil a handout, putting oil companies and their profits above both the American taxpayers and American treasures. Now my district includes the south shore of Massachusetts, the Cape, the islands of Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket and the south coast. We're a maritime community, one that respects the ocean and one that has prospered from its resources. This bill would threaten our shores, our marine life, and the industries that rely upon them by opening up the waters of the east coast from Maine to South Carolina for quote-unquote ``required oil and gases.'' Now I ask my colleagues, is this necessary? Why put hundreds of miles of ocean waters and the livelihoods of our fishing and tourism industries at risk when our Nation's oil imports are already down to their lowest level in nearly two decades, and production is up?…”