Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 3 minutes. Mr. Speaker, the independent bipartisan commission on the BP oil spill issued its final report last month. And what did it conclude? Well, that the Deepwater Horizon that went to the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, creating the worst environmental disaster in our country's history, was not an isolated incident; that the problems were systemic across the entire oil and gas industry. That report was a blistering, scalding indictment of the deregulatory environment which was created at the Department of the Interior that led inexorably, inevitably to this catastrophe, this environmental catastrophe. But are we here tonight debating legislation to implement the reforms that the commission presented to the Congress in order to prevent another catastrophe like this? No, we are not. We are instead debating whether or not we should have fewer regulations, whether or not regulations that actually protect against incidents like this hurt job creation. Well, ladies and gentlemen, what we learned from the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe was that lax regulation doesn't save money; lax regulation costs money. Lax regulation does not create jobs; lax regulation destroys jobs. And in this case, lax regulation led to the loss of 11 lives and 155 other individuals who were seriously injured. Lax regulation, ladies and gentlemen, leads to catastrophe. Boosterism breeds overconfidence, and overconfidence breeds disaster.…”