On the recordJuly 30, 2010
I come to the floor today to support the Oil Spill Response Improvement Act of 2010. It is a bill that seeks to directly deal with one of the most serious issues facing our country today in the aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon incident and how the Federal Government responds to what will likely turn out to be one of the worst ecological disasters that have taken place off our Nation's shores. The bill is a targeted piece of legislation that supports jobs in the gulf coast region, prevents our Nation from relying further on foreign nations for our energy needs, and protects the American taxpayer from being placed on the hook should, God forbid, a future incident ever occur. Specifically, the bill gives the President the ability to raise caps on economic damages done by oil companies. It creates a Price-Anderson model where all entities operating in the gulf would share the risk, as we do with the 104 nuclear powerplants. I don't think the public is aware of the fact that they all have the same insurance policy, and if something were to go wrong with one nuclear powerplant, all the others' insurance would be called upon. So there is no question about liability; they just take care of the problem. We need to do the same thing in terms of these oil rigs. The legislation maintains the integrity of the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund. It provides States an additional funding system to be used to protect the ecosystem.
