On the recordJune 10, 2010
I do appreciate our friend from Colorado talking about the history here, because we hear people come to the floor to somehow lay this at the foot of President Obama, who has been busy since the moment he took office dealing with a series of disasters that he inherited. But the approach that has been taken by the Republicans when they were in the majority actually set the stage for this. In 2003, they added an exemption for all oil and gas construction activities from the provisions of the Clean Water Act. They had a stipulation that the BLM had only 10 days to make drilling permit decisions. They had new authority for the Department of the Interior to permit new energy projects in the Outer Continental Shelf without adequate oversight or standards and then providing, on top of that, $2 billion for already profitable companies to drill in ultradeep water. It is absolutely scandalous that we have had this steady assault.
