I certainly hope that you will look into this thoroughly.

Given that pattern of activity--and I had followed it since our hearing--I went out and put together this letter, with 17 of our colleagues as cosigners, asking you all to investigate.

I rise to talk about a bipartisan amendment I have spent many weeks working on with Senator Brown of Massachusetts. It is an amendment dealing with a very crucial issue--a major gap in our system of financial regulation. It has been…

it is obvious that in no other part of the American economy do we have people betting against their own product while selling it to the American people. You do not see Apple creating the iPod in the hope that sales will be far below…

I am increasingly concerned about the gridlock between 2 objectives that this country absolutely has to address. One of them is national security. The other is energy security.

I put more than 4 years into the project, 4 years. At the very last minute, DoD came in and raised an objection.

The American people are furious at the way business is done in Washington, DC, and if ever there were a concrete reason why, we have seen it in the handling of this bipartisan effort to once and for all take business in the Senate out of…

I know we'll have a bipartisan effort here in the committee.

Have we adequate controls over those who are drilling, presently, or are we waiving the law to allow a more expedited procedure?

My sense is that they aren't being enforced.

Now, what's happening in the Gulf is obviously an environmental disaster of huge proportions, yet Minerals Management didn't require an assessment of environmental consequences of an accident when it approved BP's drilling permit.

I think the central question is, to get the maximum value out of your new enforcement effort, we've got to attack the problem at the outset.

I want to work very closely with you, Mr. Secretary, in going forward with this reform proposal.

It is long past time to drain this safety and environmental swamp at the Minerals Management agency.

We got to play catchup ball in a hurry, with respect to the environmental and safety area, because the regulations that are there have not been adequate.

policies and regulations serve no purpose if the administration doesn't enforce them.

I think it is very regrettable, because we have seen, once again, tonight, as we did on Thursday, that defenders of secret holds in the Senate continue to pull out all the stops, employ every tool in the toolbox to throw a monkey wrench…

This bipartisan amendment will abolish the secret hold in the Senate, which, in my view, is a violation--an indefensible violation--of the public's right to know. With a secret hold, any Senator can block a piece of legislation or a…

The reason we feel so strongly is because the secret hold in the Senate is an indefensible violation of the public's right to know. We all understand every time we are home in our States how frustrated people are with the way business is…

the American people are furious at the way business is done in Washington, DC. Today, on the floor of the Senate, we saw a pretty good reason why. For many months, a large group of Senators on both sides of the aisle--Senator Grassley…

Like Senator Feingold, I am an original cosponsor of the DISCLOSE Act, and would like to address the ``stand by your ad'' disclosure provision of that bill and the recent Citizens United Supreme Court ruling. The Citizens United opinion…

The agency allowed rigs like Deepwater Horizon to drill with near certainty that blowouts would occur.

This sure fits in my view a pattern, a pattern of serious safety and environmental problems at BP.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Again and again, major safety problems, problems that have resulted in hundreds of millions of dollars in fines being paid by your company, settling criminal charges.