Political Quotes

“I thank my friend, the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. LoBiondo), for yielding. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of H.R. 6016, the Audit the BP Fund Act of 2010. I urge support for the bill that would provide for an ongoing independent Government Accountability Office investigation and audit of the operations of the compensation fund created by BP to reimburse those who were harmed by the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico beginning on April 20, 2010. The bill specifically determines the effectiveness, including the timeliness of claim payments and the accuracy of these operations in determining amounts of damages compensated. I believe the BP fund was established to help make whole the economies along the gulf coast that were damaged or destroyed by the disaster. $20 billion, as we know, is a tremendous amount of money, and it can go a long way to compensate gulf coast victims of the spill. We must ensure that compensation is done fairly, timely, and without bias, political pressure, or fraud. We have heard complaints from State and local attorneys critical of the overly restrictive terms. Others have said there's not been enough time to assess the damages. Others are concerned that fraudsters will take money away from those honest people and families and businesses that are waiting for their dollars. And thus far, the fund has paid out about $400 million to approximately 30,000 claimants. Obviously, that is about 2 percent of the fund.…”