Political Quotes

“Actually, I'm not just skeptical of the MMS. I'm telling you it's a disaster. It was a disaster with MMS, and it was a disaster that their performance was allowed to happen. We're going to find out there is somebody responsible--maybe one, maybe many--at British Petroleum, but we know for sure--and it came up in the hearing today as well--that the President had previously mentioned that he wanted to end the coziness between inspectors, or people with the government, who were supposed to manage the oil companies and make sure they were doing the right things, the Big Oil companies. So that inspired some double-checking. We had hearings before about the 2 years, 1998 and 1999, during which the Clinton administration had employees who pulled the price control adjustment language out of the offshore leases. Originally, I was thinking it cost millions. It cost hundreds of millions, and now there are billions of dollars that have gone to Big Oil that should have gone into the Federal Treasury. When we had a hearing a couple of years ago about that, I asked the Inspector General--and this was a Clinton----”