On the recordJuly 20, 2010
The Wall Street Journal editorial today talks about the five applicants for every job that is available. And you know, we had in our committee today in Energy and Commerce, we had yet another hearing on the oil spill down in the Gulf of Mexico. And once again, it came up about the issue of the Secretary of Interior proposing a moratorium on drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. Well, here we kind of reverse the situation. Here we can kill five jobs for the price of one. For every job that we destroy on the drilling rigs in the Gulf of Mexico, five jobs that are also directly related to that activity in the gulf, five jobs are lost. So the moratorium in the Gulf of Mexico in a very real way is going to affect families all up and down the gulf, families that have already been hurt by this spill, already been hurt by the fact that the Federal Government did not exercise its due diligence and oversight in leasing that well to BP in the first place. BP, a foreign oil company that has one of the worst records as far as safety to be able to drill a well like this, with all kinds of passes and waivers on all of the NEPA regulations, wasn't required to put out a spill plan before they did this drilling. Well, now the poor people in the gulf, they've lost their shrimping, they've lost their fishing, they've lost their tourism, and now they're going to lose what's left of their economy because of the imposition of this moratorium.
