Political Quotes

“we have made some progress with proceeding to this very important issue and Members are obviously coming to the floor to talk about their amendments and offer their viewpoints on this legislation. I would just point out that I hope we have a chance to consider some of the other amendments we have been talking about, the issue of whether companies in the tar sands business should be paying into the oilspill liability trust fund. We talked earlier today about how the oilspill liability trust fund which U.S. companies are required to pay into and is critical for cleanup. I want to add some documents to the Record of this case we had in Kalamazoo where the company may have hit its cap and where it may--for that Kalamazoo spill on tar sands--be asking the oilspill liability trust fund to actually recoup the benefits they had to pay out. To me this is a very important issue. Here is a company where we have tar sands spilling into the Kalamazoo River and actually costing, I think, something like $1.2 billion, and instead of this company paying into the trust fund and paying for costs on this, they basically are going to take money that U.S. companies paid into the trust fund and be recouped because of this. So I just want to get this right, and I hope we can work with our colleagues on another amendment on that process.…”