Comments on Administration’s Response, Regulatory Failures, and Why DOI Chief of Staff Serves in Two Full Time Roles
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senator John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) questioned Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar about the oil spill in the Gulf during the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing.
Excerpts of Senator Barrasso’s remarks include:
Administration’s Response:
“The initial explosion occurred April 20th. It is now May 18th. The Administration waited nine days after the explosion to declare this a ‘spill of national significance.’
“The New York Times Editorial Board — not normally a critic of the Administration – said: ‘The timetable is damning.’
“The American people have been watching this disaster unfold for nearly a month.
“Meanwhile, oil has been leaking into the Gulf at an estimated 5,000 barrels per day. Some scientists now put it at up to about 25,000 barrels a day.
“Lives have been lost. People’s jobs and economic livelihood are in jeopardy.
“There’s been a number of different ideas on how to stop the leak: the containment dome, the top hat, the junk shot. Now this undersea straw.
“It doesn’t seem that anybody checked beforehand whether any of these things would actually work.
Administration’s Regulatory Failures:
“So, the American people aren’t just furious at British Petroleum. The American people are also furious that the government has allowed this to happen with no real plan in place.
“The press reports reveal a litany of failures at the Department leading up to the explosion.
“An Associated Press investigation has shown that the rig that exploded was allowed to operate without safety documentation required by government regulations.
“There was a story in the Casper Star Tribune yesterday, front page, ‘Feds Didn’t Make Inspections on Rig As Claimed’
“It said ‘regulation is so lax that some key safety aspects on rigs are decided almost entirely by the companies doing the work.’
“It went on to say ‘the Associated Press sought to find out how many times government safety inspectors visited the deep water horizon and what they found in response MMS officials offered a changing series of numbers.’
“So if the Department can’t keep track of inspections, how can they possibly believe that the Department is properly overseeing more than 3,500 active platforms in the Gulf?
“And there are different reports, and this will all come out as time goes on.
“But it seems that as Senator Wyden said, policies and regulations serve no purpose if the Administration doesn’t enforce them.
One Administration Official Serving in Two Important DOI Roles:
“Yet you have a Chief of Staff – and it’s no easy job, overseeing *6,700 employees. But he’s also serving as Assistant Secretary for Fish, Wildlife and Parks – which is also a full time job.
“I voted for his confirmation when this Energy Committee questioned his ability or anyone to fulfill both jobs during the confirmation process. It seems that those are both very big, fulltime jobs.
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“Would the country be better served, and the Department more able to prevent disasters like this and provide better oversight if you had really separated those two jobs. The Chief of Staff from that of being the Assistant Secretary for Fish, Wildlife and Parks?”
*Senator Barrasso meant to say 67,000 employees.
Senator Barrasso is the only Republican member of both the Senate Energy and Natural Resources and Environment and Public Works Committees.
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