THE GULF COAST VS. BIG OIL

 The Obama administration, concerned that BP may try to avoid giving full, prompt compensation to all the people its oil disaster hurt, negotiated a $20 billion escrow fund that the company will set up to compensate Gulf Coast residents. Yet instead of supporting the administration's efforts to hold BP accountable, Barton, the top Republican on the Energy Committee, apologized to Hayward during the CEO's testimony, saying, "I'm ashamed of what happened in the White House yesterday. I think it is a tragedy of the first proportion that a private corporation can be subjected to what I would characterize as a shakedown. ... I apologize." Nowhere in his complaints about the supposed "shakedown" does Barton ever ask Hayward or BP to formally apologize for the thousands of livelihoods ruined, the workers killed, or the massive environmental disaster caused by the company's oil spill. Of course, Barton, who was employed by BP subsidiary Arco before becoming a congressman, may simply be paying the oil industry back for its generous support. He has taken $1.4 million from the oil and gas industry, including $27,350 from BP.


Additionally, the top contributor to his election campaigns, Anadarko Petroleum, happens also to be "a 25 percent partner in the Macondo Prospect, which was the site of the Deepwater Horizon explosion." Should the GOP recapture the House, he may chair the House Energy Committee. Meanwhile, the conservative Heritage Foundation's Sally McNamara was so offended by Congress' efforts to hold BP accountable that she referred to the hearing as a "public lynching" on Twitter. Earlier this week, the Republican Study Committee, which includes 114 Republican members of Congress, released a statement by chairman Rep. Tom Price (R-GA) calling the escrow fund negotiated between the White House and BP evidence that "the Obama Administration is hard at work exerting its brand of Chicago-style shakedown politics." And when Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) offered an amendment to the Senate jobs legislation to repeal billions of dollars in tax breaks and subsidies that the oil industry gets, every single Republican locked arms and defeated it. The move was praised in a glowing press release by the National Petrochemical and Refiners Association.