Unanimous-Consent Request--S. 3305

Floor Speech

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Mr. MENENDEZ. Mr. President, I wish to thank my distinguished colleague from Washington State. I appreciate it.

I rise because the Senate has three choices on how it is going to protect coastal communities from the economic ravages of the oilspills we are seeing in the gulf. We can have fishermen, coastal residents, and tourism-based small businesses endure the suffering of lost revenue caused by a manmade disaster that was no fault of their own, which clearly in my mind isn't fair, we can have taxpayers provide them with a safety net, which I oppose, or we can make polluters pay all the damages they caused from a spill, which is the appropriate course.

It is not a hard choice. When I was a kid, my mother taught me all I think we need to know here, and I am sure everybody was taught the same way: You clean up your own mess and you are responsible for it. That is all we are asking BP or any other company to do: Clean up the mess, pay for whatever mess you can't clean up yourself and the damages that flow from what you did.

The current law sets a $75 million cap on how much an oil company has to pay for damages. That means BP doesn't have to pay more than $75 million for lost business revenue from fishing or tourism, damage to the environment, the coastline or the lost tax revenues of State and local governments. So I have introduced a bill, along with a number of my colleagues, raising that liability cap for offshore oil well spills from $75 million to $10 billion.

Some of my colleagues have objected to this proposal because they are worried it will drive oil drilling companies in the gulf out of business. Well, in the case of BP, that is a little hard to understand. It is a rather strange argument. After all, BP's profits amounted to $5.6 billion for the first 3 months of this year--profits, not proceeds, profits. That breaks down to $94 million in profits each and every day. That means their current damages liability under the law of $75 million is less than one day's profits--less than one day's profits.

Not every company drilling in the gulf is as big as BP, but why, I say to my colleagues who raise that issue, should an oil company get such a low liability cap when any average person driving down the street has unlimited liability? Why should a company doing an inherently dangerous and potentially polluting activity such as oil drilling enjoy such a low cap on liability, when the guy installing a solar panel on your roof has unlimited liability? It simply doesn't make sense.

The oil companies want it both ways. They want to keep the profits when everything works out well and times are good, but they want taxpayers to bail them out when they spill. It is fundamentally wrong.

Our bill is as simple as it gets. It says no bailout for BP. It says BP pays for its own mess, not the Nation's taxpayers. It says either you want to fully protect the small businesses and communities devastated by the spill or you want to protect multibillion-dollar oil companies from being held fully accountable.

BP says they are going to be liable for all legitimate claims, but they would not define what ``legitimate'' is. So if they are saying that, why are we hesitant to raise the liability cap to make sure that what they are saying is kept true and that anyone else in the future will have the same responsibility? Does anyone who has been watching the images coming in from the gulf believe we should be protecting multibillion-dollar oil companies instead of the small businesses, fisheries, and coastal residents who are losing their livelihoods?

It seems to me it is time this Senate stand up to big oil and make them pay for their own mess, not taxpayers, small business owners, States or the Federal Government.

I know a number of my colleagues who have cosponsored this legislation with me wish to speak. At the end of that process, I intend to make a unanimous consent request so we can move forward and make sure now--not years later, now--that all those who are damaged as a result of the spill in the gulf are protected and that taxpayers don't pay one penny toward this liability that BP and others may have.

With that, for the moment, I yield the floor.

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Mr. MENENDEZ. Mr. President, to summarize, this is very simple: Whose side are you on? Are you on the side of the taxpayers or multibillion-dollar oil companies? Are you on the side of fishermen, working hard to make a living, or on the side of multibillion-dollar oil companies? Are you on the side of the small inns that benefit from the tourism in the gulf region or on the side of multibillion-dollar oil companies? Are you on the side of the coastal communities that are going to be affected by virtue of the spill or on the side of multibillion-dollar oil companies?

Because of the fierce urgency now, we believe it is necessary to ask unanimous consent that the Environment and Public Works Committee be discharged from further consideration of S. 3305, the Big Oil Bailout Prevention Liability Act of 2010, and that the Senate then proceed to its consideration; that the bill be read three times, passed, and the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table.

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Mr. MENENDEZ. Look, I regret that my distinguished colleague from Oklahoma has decided to object. I would simply say that if you are an ``independent,''--and some of these independent companies are valued at $40 billion--does that mean that because you are not the BPs of the world, you should have less liability? If this spill in the gulf was done not by a BP or an ExxonMobil or any of those but by some other entity, should there be less liability for them; therefore, they can take the risk and go ahead and drill, and if it works out, they get all the profits, but if they spill, their liability would be limited under the guise they were going to create a monopoly for the big five? I am for creating that liability across the entire range. If you are involved in a dangerous activity, one that can create enormous environmental and economic damage, then you should face the liability for such whether you are BP or you are some intermediate entity.

So I don't quite understand the nature of suggesting that we are going to try to give the big companies some form of monopoly. Actually, it seems to me what we are doing is using that argument--and I have heard this argument several times--to not create the liability that is necessary for everybody, so that regardless of who creates this set of circumstances and has a spill and therefore fishermen, shrimp fishermen, seafood processing companies, tourism, coastal communities, and our environment are damaged, they should be let off the hook because they are not as big as BP.

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