A group of Senate Democrats unveiled a bill on Tuesday that would give the presidential commission investigating the Gulf oil spill the power to issue subpoenas.
Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) and nine other Democrats introduced legislation to give the bipartisan panel the authority to compel officials from BP and the government to appear and testify as it investigates the causes of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.
“BP and the other companies responsible for this devastating oil spill must not be allowed to stonewall the American people,” Shaheen said in a statement. “Subpoena power is absolutely necessary to make sure that all responsible parties provide us with the information and evidence we need in order to prevent an economic and environmental disaster of this magnitude from ever happening again.”
Shaheen's office pointed to precedent for special presidential commissions having received subpoena power, notably the Warren Commission, which investigated the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, as well as the commission that probed the nuclear crisis at Three Mile Island in 1979.
President Barack Obama established the commission late last month and appointed former Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.) and former Environmental Protection Agency Director William Reilly (R) as co-chairmen.
Companion legislation will be introduced by Reps. Lois Capps (D-Calif.) and Edward Markey (D-Mass.) in the House.
Other Senate Democrats to sign onto Shaheen's bill include Sens. John Kerry (Mass.), Byron Dorgan (N.D.), Patty Murray (Wash.), Mary Landrieu (La.), Robert Menendez (N.J.), Bob Casey Jr. (Pa.), Amy Klobuchar (Minn.), Mark Begich (Alaska) and Kirsten Gillibrand (N.Y.).
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) raised the political stakes on this week's EPA vote by casting supporters of the measure as handmaidens of
"big oil."
The Senate is slated to vote Thursday on Sen. Lisa Murkowski's
(R-Alaska) measure that would overturn the Environmental Protection Agency's authority to regulate
greenhouse gases. The resolution, which has 40 cosponsors beyond
Murkowski thus far, cannot be filibustered.
Reid, through a spokesman, on Tuesday launched a new attack on the plan as Democratic leaders seek to keep it shy of reaching 51 votes.
“Even with thousands of barrels of oil still gushing into the Gulf,
Republicans are trying to hand a $47 billion giveaway to big oil
companies later this week," said Reid spokesman Jim Manley in a
prepared statement.
“This giveaway, otherwise known as the Murkowski disapproval
resolution, is backed by oil company lobbyists because it would
increase the nation’s consumption of oil by at least 455 million
barrels, and probably waste several billion more," he added.
Murkowski's plan is cosponsored by three centrist Democrats — Blanche
Lincoln (Ark.), Mary Landrieu (La.) and Ben Nelson (Neb.). But other
Democratic votes are in play, including that of Sen. Jay Rockefeller
(D-W.Va.), who said Monday he may support the measure.
Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), seeking to show political momentum for his climate change plan, said the measure has much deeper support than global warming legislation the House approved last year.
Kerry and co-author Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) are under pressure to gain traction for greenhouse gas limits ahead of a planned Senate debate on energy legislation next month.
Climate advocates hope to prevent Senate leaders from instead
moving a narrower energy measure that omits emissions limits. But
greenhouse gas caps face widespread resistance among Republicans and
some moderate Democrats.
Kerry, in an interview broadcasted on PBS’s “Charlie Rose” Monday night, nonetheless claims the bill unveiled last month has attracted a “new coalition” that believes the measure is in the country’s economic, security, health and environmental interests.
Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) said Monday that he “could very well” vote for Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s (R-Alaska) plan to block any Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) climate change rules even though it goes much further than his competing measure.
The Senate is slated to vote Thursday on Murkowski’s resolution, which cannot be amended or filibustered but nonetheless faces a tough road to winning 51 votes.
“It is a message about EPA,” Rockefeller told reporters in the Capitol on Monday evening. “I think it will send a message regardless of how many votes it gets.” That message, he added, “would be with respect to EPA’s closing in on coal.”
President Barack Obama expressed confidence in shallow-water oil exploration but said there is no assurance that deepwater drilling can be conducted safely.
"What we don't have right now is an assurance that in these incredible depths … that we can actually handle a crisis like this," Obama said during an appearance Tuesday morning on NBC's "Today" show.
The administration had earlier this year announced plans to support expanded offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and along the Atlantic coast, but has backed off those plans and issued a moratorium on new deepwater drilling until the causes of the spill are known.
"The production wells that are already pumping oil, those don't seem to be the problem. The problem seems to be with drilling and starting a new well," Obama explained. "Shallow wells aren't a problem, because the risers essentially come above the water."
The president has been under pressure from lawmakers in both parties to define how it would pursue and support drilling going forward. While most Democrats have said the spill provides the impetus for legislation that would shift the U.S. toward alternative energy, Republicans argue that the spill shouldn't shut the door to domestic oil exploration.
Obama reiterated, though, that the commission he had appointed to examine the spill, led by former Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.) and former GOP Environmental Protection Agency chief William Reilly, would be instructive in reshaping his policies toward drilling.
"I want them to report back to me, because obviously you can't take the word of oil companies when they say they have a bunch of redundancies and backup plans, when something like this happens and it turns out they have no idea what they're doing," he said.
BP has long run afoul of environmental and safety rules
The nonprofit investigative journalism group ProPublica and the Washington Post have jointly published a story that finds “A series of internal investigations over the past decade warned senior BP managers that the oil company repeatedly disregarded safety and environmental rules and risked a serious accident if it did not change its ways.”
Those reports focused on BP’s Alaska drilling operations, but the story adds:
“Similar themes about BP operations elsewhere were sounded in interviews with former employees, in lawsuits and little-noticed state inquiries, and in e-mails obtained by ProPublica. Taken together, these documents portray a company that systemically ignored its own safety policies across its North American operations — from Alaska to the Gulf of Mexico to California and Texas.”
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