Gulf Oilspill
Floor Speech
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Mr. DURBIN. I thank the Senator from Washington because she brings back an experience that I had 21 years ago, when I went to Prince William Sound in the beautiful State of Alaska. It is one of the most beautiful places on Earth but at that moment it was a sad situation. The Exxon Valdez tanker had run aground and spilled literally thousands and thousands of barrels of black, sludgy, crude oil on this beautiful, pristine area. I went out in a Coast Guard cutter to one of the tiny little islands in the middle of Prince William Sound, which is otherwise as beautiful as God ever made this Earth, and there, covered in oil, was this rock-strewn island, and men and women, dressed in yellow slickers, were taking big cotton cloths and trying to scoop up the oil and put these cloths into bags to be carted away. I asked one of the workers, after the television cameras were off, I said, Do you think we are doing any good? He said, If we didn't do anything it would take 10 years for God to clean up this mess. For all we are doing, it might take 9 years and 6 months.
It was a pretty cynical view, but I tell you, 21 years later Prince William Sound is paying the price for that one tanker that ran aground.
Senator Murkowski of Alaska told us some species of fish have all but disappeared. Herring can't be found in this area anymore. Yes, some of it is recovering, but it is slow, painfully slow. It takes generations for that to happen.
We decided at that moment in history that we had to have an oilspill liability fund. In other words, we say to the oil companies, when you produce a barrel of oil we want 8 cents from each barrel to go into an oilspill liability fund so if there is another spill in the future and you cannot pay for it as a company, there will at least be this fund collected from your industry to try to repair the damage--8 cents a barrel.
Let me tell you what the price of oil is today according to the Wall Street Journal. It is over $75 a barrel. So 8 cents represents about one-tenth of 1 percent of the cost of a barrel of oil. Keep that in mind because I want to tell you about an amendment that is coming to the floor this afternoon.
In the bill pending on the floor, we increased that 8 cents to 41 cents. The idea is to have enough money in this oilspill liability fund that if in some future crisis you do not have a deep-pocket, big-time oil company such as BP, we will at least have enough money collected from the industry to repair the environmental damage from tankers running aground or drilling in the gulf or other places that goes awry. We raise it from 8 cents to 41 cents. It is one-half of 1 percent of the cost of a barrel of oil.
Why do I bring this up? JOHN THUNE, Republican Senator from South Dakota, is going to offer an amendment this afternoon. Most people will not get a chance to read it in its entirety. It is 210 pages long. Let me tell you several features that are worth noting, particularly as President Obama speaks to the American people tonight about what is going on in the Gulf of Mexico, with this bill. JOHN THUNE offers the Republican substitute amendment, and what JOHN THUNE does for the Republicans is to eliminate the increase in this tax on a barrel of oil. Of course, big oil doesn't want to spend this money. They don't want to pay this tax. They don't want to create this oilspill liability fund. And the Republican substitute says they do not have to. Even though we know and see every single minute of every day the damage being done in the gulf, the Republican substitute amendment eliminates the increase in the tax on a barrel of oil.
That is not all. In our bill we also increased the liability for oilspills. Now it is at $1 billion. We increase it to $5 billion. Is there anyone who thinks that we can escape with only $5 billion in damages from what is going on in the Gulf of Mexico? I don't. Sadly, I think it is going to be much more. We tried to change the underlying law to say in the future, for any for oilspills, there will be liability up to $5 billion in our underlying bill. The Republican substitute eliminates the increase in liability for the big oil companies.
This is a dream come true for big oil, but it is not a dream come true for America, where we are so dependent on oil today and where we need to make certain if there is another environmental disaster tomorrow, we are prepared to take care of it.
What is the alternative if the Thune Republican substitute passes? If the damage occurs in Prince William Sound, in the Gulf of Mexico, who will be expected to bail out the damage? American taxpayers. So the Republican substitute takes the burden off the big oil companies and puts it on the taxpayers of this country. That is wrong. It is fundamentally wrong. If for no other reason I hope the Senate rejects the Republican substitute, that they would have the nerve to stand up in the Senate today, standing up for big oil under these circumstances. How can they possibly defend that? They will try, and you will hear it on the floor.
There is one other provision that ought to be noted in the Thune substitute and here is what it says. It eliminates the language in the underlying bill that creates incentives in America's Tax Code for American businesses to relocate their production facilities overseas. Think about it. We have incentives in our Tax Code rewarding American businesses that build production facilities overseas. Does that make any sense in this economy, with 8 million people out of work and 6 million who have given up looking for jobs, that we would eliminate the provisions that stop companies from moving overseas? We need to keep good-paying jobs right here in America.
The Republican substitute does not agree. The Republican substitute wants to continue to incentivize American companies so they will move production facilities overseas. We give them a break in the Tax Code now in terms of the taxes they pay on the income they earn overseas, but the bill before us eliminates it and the Republican substitute defends it.
How can they do this? In one amendment they defend big oil companies and stop us from collecting money to protect taxpayers if there is another environmental disaster. Then they turn around and try to protect the loopholes in the Tax Code so that American businesses can move their production facilities overseas. It is the clearest definition of the difference between the two political parties I have seen in a long time.
Earlier, the Senate Republican leader came forward, Senator McConnell, and said we need more government in the Gulf of Mexico. I think we do have an important responsibility here as a government to make sure the damage that has been done by British Petroleum is in fact taken care of and repaired--and there will be a lot of it, unfortunately. It is interesting to hear these speeches from the Republican side of the aisle about how we need an expanded role of government. It seems as though some of my colleagues are suffering from political amnesia. It was not too long ago that they were coming here crying that government was too big and had too big a hand in our economy, but we have learned through the recession brought on through the greed of Wall Street, through this terrible environmental disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, there is a legitimate and important role of government.
Tonight the President of the United States will address the American people and tell us about what we are doing and what we need to do. It will go beyond this terrible environmental disaster and challenge us to look to the big picture, the picture about the future of energy and the American economy. There are some people who do not want to talk about this, but it is fundamental. We need to move our nation forward--with cleaner, renewable, sustainable sources of energy.
We need to have more efficient cars and trucks that burn less fuel for the same mileage. We need to have fewer emissions into the environment which damage our lungs and the Earth on which we live, and we need to have a policy that is forward looking. When I listen to the other side of the aisle, they are looking in the rearview mirror. We cannot afford to do that anymore. America can move forward together when we accept our responsibility to the environment and to provide clean, renewable energy for the growth of our economy.
I reserve the remainder of my time and yield the floor.
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