Sit­ting U.S. Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Joe Bar­ton (R-TX) today apol­o­gized to BP, appar­ently on behalf of him­self, for the $20 bil­lion dol­lar escrow account that the Admin­is­tra­tion has just set up for Gulf Coast dam­ages and recov­ery. In a con­gres­sional tes­ti­mony with BP exec­u­tives he said:

I’m not speak­ing for any­body in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives but myself. But 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, in this case a $20 bil­lion shake­down… what amounts to a $20 bil­lion slush fund that is unprece­dented in our nation’s his­tory, that’s got no legal stand­ing, which I think sets a ter­ri­ble prece­dent for the future. [1]

Really? Joe, you’re apol­o­giz­ing to BP?? On behalf of your­self? As an elected politi­cian? When­ever you open your mouth Joe, you speak for your con­stituency whether you try to sugar coat it or not. You do not speak for me, nor do you speak for thou­sands of your fel­low Tex­ans whose liveli­hoods may now be ruined, espe­cially if one of those under­wa­ter plumes that don’t really exist [2] heads your way.

Okay, so while I am not thrilled with Pres­i­dent Obama’s over­all han­dling of this dis­as­ter, at least he’s respond­ing to a very dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tion. And the escrow account is cer­tainly appro­pri­ate under the cir­cum­stances, regard­less of your ques­tion­able loy­al­ties Joe.

I’ll give John Boehner (R-OH) some credit for hav­ing the decency to pub­licly dis­tance him­self from your ridicu­lous com­ments. [3] But oth­ers — Bar­ton (R-TX), Price (R-GA), Bach­mann (R-MN) and any­one else who is try­ing to frame the escrow account as a shake­down? Shame. On. You.

Dear reader, before vot­ing this fall, I hope you’ll do some research and remem­ber those who either vote against escrow leg­is­la­tion or worse, pub­licly smear it. Those peo­ple are not act­ing in your inter­est, and they do not deserve to hold title as your representatives.

Ref­er­ences

1. Rep. Bar­ton apol­o­gizes to BP for Obama ‘shakedown’
2. BP CEO: There aren’t any oil plumes
3. Boehner refuses to endorse Barton’s claim that BP’s escrow fund is a ’shakedown.’

Posted on June 17th, 2010 by Sky
Filed under: Politics