Oil spills, the GOP, and More Corporate Welfare

by Nick Star

A Gallup poll published last week reports that a mere fifty-nine percent of Americans believe that BP should pay for the entire cost of the oil spill, no matter the cost. Even a headline above the fold in Friday’s New York Times questioned the president’s demand for the oil company to clean up their own mess. My question is, who do the other forty-one percent think should pick up some or all of the tab?

Should taxpayers be picking up a portion? That seems to be the suggestion coming from the right. On Thursday, Representative Joe Barton (R-TX6) apologized to Tony Hayward for the White House’s “shakedown” of BP in requiring them to pay for the clean-up and damaging effects of the oil spill. Mr. Barton apologized for the apology later that day, but made clear that he still did not agree with the $20 billion escrow account set up to ensure that neither dividend payments nor bankruptcy would cheat gulf coast residents out of compensation. If the past two months of constantly increasing flow rate estimates and failed “kill” attempts have taught us anything, it should be that $20 billion will not come close to paying for the actual damages and clean-up efforts. The republicans seem to be mixing up their populist and pro-corporate talking point memos as Mr. Barton was not the only republican complaining about the “extortion” (Michele Bachmann, R-MN6). Rand Paul even broke from his nostalgia for the Jim Crow era to call the White House’s initial rhetoric calling for BP to clean up their own mess “un-American” on Good Morning America, before it was cool. John Boehner (R-OH8) followed suit counting the federal government as one of the two parties “responsible for the oil spill” who should take some “responsibility for what’s happening” in the gulf. The solution Louisiana legislature proposed was a day of prayer. No word on how long we are to wait to determine its efficacy.

Who, then, should share financial responsibility if charging BP for their own mess will rock the foundations of democracy, and according to Rush Limbaugh, is an attack on the constitution and will somehow fund ACORN. Of course we know who: the taxpayers. (Perhaps we can use the money we save by telling less privileged children to eat out of dumpsters for the summer, at Rush’s suggestion http://mediamatters.org/research/201006170053) Once again we arrive at the disconnect in the minds of conservatives between reality and the Ayn Rand fantasy world where they try to live. The federal government cannot contribute to the cleanup effort, pro bono, without using taxpayer money. How do you suppose the teabaggers will feel about more corporate welfare, GOP? Then again, we all know that no matter what President Obama, BP, or anyone else does, it will still all be Obama’s fault.