Liability Impasse in Senate
Republican Senators Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and James Inhofe of Oklahoma continue their efforts to block raising the liability cap on oil spills. This is a necessary measure to ensure that BP can be held legally accountable for the entire cost of the Gulf catastrophe, not just the first $75 million as under current federal law. Murkowski blocked Senate Democrats first attempt and Inhofe the second two. Yesterday, Murkowski and Sen. David Vitter (R. La.) offered a bill that would eliminate the liability cap on the current spill, but not on any future spills. This bill was blocked by Democratic Sen. Robert Menendez of NJ.
While this is an improvement over simple obstructionism it still falls far short of what is needed. Drilling for oil under the best of circumstances has its risks and those risks should be borne by the companies involved, not by taxpayers. That being said, however, if nothing else can get through the Senate than Democrats should probably accept this bill now and work towards raising the cap on future spills after this one is dealt with. Ideally this issue should be dealt with definitively now, but sometimes ideal has to yield to possible, especially if the alternative is that BP cannot be forced to take full responsibility for their failures.
Senate Standoff on Spill Liability - Kate Sheppard, Mother Jones
Bill to Raise Oil Spill Cap Rejected Again - Kate Sheppard, Mother Jones
The Liability Impasse in Senate by Stephen DeWitt, OFM, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.
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