House committee seeks data on Gulf drilling moratorium

Washington Times:
House Republicans voted Wednesday to authorize congressional subpoenas demanding that the Obama administration turn over documents it has refused to provide in two investigations, including one looking at the post-Gulf of Mexico drilling moratorium.
The 23-17 vote in the Natural Resources Committee escalated yet another showdown between the administration and House Republicans, who have flexed their investigative powers on everything ranging from immigration to gunrunning to land use.
In the moratorium case, the committee is trying to figure out whether politics were behind edits the Interior Department made to its six-month Gulf drilling ban report, which suggested its own panel of experts agreed with the moratorium, even though the engineers actually opposed that decision.
The other subpoenas seek documents on whether the administration is following the rules as it tries to rewrite coal-production regulations.
“It is unfortunate that we have reached this point today, but the [Interior]Department has left us with no other choice,” said committee Chairman Doc Hastings, Washington Republican, who pointed to President Obama’s pledge of transparency. “The administration is not only failing to uphold this promise, but is actively preventing Congress from carrying out its oversight authority.”
The vote gives Mr. Hastings authority to issue the subpoenas at any time. An aide said Republicans hope the vote prompts the administrationto turn over the documents they are seeking, but said Mr. Hastings is prepared to act in short order.
... The oil moratorium has dogged the Obama administration. 
Interior Secretary Kenneth L. Salazar’s report accompanying the July 2010 moratorium seemed to imply that the panel of engineers he had asked to review the moratorium concurred with the decision, though most of the engineers actually disagreed....
The administration moratorium was a bad faith reaction to the Gulf oil spill.  A federal district court found them in contempt for the action.  It is ironic that they chose to ignore the advice of scientist while proclaiming themselves pro science.

The moratorium cost thousands of jobs along the Gulf coast.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Should Republicans go ahead and add Supreme Court Justices to head off Democrats

Washington Post: Some Democrats eye adding more justices to the Supreme Court to change its ideological bent The once-remote idea has gained the attention of liberals angered by the GOP push to remake the federal courts. Probably the easy way to defeat this court-packing scheme is for Trump to propose doing the same thing now.  It would lead to Democrat denunciations and claims that it would be wrong, thereby blowing up any attempt by them in the unfortunate event of Democrats winning a presidential election.
Read more

29 % of companies say they are unlikely to keep insurance after Obamacare

Conn Carroll: A new survey of 368 midsize to large companies found that 29% of them are considering terminating their active employee health care plans when Obamacare is full implemented in 2014. Only 71% of employers surveyed said they did not expect to drop their health coverage, while 20% said they did not know and 9% said they were planning to exit. The latest survey, conducted by Towers Watson, echoes an ealier survey by McKinsey & Co. finding that 30% of private-sector employers were planning to drop their employee health insurance coverage by 2014. When the Congressional Budget Office crunched Obamacare's spending numbers, they estimated that only 7% of employees currently covered by employer-sponsored plans would lose their plans. ... This means the cost of the health care fiasco will be hundreds of billions more than estimated by the CBO and Congressional Democrat. It is also clear that Obama's pledge that you could keep your health care plan if you wanted t...
Read more

Is the F-35 obsolete?

Headline USA: Pentagon Fires Back after Musk Calls Its Most Expensive Project ‘Obsolete’ 'Yeah, as I'm sure you can appreciate, Mr. Musk is, currently, a private citizen, I'm not going to make any comments about what a private citizen may have to say about the F-35....'   ... ... Drones appear to be replacing jets for many operations.  The Russia-Ukraine war is an example of that.  Drones are often hard to detect and can be used for intelligence operations as well as for attacking enemy targets.  It would not surprise me to see drones engaging other drones in combat.  They also cost much less than manned fighters.  
Read more