Rep. Barton under fire after apologizing to BP

By Aaron Blake
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 17, 2010

Rep. Joe Barton (R-Tex.) on Thursday apologized to BP CEO Tony Hayward for the way his company has been treated by the U.S. government, drawing heavy criticism from the left and giving ammunition to an administration on its heels over the gulf oil spill.

Barton, in his opening statement before Hayward's testimony to a House subcommittee, decried the Obama administration for pressuring BP to open a $20 billion escrow account and to suspend dividend payments for the rest of the year.

The ranking Republican on the House Energy and Commerce Committee said such arrangements have no legal basis, and that the political pressure exerted on the corporation in the midst of an investigation is a "tragedy of the first proportion."

"I'm ashamed of what happened in the White House yesterday," Barton said. "I apologize."

(More here.)


How long can Dems keep the Barton story alive?


Greg Sargent
WashPost

Democrats are clearly convinced that Joe Barton's apology to BP for the White House's conduct is a pivotal moment of sorts -- one that could allow them to indelibly brand the GOP as the party of Big Oil at a time when the public is reeling from a disaster with no end in sight.

The challenge for Dems, though, is to elevate the story beyond Barton's ridiculous comments and build a larger narrative about the Republican Party's solicitiousness towards Big Oil during and before the crisis.

To that end, DNC spox Hari Sevugan emails a statement trying to tell the larger story here by saying it goes well beyond Barton:

Republicans may want to throw Joe Barton under the bus, but he's not the only one that has come to the defense of BP against Administration attempts to hold the company accountable to the families and small businesses of the Gulf for their recklessness. With their opposition to lifting the liability cap on all oil companies, the $20 billion accountability fundand legislation to ensure that we are never put in this position again by our reliance on oil and oil companies, Republicans have systematically and inexorably taken the side of Big Oil.

This does go far beyond Barton. House conservatives have blasted the escrow fund as a "Chicago-style political shakedown," and Michele Bachmann, a national Tea Party lightening rod, has denounced it as "a redistribution-of-wealth fund."

(Original here.)

Republican Backpedals From Apology to BP

By JACKIE CALMES
NYT

WASHINGTON — Representative Joe L. Barton had to be truly sorry by the time he apologized for his apology on Thursday.

In the four hours between his televised apology to BP — for what he called a $20 billion “shakedown” by President Obama for loss claims in the gulf oil spill — and his apology for that apology, Mr. Barton, a Republican from Texas, had been pummeled in the blogosphere, assailed by Democratic Party operatives and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., and, in the blow that landed, threatened by Republican leaders with being yanked from the party’s top seat on the powerful House energy committee.

By day’s end, the Barton sideshow had become the main show in Congress, eclipsing the much-anticipated grilling of BP’s chief executive, Tony Hayward, by members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

“I’m ashamed of what happened in the White House yesterday,” Mr. Barton said in his opening statement. “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.”

(More here.)