Senate Republicans won a vote Wednesday to create a congressionally-appointed panel to investigate the BP oil spill independent of the bipartisan panel already created by the Obama administration.
Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso (R) successfully attached language to a larger oil spill bill that cleared the Energy and Natural Resources Committee that would establish a 10-member panel tasked with studying the causes and implications of the Deepwater Horizon well that’s been spewing crude into the Gulf of Mexico since April 20.
Five Democrats and the panel’s 10 Republican members approved Barrasso’s amendment after a heated debate questioning the expertise and resumes of the members on the Obama-established commission led by former Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.) and former EPA Administrator William Reilly.
Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) voted for the amendment after citing the pro-environmental credentials of several members of Obama’s panel, including Frances Beinecke, the president of the Natural Resources Defense Council, National Geographic Society executive vice president Terry Garcia, Georgetown University law professor Richard Lazarus and Donald Boesch, the president of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science
“If the shoe were on the other foot, and President Bush were the president, and he submitted a list of names like this to us, we’d say this is not fair,” Landrieu said, urging more participation from officials with industry experience.
Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) countered that another BP investigation panel was “unlikely to shed much new light” on the environmental disaster. But he failed to convince even some of his own Democrats. “I’d air on the side of let’s get another point of view,” said Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire. - Politico Story
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