Oil spill hypocrisy

Thursday, June 17, 2010 | 2:01 a.m.

Republicans have been happy to criticize President Barack Obama over the federal government’s response to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. They have complained about what they say is the late and inadequate response of the federal government.

There is an incredible irony in their comments. For months, Republicans labeled Obama’s policies as government “takeovers,” but now they want greater government intervention?

This is just political posturing. The truth is that this situation should suit the conservatives just fine. After all, the federal government has worked as it was designed to do by the previous Republican administration.

Former President George W. Bush took to heart the conservative credo that regulation is harmful to business, and with former oil industry executives running the White House, the agency that oversees offshore oil drilling was turned from a watchdog into a lap dog. During the Bush years, the Minerals Management Service peeled back the regulations and took a lax approach to oversight.

For example, MMS asked a researcher to study how to improve deep sea blowout preventers, which stop wells in emergencies. The researcher recommended adding equipment, but that would come at an added cost. MMS took a pass on the recommendation, apparently believing the industry’s repeated assurances that the fail-safe systems in place would work. As the world has learned, they didn’t.

Federal regulators routinely took oil companies at their word. British Petroleum’s oil spill response plan, for example, went unchallenged, despite numerous errors and faulty assumptions. The plan, developed by BP’s experts, said the risk of a spill was minimal and if there were one, there would be little — if any — chance of oil hitting Louisiana’s coast. Tell that to the fishermen and shrimpers watching oil pollute their fishing grounds.

Obama has been criticized by Republicans for failing to show leadership, yet the federal government’s power is limited. The “bloated” government that the Republicans complain about doesn’t have the expertise or the ability to handle a deep sea oil leak, yet some Republicans want more intervention and want the military to take charge. And do what?

The federal government is doing what it can. In a speech from the Oval Office on Tuesday night, Obama made it clear that he was committed to helping the Gulf Coast recover and to fixing the federal government’s oversight problems. On Wednesday, he met with BP’s chairman and CEO and got them to agree to put $20 billion into an escrow account to pay for damage caused by the spill. Republicans, meanwhile, have incredibly complained about Democrats’ effort to change the law that limits the liability in oil spills to $75 million.

Still, Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele issued a statement Wednesday attacking Obama and said government needs to be “making sure nothing like this ever happens again.”

If that’s really the case, Republicans should drop the hypocrisy and join with the president to reform the MMS and end the Bush administration policies that have left the country vulnerable in situations like this.