they agreed with the president that they would set up this fund to to compensate the victims in this environmental disaster on the gulf. and now, congressman barton comes in and apologizes to them and they all use this word slush fund? i mean it just really shows a complete lack of understanding of what happened here or frankly, the suffering that the people on the gulf are going through right now. yeah, i wouldn t use the word slush in this environment with all that stuff coming up on the shore of the gulf of mexico. i don t think that s a well-advised word. no. let s take a look, congresswoman, let s hear what the ceo, if he had anything to say today. it s not clear he did. no, he didn t. tom price putting out this statement. let s go to hayward. the guy eave been watching for days. the british guy with the nice accent. see if he answers any questions, the ceo of bp. i was not part of that decision-making process.
i m getting ready to go back myself and question him some more. at least we ll have this on the record. i will also say this committee, the oversight and investigation subcommittee, is not going to just stop today. we re going to keep bringing the bp employees and their subcontractors in until we get answers to how this terrible tragedy occurred and how we can prevent did in the future. and how we re going to compensate the victims quickly. you know when a plane crashes or we have some other tragedy, we have a black box we try to find in the water or somewhere and we go through it and try to figure out looking at all the technology and learn what happened. do you believe we re going to find out the management decisions that led to this catastrophe? we already have a lot of the information in internal bp documents and halliburton documents and slumber jay and all of the other people working on this rig. we already have a lot of the evidence and what it shows is that every step of th
this assures wall street of a sense of how to go ahead in terms of investing in bp. it assures that victims most importantly that they have a pot of gold to go to at the time when they make their claims and it will be there and it s assured to be there. that s the most important thing. the victims have. you know the old song short people got nobody ? what did you make of the comment by the dutch guy, what did he call it, the small people down there. the little people. hate to tell you it was small people he said. chris, that means that everyone who lives along the coast from the texas border of louisiana all the way to florida are small people. this is the most insulting and insensitive company, but i don t know why everybody s so surprised. this is the same company whose ceo said four weeks ago he wanted his life back. these guys are insensitive. there was 11 deaths and there are 7500 oil rig workers who are not working right now. not to mention the fishermen and
number two, they re going to set up a claims form. everyone submits a claim. if you re a person who owned a little store, then you show last year this time i made x. this year i m making zero. you ve got to the quantify your claim but the money s in the pot, chris. that s the most important thing. the money is in the pot. so first in, first dibs, right? that s it. that s it. but you know, lawyers are going to have a say. us lawyers have a say how this is distributed. but there s going to be a lot of judges who have a say. do i have to say this, chris. bp is so eninsensitive. that s the reason they want this case heard in houston. transocean and b to have this case heard in houston. why is that home cooking for them. that is home cooking. why? it s open question. you re suggesting it is. why is houston a better venue for them than somewhere along the gulf itself? because number one, look where all the federal judges were appointed? this is pure and deep bush country.
states who is legitimately conducting a criminal investigation and has every right to do so to protect the interests of the american people, participating in what amounts to a $20 billion slush fund. so i m only speaking for myself. i m not speaking for anybody else. but i apologize. wow. that was joe barton, the consciousman from texas. later in the day, hours later after a lot of heat came down on him includeding to be fair, heat from his fellow republican, the leaderships of his feather i said this, these were his words at the end of the day. i apologize for using the term shakedown with regard to yesterday s actions at the white house in my opening statement this morning and i retract my an pol jill to bp. i guess the slush fund still holds. here s rush limbaugh. they re all singing from the same cards here. here s rush on the so-called shakedown slush fund, whatever terms he s using now. let s listen.