Tony Hayward, CEO of oil giant BP, is betting that the environmental impact of the Deepwater Horizon disaster will be “very, very modest.” Even though a million gallons of crude have flooded into the Gulf of Mexico every day since the exploratory rig exploded nearly a month ago, Hayward told Fox News sister network Sky News on Tuesday that he is largely unconcerned:

I think the environmental impact of this disaster is likely to be very, very modest. It is impossible to say and we will mount, as part of the aftermath, a very detailed environmental assessment as we go forward. We’re going to do that with some of the science institutions in the U.S. But everything we can see at the moment suggests that the overall environmental impact of this will be very, very modest.

Watch it:

“The Gulf of Mexico is a very big ocean,” Hayward told the Guardian last week. “The amount of volume of oil and dispersant we are putting into it is tiny in relation to the total water volume.”

Independent experts estimate that about 32 million gallons of toxic oil have spewed from the broken well, partially broken up into invisible plumes by more than 600,000 gallons of toxic chemical dispersants, produced by a company with close ties to BP.

Already, toxic sludge has started to ooze onto Louisiana’s fragile wetlands, and oil globs and tar balls have been found on barrier islands and beaches along the northeastern Gulf Coast. The federal government closed 19 percent of the Gulf to fishing on Monday when the slick doubled in size, caught by the Loop Current that is now dragging oil to the Florida Keys. Dozens of endangered Kemp’s ridley sea turtles have washed up dead.

It will be years before the toxic legacy of this disaster is known to a region defined by its coasts. According to scientists, this is “the worst time” of year that this disaster could have begun, as this is the peak of the spawning and nesting season for marine wildlife in the Gulf, from fish to turtles to dolphins. BP officials say they will be able to shut down the well blowout by July, well after the start of the hurricane season.

Cross-posted on The Wonk Room.

I’ve been complaining that Sens. Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) and Jon Kyl’s (R-AZ) quest to cut the estate tax — spending up to $80 billion to reduce tax bills for the richest of the rich — has suffered from a severe lack of perspective. No one in Congress has been questioning whether the estate tax is, in fact, too low, or whether there are far better things to do with that much money. Fortunately, today, Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Bob Casey (D-PA) provided a modicum of reason:

CASEY: I think it would be a big mistake when everyone’s yelling about spending and deficits to let a lot of very wealthy people get off the hook.

SANDERS: The idea that we would make significant exemptions within the estate tax to give more tax breaks to the top three-tenths of 1% is nauseating. I will do everything I can to stop that.

Casey also added that “the idea that we’re going to give an incredible economic advantage to less than 1 percent of our taxpaying population is really offensive to me, to understate it dramatically.”

It’s about time that some lawmakers began to say that spending $80 billion to provide a tax cut to the richest 0.2 percent of households is an absurd waste of money. (62.5 percent of estate tax revenue comes from estates worth more than $20 million.) Objections from Democratic lawmakers, in fact, seem to have scuttled a deal that Lincoln and Kyl had worked out yesterday with the Senate Finance Committee’s chairman and ranking member, Sens. Max Baucus (D-MT) and Charles Grassley (R-IA).

Of course, Republicans are now complaining about Democrats blowing up whatever agreement was in place yesterday. “We no longer have an agreement, because the Democratic side has decided that unless a matter has a guaranteed majority of Democratic votes going in, they’re not going to allow it on the floor, at least not voluntarily,” said Kyl. “It’s very frustrating because we thought we had a deal,” added Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT). “We thought we put it together in a way we thought was acceptable, and the Democrats are backing off on resolving it.”

But it’s worth remembering that it was Republicans who, in their zeal to slash the estate tax, scuttled a compromise offered to them in December. At that time, Baucus wanted to permanently set the estate tax at the 2009 level of 45 percent with a $3.5 million exemption (as opposed to letting the law run its course, which has the currently expired tax coming back next year at a 55 percent rate with a $1 million exemption). But Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Kyl blocked that move, leaving the current law untouched.

Lincoln today characterized her and Kyl’s cut as a “reasonable compromise.” But it isn’t. It is the furthest right-wing position, short of complete repeal. Accepting a permanent extension at the 2009 level was a compromise (to which the House of Representatives has already agreed). There’s no reason for the Senate to swallow Lincoln-Kyl, simply because they’ve been the loudest voices on this issue.

Last week, House Republicans launched a gimmicky website called “YouCut,” which asked visitors to vote on which item out of a pre-chosen set they would like to see axed from the federal budget. Republicans promised to bring a bill to the House floor nixing the item that received the most votes.

The problem with this is two-fold. For starters, eliminating every single one of the proposed YouCut items would amount to cutting 0.017 percent of the federal budget. This highlights the fundamental unseriousness of Republican claims that you can significantly reduce the federal budget deficit by targeting small-ball spending programs. But second, the ultimate “winner” of the contest is a successful jobs program that was fundamentally mischaracterized and misunderstood by the GOP.

With about 29 percent of the 280,000 votes cast, the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families Emergency Contingency Fund led the pack. House Republicans called the fund a “backdoor way to undo” welfare reform that “incentivizes states to increase their welfare caseloads.” Of course, phrased that way, the program sounds absolutely awful!

But as the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities pointed out, neither of those claims are actually true. While the Emergency Fund does provide payments to families facing financial emergencies, it does so with stringent work requirements. In addition, it’s enabling states “to place 186,000 unemployed individuals in subsidized jobs by the end of the summer”:

It’s the largest subsidized employment effort states have ever taken under TANF, the national block grant created by the 1996 welfare reform law. A large share of the jobs are in the private sector…Individuals receiving TANF assistance funded through the Emergency Fund must meet the same stringent work requirements imposed on other TANF recipients. They have 12 weeks to find a job — an extremely difficult task in today’s labor market — after which they must meet their work requirement through other work activities, such as unpaid work.

“The recession has caused unprecedented need for many struggling families with children and the TANF Emergency Contingency Fund helps states meet that demand but is also responsible for directly funding 185,000 jobs. I can think of few ideas Republicans have floated that have been as devoid of compassion and commonsense as this one,” said Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA).

Even Gov. Haley Barbour (R-MS), no liberal darling, has said that the program provides “much-needed aid during this recession by enabling businesses to hire new workers, thus enhancing the economic engines of our local communities.” But House Republicans are set to put it on the chopping block, because of an online gimmick.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) is hoping to invoke cloture on Sen. Chris Dodd’s (D-CT) financial regulatory reform bill tonight, limiting the remaining debate to 30 hours and, in a perfect world, setting up a final vote on the bill for late this week. However, that plan has been all but derailed by Republicans objecting to various important amendments, preventing them from coming to the floor for a vote. Debate up to this point has been moving along at a (relatively) brisk pace, but with the endgame in sight, Republicans are stepping up to defend Wall Street and the financial services industry.

As I noted yesterday, Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL), on behalf of a bunch of unnamed colleagues, objected to the motion to bring Sens. Carl Levin (D-MI) and Jeff Merkley’s (D-OR) amendment institutionalizing the Volcker rule to the floor. But that was just the beginning of GOP obstructionism last night.

Shelby also objected to an amendment proposed by Sen. Kay Hagan (D-NC) that would limit the number of times payday lenders could roll over a loan to a particular borrower and an amendment from Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-ND) banning what are known as naked credit default swaps. For good measure, Shelby objected to Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) bringing up his amendment ending secret holds, which was blocked by Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) last week. Watch a compilation:

These amendments would reel in some of the riskiest practices of federally insured banks and ensure fair regulation of one of the most pernicious forms of lending. Yet, Republicans won’t even allow them to come to the floor for a vote, nevermind pass.

Levin and Merkley have said that they won’t vote for cloture without receiving a vote on their amendment, so the GOP’s refusal to allow their amendment onto the floor may very well result in Democrats scuttling their own cloture attempt. “‘It does’ jeopardize the bill,” Levin said. “I’m not inclined to vote for cloture if we can’t get a vote on this.” (To be fair, Dodd has also played a role in preventing votes on amendments, publicly sparring with Dorgan over whether his amendment would ever see a vote.)

Meanwhile, as the New York Times noted, Republicans are reprising their “government takeover” talking point, used so consistently during the health care reform debate, to deride financial reform. “Increasingly, the majority seems to be doing what they did on health care now to Main Street,” said Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN). “It looks like another Washington takeover.”