One year ago Friday, Representative Joe Barton (R-TX) said it is “a tragedy of the first proportion” that BP agreed to Obama’s request to set up a $20 billion fund to compensate Americans for the devastation they wrought on the Gulf of Mexico by their recklessness — and then he apologized to BP CEO Hayward!
Desperate Republican leaders quickly forced Barton to retract the apology (see “Who’s sorry now?“). But a few days later, the following tweet appeared from Barton:
It was quickly removed and then Barton’s press secretary fell on his sword to protect his boss.
You can watch the original jaw-dropping remarks by Barton (GOBP-TX) in this video from the House hearing, which makes perfectly clear that Barton meant every last word he said:
Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) — who famously apologized to BP after the disastrous spill in the Gulf — now thinks that the term “Big Oil” is mean to the oil industry. Yesterday, executives from the Big Five oil companies testified before the Senate Finance Committee to defend their taxpayer funded subsidies in an oftencontentious hearing. In defense of the Big Oil executives, Barton told a C-SPAN interviewer that the media shouldn’t use the phrase “Big Oil” because it’s “upsetting”:
First of all, I don’t think it should be a pejorative. We’ve got this mentality on the liberal side of our political debate: Big Oil, Big Insurance, big this, big that. We compete in a global economy, and the biggest company, Exxon Mobil, is only the fifth largest oil company overall, because the other four are run by governments. It should be something of a badge of honor that we still have companies that can compete internationally. It’s a little upsetting that we try at the beginning to make it a pejorative.
Watch it:
Contrary to Barton’s statement, “big” is an undeniably understated way to describe the industry – from its profits, to its campaign contributions and even its mistakes. For eight years in a row, Exxon Mobil was listed by Fortune 500 as the most profitablecompanyinAmerica. Combined, the Big Five Oil companies raked in over $32 billion in profits in just the first three months in 2011. The Big Five oil companies make more than one trillion dollars in revenues every year. And over the past decade, those same Big Five oil companies made a combined $900 billion. Since 1990, the oil and gas industry has spent more $270 million in congressional campaign contributions, and in 2010 alone, spent $145 million on lobbying.
Perhaps the only thing that’s not big about Big Oil is its tax rate. A Center for American Progress analysis revealed that from 2008–2010, ExxonMobil’s effective federal tax rate came in at 17.6 percent, less than the average American’s federal rate in 2007. Yesterday, the Washington Post reported that an ExxonMobil spokesman“conceded that the company had a net federal income tax credit of $156 million in 2009.” Yet the American taxpayers subsidize these companies with $4 billion in tax breaks every year. Read more
At a congressional hearing on Friday designed to lay the groundwork for an effort to delay critical EPA toxic pollution standards, Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) claimed that reducing emissions of toxic mercury, sulfur dioxide and soot would not bring health benefits. Though conceding he is “not a medical doctor,” Barton offered the “hypothesis” that EPA estimates of the benefits of its proposed air toxics rule are “pulled out of the thin air” because there is no “medical negative” to the pollution:
To actually cause poisoning or a premature death you have to get a large concentration of mercury into the body. I’m not a medical doctor, but my hypothesis is that’s not going to happen! You’re not going to get enough mercury exposure or SO2 exposure or even particulate matter exposure! I think the EPA numbers are pulled out of the thin air!
Watch it:
The new power plant toxics rule will put over 30,000 people to work upgrading plants to dramatically reduce toxic mercury and other chemicals that cause neurological damage to fetuses and babies. Those upgrades will also cut enough particulate pollution to prevent as many as 17,000 premature deaths, 11,000 heart attacks, 120,000 cases of childhood asthma symptoms, 11,000 cases of acute bronchitis among children, 12,000 emergency room visits and hospital admissions and 850,000 days of work missed due to illness.
Barton blasted the testimony of NRDC Clean Air Director John Walke, asserting “you’re not having the medical negative” from mercury, sulfur dioxide, or particular matter pollution.
He even argued enforcement of the air toxics rule would hurt Rep. John Dingell’s (D-MI) city of Detroit, where nearly one in three children have asthma, and where one power plant alone emits 1,235 pounds of mercury every year.
Barton denied decades of science and the experience of anyone who has ever lived downwind of a polluting facility, noting the factory and plant owners on the panel didn’t know of any workers inside their plants that have gotten sick from the pollution.
“I guess he forgot that the people most in risk of getting poisoned — babies — don’t work in factories,” Clean Air Watch’s Frank O’Donnell responded. “This is pretty appalling stuff, since Barton and colleagues will probably soon be voting on legislation to delay toxic pollution cleanup.”
A former Texas GOP official, David Barton is a “Christian historical revisionist” who contends that “the United States of America is a Christian nation” and the separation of church and state is a “liberal myth.” He is also one of the most radical Tenthers in the country who believes the federal highway system is unconstitutional. So radical was his view that even the Tenth Amendment Center disavowed his federal highway theory.
Though he “holds no advanced degrees and does not teach at any legitimate institution,” Barton is no small figure in conservative politics. He was invited by Fox News host Glenn Beck and Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) to teach as a “scholar” on American history. At the conference, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said that “every time he hears Barton speak, he learns something new.” But Right Wing Watch’s Kyle Mantyla captured the most outrageous endorsement yet. Introduced by Barton, Gov. Mike Huckabee (R-AR) insisted that children need to be “under his tutelage” and said that every American should be forced “at gun point” to “listen to every David Barton message”:
HUCKABEE: I don’t know anyone in America who is a more effective communicator [than David Barton.] I just wish that every single young person in America would be able to be under his tutelage and understand something about who we really are as a nation. I almost wish that there would be something like a simultaneous telecast and all Americans would be forced, forced — at gun point no less — to listen to every David Barton message. And I think our country would be better for it. I wish it’d happen.
Watch it:
Unfortunately, American children are already reaping the benefit of such “tutelage.” Appointed by several State Boards of Education and governors to “oversee the writing of history and government standards for public school students,” Barton is revising history textbooks in multiple states. In Texas, he’s ensuring books exchange biographies of George Washington, Thurgood Marshall, and Abraham Lincoln for the role of Jesus “in America’s past.”
But those watching the webcast of the event might be shocked to learn of Huckabee’s comments. As the Military Religious Freedom Foundation’s Chris Rodda notes, the webcast of the event edited out the “forced at gunpoint” comments — which, incidentally, received enthusiastic applause.
Visiting the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality in Fort Worth, Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) — who infamously apologized to BP CEO Tony Hayward for having to pay Gulf residents for damage caused by his company’s oil spill — stated that the air in Texas is “excellent“:
Texas’ environmental regulators are “the best in the country,” and “Texas air quality is excellent,” U.S. Rep. Joe Barton said Friday during an event that highlighted the state’s ongoing scrap with federal authorities over air quality.
“The federal government sets the standard, but then the states implement it,” Barton said. “I think Texas has done an excellent job of not only implementing the standards but of proving they’re in compliance.”
Not only is Texas the biggest polluter in the country but it isn’t complying with federal air quality standards. Texas leads the nation in carbon dioxide emissions, and in 2008, Houston was ranked the fourth worst city for ozone — a far cry from “excellent” air quality.
Texas has not been in compliance with federal air quality standards since 1994, when the state submitted a system of issuing flexible air pollution limits to the EPA — which allowed for a portion of a refinery or chemical plant to emit more pollutants than federal standards authorize as long as the total emissions did not infringe on federal air quality standards. Both the administrations of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush missed deadlines to make a decision on the Texas permitting program, but the Bush administration repeatedly sent notices insisting that they comply with federal requirements. Finally, in June 2010, the EPA published its “disapproval” of Texas’ air quality standards, stating, the Texas program “does not meet several national Clean Air Act requirements that help to assure the protection of health and the environment.”
Texas Department of Agriculture Commissioner Todd Staples has pushed back against the EPA’s decision, saying, “[u]ltimately, in this process, it is the consumer, American families, that will be picking up the tab for” stronger air quality enforcement.
Gina McCarthy, the EPA’s top air official, responded to the agency’s critics, saying that “enforcement of the Clean Air Act has saved lives and allowed the economy to grow.” In fact, the EPA just released a study which concluded that the Clean Air Act will “prevent 230,000 premature deaths and result in $2 trillion in economic benefits in 2020.”
Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX), who failed in his bid to take the chairmanship of the House energy committee from Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI), has begun the new congress with a new assault on his fellow Republican. In the first day of the 112th Congress, Barton led a pack of 13 anti-innovation Republicans with the introduction of legislation (H.R. 91) to strike down Upton’s 2007 lighting efficiency standard, painted by conservative activists as a “light bulb ban.” In a statement, Barton accused Upton of legislating an assault on “personal freedom” and “manipulating the free market”:
This is about more than just energy consumption, it is about personal freedom. Voters sent us a message in November that it is time for politicians and activists in Washington to stop interfering in their lives and manipulating the free market. The light bulb ban is the perfect symbol of that frustration. People don’t want congress dictating what light fixtures they can use.
“From the health insurance you’re allowed to have, to the car you can drive, to the light bulbs you can buy,” the polluter-funded Barton concluded, “Washington is making too many decisions that are better left to you and your family.”
Upton has already reneged his position on light-bulb efficiency, which was supported by former speaker Rep. Denny Hastert (R-IL), Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN), and the light bulb industry itself. In December, Upton told Politico “he’s not afraid to go back after an issue he once supported but that has come under withering assault on the conservative airwaves, including on Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck’s talk shows.”
There was, in fact, no bill to ban incandescent light bulbs. Because of the advanced light-bulb standards Upton helped pass in 2007, “the incandescent bulb is turning into a case study of the way government mandates can spur innovation,” the New York Times reported last year. “There have been more incandescent innovations in the last three years than in the last two decades.”
A war is brewing among the right wing over the chairmanship of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, which has jurisdiction over health care, climate policy, and energy policy. Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI) is the leading contender, but Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) is seeking a waiver from Republican leadership to retake the gavel, while Reps. John Shimkus (R-IL) and Cliff Stearns (R-FL) are also in the hunt. Although the candidates are lockstep in opposition to the Obama agenda and in their intention to launch witch hunts against climate science, Upton is a relative moderate, having admitted in the past that greenhouse emissions should be reduced. In contrast, Barton — who famously apologized to BP this summer — is fully aligned with the oil and gas industry, with $1,482,630 in lifetime contributions.
Now this internal fight has exploded into a Tea Party battle royale. FreedomWorks, run by veteran GOP lobbyist Dick Armey, has launched Down With Upton, a website attacking “Big Government Republican Fred Upton” for a record “full of votes for more regulation, more spending, and more taxes.” In an email announcing the campaign, FreedomWorks cited Glenn Beck’s warning that “light bulbs are just the beginning”:
Fred Upton, currently considered the front-runner for chairmanship of the critical House Energy and Commerce committee, is far out of step with the Tea Party movement, the GOP and the American people as a whole. You may have heard Glenn Beck talking about Fred Upton introducing a bill to ban incandescent light bulbs in favor of so-called “environmentally-friendly” alternatives. The truth is, Fred Upton has a Big Government record a mile long, and light bulbs are just the beginning.
Upton has already reneged his position on light-bulb efficiency, telling Politico “he’s not afraid to go back after an issue he once supported but that has come under withering assault on the conservative airwaves, including on Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck’s talk shows.”
There was, in fact, no bill to ban incandescent light bulbs. Because of the advanced light-bulb standards Upton helped pass in 2007, “the incandescent bulb is turning into a case study of the way government mandates can spur innovation,” the New York Times reported last year. “There have been more incandescent innovations in the last three years than in the last two decades.”
The House energy committee is seeing an intense leadership fight, as four different Republicans are vying to become take over the influential post from Democratic Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), who shepherded progressive climate legislation to the House floor in 2009, before it foundered in the U.S. Senate. The four candidates — Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI), Rep. John Shimkus (R-IL), Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX), and Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-FL) — all want to reopen the floodgates for a deregulated fossil fuel industry. But precisely how reactionary the committee will become — whether investigations will be launched against climate scientists and all clean-energy efforts killed — could depend on which fossil-fueled Republican wins the intraparty fight.
The frontrunner Upton is the only candidate who doesn’t explicitly question the science of manmade global warming, though he is opposed to any policy action. It remains to be seen if the new GOP caucus — dominated by climate deniers — will accept Upton’s marginally realist stance, or if denial of science will be a litmus test.
FRED UPTON
Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI) is the seniormost member eligible to take over the committee. In 1990, Upton voted for the Clean Air Act, enacting a cap-and-trade system to limit the sulfur pollution that causes acid rain. Now, however, although Upton admits “we need to reduce emissions” of greenhouse pollution, he opposes “cap-and-tax,” he said in April 2009:
A cap-and-tax, cap-and-trade will essentially kick American families when they’re down. I do believe that we need to reduce emissions, but it needs to be done in a commonsense way that takes into account the economic and global realities of the issue.
Appearing at the Copenhagen climate conference last December, Upton reiterated his position that somehow greenhouse pollution be be lowered without explicit limits:
I think we can lower our emissions. I think the world will be better off if we did that, and we can do it without cap and trade.
Seeking the chairmanship, Upton is remaking himself as a Glenn Beckian conspiracy theorist (“It is also quite unfortunate that Van Jones, the former Green Jobs Czar, avoided congressional scrutiny and could not be questioned on his alarming associations with the so-called “9/11 truther” movement or on his radical leanings”) who will hound Obama climate advisor Carol Browner:
Because Browner serves as a Czar, she has not been subject to the customary Senate confirmation hearing in which her philosophy on transparency could be examined. This circumvention is wholly unacceptable, especially given Browner’s wide-ranging legislative portfolio and influence within the administration. She was the Obama administration’s point person for a massive economy-killing national energy tax in the form of a cap-and-trade scheme. Thankfully, the American people did not fall prey to the administration’s climate gimmicks and had their voices heard at town halls across America last summer. . . .
House Republicans pledge to conduct vigorous oversights of the Obama administration next year if the American people entrust us with the Majority. With Republicans at the helm and exercising its authority to oversee activities of the executive branch, we will restore the public trust and subject this White House and its dozens of czars to the scrutiny that taxpaying Americans expect and deserve.
Upton’s top donor is nuclear waste giant EnergySolutions ($38,800), with other major donors including Michigan utilities CMS Energy ($22,750) and DTE Energy ($16,900). His leadership PAC distributed $129,000 to other Republicans, which should help him in the chairman’s battle.
I think this is the largest assault on democracy and freedom in this country that I’ve ever experienced. I’ve lived through some tough times in Congress — impeachment, two wars, terrorist attacks. I fear this more than all of the above activities that have happened.
Watch it:
Shimkus is a Koch Industries candidate ($18,500 this cycle), and his top contributor is nuclear giant Exelon ($20,000). Other top donors include the coal-using National Rural Electric Cooperative Association and American Crystal Sugar ($10,000 each). His leadership PAC only distributed $25,500 to fellow Republicans.
CLIFF STEARNS
Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-FL) has been angling for the energy committee chairmanship for months. Like Shimkus, his main strength against Upton is that he is a hard-right ideological conservative. Stearns has been a strong proponent of expanding drilling, claiming falsely that “ANWR alone would be capable of reversing the decline in U.S. petroleum supply within a decade.” Stearns responded to the BP oil disaster: “The Challenger and the Columbia disasters did not end our space program and this spill should not be the end of our domestic energy production.” In 2007, Stearns gave a floor speech promoting the “global cooling” myth:
Not everyone sounded the alarm about global cooling in the seventies, just like not everyone is sounding the alarm about global warming today. Madam Speaker, the fact that so many experts were wrong about global cooling in the seventies does not necessarily mean that they are wrong about global warming today, but it does at least show that experts are sometimes incredibly, incredibly wrong.
I think all of us realize we’ve got to control CO2 and that we have various ways to do it. … My position has been anything we can do to control and regulate is good, but do it through the private sector. The energy policy I’m talking about isn’t on global warming; it’s making us self sufficient.
Stearns’ contributions mostly reflect his position as the top Republican on the telecom committee, although he has received $5000 each this cycle from Progress Energy and and Peabody Energy. His leadership PAC has contributed a measly $2,500 to four House Republicans.
JOE BARTON
Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX), the top Republican on the energy committee, will need a waiver from GOP leadership to return to the chairmanship. Yesterday, he “sent out letters to the incoming 60-and-counting Republican freshmen asking them for support,” which rail against “radical cap-and-trade legislation” and the “rotten core” of Obama’s health care legislation. Most recently famous for apologizing to BP, Barton thinks global warming is “natural“:
Barton is a sponge for oil and coal money. This cycle, his top donors include coal giant Murray Energy ($20,990), Koch Industries ($18,000), coal utility PPL Corp ($17,500), Valero Energy ($15,000), Exelon ($14,000), DTE Energy ($13,500), Exxon Mobil ($12,000), American Electric Power ($10,000), and a raft of industry trade groups. His leadership PAC has distributed $88,500 to fellow Republicans.
Update
11/10: The Wonk Room has discovered that Fred Upton is a climate zombie as well.
Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) could head up the House Energy & Commerce Committee
Appearing on Meet the Press yesterday, Gov. Haley Barbour (R-MS) — the chairman of the Republican Governors Association — predicted that if Republicans aren’t successful in repealing the health care law outright, “they will make such big changes in it over the next three years that you won’t recognize it.” And indeed, the GOP has promised to repeal the law “lock, stock, and barrel” if it regains the majority in the House after the midterm elections and has advocated defunding large parts of the measure. As as Kaiser Health News’ Marilyn Werber Serafini reports, the GOP seeks to use committee hearings and “oversight” investigationsto build public support for this effort:
If Rep. Joe Barton becomes chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee next year, the Texas Republican vows to make life miserable for Democratic defenders of the health care overhaul law.
He will drag Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and Medicare chief Donald Berwick to Capitol Hill for regular grilling….
And that’s just the beginning. Barton has a list of seven problems he intends to spotlight, including how he believes the Obama administration covered up cost estimates of the law before it was enacted, inappropriately silenced insurers from warning customers about what they believed would be rate increases and wrongly spent money on brochures touting improvements to the Medicare Advantage program even though funding is being reduced.
Key Republicans are threatening to withhold funding for overhaul initiatives and to relentlessly pursue hearings and oversight investigations to challenge administration officials’ regulations and communications with the public. Committee chairmen have subpoena power, although holding the gavel is usually enough to get officials into the witness chair.
“Oversight of the existing law will build a case for full repeal,” said Barton. “We have to aggressively work to repeal the entire bill. As part of the process, we’ll have very aggressive oversight.”
In several recent reports, the Government Accountability Organization (GAO) has cleared the administration of any wrongdoing in disseminating pamphlets about the new Medicare Advantage cuts, but the validity of the attacks are less of a concern than their practical effects on the agencies’ implementation efforts.
Whatever the success of Republicans in repealing or defunding the law, over the short term, the GOP could slow implementation to a trickle, forcing regulators to reconsider potentially controversial regulations and defend even the most benign of decisions. Republicans, who have already released numerous reports detailing reform’s “broken promises” and attributing almost every story about rising health care costs to the Affordable Care Act, will redouble their efforts as they gear up their campaign against the law. But if there is a silver lining in the coming fight it’s that the renewed focus on the ACA could give the administration another opportunity to sell reform just as some its most popular provisions go into effect.
On his Fox Business show this week, host Neil Cavuto appeared worried that Republicans may be too confident about their chances of taking control of the House and/or Senate this November. “Allay me of that anxiety that Republicans are getting ahead of themselves,” Cavuto told climate change denier and former BP oil spill apologist Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX). While Barton agreed that the GOP may be measuring the drapes a bit prematurely, Cavuto wondered what the GOP would actually do if it won control of Congress. However, the Texas Republican admitted his party doesn’t have much to offer:
CAVUTO: I get a sense from Republicans collectively that they’re just already starting to dine on a feast three weeks early. And…when I get a sense from them about what they’re going to be doing day one without offering many specifics about the day one, besides getting back to 2008 spending levels, without addressing how you’re going to go back to those levels, I think they realize the better part of valor, is no specifics?
BARTON: Well, you know, we may be a little bit short on specifics.
Watch it:
Of course, Barton eventually offered up the standard GOP platitudes about repealing the new health care reform law. “Well, have you bounced that off John Boehner?” Cavuto asked, adding, “because he has not been very clear on this repeal effort.”
One year ago Friday, Representative Joe Barton (R-TX) said it is “a tragedy of the first proportion” that BP agreed to Obama’s request to set up a $20 billion fund to compensate Americans for the devastation they wrought on the Gulf of Mexico by their recklessness — and then he apologized to BP CEO Hayward!
It was quickly removed and then Barton’s press secretary fell on his sword to protect his boss.
Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) — who famously 
Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX), who failed in his bid to take the chairmanship of the House energy committee from Rep. 
A war is brewing among the right wing over the chairmanship of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, which has jurisdiction over health care, climate policy, and energy policy. Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI) is the leading contender, but Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) is seeking a waiver from Republican leadership to retake the gavel, while Reps. John Shimkus (R-IL) and Cliff Stearns (R-FL) are also in the hunt. Although the candidates are lockstep in opposition to the Obama agenda and in their intention to 
