Earlier this morning, Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) called the $20 billion escrow fund BP agreed to set up yesterday to pay for oil spill damages a “slush fund” resulting from a “shakedown” by the White House. Though many conservatives agree with Barton, House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) refused to endorse Barton’s position. Now, Rep. Jeff Miller (R-FL) has called for Barton to step down as the ranking member of the Energy and Commerce Committee because of his comments:

Rep. Jeff Miller (R-Fla.), whose Pensacola district is among the most-impacted areas in the Gulf by the oil spill, condemned Barton for apologizing to BP CEO Tony Hayward during a committee meeting on Thursday.

“I condemn Mr. Barton’s statement. Mr. Barton’s remarks are out of touch with this tragedy and I feel his comments call into question his judgment and ability to serve in a leadership on the Energy and Commerce Committee,” Miller said in a statement. “He should step down as Ranking Member of the Committee.”

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During his opening statement at BP CEO Tony Hayward’s congressional testimony today, Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) accused the White House of an illegal “shakedown” of the oil giant when it secured a $20 billion escrow fund for Gulf Coast damages. “I do not want to live in a country where any time a citizen for a corporation does something that is legitimately wrong is subject to some sort of political pressure that is again in my words amounts to shakedown,” said Barton. “So I apologize.” Fox News asked House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) this morning if he agreed with Barton’s “shakedown” claim and Boehner declined to endorse it:

HEMMER: Would you call it a shakedown? $20 billion?

BOEHNER: I have said since the beginning that BP ought to be responsible for all of this clean up. And the fact is that they’ve agreed to put this $20 billion in escrow. I don’t know what context Mr. Barton was making that remark, but I’m glad that BP has accepted responsibility for their actions.

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Boehner’s comment that he’s “glad that BP has accepted responsibility” by putting money in the fund puts him at odds with more members of his conference than just Barton. Rep. Tom Price (R-GA), the chairman of the Republican Study Committee, issued a statement yesterday calling BP’s agreement to the fund a “Chicago-style political shakedown.” Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) called the escrow fund “a redistribution-of-wealth fund.”

During a hearing of the House Energy and Commerce Committee this morning, Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) “apologize[d]” to BP CEO Tony Hayward, accusing the White House of an illegal “shakedown” of the foreign oil giant to secure a $20 billion escrow fund for Gulf Coast damages. Barton repeated the Republican attack that the escrow fund is a result of a White House “shakedown” that contravenes “due process,” saying that he was “ashamed” and would “go to jail” if he abused his elected powers similarly. Although he admitted that BP was liable for the billions of dollars of damages to the American people caused by its catastrophic oil disaster, Barton said “I apologize” that BP had to establish this “slush fund,” which he called “a tragedy of the first proportion”:

BARTON: I’m speaking totally for myself, I’m not speaking for the Republican Party, I’m not speaking for anybody in the House of Representatives but myself. But I’m ashamed of what happened in the White House yesterday. I think it is a tragedy of the first proportion that a private corporation can be subjected to what I would characterize as a shakedown, in this case a $20 billion shakedown — with the Attorney General of the United 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 that is unprecedented in our nation’s history, that’s got no legal standing, which I think sets a terrible precedent for the future.

If I called you into my office, and I had the subcommittee chairman Mr. Stupak with me, who was legitimately conducting an oversight investigation on your company, and said if you put so many millions of dollars in a project in my congressional district, I could go to jail and should go to jail. Now, there is no question that British Petroleum owns this lease, that BP made decisions that objective people think compromise safety. There is no question that BP is liable for the damages. But we have a due process system where we go through hearings, in some cases court cases, litigation and determine what those damages are and when those damages should be paid.

So I’m only speaking for myself, I’m not speaking for anybody else, but I apologize, I do not want to live in a country where anytime a citizen or a corporation does something that is legitimately wrong is subject to some sort of political pressure that is again in my words amounts to a shakedown. So I apologize.

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The “slush fund” will not be managed by the federal government or BP, but an independent third party, funded over four years with a small fraction of BP’s annual revenues. Barton has taken $1.4 million from the oil and gas industry, including $27,350 from BP. In Barton’s world, it seems that the small people have to pay for their mistakes, but companies don’t.

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Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX), nicknamed “Smokey Joe” for his persistent advocacy on behalf of polluters, sat for an interview with C-Span this weekend to discuss a variety of environmental issues.

Barton expressed concern that regulation of carbon dioxide pollution would restrict his “convenient” and “modern lifestyle.” “I don’t want to go back to the 1870s where my great-grandparents lived on a dry land cotton farm in Texas with no running water and no electricity and their power source was their own muscles or animal power,” Barton feared.

He then argued that the warming of the planet is actually a “net benefit” for humans:

CO2 is odorless, colorless, tasteless – it’s not a threat to human health in terms of being exposed to it. We create it as we talk back and forth. So, and if you go beyond that, on a net basis, there’s ample evidence that warming generically — however it is caused — is a net benefit to mankind.

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Ironically, just as Barton is pushing his claim that warming is beneficial for humans, the Pentagon is concluding that “global warming is now officially considered a threat to U.S. national security.” In its upcoming 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review, Pentagon planners will report that climate change could result in food and water scarcity, pandemics, population displacement, and other destabilizing events that could create conflict.

“The American people expect the military to plan for the worst,” says retired Vice Adm. Lee Gunn, a 35-year Navy veteran now serving as president of the American Security Project. “It’s that sort of mindset, I think, that has convinced, in my view, the vast majority of military leaders that climate change is a real threat and that the military plays an important role in confronting it.”

Barton took issue with Sarah Palin’s call for Obama to boycott Copenhagen. “I like Sarah Palin as a person…I would disagree with her though. I think the President’s got every right to go to Copenhagen,” he said.

At a briefing with conservative bloggers held at the Heritage Foundation today, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) articulated “the way forward for conservatives.” Bachmann’s strategy consisted of defeating Democrats in 2010, defunding the left and passing a series of “repealer” bills:

BACHMANN: We have to defund the left. And this is great. Gallup came out with a poll, I think last week or the week before, that said the American people believe that Congress wastes 50 percent — 50 cents or 50 percent of every dollar it spends. God love the American people. They get it. They understand the truth that actually there’s huge waste. So we defund that but then the third thing that we do, which you’re getting into with economic development, is we have to after we defund the left, we pass repealer bill after repealer bill after repealler bill. Because there’s a huge machinery that’s been built up in this town. And we have to just repeal it. And we have to campaign on that to the American people. That is a hugely winning message right now with the American people.

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Bachmann isn’t the first conservative member of Congress to express a desire to “repeal” legislation passed under Obama if Republicans take back control of Congress again. In August, Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) said “we’ll repeal” health care reform if it passes. Rep. Tom Price (R-GA) said at the Values Voter Summit last month that he dreams of telling President Obama in 2010, “we need to repeal the disaster and the tyranny that you passed last session.”

Politico reports that some polling experts are predicting House Democrats to lose many seats in the 2010 midterm elections. FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver said the GOP has a one-quarter to one-third chance of taking back the House. Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) is giddy at the thought of regaining his chairmanship in the event the Republicans take over. This weekend on Fox News, Barton revealed that his agenda would be to repeal health care reform, if it passes before 2010:

BARTON: If they [Democrats] somehow manage to get the votes and get enough Democrats to walk the plank and commit political suicide, in the next Congress, I’ll be Chairman Joe Barton of the Energy and Commerce Committee, and we’ll repeal it.

If Obama attempts to “muscle through” health reform, Barton predicted he would end up leading the Democrats into the “political wilderness.” Watch it:

Citing a Washington Post article on health care industry cash flowing to lawmakers, Washington Journal guest host Libby Casey asked Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) to respond to a Twitter question inquiring how much money he has “taken from the insurance industry.” Barton played coy on the question, saying that he was “sure” he had “received some political action committee donations from the health insurance sector” over 25 years in Congress. Watch it:

Barton’s answer significantly downplays the role that health industry money has played in his political career. According to OpenSecrets, the health care sector has been Barton’s second largest contributor over the years, donating $2,096,021. In the current election cycle, only the energy and natural resources industries have given him more money.

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