Democratic Candidate - Wisconsin's 5th District, U.S. House of Representatives

I read with interest that Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner, a BP shareholder who sits on the House Judiciary Committee, has no intention of recusing himself from the oil-spill probe. 

More unbelievable to me is that he has made absolutely no statement to date that places any blame on BP for the disaster. Perhaps he is not yet certain that BP, or any subsidiary, agent, or employed contractor, had anything to do with the roughly 30,000 barrels of oil that are pouring into the Gulf on a daily basis? Is it really possible that he believes that the oil billowing into the Gulf is a completely natural event?

Apart from the fact that Congressman Sensenbrenner holds BP stock and has voted consistently with the oil and gas industry for the last 30 years, another reason he might refuse to acknowledge BP’s culpability could be that it would require him to reverse his position on climate change and other environmental issues.

He would have to acknowledge that human beings can adversely change the natural world through our actions and that environmental disasters like the one in the Gulf are a matter of critical concern to us all, regardless of party affiliation or ideology.

In Congressman Sensenbrenner’s world that simply is not the case, and anyone who fails to pass his black-and-white litmus test on environmental issues is a raging liberal. Climate change doesn’t exist, pollution will melt away in the future, and the oil in the Gulf will eventually disappear. He stubbornly clings to these positions on the environment despite all evidence to the contrary.

Yet Congressman Sensenbrenner remains all too happy to do a politically expedient about-face on government regulation. He joined the growing ranks of the “I was against more government before I was for it” Congressional caucus and sent President Obama a “strongly worded” letter taking the federal government to task for not doing enough to prevent or clean up the disaster in the Gulf.

Just when you think his shameless flip-flopping and rank opportunism could not get any worse, Congressman Sensenbrenner has also come out in favor of limiting BP’s ultimate liability in this mess at $75 million, or in round numbers, to 12% of BP’s profits in the first quarter of 2010 alone ($6.08 billion).

One has to wonder if he’s more concerned about the birds on the shore, the fish in the sea, or the numbers in his stock portfolio. After all, we know that every dollar is precious to this multimillionaire, three-time lottery winner who is so stingy that he kept every cent of his hundreds of thousands of dollars in lottery-money windfall.

I guess we should be heartened by the fact that on at least one of his stocks he’s taking the same bath the rest of us have been taking for months. Too bad for us it’s an oil bath.

In any event, Congressman Sensenbrenner, an attorney by training, has to ask himself if it is the wisest and most ethical course to sit in judgment of a corporation that, at best, engages in behavior he does not seem to comprehend and, at worst, engages in behavior that he profits from.

When the people of the 5th Congressional District decide that it’s time for their longtime incumbent to go and elect me to represent them in Washington, they can be confident I will honor my pledge to conduct myself according to the highest ethical standards and that I will not forsake my values and principles in the name of political expediency or profit.

You wouldn’t think it was possible considering the anti-government rhetoric coming from certain members of Congress, but in the aftermath of the BP oil spill, many of them have changed their tune and now believe that government actually does have its uses.

I was watching with interest as the “government can’t do anything right” crowd in Congress have been falling over themselves on TV trying to point out how little the administration has done in response to the oil-spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.

Never mind that many of these same individuals defended the meager response of the previous administration to the natural—as opposed to man-made—hurricane Katrina disaster. Or the fact that our current incumbent, Jim Sensenbrenner, like so many of his colleagues, voted against government funding for repair, housing, food, or anything else for the victims.

Shameless flip-flopping aside, let’s take a minute to personalize the disaster in the Gulf and imagine what might happen if a large tanker truck of oil was driving by your house and, through negligence or carelessness, happened to spill its entire payload onto your back yard.

 My guess is that most people would demand that the responsible party clean up the spill, and I would assume that the company responsible for the spill would agree to make reasonable efforts to clean it up. Not only would the company be facing a serious public relations disaster if it didn’t act, but it would also have a strong financial interest in making amends.

 One thing I am confident would not happen in this scenario is the property owner immediately demanding that the government take care of the problem. That would be both illogical and premature. If the cleanup was taking too long or was not done properly, then the government would certainly have an interest in intervening. But no one would expect the government to be first in line to accept responsibility for the cleanup.

 This is exactly what has happened in the Gulf. The administration expected BP to take appropriate responsibility for cleaning up its mess, and now that it has become clear that their efforts are ineffectual, the government is stepping in. Yet the “we need more government” converts in Congress are saying that the administration should have done more. 

More? Maybe they’re suggesting that the federal government take part ownership of BP? Or that the EPA should be expanded? Or that federal efforts should trump the states’ rights to protect their own coastline? What would the response from members of the “I was against more government before I was for it” Congressional caucus have been if the administration had stepped in with command-and-control efforts like these from the very beginning?

I highly doubt they would have given President Obama three cheers and an “A” for effort. 

To hear folks like aspiring-Congressman Rand Paul talk about it, we shouldn’t even place any blame on BP at all. Accidents happen. That oil slick in your back yard? Things are tough all over! Just put on your boots when you mow your lawn.