On Wednesday, Fox News' Neil Cavuto interviewed Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) about the congressional investigation into the British Petroleum oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, but Pence was more concerned with the alleged slowness of the Obama administration's response to the disaster.
Pence said the people "want to get to the bottom of what happened on April 20."
Evidently, what Pence meant was that he wants to use a congressional investigation to attack what he says was Obama's lackadaisical response to the crisis.
"They also want to get to the bottom of why this administration was so slow to respond," Pence said. "The administration essentially did not fully deploy cabinet level officials until April the 28th, eight days after the explosion. The president, of course, didn't address it significantly until nine days after the explosion."
On April 21, Coast Guard Petty Office Mike Blankley told ABC News about their efforts to look for the missing workers. The focus initially was on finding any survivors from the Deepwater Horizon oil rig.
Cavuto told Pence that it's premature to investigate while the crisis was still unfolding, and that immediately following the explosion, the focus was on search and rescue.
"We went on the assurances" by BP, Cavuto said, who was "telling everybody that was the focus."
As of April 22, 11 people were missing and later pronounced dead.
"We ought to get some answers," Pence said, "about why the federal government at so many levels was slow to respond … The federal government has to respond quicker than eight days."
According to news reports immediately following the explosion, the federal government was directly involved in the tragedy from the search and rescue to the environmental crisis.
On April 23, the Coast Guard stated, "The Department of the Interior, MMS [the U.S. Minerals Management Service], and the Coast Guard continue to support the efforts of the responsible parties to secure all potential sources of pollution. Both federal agencies have technical teams in place overseeing the proposals by BP and Transocean to completely secure the well. Until that has occurred and all parties are confident the risk of additional spill is removed, a high readiness posture to respond will remain in place."
--
Do you think this article is awesome? Click the Subscribe button at the top of this page. Thanks.
Comments