A shakedown?

[billspiz]

Leave it to a representative from our nations 28th state to actually apologize to the BP chairman for the "20 billion dollar shakedown". Maybe its just coincidendence that Rep. Barton has received over $100,470 in political contributions from gas and oil interests since 2009. Even his fellow GOP peers raised their eyebrows at his comments. This states GOP never ceases to amaze me!

From the Dallas morning news 6/17

WASHINGTON – Rep. Joe Barton , R-Arlington, apologized to BP CEO Tony Hayward on Thursday morning for what he called a "shakedown" by the Obama administration.

Barton condemned the White House's handling of a meeting Wednesday with BP officials, in which President Barack Obama pushed the company to create a $20 billion escrow account for damage claims from the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. The congressman called the account a “slush fund.”

The statement drew a rare and forceful denunciation from the White House, and other Republicans sought to distance themselves from the apology as well.

Barton made the remarks at a House Energy and Commerce committee hearing that is ongoing. Hayward is before the committee to testify about his company’s handling of spill.

“I am ashamed of what happened at the White House yesterday,” said Barton, the top Republican on the committee. “It is a tragedy in 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.”

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs called on other members of Congress to repudiate Barton.

“What is shameful is that Joe Barton seems to have more concern for big corporations that caused this disaster than the fishermen, small business owners and communities whose lives have been devastated by the destruction," Gibbs said in a written statement. "Congressman Barton may think that a fund to compensate these Americans is a ‘tragedy’, but most Americans know that the real tragedy is what the men and women of the Gulf Coast are going through right now."

Barton's Republican colleagues have not rushed to embrace the Texan's apology. In a news conference, House GOP leader John Boehner of Ohio said he disagreed with the characterization of the escrow fund as a "shakedown."

And in his questioning of Hayward, Rep. Michael Burgess, R-Lewisville, also put space between himself and Barton.

"I am not going to apologize to you," Burgess said. "Ultimately you are the person at the top and you are responsible."

Burgess grilled the CEO over how familiar Hayward was with the specifics of the Deepwater Horizon rig.

"We drill hundreds of wells a year all around the world," said Hayward.

"That's what's scaring me right now," responded Burgess.

Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., said he could “not disagree more strongly” with Barton’s statement.

“This is not a shakedown,” Markey said. “This is the American government and President Obama ensuring that this company is held accountable…In my opinion, this is the American government working at its best.”

Heyward testified briefly, after committee members spent the morning excoriating the company's handling of the Deepwater Horizon rig and the Gulf disaster. Lawmakers then grilled him with questions about the company's safety record.