ThinkProgress asked House Minority Leader John Boehner a question this morning about cleanup costs in the Gulf. John "rein in government spending" Boehner's response:
"I think the people responsible in the oil spill--BP and the federal government--should take full responsibility for what's happening there," Boehner said at his weekly press conference this morning. [Emphasis added]
As TP points out, Boehner is following the script written by the Chamber of Commerce:
House Minority Leader John Boehner backed Tom Donohue, President of the Chamber of Commerce, in saying taxpayers should help pick up the tab.
What Donohue said: below the fold.
The head of the United States Chamber of Commerce said Friday that his group is not yet lobbying against legislative efforts to raise BP’s liability cap, viewing the issue as not yet "ripe."
He signaled, however, that his group would figure out a way to get the government to share in the cost of cleaning up the Gulf Coast. ABC News 28 may [Emphasis added]
This is, of course, the same corporate mentality we've seen at work in Wall Street - make wildly risky moves, collect huge profits if they succeed, and stick the taxpayers with the bill if they fail.
To which the GOP adds its own little twist: Force the government - ie, the taxpayers - to bail out the corporations, then complain that the government has spent taxpayers' money on corporate bailouts.
We can - and have, in many diaries here - go on and on about the share of the federal government's blame - the degree to which MMS didn't enforce existing regulations, the Bush/Cheney efforts to water down and remove regulations, BP's deceptions - OK, lies - when responding to those regulations that still do exist - but that's not what Boehner meant by the federal government accepting "full responsibility." No, his idea of responsibility stops with the government paying for corporate mistakes, not with the government checking out what the corporations do with and to our country.
Incidentally, I had occasion recently to recall Ralph Nader, that supposed bane of corporations, complaining that there wasn'ta dime's worth of difference between the Republicans and the Democrats (he was repeating George Wallace's line, by the way), and so helping pave the way for the[s]election of George Bush over Al Gore. But while President Obama hasn't been as populist as we would like in trimming corporations, he's certainly made it clear he is holding BP responsible for cleaning up - and paying for - the mess it made. So I'd say there's several billion dimes' worth of difference between him and Boehner, just for starters.