Reply #6: What President Obama will say tonight (Politico) [View All]

[jefferson_dem]

What President Obama will say tonight

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President Barack Obama’s speech to the nation Tuesday night will include an accounting of the administration’s response to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, an outline for how to rebuild coastal communities in the region facing economic and environmental disaster, and a plea to enact comprehensive energy legislation, according to a preview of the speech by senior administration officials.

In his 18 minute address – the first he has ever given from the Oval Office – Obama won’t directly address the issue of climate change, the officials said, but he will use the spill as an example of why the United States needs to end its addiction to oil. He also won’t directly confront the controversial issue of cap and trade, although the president still believes that putting a price on carbon would be the most effective way of reducing carbon emissions..

And he will pledge to work to get Congress to pass energy legislation, officials said. The consequences of not acting on energy reform “are now in plain sight,” one senior administration official said.

The president will begin by looking back, detailing what happened on April 20 when the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded and sank off the coast of Louisiana. He will detail the response effort – 30,000 workers spread out across four states and the authorization of 17,000 National Guard troops to be called up at Gulf Coast governors’ discretion (“and fully paid for by the federal government,” a second senior administration official stressed.)

Obama will discuss a long-term plan to restore the communities built on the Gulf Coast and reliant on the water, according to the administration officials. He’ll note his meeting with BP executives scheduled for Wednesday and his call for the company to set up a fund to pay compensation claims to workers and residents in the region “that have been harmed as result of the company’s recklessness,” the second official said.

The president, the officials said, will outline initiatives to make sure a spill of this magnitude does not happen again. He’ll urge the national commission he established to look into the oil spill to complete its assessment of the deepwater drilling moratorium as quickly as possible because of the strain it has put on oil workers in the area. And the president will also tout his newly named head of Minerals Management Services, Michael Bromwich, to stress that his role is to act as an oil industry watchdog.

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http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0610/38585.html#ixzz0qy2U7p40