Democrats Chant “Shame” in Congress After Bills Pass Benefiting Big Businesses

The bill passed 212-210 but only because the house leadership extended the vote by 40 minutes during which time two Republicans switched their vote. The legislation will streamline government permits for refineries, open federal lands for future refinery construction, weaken environmental protections, and offer subsidies to build refineries even though oil companies are making record profits. The bill would also limit the power of community or citizen groups because if they filed a lawsuit to challenge the location of a refinery they would be required to pay an oil company’s legal costs whether they win or lose the lawsuit.

In the initial vote tally, it looked as if the bill was going down to defeat two votes shy of approval. Democrats called for gaveling the vote closed to no avail. During the extra 40 minutes of voting House Speaker Dennis Hastert, majority whip Roy Blunt and former Majority Leader Tom Delay all pressured other Republicans to change their votes. After the vote, Democrat Henry Waxman asked from the floor, "Doesn’t this make the House a banana republic?"

The Louisiana Katrina Reconstruction Act was introduced last month by Louisiana Senators Mary Landrieu, who is a Democrat, and David Vitter, who is a Republican. The LA Times reported this week that lobbyists representing transportation, energy and other special interests dominated the panels advising the senators in crafting the legislation. Most of the lobbying firms are major campaign contributors and several have donated heavily to the campaigns of Landrieu and Vitter. The bill is estimated to cost $246 billion dollars and includes billions of dollars of business for clients of the lobbyists. The act has been criticized as a missed opportunity to begin creative and equitable reconstruction of the devastated region. Keith Ashdown of the non-partisan watchdog group, Taxpayers for Common Sense, said that the lobbyists were exploiting the catastrophe. “They are using Katrina to get funding they haven’t been able to get in the past. You want to help the region but the bill they put together has a lot of projects that aren’t needed. This is congressional looting at its worse.”

* John Walke, Director for the Natural Resource Defense Council in Washington DC.
* Ivor van Heerden, Deputy Director of the Louisiana State University Hurricane Public Health Research Center and Director of the Center for the Study of Public Health Impacts of Hurricanes in Baton Rouge. Van Heerden oversaw Louisiana’s coastal restoration program as an official in the state’s Department of Natural Resources

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/10/13/1359253