Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) haz a sad:
Barton came under a lot of pressure, he then retracted his apology to BP. That didn’t stop Republican leadership from trying to distance themselves from Barton:
Barton apologized to BP this morning for the “tragedy” of its $20 billion fund to pay damage claims from the Gulf Coast oil spill. Barton has since apologized for apologizing to BP. Nonetheless, Reps. John Boehner (R-OH), Eric Cantor (R-VA), and Mike Pence (R-IN) released a joint statement this afternoon calling Barton’s original statements “wrong.”
“Congressman Barton’s statements this morning were wrong. BP itself has acknowledged that responsibility for the economic damages lies with them and has offered an initial pledge of $20 billion dollars for that purpose.”
Never mind that Eric Cantor was saying the exact same thing as Barton yesterday. He just didn’t say it loud enough, I guess. But here we have the Republican Party platform in a nutshell. Corporations should be able to do whatever they want without any oversight from government.