By way of a lead-in, it's as well to note that Senators Schumer and Wyden are after BP's next round of dividends. Fair enough. Here's their press release:
U.S. Senators Charles E. Schumer (D-NY) and Ron Wyden (D-OR) pressed the head of British Petroleum (BP) on Wednesday to table plans to pay out its shareholder dividend until the full costs for cleaning up the Gulf oil spill can be calculated. According to London-based reports, BP CEO Tony Hayward plans to reassure shareholders that the company would go ahead with its dividend payment even as estimates of the company’s potential liability from the environmental disaster continue to rise.
Meanwhile, President Obama is taking advantage of BP's malfeasance to propose ending certain tax breaks given to oil companies.
President Obama will call Wednesday for rolling back billions of dollars in tax breaks to oil companies, and will vow to push for climate change legislation “in the coming months,” setting the stage for another potentially divisive battle in Congress.
Mr. Obama, seeking to capitalize on the deepening anger in the American public over the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico to push for his legislative agenda, plans to promise to find the lagging votes in the Senate to get an energy bill passed, according to excerpts of a planned speech at Carnegie Mellon University, which were released by the White House.
“The only way the transition to clean energy will succeed is if the private sector is fully invested in this future — if capital comes off the sidelines and the ingenuity of our entrepreneurs is unleashed,” Mr. Obama will tell a group of around 300 local business owners and economic officials at Carnegie Mellon University. “And the only way to do that is by finally putting a price on carbon pollution.”
A big problem for Obama, as the reporter points out, is that his presidency is being "consumed" by this oil spill. It's as though Dick Cheney (who's been remarkably quiet these days) had planned the whole damn thing.
