three years ago, when bp was caught discharging into lake michigan, i joined with my colleagues to beat back the attempted pollution of our latk. we worked together to solve the problem. we need a similar but partisanship here today. the gulf of a mexico accounts for almost 1/3 of u.s. oil production. if we eliminate that supply, the dependency on foreign oil will indeed go up. saudi arabia will be happy. hugo chÁvez and mahmoud ahmadinejad will be popping champagne, but the consumers will rrmember the good old days when gas was only four dollars per gallon. i asked secretary salazar to ask what went wrong on that the deepwater horizon rig. he said you believed it was preventable, that ii was the result of human error and overlooked safety regulations. [buzzer sounds] i will wait for that. we will not be satisfied until there is no danger to our environment. let us learn from this awful mistake, fix the problem, clean up the gulf, and look forward to fixing our ailing economy and creating private sector jobs. >> we recognize the chairman of the full committee, the gentleman from califor

three years ago, when bp was caught increasing the discharge into lake michigan, i joined with the great lakes caucus and other colleagues on both sides of the aisle, across the great lakes, to beat back the attempt to increase pollution in our lake. we did not take a partisan posture. we worked together to solve the problem. we need similar bipartisanship here today. the gulf of mexico accounts for almost 1/3 of u.s. oil production. if we eliminate that supply and our dependency -- the dependency on foreign oil will indeed go up. saudi arabia will be happy. hugo chavez will be popping champagne. the team of engineers tapped by secretary ken salazar to examine what went wrong on the rig recently wrote, "we believe the blowout was caused by a highly improbable chain of human error is coupled with several equipment failures and was preventable. the petroleum industry will learn from this. it can and will do better. we should not be satisfied --" just wait for a second. "we should not be satisfied until there are no debts and environmental impacts offshore ever. however, we must understand

host: lake orion, michigan. laura, republican. caller: i think what we need to do is -- i understand we need to drill, but i think that before we go back to that, we are really going to have to think about how this happened. we are going to have to really understand it and make sure it does not happen again. this is just a disaster of such huge proportions, and it can't be undone, and we don't want it to happen again. i know the chance is very remote, but we do need to think about these things when we are out in the gulf because this is our water and our land that is getting destroyed. host: coast guard saw potential threat early -- this is from a "the new york times" article. belfry, melissa, a democrat. caller: i am so grateful for c- span. during the dark days of the bush administration you were the only ones to shed light on the whole political process and i would like to say, thank you so much for all of your wonderful service to the american community. the other things i would like to say, a lot of times when you don't get c

esentencely michigan and other states in the great lakes basin are being forced to subsidize those in other states who are prone to severe weather events. if that's what we are going to do, we should just call it what it is and have a national catastrophic fund as opposed to this national flood insurance fund. in other words, what everybody pays. why should the people in the great lakes basin have to subsidize this particular program? a g.a.o. repoot on this program that was published in april found that nearly one in four property owners pay subsidized rates for their flood insurance that do not reflect the full risk of flooding. you have to ask no wonder this program $19 billion in debt. to add insult to injury, this program keeps paying claims year after year so some americans can continue to live in floodprone areas. that's fine if they want to live there. i don't know why those people in the great lakes have to keep paying for these repetitive claims year after year. it's only 1% of the policy, but it is 25% of all of the claims. i think it is well past time this program ought to

i live in michigan, of course. i love the great lakes. we deregulated dumping.but we are still feeling the long-term effects. a pregnant woman cannot eat the fish.. i am concerned about the long- term environmental effects here. what are we looking at in terms of the long-term defects. ? what are they going to do about the regulations that were in the defect that did not work? >> just about eight minutes before the hearing gets underway. tony hayward testifying before the oversight committee. you can watch the hearing on liline. arlington, virginia is up next. this is frank. >> good morning. i have a concern about the government's capability. this is like a wake-up call for our capabilities of going into the ocean.. . only bp knows what technology will work. they have the deepest wells in the gulf. there is even one that is twice as deep and has a labyrinth of wells connected like spiders. it is scary when you look at it. the government needs the capability. unfortunately, they need a nasa agency for the undersea to develop a see crawler that can go down there a

michigan, in our country lost a hero. on june 9, first lieutenant joel of grass lake, east of jackson, was killed while compleeing a helicopter rescue mission in southern afghanistan. he was 245 years old. the -- 25 years old. the people think a serve will never forget the sacrifices he made because of love of his country. i'd like to share his story with you. joel ran cross country at chelsea high school where he graduated in 2002. he attended purdue university and graduated with honors in aerospace engineering in 2007. in june, 2008, joel married kathryn sullivan, his college sweetheart. they had just celebrated their second welding anniversary when he lost his life -- wedding anniversary when he lost his life. i spoke wwth kathryn on saturday and she has truly lost her best friend. joel originally wanted to be an astronaut, but through his rotc program, he met combat rescue officers, learned about their missson and decided what he wanted to do most was to help people. as part of the air force's 58th rescue squadron, first lieutenant spent two ears becoming a combat rescue officer. he completed superman school, a training p

three years ago, when bp was caught increasing the discharge into lake michigan, i joined with the great lakes caucus and other colleagues on both sides of the aisle, across the great lakes, to beat back the attempt to increase pollution in our lake. we did not take a partisan posture. we worked together to solve the problem. we need similar bipartisanship here today. the gulf of mexico accounts for almost 1/3 of u.s. oil production. if we eliminate that supply and our dependency -- then the dependency on foreign oil will indeed go up. saudi arabia will be happy. hugo chavez will be popping champagne. the team of engineers tapped by secretary ken salazar to examine what went wrong on the rig recently wrote, "we believe the blowout was caused by a highly improbable chain of human errors coupled with several equipment failures and was preventable. the petroleum industry will learn from this. it can and will do better. we should not be satisfied --" just wait for a second. "we should not be satisfied until there are no deaths and environmental impacts offshore ever. however, we must underst