The Fight Between Kathy Castor & the Oil Industry Begins

Kathy Castor is sponsoring the Florida Coastal Protection Act. The bill would permanently ban on offshore drilling along Florida's Gulf coast. Castor's bill is a reaction to U.S. Rep. John Peterson's (R-Pa) bill to drill as close as 25 miles off Florida's coast. Peterson has pulled his legislation. Castor helped forced Peterson to withdraw his legislation.

Wayne Garcia has quotes of Castor speaking on the House floor in support of the the Beach Protection Act of 2008. It is a good bill, but has nothing to do with the FCPA or providing a buffer for offshore drilling. Here is the video of Castor's comments on the BPA. (How I love reporters attributing the wrong quotes because when they run with press releases.) Castor's speech does reflect her stance on offshore drilling.

“Drilling off of our beautiful beaches is the energy policy of the past,” said Castor. “If President Bush and my colleagues on the other side of the aisle truly wanted to address high oil prices, they should have voted with the Democratic majority to take the huge tax breaks away from the big oil companies at a time that they are making record profits. Instead of these huge tax breaks for big oil the New Democratic Congress wants to invest those dollars in alternative energy and transportation opportunities to break our addiction.”

Castor's description of America's addiction to oil reminds me of Dennis Leary's comedy routine about cocaine. America is one big Rick James super freak that can't kick the oil jones.



The oil industry have already launch attacks against Castor.

“Drilling off the coast of Florida, the risks far outweigh the benefits. That kind of drilling would only provide a short term supply, maybe a few weeks of oil to power our cars,” says Castor.

Jim Smith, President of the Florida Petroleum and Marketer Association disagrees.

"How does she know?" he asks. "What are the facts to back up that claim? The 'Jack' well that Chevron discovered in the Gulf of Mexico in 2006 has huge reserves. Hundreds of billions of barrels. I don't know how she could know that."

Rep. Peterson
states that Castor's bill will single-handledly take down the economy. Who knew that Castor had more control over economic matters than Henry Paulson or Ben Bernanke?

"If we don't open up the natural gas supply for this country we will not compete economically," Peterson said. "It's just going to be tough times."

Castor needs to aggressively get her message out. Republicans, the oil industry and conservative pundits are going to gut her. Democrats are horrible at message discipline and flee when one of their own is in trouble. Castor needs to use the netroots, the liberal wing of the Democratic delegation (the Blue Dogs will abandon her), and put people in her own party on the spot. Congressional Democrats need to be asked, 'Do you support clean water or not.'

Castor's staff is netroots savvy and good with the media. Republicans and lobbyists will do everything to kill her bill. Castor's people need to take the initiative and fight for their boss.

The one piece of good news is Vern Buchanan has come out in support of the bill.