The Classic Liberal Blog

Like many of you, especially in light of the oil spill, Irish Cicero is wondering "What's Limited Government?" After all, as he says commenting on Faith, Honor, Modesty, and Limited Government, "bumping the blame off to government doesn't do it for me."

Well, let's take a look at the BP oil disaster to see if we can put some of this in perspective.

After the Exxon Valdez disaster, the oil companies lobbied Congress for liability caps. So President Bill Clinton, with the help of a Republican Congress, capped their liability by law to $75 million and promised American taxpayers would pick up the rest of the tab. The caveat being that government would decide where they could drill for oil.

Louisiana gave BP permission to drill at 500 feet of water, but the federal government vetoed the state government and demanded the drilling be done at 5,000 feet. Nevermind that no oil company or government has ever cleaned up a broken well that deep, the federal government was determined it knew better than BP's engineers and told them where to drill. Then disaster struck (almost 2 months ago).

Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal wanted to build barriers, but the federal government said 'no.' Foreign companies with advanced oil skimming ships have been blocked from clean up efforts because of a 1920’s law known as the Jones Act. President Obama has even invoked powers that allow him to supervise clean up efforts using BP personnel and equipment ... yet nothing has improved.

Obama has now stopped all drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, putting thousands of Americans out of work, and demanded BP fork over billions so he and his cronies can decide who gets it (rather than using traditional channels where genuine victims would get compensated). Remember too, the last time the federal government had this kind of cash to hand out was when they were bailing out Chrysler and GM, where they disregarded well-settled law and gave the money to the labor unions instead.

The oil spill is a genuine disaster and I'm sure there's a lot of blame to go around, but in this case we can see the government deserves a significant amount of the blame.

• The federal government limited BP's liability (allowing them to take greater risks).
• The federal government told BP where to drill.
• The federal government stopped Louisiana from protecting their shoreline.
• The federal government blocked foreign companies from helping with the clean up.
• The federal government put thousands out of work by halting all drilling in the Gulf.

For all that, they now want to regulate energy use in our private businesses and homes. Oh, and build windmills. Oil Spill Is Now An Excuse For Democrats Green Energy Agenda.

So what?

I have no idea how to clean up an oil spill, neither does Obama (or even the folks at BP for that matter), so I'm not going to attempt to address how to clean it all up. What I can comment on however, is how to avoid a disaster like this in the future.

The obvious answer is to get the federal government out of the oil drilling business! They've proven themselves incompetent. Get rid of the liability caps. It's doubtless BP would have been drilling in such deep water if their downside wasn't limited to a mere $75 million. In fact, we know they wouldn't have been drilling at such depth if the federal government hadn't interfered with the state government of Louisiana in the first place! And dump the ridiculous Jones Act.

A government limited to it's constitutional authority couldn't have created the circumstances in which this disaster happened. I'm not saying the government caused it mind you, but I am saying that all their meddling made the disaster significantly worse.

President Obama and the Jones Act

There will no doubt be plenty of blame for this catastrophe, but if there is anything that Obama could have done to forestall or lessen the amount of damage to the Gulf Coast he should have done it. His continuing failure to do so is contributing to an environmental nightmare beyond belief. This is an epic failure by the Obama Administration.

This is the time to waive the Jones Act. This is the time to issue a plea to anyone in private industry—foreign or domestic—who has a potential, even unproven, method to clean up afflicted coastline or to protect threatened areas to get to the Gulf as soon as possible and put it to work in a coordinated effort. This is the time to throw out the rulebook. This is the time for Obama to remove the roadblocks that keep Gulf Coast localities from receiving the supplies they have requested. This is the time to let local and state governments to do whatever they need to do and to do it right now.

The ecosystem of the Gulf Coast is going to be altered. Wetlands will disappear, likely to be replaced with open water. Life up and down the food chain will suffer and die. In some instances whole species face the possibility of extinction. How we respond will define us as a nation and, ultimately as a species.

There may be a lot of blame to go around, but looking to the future, let's not forget how deeply involved the federal government truly was. Big Government has their fingerprints all over this disaster, so the best thing we can do for the future is to limit government.

What is limited government? Think of it this way, it's regulated government. In contrast, Big Government is deregulated.