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President Barack Obama met with congressional leaders Thursday to discuss the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
He called the measures taken White House’s response to the oil spill the “single largest response in United States history to an environmental disaster.” He also said the current oil pollution laws were too dated to be adequate to handle a spill of such magnitude.
The current Oil Pollution Act, passed in 1990, caps spending for oil spill damages at $100 million in most cases and limits the money it can give the Coast Guard to spend on cleanup to $100 million. President Obama said he urged congressional leaders to update the laws to provide funds for the cleaning up of the gulf and compensate the people the spill has affected.
President Obama said that “we update the laws to make sure that the people in the gulf, the fishermen, the hotel owners, the families who are dependent for their livelihoods on the gulf, that they are all made whole, and that we are in a much better position to respond to any such crisis in the future.”
The meeting was successful, as the House voted 410-0 to lift the cap on money the Coast Guard may spend on clean-up expenses and frees them to use a $1.6 billion government trust fund. The funds in the trust come from an 8 percent tax on each barrel of oil the U.S. imports or produces.
The Senate already passed the bill on Wednesday, and it will now go to President Obama to sign.
