From CNSNews.com:

A new oversight report from Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), the senior Republican on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, details what many analysts see as the failures of the Obama administration during the Gulf oil spill.

The report lays out the ways in which the administration either failed to exercise authority it had or acted in ways that hindered the massive cleanup effort, pointing out that President Barack Obama appeared less than focused on the country’s largest environmental disaster in history.

“President Obama and Administration officials failed in several instances to remove regulatory and bureaucratic impediments, and to ensure that proper and adequate resources were available to address the BP disaster,” the report states.

Inhofe’s report maintains that President Obama had ample authority to personally take charge of the cleanup effort and faults him for not exercising this authority. Citing the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 – enacted in the aftermath of the Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska – the report says that Obama could have personally assumed command of the cleanup effort, instead of leaving it in the hands of BP officials and cabinet members.

“One of the central statutes governing the federal government’s response to an oil spill is the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 (OPA),” the report says. “The OPA specifies that the President shall ensure effective and immediate removal, mitigation, or prevention of a substantial threat to human health and welfare.”

While the OPA allows a president to delegate his authority to other government officials and involve local and outside authorities, “the authority and responsibility to act” belongs to the president, the report notes.

The OPA gives the President three options: “perform cleanup immediately (‘federalize’ the spill), monitor the response efforts of the spiller, or direct the spiller’s cleanup activities,” the report explains.

The report harshly criticizes Obama for taking the less-involved of the roles available to him under the OPA. As the Inhofe report notes, while his lieutenants and BP officials directed the cleanup, Obama vacationed and played golf.

“Between April 23rd and June 19th, however, President Obama found time to play eight rounds of golf, to take two vacations, to attend two rock concerts and a baseball game, and to be a guest on the Jay Leno and George Lopez talk shows,” the report says.

The Inhofe report also notes that Obama, despite having the clear authority to direct the operations of BP, did not meet with the company’s CEO Tony Hayward until June 16th, 57 days into the disaster.

The report also notes that while Obama had the authority to issue executive orders that could have cut through the bureaucratic red tape blamed by local officials for delaying their efforts, he inexplicably chose not to do so. The report points out that many state and local actions technically required federal government approval, a process that could have been expedited had Obama ordered agencies, such as the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), to do so.

“One manifestation of executive power under the Constitution is the executive order—a legally binding order issued by the president to federal agencies, directing their execution of congressionally established laws or policies. In the BP disaster, President Obama rarely issued executive orders to remove obstacles,” the report says.

The report also points out that, in addition to the OPA and Obama’s ability to issue executive orders, the government had other authorities it could have used to speed and streamline the cleanup. Inhofe’s report notes that under the Administrative Procedures Act, federal agencies are granted a “good cause” exemption that allows them to bypass the normal regulatory and administrative processes in the case of an emergency.

“The good cause exemption allows agencies to expedite their rulemaking process and bypass the typical procedural requirements of notice and comment periods when they are found to be “impracticable, unnecessary, or contrary to the public interest.

“The good cause exemption could have been used by federal agencies to overcome regulatory barriers—and help those agencies minimize the risk of litigation. But none thus far have utilized it, despite the fact that there clearly was a need to do so,” the report explains.

The report also debunks the claim that the administration’s efforts were hindered by the Jones Act, which restricts foreign-flagged vessels from operating within U.S. waters. The Jones Act was cited as a major impediment to supplementing the small U.S. fleet of oil skimming and recovery vessels.

“The Jones Act allows for foreign vessels to receive a waiver to assist in the recovery and transportation of oil if the Coast Guard, in consultation with the U.S. Department of State, determines, on a case-by-case basis, that domestic vessels cannot be ‘engaged’ in a timely manner to respond to an oil spill,” the report notes.

“The Jones Act has been waived as part of disaster response in the past, including a waiver to assist in response to Hurricane Katrina nearly five years ago. However, during the emergency response to the BP disaster, the Obama Administration failed to issue a Jones Act waiver.”

The report concludes by issuing a blunt indictment of the administration’s performance, saying that its failure to remove red tape and fully take charge of the cleanup made an already historic disaster worse.

“Instead of removing red tape, bureaucracy, and onerous regulations, the Obama Administration kept them in place, and refused to exercise available legal authorities to remove impediments blocking the most effective and efficient courses of action,” states the report. President Obama treated the BP disaster as if it were business as usual, rather than a crisis of national significance. The result was a federal response effort that was doomed to fail from the very beginning.”

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