You'd think it was an Election Year...

Congress hissy fit over oil leases.
Flawed leases under Clinton, failure to correct under Bush.

click here

Fingerpointing time.

"... even as Republican and Democratic lawmakers expressed outrage that the government could lose more than $10 billion over the next decade, the Bush administration said it flatly opposed House bills that would pressure oil companies into renegotiating flawed leases that the government signed in the late 1990’s.

The 56 companies hold leases that allow them to extract billions of dollars in oil and gas from the Gulf of Mexico without paying any royalties, regardless of how high energy prices or the industry’s profits might climb."

Dumb contract, questionable remedies.

"In what has now become a major scandal, the Interior Department inadvertently signed 1,100 drilling leases in the late 1990’s that offered lucrative incentives to deepwater drillers, regardless of how high energy prices might climb.

Officials then covered up the mistake for nearly six years. In that time, the prices for oil and gas soared and the magnitude of the potential loss to taxpayers escalated to more than $10 billion."

Plenty of blame to share...

And spotted this from Dick Morris : Neither side deserves to be reelected
Failure to act on almost everything.