The following is a fact-check from the June 20, 2010 episode of Meet the Press:

GOV. HALEY BARBOUR (R-MS) VS. REP. ED MARKEY (D-MA) | Obama energy plan quote & cap and trade costs

1) GOV. BARBOUR | Rep. Markey’s cap and trade bill would drive up energy costs – TRUE

2) GOV. BARBOUR | President Obama told a San Francisco newspaper that under his cap and trade plan, electricity plans [rates] would necessarily skyrocket. – TRUE

3) REP. MARKEY | The Obama quote Gov. Barbour mentioned was from three years ago – FALSE (2+ years)

4) REP. MARKEY | The Obama Cap and Trade plan is not the same as the bill the House passed last year – TRUE

GOV. BARBOUR: Now, there are people like Congressman Markey whose bill in Congress, the–that mostly effects electricity, would drive up, up energy costs.  As President Obama said, under–he told a San Francisco paper, and I quote, “Under my cap and trade plan, electricity rates will necessarily skyrocket.” One of the things President Obama and I agree on.

While there is still mostly partisan-delineated debate regarding the actual cost to American households of the cap and trade bill passed by the House last year, the non-partisan CBO estimated that yes, the cost of electricity would rise under the plan. Thus, we determine Gov. Barbour’s statement to be TRUE.

Thanks to a similar fact-check by PolitiFact, it is clear that Gov. Barbour’s statement is TRUE. Obama made the statement during a January 2008 meeting (video) with the editorial board of the San Francisco Chronicle.

Gov. Barbour’s statements are somewhat misleading, however, since he is attempting to link then Senator Obama’s quote regarding his plan at the time to the plan that the House passed last year, something Rep. Markey then responded to:

REP. MARKEY:  The governor is wrong.  And the governor is using something that then Senator Obama said three years ago, not the Waxman-Markey Bill along with senator–along with Speaker Pelosi that we passed through the House last year.  What we do is we create a, a program of market-based incentives so that we move towards wind and solar, towards geothermal, towards biomass, towards plug-in hybrids, towards all-electric vehicles; efficiency, doubling the efficiency of the homes and the, and the buildings that we work in; moving in a way that captures the innovation, captures the science lead that we have on the rest of our country.  And over time it will actually lead to lower electricity, lower energy bills for our country.

As mentioned above, the Obama statement referenced by Gov. Barbour was made in January 2008, which means Rep. Markey is incorrect that it was three years ago. It was instead two years and five months ago. Because we are doing our best to look at statements in a technical sense, Rep. Markey’s would thus be FALSE.

Also, in their fact-check from June of 2009, PolitiFact neatly summed up how the debate and plan had changed since Obama made his statement:

It is worth noting that the climate debate has changed substantially since Obama sat down with the Chronicle nearly a year and a half ago. Legislators have opted to give 85 percent of the polluting permits away for free instead of putting them up for sale, as Obama pledged to do on the campaign trail. In theory, this approach should reduce costs to consumers. Furthermore, revenue from auctioned permits will help consumers pay for increased energy prices, according to Obama’s first budget.

From what we have read, we agree, making Rep. Markey’s statement that Obama’s plan in January 2008 was not the same as the House bill passed last year TRUE.

We are also looking into Rep. Markey’s claim that electricity costs will eventually go down as a result of his plan, but as of right now that research is inconclusive.

This fact-check took a combined 2 hours.

The following is a fact-check from the June 20, 2010 episode of Meet the Press:

GOV. HALEY BARBOUR (R-MS) | The $20 billion BP put in escrow will be paid in $5 billion increments over a period of four years – TRUE

GOV. BARBOUR: Right. Well, I thought that they were talking about taking $20 billion from BP all at once, and my fear was if you took $20 billion from them all at once, put it in an escrow account, then they wouldn’t have the working capital to generate the revenue to pay us. I think the president was smart, and I congratulate him and BP that they reached an agreement. Instead of $20 billion taken out of that working capital all at once, it’s actually going to be $5 billion this year, $5 billion the next year, $5 billion the following year and $5 billion the fourth year.

According to both a Washington Post and CBS news article, under the deal, BP will put $5 billion annually into escrow for the next four years to pay damage claims from the Gulf of Mexico. Therefore, we rate Gov. Barbour’s statement TRUE.

The following fact-check took a combined 1 hour.

The following is a fact-check from the June, 20, 2010 episode of Meet the Press:

REP. ED MARKEY (D-MA) | There is a BP document stating that oil flow may go up as high as 100,000 barrels per day – TRUE

REP. ED MARKEY (D-MA): Right now, again, we’re dependent upon BP and the execution of their capacity to be able to put a cap over this well. I actually have a document that shows that BP actually believes it could go upwards of 100,000 barrels per day, which would be about four million barrels a day.

According to an internal BP document which was released by Rep. Ed Markey, the oil flow rate on the Deepwater Horizon rig could get as high as 100,000 barrels per day (bpd). Here is what the document says:

Note: If BOP and wellhead are removed and if we have incorrectly modeled the restrictions – the rate could be as high as – 100,000 barrels per day up the casing or 55,000 barrels per day up the annulus (low probability worst cases)

Therefore, because the document clearly states the oil flow rate could go as high as 100,000 bpd, we will rate Rep. Markey’s statement TRUE.

This fact-check took 30 minutes.

Here are the statements to fact-check from the June 20, 2010 episode of Meet the Press.
Transcript | Video

If you can help us research them please either email us or (preferably) post your work in the comments below. (Anonymity is fine) Also let us know how long you spent researching each fact, we will be tracking it. The success of Meet the Facts depends on the crowd-sourcing of people like you, please help if you can!

Statements are listed in chronological order

REP. ED MARKEY (D-MA) | [Confirm existence of document]

REP. ED MARKEY (D-MA):  Right now, again, we’re dependent upon BP and the execution of their capacity to be able to put a cap over this well.  I actually have a document that shows that BP actually believes it could go upwards of 100,000 barrels per day, which would be about four million barrels a day.

SEN. MARY LANDRIEU (D-LA) | Canada deliberately spills oil in water to practice their clean up efforts.

SEN. LANDRIEU: I learned this week that Canada and–as one country, for instance–does spills into their water to practice in the event that this would happen.

JOHN HOFMEISTER | Jones Act prevents use of foreign ships from assisting with the oil spill cleanup.
REP. ED MARKEY (D-MA) | Jones Act does not prevent use of foreign ships from assisting with the oil spill cleanup.

MR. HOFMEISTER:  Well, there’s a Jones Act that gets in the way.  The Jones Act, decades-long enforced, prevents foreign ships from operating in domestic waters.
MR. GREGORY:  Mm-hmm.
MR. HOFMEISTER:  It would have to have a waiver.  There was a waiver after Katrina to help do whatever needed to be done.  There should be a waiver now. This is a unique, unprecedented situation.  The U.S. hasn’t made supertankers in–ever.  Supertankers have always been made in foreign shipbuilding yards.  And we need to bring that kind of scale to bear, in my opinion.
MR. GREGORY:  Congressman, you’re shaking your head.  You don’t…
REP. MARKEY:  The, the Jones Act, the Jones Act does not apply to situations like this, emergency situations, relief situations.
MR. GREGORY:  You should be able to get those ships in there right away.

GOV. HALEY BARBOUR (R-MS)

1) The Mississippi government recruited 1163 vessels to help with spill cleanup.
2) Coast Guard communications issues prevented the use of those vessels [ED NOTE: is that what he was saying?]

GOV. BARBOUR:  Yeah, David, I was just, I was–well, I was just going to say, Senator Landrieu made a point earlier about command and control, which has been a huge problem.  We recruited 1,200–1,163 vessels to work on our spill, designed a multilayered plan to start defending our shores 20 miles south of the barrier islands.  And then, unfortunately, the Coast Guard told us weeks later, “Well, we don’t have a way to communicate with those vessels.  We don’t have a way to identify even where they are, and so we’ve been relying for about three weeks on a system that existed but couldn’t be executed.” To their credit, in the last two weeks the Coast Guard has, has, has corrected that or begun the correction of that.

DAVID GREGORY (NBC) | Obama made a promise to leave the Gulf Coast (of Gulf of Mexico) in better shape than it was before the oil spill. [ED NOTE: Statement is listed because it seems possibly unclear, from the quote used, whether Obama was actually promising or making a statement of belief.]

MR. GREGORY:  Can I have you respond ultimately, Governor, to the sense of what government is capable of here?  Because that’s what people are really thinking about in the long term.  Here’s what the president said.  He issued a promise when he was in Alabama, Theodore, Alabama, this week.  Let’s listen to that.
(Videotape, Monday)
PRES. BARACK OBAMA:  We are going to do everything we can 24/7 to make sure that communities get back on their feet.  And in the end, I am confident that we’re going to be able to leave the Gulf Coast in better shape than it was before.
(End videotape)
MR. GREGORY:  “In better shape than it was before.” That caught my eye and my team because we went back to 2005, President Bush speaking in New Orleans, and this is among the promises he made.

GOV. HALEY BARBOUR (R-MS) | The $20 billion BP has promised is broken up into $5 billion increments over a period of four years.

GOV. BARBOUR:  Right.  Well, I thought that they were talking about taking $20 billion from BP all at once, and my fear was if you took $20 billion from them all at once, put it in an escrow account, then they wouldn’t have the working capital to generate the revenue to pay us.  I think the president was smart, and I congratulate him and BP that they reached an agreement.  Instead of $20 billion taken out of that working capital all at once, it’s actually going to be $5 billion this year, $5 billion the next year, $5 billion the following year and $5 billion the fourth year.

REP. ED MARKEY (D-MA)

1) Oil industry had said that the risks of an oil rig ever sinking were zero [%].
2) Oil industry had said that they had the capacity to handle a spill of up to 250,000 barrels a day.

REP. MARKEY:  I, I agree with you.  When an agency responsible for safety turns into a lapdog and not a watchdog, then, unfortunately, boosterism creates complacency, and complacency leads to disaster.  It happened in the financial sector.  Goldman Sachs and Bear Stearns and AIG, they all said, “There’s no risk with derivatives and credit default swaps.  Don’t worry.” And it created a financial disaster.  The same thing was true here.  The industry said that the risks of a rig ever sinking were zero.  Their capacity to handle a spill up to 250,000 barrels per day was absolute.  None of it was true.  And so, if you allow this risk to be built into the system, then it’s ordinary families’ financial and health and well-being which is affected, and the government has to play the role of protecting ordinary people against the short-term financial goals of companies that are going to assure the public that everything is safe.

GOV. HALEY BARBOUR (R-MS)

1) 30% of US domestic oil production comes from Gulf of Mexico.
2) 80% of Gulf of Mexico US oil production comes from deepwater wells.
3) 25% of US domestic oil production comes from deepwater wells in the Gulf of Mexico.

GOV. BARBOUR:  Well, the moratorium.  The skill–the spill’s a terrible thing, but the moratorium is a, is a terrible thing that’s not only bad for the region, it’s bad for America.  Thirty percent of the oil produced in the United States comes out of the Gulf of Mexico, and 80 percent of that is from deepwater drilling.  So that’s a fourth of all of our oil.

GOV. HALEY BARBOUR (R-MS) | President Obama told a San Francisco newspaper that under his cap and trade plan, electricity plans [rates] would necessarily skyrocket.

GOV. BARBOUR:  As President Obama said, under–he told a San Francisco paper, and I quote, “Under my cap and trade plan, electricity rates will necessarily skyrocket.” One of the things President Obama and I agree on.

REP. ED MARKEY (D-MA) | Gov. Barbour’s Obama quote was from three years ago.

REP. MARKEY:  The governor is wrong.  And the governor is using something that then Senator Obama said three years ago, not the Waxman-Markey Bill along with senator–along with Speaker Pelosi that we passed through the House last year.  What we do is we create a, a program of market-based incentives so that we move towards wind and solar, towards geothermal, towards biomass, towards plug-in hybrids, towards all-electric vehicles; efficiency, doubling the efficiency of the homes and the, and the buildings that we work in; moving in a way that captures the innovation, captures the science lead that we have on the rest of our country.  And over time it will actually lead to lower electricity, lower energy bills for our country.  We only have 2 percent of the oil reserves in the world, and we consume 25 percent of the world’s oil on a daily basis.  That is nonsustainable.  Either we have this technological revolution going forward while we keep the oil and gas and coal that we have, but unless we unleash this market-based revolution and make it possible for us to back out the oil from OPEC, make sure China isn’t selling all of these new products to us…

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