Democrats Want Control of Oil Slush Fund

The Wall Street Journal has a good article on several bad policy moves the Democrat Congress wants to make with respect to the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.  As usual, these socialists are not about to let a crises go unexploited.  The article notes that among these misbehaviors are:

• A "public announcement by Attorney General Eric Holder that his Department had opened a criminal probe of the spill, a fact usually kept under wraps to protect the innocent."
• Obama pressured BP to suspend its stock dividends.
• "Democrats in Congress are preparing to lift their own $75 million liability cap and apply that retroactively to BP, another move of dubious legality."
• The Democrats want to set up a $20 billion oil spill slush fund to be controlled by the Democrats to make payments to reimburse the injured, though a court-controlled reimbursement system without political influence already exists.
• Just " last week Democrats on Capitol Hill wanted to siphon money out of the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund—established in 1986 and funded by oil taxes to help clean-up spills—to pay for their extension of unemployment benefits. The history of such government funds is that they are always raided for politically favored purposes."

The only problem I have with the article was the qualifier at the end of the third bullet above.  There is nothing of dubious legality in retroactive or ex post facto laws.  The Constitution is very clear about such ex post facto laws.  Article 1, Section 9 of the Constitution says "No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed." A retroactive change to the $75 million liability cap is an ex post facto law and it is clearly unconstitutional. But as we know, our Democrat Congress cares not a fig about the Constitution.

The Democrat Congress and Obama only care about exploiting crises to pay off its benefactors and favored special interests and to grab more power.  This is why they want an oil spill slush fund that they control.