Representative Joe Barton...

of Texas, ranking member of the House Energy committee, joins other Republicans by saying:

"It is a tragedy of the first proportion that a private corporation can be subjected to what I would characterize as a shakedown, in this case a $20 billion shakedown."

And yet, what if President Obama didn't insist on BP's creating an escrow account? Might the money disappear somehow?

From an article in the Times dated June 26, 2008, nearly twenty years after the famous Exxon Valdez spill:

The Supreme Court on Wednesday reduced what had once been a $5 billion punitive damages award against Exxon Mobil to about $500 million. The ruling essentially concluded a legal saga that started when the Exxon Valdez, a supertanker, struck a reef and spilled 11 million gallons of crude oil into the Prince William Sound in Alaska in 1989.