WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Reaction to President Barack Obama's address to the nation Tuesday night.

Statement from BP

-- "We share the president's goal of shutting off the well as quickly as possible, cleaning up the oil and mitigating the impact on the people and environment of the Gulf Coast. We look forward to meeting with President Obama tomorrow for a constructive discussion about how best to achieve these mutual goals."

Former Vice President Al Gore, chairman of the Alliance for Climate Protection

-- "I applaud President Obama's call for a comprehensive legislative solution to the oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. The oil gusher is just the latest and most tragic reminder of the environmental, economic and human consequences of our addiction to oil and other dirty sources of energy. The president is right to focus on stopping the spill and working to limit, to the degree possible, its impact on the Gulf ecosystem. But ultimately the only way to prevent this type of tragedy from happening again is to fundamentally change how we power our economy. Placing a limit on global warming pollution and accelerating the deployment of clean energy technologies is the only truly effective long-term solution to this crisis. Now it is time for the Senate to act."

Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Florida

-- "It's time to take this tragedy and turn it into an opportunity. I congratulate the president on saying we are now going to declare that this nation is getting on the road rapidly to breaking our dependence on oil. We are at a point now, through research and development, that we are going to wean ourselves from petroleum addiction."

Michael Steele, chairman of the Republican National Committee

-- "Manipulating this tragic, national crisis for selfish political gain not only demonstrates President Obama's inability to aptly lead our nation out of a disaster, but also reveals the appallingly arrogant political calculus of this White House. Exploiting the tragedy in the Gulf to try to ram through a devastating job-killing national energy tax is more of the same Chicago-style politics that has the president's approval ratings plummeting to an all-time low. Instead of leveraging this crisis to manufacture knee-jerk political support for cap-and-trade energy taxes, President Obama should focus on providing the people of the Gulf with real and honest solutions to this horrible environmental disaster that this administration has been slow in waking up to."

Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson, R-Texas

-- "Today, nearly two months after the spill began, our focus and attention must remain on the massive cleanup and the lessons to prevent future disasters. The results of the investigations, rather than emotions or politics, must guide our energy policy moving forward. I am concerned the administration is attempting to capitalize on public outrage over the spill in order to push through a cap and trade bill that will significantly raise energy prices for all Americans and add more burdens on businesses. Right now, the president's No. 1 priority needs to be keeping the jobs in the energy sector from going overseas and restoring the Gulf of Mexico."

Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, Senate Minority Leader

-- "Every day seems to bring more bad news about the size and scope of this crisis, and reversing that trend should be the president's priority. Legislation to respond to this oil spill should be an opportunity for genuine bipartisan cooperation, the kind that the president so frequently says he wants and the kind that has been sorely needed and sorely lacking in this midst of this tragedy. The White House may view this oil spill as an opportunity to push its agenda in Washington, but Americans are more concerned about what it plans to do to solve the crisis at hand."

Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas

-- "The president's moratorium on deep-water drilling will likely destroy tens of thousands of jobs in the Gulf region. Sadly, if the federal government would have been doing their job, the Deepwater Horizon tragedy may very well have been averted.

-- "Now the president hopes to use this crisis to force a job-killing energy tax on the American people. His notion that mandating enough wind turbines and solar panels will eliminate the need for domestic oil and gas reserves is sheer fantasy ... President Obama should focus on stopping the leak and helping state and local governments protect their beaches and fisheries. He should work to figure out what went wrong and help make sure it never happens again."

Rep. John Boehner, R-Ohio, House Republican Leader

-- "Nearly two months after disaster first struck, the federal response remains inadequate and disorganized. Americans are rightly angry about this failure of government, and they want to know that their president is focused squarely on stopping this leak, cleaning up this mess, and finding out what went wrong.

-- "President Obama should not exploit this crisis to impose a job-killing national energy tax on struggling families and small businesses. Both parties should be working together to craft responsible solutions in response to this disaster. There's nothing responsible or reasonable about a national energy tax that will raise energy costs and destroy more American jobs."

Rep. Roy Blunt, R-Missouri, deputy ranking member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee

-- "I was stunned to hear the president use this catastrophe as an opportunity to push for his job-killing national energy tax plan that would kill 32,000 Missouri jobs in its first year alone. Equally puzzling was the president's claim that we are 'running out' of resources on land and in shallow waters when in fact it is the policies of a generation of Washington Democrats that have put those resources off-limits. Now is not the time for political gamesmanship; it's a time for action."