Barack Obama is stonewalling the badly needed Keystone XL pipeline strictly for political reasons. Both chambers of Congress have already signed on and yet to appease the Greens, Obama is blocking the creation of tens of thousands of jobs while idiotically forcing oil supplies from Canada to move by rail.
There is a quick and simple remedy. The Senate can attach the Keystone XL pipeline bill to a separate lead bill that Obama must sign. Writing at National Review, John Fund explains in detail the job-killing Obama Keystone XL efforts.
Nowhere has President Obama’s legendary indecision been on more vivid display than in his bizarre dithering over the Keystone XL pipeline, which would move crude oil from the oil sands of Alberta, Canada, to Gulf Coast refineries some 1,700 miles to the south. The southern leg of the pipeline, from Oklahoma to the Gulf, began operating last week. But the northern end has been in limbo for five years. Last March Obama assured Senate Republicans that a decision on Keystone would be made before the end of 2013. We are still waiting. One more broken promise.
Of course, the president claims that his indecision has nothing to do with politics. He has his excuses. His own State Department’s exhaustive environmental review didn’t raise any red flags, but the White House has requested another review. State concluded that “the proposed pipeline would serve the national interest,” but Obama says that he needs to learn more. The pipeline would directly create 42,000 jobs over its two-year construction period in addition to tens of thousands of support jobs, but President Obama counters that it would result in only 50 “permanent” jobs for maintenance people once completed. That’s like opposing the construction of the new World Trade Center after 9/11 because the only permanent jobs created would be building-maintenance ones. Sean McGarvey, president of the Building and Construction Trades Department at the AFL-CIO respond to Keystone’s critics this way: “The interstate Highway System was a temporary job; Mount Rushmore was a temporary job. If they knew anything about the construction industry, they’d understand that we work ourselves out of jobs and we go from job to job to job.”
It’s increasingly obvious that Obama’s main reason for delaying the pipeline decision is politics, pure and simple. His environmental-activist supporters, for whom reducing carbon emissions is paramount, have turned the battle into a high-profile cause célèbre. The green camp would view any decision from Obama as an act of betrayal. “It’s not going to be pleasant if it is approved,” Robert J. Brulle, a Drexel University professor who studies the environmental movement, toldNational Journal. “One thing we can be pretty sure of is that the marriage between the greens and the Democratic party will be brought under pretty severe review.”
Related video:
3 Reasons to Build the Keystone XL Pipeline
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