Stop blocking Keystone pipeline
No sooner did Congress convene for the start of its 114th session than the gridlock everyone complains about was back!
But this time it wasn’t the House and the Senate at loggerheads. It wasn’t the GOP that was being castigated as the “Party of No.” It was President Obama, fresh off an historic defeat in the midterm elections, who was telling Congress “no way” would he sign legislation to approve the Keystone XL pipeline.
Why not?
Supposedly because he is waiting for court action in Nebraska to determine whether or not the pipeline needs to be approved by the Nebraska Public Service Commission before it can be built.
But, as we all know, that is just one more convenient excuse to do what he wants to do anyway — delay the pipeline until it goes away as a political headache ... or at least until he is no longer president and it is someone else’s headache.
One thing for certain, neither President Obama nor Congress has to wait for the Nebraska Supreme Court or the Nebraska Public Service Commission or anyone else before they approve the pipeline, which would transport oil from Canada through Montana and South Dakota to Nebraska, where it would connect with existing pipelines on the way to refineries along the Gulf Coast.
If court action delays the pipeline, so be it, but don’t use that threat as an excuse to avoid approving a project that is potentially one of the brightest spots in a still rather ragged American economy. Possibly thousands of high-paying jobs could be supported by the pipeline, not just with workers directly employed by pipeline owner TransCanada, but also with workers in the oil industry at both the extraction and refining ends of the operation.
The president says the route is risky. Well, building the Panama Canal was risky, too. Going to the moon was risky. Heck, even sending hundreds of thousands of cars over the Going-to the-Sun Road every year is risky, too, but somehow we manage to do it.
The American people are smart enough to know when someone is playing political games, and this sham of artificial delays for six years in approving the pipeline is one of the main reasons why the Democratic Party was trounced in November.
Hopefully, the 54 Republicans in the new Senate will find 13 Democratic colleagues to join with them in voting to override President Obama’s threatened veto. There should be enough pro-jobs, pro-development Democrats to make that happen.
Or better yet, maybe President Obama will decide he doesn’t want to be known as an obstructionist and will sign the bill. Let’s get started working together to build a better America.