If there was ever doubt that congressional Republicans would accept US President Barack Obama's Jan. 18 ruling against the proposed Keystone XL crude oil pipeline, it disappeared completely on Jan. 30 when three GOP members of the US Senate announced they would introduce a new bill to approve the project.
Richard D. Lugar (Ind.), John Hoeven (ND), and David Vitter (La.) said that Congress has such authority under Article 1, Section 8 of the US Constitution's Commerce Clause. Forty-one other senators, including several Democrats, are cosponsors, they added.
"The job creation, economic, and energy security arguments are overwhelmingly in favor of building the pipeline," said Lugar. "A majority of Americans support it. President Obama's opposition is not in the best interest of the United States. The president has failed to lead, but we will not stop trying to complete this critical supply line."
Congress used this authority to approve the Trans-Alaska crude oil pipeline nearly 40 years ago, Hoeven observed. "Our legislation not only acknowledges the vital national interest this project represents on many levels, but also works in a bipartisan way to begin construction," he said.
After the three lawmakers successfully inserted a 60-day Keystone XL decision deadline provision into the payroll tax extension in late December, Obama denied the project's cross-border permit as not being in the national interest because the deadline did not allow time to fully assess the pipeline's impacts as it crossed Nebraska.
Congressional Republicans found the idea ridiculous. They said the administration spent 1,217 days studying TransCanada Corp.'s application, and there was no time limit on the US Department of State's ability to review the project's Nebraska portion.
'A public outcry'
"President Obama's rejection of the Keystone project has caused a public outcry and provided another example of how his policies are making our economy worse," US House Speaker John Boehner (Ohio) said before the president's 2012 State of the Union address on Jan. 24.
Boehner said four guests would be nearby during Obama's speech: Ray Brooks, manager of Marathon Petroleum's Robinson, Ill., refinery; Jay Churchill, manager of ConocoPhillips's refinery at Wood River, Ill.; Dale Delie, president of Welspun Tubular LLC in Little Rock, Ark.; and Nebraska state senator Chris Langemeier, who chairs that legislature's Natural Resources Committee and wrote compromise legislation for a new Keystone XL route across the state.
Vitter said the Senate's latest bill is similar to its predecessor, "but it makes definitive that Congress has the authority to push the Keystone XL Pipeline forward. Everyone in Washington talks about saving the economy and creating jobs. This project will actually do something about that."
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