If there’s one thing people are growing tired of in Washington it is the lack of will to solve problems by kicking those problems down the road and calling it a solution. That is where we are with the Keystone XL Pipeline project.
All the studies of the pipeline are done. Our Canadian neighbors are not happy that Obama chose to delay his decision on the pipeline until after the 2012 election. Senate bill S.1932 is Republican’s attempt to force the president’s hand before the election, calling for a decision from the Sec. of State within 60 days.
The bill would:
- Establish congressional affirmation that Keystone XL is good for job creation, economic growth, and national security;
- Require the President, through the Secretary of State, to issue a permit within 60 days to allow the Keystone XL project to move ahead, unless he finds that it’s not in the national interest;
- Require the permit for Keystone XL to contain strong and specific environmental protections and protect states’ rights;
- Require the federal permit to recognize an alternative route approved by Nebraska, protecting their ability to shift the route of the pipeline to avoid the Sand Hills area, while not holding up construction elsewhere;
- Concludes more than three years of federal review by deeming the Final Environmental Impact Statement to be adequate.
Where President Obama is concerned, his re-election takes precedent over the national interest. Because if he were to approve the pipeline, he would alienate his environmental base and risk losing their campaign contributions. If he rejects it before the election, he puts BIG LABOR (labor unions are in favor of the pipeline) on the ropes and risks losing their support. To him, putting off the decision until after the election is his way of voting present and doesn’t risk a dime of campaign contributions or support from either the environmental or labor union special interests.
If he rejects it, how could he explain to the American people why the nation doesn’t need 700,000 barrels a day of Canadian crude and 140,000 high-paying jobs? After all the green-energy bankruptcy scandals (BrightSource, Solyndra, etc.), he can’t say with a straight face how green energy is the answer to today’s energy problems. His own Energy Information Administration . . .
projects that most petroleum-based and non-petroleum based liquid fuels — including those derived from fuels such as coal, biomass, and natural gas — will continue to be used for transportation over the next two decades.
At a time when our economy is struggling and real unemployment is north of 11 percent, a truly shovel ready project like this means over a hundred thousand jobs nationwide. 14,000 in Oklahoma alone according to Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK), ranking Republican on the Senate Environment Committee.
In my state of Oklahoma alone, we’d be creating 14,000 jobs with the Keystone pipeline. Existing pipeline infrastructure can’t accommodate the current volume of crude oil, which makes us more dependent on imports and vulnerable to increasing prices. The Keystone pipeline will improve both the inbound and outbound flow of crude oil at Cushing, OK.
Speaking to the President’s speeches of lessening U.S. dependence on Middle East oil and creating jobs, Inhofe continues . . .
There’s not one piece of legislation in the House or Senate right now that would do more to achieve both of these goals than this Keystone bill that we are introducing today.
If you think we don’t have an energy problem, consider this. Bill Clinton opposed ANWR exploration because, he said, it would take 10 years to get anything out of it. That was nearly 20 years ago and ANWR is still closed. As recent as five years ago, people in the Northeast United States were suffering from a lack of heating oil. (84 percent of heating in the NE comes from oil.) Back then, Joe Kennedy’s oil company accepted discounted heating oil from the hemisphere’s idiot, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, to ostensibly ‘help’ poor people in the United States. A political move to give then President Bush a slap in the face.
All the green energy talk and environmental lobbies have managed to do to solve the NE problem is . . . nothing. Five years later and we have headlines like this one, ‘Northeast states cut heating aid to poor.’
If there ever was a case to increase oil production, I think people going without heat or food would make a compelling case. Even though these are the people Obama champions on the campaign trail, he officially ignores them in The White House.
National security meets foreign policy
While we’re on the subject of oil independence, let’s take a look back to the Carter administration and the long lines at the pump, the gas rationing, and OPEC’s embargo that caused it all.
Jimmy Carter was forced into getting a spine and came up with the Carter Doctrine. It was supposed to ensure protection of Middle East oil. Carter declared that the United States would consider any attempt by an outside force to gain control of the gulf region an assault on U.S. vital interests, and would be considered an act of war that would be repelled by military force if necessary. Carter also invented the Cabinet position of the Department of Energy which, thanks to environmentalists and big government statists, was and is a dismal failure.
Today, the Iranian situation is still volatile. They are making threats via military exercises to close the Strait of Hormuz to oil traffic. With the Keystone Pipeline project on the table, and people in the Northeast being left in the cold, and Iran threatening to cut off oil to most of the world, how does him voting present on the Keystone Pipeline work for you?
So far, except for ‘social justice,’ there is no Obama Doctrine.
