The Keystone Pipeline project by TransCanada will be resurrected and brought to life. President Obama said that he denied the 1,700 mile long pipeline because the State Department did not have enough time to complete the review process. The decision to deny the application for the pipeline was applauded by environmental groups, but it took harsh criticism from lawmakers that want to reduce America’s dependence on Middle Eastern oil and create jobs.
According to U.S. Chamber of Commerce President Tom Donohue, the decision to deny the Keystone pipeline sends a strong message to business in America. In a Jan. 18 press release he states, “By placing politics over policy, the Obama administration is sacrificing tens of thousands of good-paying American jobs in the short term, and many more than that in the long term.”
The Republicans see the Keystone Pipeline as a major campaign issue and they would love to capitalize on it. The Keystone Pipeline can be used to highlight several issues where the Republicans differ from Democrats. The Republicans want to claim that the Democrats are pandering to special interests rather than supporting America’s energy independence and job creation. The Republicans will make an attempt to convince the American people that President Obama stopped the pipeline to keep his environmentalist friends happy. The Republicans want to put a divide between President Obama and his strong labor union supporters.
The Keystone Pipeline issue will not be going away anytime soon. “We are committed to keeping it on the front-burner,” said Fred Upton chair of the house committee on U.S. energy policy. The significance of Upton’s statement is that he is also a negotiator on payroll tax legislation that will be going through Congress in a few weeks. Expect to see the Keystone Pipeline revisited every time that congress is forced to pass their two-month extensions of the payroll tax cuts if Upton has his way. Another payroll tax bill negotiator, Greg Walden, is expected to join Upton in support of inserting legislation for the construction of the Keystone Pipeline in the upcoming payroll tax bill. Speaker Boehner has not yet decided if he will go along with adding legislation to build the pipeline to the payroll tax bill.
Representative Lee Terry of Nebraska thinks that the Keystone Pipeline could be added to an upcoming highway construction bill. If these measures do not work for the Republicans the Pipeline project will be pushed out past the November elections. President Obama says that it will take months to get accurate studies on the environmental impact of the pipeline. Republicans say that President Obama does not want to choose between two of his constituencies before the November elections — those two being labor unions and environmental groups.