Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) announced on CBS’s Face The Nation that Senate Democrats have enough votes to sustain the widely expected veto that President Obama will issue after Republicans pass a bill authorizing the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline.
Schumer said, “I think there will be enough Democratic votes to sustain the president’s veto…Our Republican colleagues say that this is a jobs bill but that really is not true at all. By most estimates it would create several thousand temporary construction jobs and only 35 permanent jobs…Why create very few jobs with the dirtiest of energy from tar sands when you can create tens of thousands more clean jobs using wind and solar? Our Republican colleagues are doing what they always do: they’re appeasing a few special interests — in this case oil companies and pipeline companies and not really doing what’s good for the average middle class family in terms of creating jobs.”
Senate Republicans won’t get anywhere near the 67 votes that they will need to override a presidential veto of the bill to authorize the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. President Obama made it clear that he was leaning towards vetoing the bill during his final press conference of 2014.
When the president was asked about Keystone XL, Obama said,
At issue in Keystone is not American oil. It is Canadian oil that is drawn out of tar sands in Canada. That oil currently is being shipped out through rail or trucks and it would save Canadian oil companies and the Canadian oil industry an enormous amount of money if they could simply pipe it through the United States and all the way down to the Gulf. Once that oil gets to Gulf, it is then entering into the world market, and it would be sold all around the world.
So there is no. I won’t say no. There is very little impact, nominal impact on US gas prices, what the average American consumer cares about, by having this pipeline come though. And sometimes the way this gets sold is, let’s get this oil, and it’s going to come here and the implication is that it’s going to lower gas prices here in the United States. It’s not. There’s a global oil market. It’s very good for Canadian oil companies and it’s good for the Canadian oil industry, but it’s not going to be a huge benefit to US consumers. It’s not even going to be a nominal benefit to US consumers.
President Obama is going to veto whatever bill the Republicans pass that would authorize the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. Republicans are going to try to spin this veto as the president being against job creation, but enough Senate Democrats will stand with the president to sustain his veto.
Republicans better get used to it, because they don’t have enough votes to pass anything on their own. Congressional Democrats and President Obama are going to present a unified front against Republicans giving Big Oil the gift of Keystone XL.
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