If Obama and his party really cared about jobs and American energy ... the Keystone XL pipeline would already be underway :: Political News and commentaries

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November 8, 2011

If Obama and his party really cared about jobs and American energy ... the Keystone XL pipeline would already be underway

Topics: Political News and commentaries

As Rich Lowry aptly points out, if the president and his party really cared about jobs, the proposed Keystone XL pipeline would already be underway:

... the proposed Keystone XL pipeline represents a big, honking $7 billion, 1,700-mile-long infrastructure project that the Obama administration is delaying and the environmentalists are opposing. If Pres. Barack Obama thinks the country lacks its former economic verve, he need look no farther than the Keystone XL fiasco for a demonstration of one reason why.

Keystone XL meets every possible standard. President Obama wants "shovel ready" jobs. The materials to build the pipeline from Alberta, Canada, to the Gulf Coast are waiting to go. The president rightly notes that construction has been hard hit in the recession. Building Keystone XL will create thousands of construction jobs. The president criticizes our dependence on Middle Eastern oil. Keystone XL is projected to pump as much as 830,000 barrels of crude oil a day from our friendly neighbor to the north.

President Obama should want to sign the permit himself and send Vice Pres. Joe Biden to take credit at the groundbreaking. At this rate, though, the project will get underway sometime in the second Obama or first Cain administration, if ever. For more than three years, the administration has been dragging TransCanada, the prospective builder of the pipeline, through a review process involving about a dozen federal agencies and a cast of thousands. In the time the federal government has been considering TransCanada's project, Al Smith and the gang could have built three Empire State Buildings, at one year and 45 days each.

The proposed pipeline crosses an international border, so the State Department has been the lead agency in charge of ceaseless bureaucratic delay. Its environmental-impact statement runs to eight volumes. It informs us that "tree squirrels depend on forested habitats, usually deciduous or mixed hardwood forests with abundant supplies of acorns and hickory nuts." It examines the proposed project as "an undertaking under Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act," the implementing regulation of which is "36 CFR Part 800 (2004)." It takes a hard look at the possible spread of "137 federally restricted and regulated noxious weeds," as well as "state and local noxious weeds."

The upshot is that the pipeline poses little risk to the environment. But the reviewing must go on. The State Department is now considering whether the pipeline is in "the national interest." A department official told the Los Angeles Times that the continuing process will include, "if needed, gathering and assessing additional information." Such is the fate of 21st-century infrastructure, no matter what gauzy visions President Obama conjures of "nation building at home."

Read the whole thing here. As Lowry goes on to note, the Democrats are the party of the regulations that hamper infrastructure projects and of the environmentalists who work to kill them outright. If that weren't so, Joe Biden would have cut a ribbon for TransCanada long ago.

Related: Not all Democrats are against the project. Take for example Rep Gene Greene of U.S. House District 29, who writes:

... 21 other Democratic members of Congress and I sent a letter to the president requesting that he do what's right for our nation and grant the permit for the Keystone XL Pipeline. The extension of the existing pipeline will create domestic jobs, raise local revenue, ensure a more consistent energy supply and improve America's energy independence from hostile nations.

The Keystone XL Pipeline project is estimated to bring in $20 billion of private sector investment into the American economy, create 20,000 direct jobs, spur the creation of 118,000 spin-off jobs and pay out $5 billion in taxes to local counties over the project's lifetime.

In other words, there are at least 22 Democrats (out of a total of 244) that actually care about jobs and energy, and are willing to give both more than just lip service.

Posted by Hyscience at November 8, 2011 12:59 PM

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