While some are thoroughly tired of the Keystone XL pipeline saga, it has also become one of those spectacles that’s hard to turn away from. At this point it must be one of the most famous US energy projects of all time – up there with the Trans-Alaska Pipeline – and it might never even get built.
Last week the Senate tried to force the pipeline’s construction with a veto override bill that stalled and finally ended that particular strategy for circumventing the president on the issue. But it’s not over. The republican-controlled congress is not letting Keystone go and has vowed to attach it to another piece of legislation expected to receive wide approval.
“If we don’t win the battle today, we will win the war, because we will attach it to another piece of legislation,” said Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.), who authored the bill. “This is coming back in the form an infrastructure bill, a road bill that we are all voting for,” said [Senator Joe Manchin]. – As reported by The American Interest
Politics can indeed be ugly and this is a prime example of partisan disagreement at its worst. Attaching Keystone to an otherwise popular highway infrastructure bill would force the president to veto that important piece of legislation. So now taxpayers will need to spend more of their money so another transportation bill can be crafted and hopefully passed, while the country’s aging infrastructure only gets worse and potentially more expensive to fix.
The question is why this tenacious effort to bypass the president on the Keystone issue? The GOP would say they are just acting on behalf of their constituency and would be remiss in doing anything less. While that is certainly true on some level, it seems extreme to sabotage unrelated legislation for what appears to be limited or no political gain.
Perhaps the Keystone writing is sufficiently on the wall and insiders already know the Obama administration will never approve the pipeline. Even if that were true, then why go through all this trouble to ram the pipeline down the democrat’s throats or bypass the president’s authority? Just pick a new issue and move on.
The ultimate irony – and shameful waste of tax-payer dollars – would be for President Obama to approve the pipeline’s construction based on the State Department review process, which he vowed to do from the beginning if the project is found to be in the national interest.
