Keystone vote sets up GOP challenge against Obama

“I’m opposed to this reward to the corporate interests that financially backed the Republicans in their winning efforts in November. This is a payback.”

U.S. Rep. Hank Johnson, D-Lithonia

About the Keystone XL pipeline project

The Keystone XL pipeline would run from the Canadian province of Alberta to the Gulf of Mexico.

It would move up to 830,000 barrels a day of crude oil generated from Canadian tar sands to refineries in Texas.

The project is about 40 percent complete. Oil is already flowing through a 298-mile segment running from Steele City, Neb., to Cushing, Okla., and another segment that stretches 485 miles from Cushing to Nederland, Texas.

The remaining segment, which still requires approval, would run between Alberta and Steele City.

A State Department review of the project found that the pipeline would create 1,950 construction jobs for two years. Once its built, operation of the pipeline would require 35 permanent employees, plus 15 temporary contractors. The project, however, would contribute $3.4 billion to the nation’s gross domestic product, which would support an additional 42,100 jobs.

The pipeline requires a “presidential permit” because it crosses a U.S. border.

It also faces a court challenge in the state of Nebraska over its routing. The original plan called for it to pass through the environmentally sensitive Sand Hills region. Nebraska Gov. Dave Heineman approved a new route proposed by the pipeline’s builder, TransCanada, but the suit claims the governor does not possess such authority.

Sources: U.S. State Department, National Public Radio

The first stare-down between the Republican-controlled Congress and President Barack Obama involves an oil pipeline from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico that has long been a political powder keg.

The Keystone XL pipeline remains under review by the State Department. The House will vote Friday — likely by a wide margin — to force its immediate approval, and the Senate is expected to take up the issue next week. Obama has vowed a veto.

It is one of the first major agenda items for the new Congress, and even though the construction jobs will be in the Midwest and gas prices are plummeting, Georgia’s Republican newcomers are fired up about the possibility of a quick, tangible accomplishment.

“That’s a jobs bill first and last,” Georgia Republican U.S. Sen. David Perdue said. “Anybody who says that’s not a jobs bill that would benefit Georgia hasn’t read it and really doesn’t understand. One of the three things we have to do to get this economy going is get an energy policy in this country to unlock the resources we have.”

The project by TransCanada to move oil extracted from Canada’s tar sands to refineries on the gulf has the backing of influential oil companies and labor unions. Environmental groups have used their clout to put up roadblocks, mostly because they warn that fully tapping Canada’s vast tar sands reserves will wreak environmental havoc and accelerate climate change.

U.S. Rep. Hank Johnson, a Lithonia Democrat, said he will vote against the measure Friday because it circumvents the Obama administration’s review process.

“I’m opposed to this reward to the corporate interests that financially backed the Republicans in their winning efforts in November,” Johnson said. “This is a payback.”

But the vote is likely to pick up plenty of moderate Democrats, including in the Senate, where it should easily clear a 60-vote threshold to avoid a filibuster. (There are now 54 Republicans in the Senate.)

The House is set to pass a simple three-page bill to approve the project. Down the hall, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., is vowing an open amendment process on the bill, which could produce a few surprises.

Democratic amendments such as banning the export of Keystone oil could prove tempting to Senate Republicans and put the House and Senate on different pages. Democrats already have delayed a committee hearing on the bill, and they could deploy more moves.

Georgia Republican U.S. Sen. Johnny Isakson said Republicans are “not intimidated by procedural games” and are committed to a free-flowing amendment process in order to present a stark contrast with the tightly controlled Senate under previous Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.

“We’re undertanding there’s going to be a lot of tough votes,” Isakson said, “but Democrats are going to have to take a lot of tough votes, too.”

And then there's Obama. White House press secretary Josh Earnest said Tuesday that Obama would veto the bill, mostly because the bill would disrupt the "well-established process in place to consider whether or not infrastructure projects like this are in the best interest of the country."

Among the remaining hurdles: Nebraska landowners have a pending lawsuit against the pipeline.

The veto threat — as well as December comments from Obama, who said Keystone would have a “nominal” economic impact — cheered environmental groups who have waged a lengthy lobbying campaign against the project.

“President Obama continues to show real climate leadership by pledging to veto attempts by Congress to circumvent the process and we’re more confident than ever that he will reject this dirty, dangerous pipeline once and for all,” Tiernan Sittenfeld, an official with the League of Conservation Voters, said in a prepared statement.

The project’s backers point out that TransCanada first filed a permit application in 2008.

"After nearly six years of studies showing no significant (environmental) impacts — yet positive benefits to our energy and economic security — politics are still trumping good policy," a coalition of pro-pipeline trade associations led by the American Petroleum Institute wrote last year in a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry.

A State Department review found that the pipeline would create 1,950 construction jobs for two years to build the pipeline and 35 permanent jobs, plus 15 temporary contractors, to operate it. On the whole, the Keystone project would support about 42,100 U.S. jobs through the $3.4 billion it would contribute to the gross domestic product, according to the State Department analysis.

Putting Keystone first in line for the new Congress gives Republicans a straightforward bill that polls well on which to clash with Obama.

“He doesn’t get it,” U.S. Rep. Buddy Carter, a freshman Pooler Republican, said when told Obama would veto the bill.

“Let’s face it: The results from November were a clear mandate from the American people that they want to see something done, and I think you’ll see the House and the Senate get something done. And when the president decides he wants to veto a bill or he doesn’t sign it, that will be his business. But we need to do our business.”

Within the sniping, U.S. Rep. David Scott, an Atlanta Democrat, senses an opportunity. He said the Keystone issue can be merged with the “Black Lives Matter” protest movement following the recent deaths of black men at the hands of police, and that it can be done in a way that can get Obama’s signature.

Scott said he could support a version of the Keystone bill that includes language encouraging corporations and labor unions involved in the project to beef up apprenticeship and job-training programs for young black men — and federal money would not even be necessary to do it.

“Eventually this thing is moving,” Scott said of the Keystone bill. “So why not take this as a chance to do something productive, to plant a seed here to get to the core of this whole thing about ‘Black Lives Matter’ and put the right ending to it — black lives with jobs.”