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| By John Waage CBN News Sr. Editor |
On Monday, a few dozen protesters chanted "No XL!" outside the Washington home of embattled Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu, filling her yard with an inflatable pipeline.
One of the protesters, Karthik Ganapathy said to cheers, "If she wants this pipeline so badly, it can go through her yard and not any one of ours."
But Landrieu's pushing hard for it because it may be her only hope for winning a runoff election next month. Her Republican opponent Bill Cassidy sponsored a House bill to build Keystone, which could mean 30,000 Louisiana jobs.
The Obama administration and Senate Democrats have blocked a vote on the $5.4 billion pipeline from Canada for years. Landrieu's Senate Republican colleagues say it's high time that stopped.
"Canadians are going to produce the oil," South Dakota Sen. John Thune said on Fox News Sunday. "The only question is whether or not America is going to benefit from it and we're going to get the jobs that come with it, and whether we're going to replace the oil, the same type of oil that's coming in from Venezuela, which is what the State Department said this project would do."
The Heritage Foundation's Nick Loris said the president's people have studied Keystone long enough:
"President Obama himself said he would make his determination based on whether it would contribute significantly to climate change, which has been the big issue around this pipeline," Loris told CBN News. "And his own State Department even concluded that this pipeline won't contribute significantly to climate change because the Canadian tar sands oil is coming out of the ground whether this pipeline is built or not--so why not bring that oil down to the Gulf Coast refineries and create the jobs here?"
House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) kept the focus
on jobs in his weekly press conference with Republican
leaders today, discussing the upcoming House vote on
a manufacturing jobs bill, and keeping the heat on
President Obama and Senate Democrats to approve
the Keystone pipeline.
But environmental activists say that given oil spills in the Gulf, Landrieu should know better than to back the project. And they're worried about environmental damage in states like Nebraska, which would house the pipeline.
"Unfortunately, cleaning up the Gulf was a piece of cake compared to what it's going to be to clean up a tar sands spill in the Ogalalla Aquifer," Nebraska Farmer Art Tanderup said.
But with people hurting for jobs, the votes may be there even to override a potential veto by President Obama.
"The public wants it, it has bipartisan support," Loris said. "It is much-needed economic growth and much-needed oil coming to the United States. So you know, I think it's all economic benefits for building this pipeline. So I can't imagine what the good reason for vetoing Keystone XL would be."
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