Keystone pipeline vote falls short
Senate rejects a bid to include the Keystone XL project in the transportation bill.
A GOP effort to advance the oil project fails in the Senate despite backing from 11 Democrats.
With gas prices becoming a high-octane campaign issue, the Democratic-led Senate defeated a Republican effort Thursday to advance the controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline.
The vote to attach the project to a must-pass transportation bill required 60 votes to advance. It received 56, with 11 Democrats joining Republicans in support; 42 senators voted no.
President Obama had called senators to urge a no vote.
“We hope that the Congress will ... not waste its time with ineffectual, sham legislation,” White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said.
But the effort — along with a vote on a measure to expand offshore drilling that was also rejected — was designed to highlight differences between the two parties and provide fodder in this year’s battle for control of the White House and the Senate.
“The president simply can’t claim to have a comprehensive approach to energy, because he doesn’t. And any time he says he does, the American people should remember one word: Keystone,” said Senate Republican leader Mitch Mcconnell of Kentucky. No Republicans opposed the Keystone measure, but two did not vote.
The pipeline would carry oil from Canada’s tar sands in Alberta south to Texas refineries. Obama rejected it in January, saying Congress had imposed too tight a deadline for adequate review. The pipeline’s original route would have passed through the Nebraska Sandhills region atop the massive Ogallala aquifer.
Republicans are eager to showcase Obama’s decision as proof that the administration is not doing enough to generate jobs and increase energy supplies. Opponents of the project accuse supporters of exaggerating the number of jobs it would create and dispute that it would reduce gas prices.
Pump prices have moved center stage on Capitol Hill, with hearings and an almost daily barrage of GOP criticisms of the administration’s approach to energy policy.
The pipeline issue has divided core Democratic constituencies, with some labor unions backing the project as an opportunity to create jobs. But environmentalists warn that the pipeline would expand the nation’s carbon footprint and create more pollution.
An alternative Democratic measure also failed. It would have prohibited the export of oil transported in the Keystone XL pipeline and, according to its sponsor, Sen. Ron Wyden (Dore.), put “teeth behind all of the debate that this energy is going to be for the American consumer.”
Sen. John Hoeven (RN.D.), who led the debate on the Keystone amendment, argued that the Democratic alternative would have added “additional impediments” to the project.
The Keystone votes come as the Senate is set to pass a $109-billion, two-year transportation bill next week.
But the bill’s fate is uncertain because House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-ohio) has been unable to corral a majority for passage in the Republican-controlled House. Republicans are in disagreement over how big the bill should be and what it should include.