Analyst: Boehner Wants To Mistake Keystone Pipeline For A 'National Jobs Package -- It Isn't'
GOP House Speaker John Boehner is pushing for approval for a controversial transnational pipeline under the guise of jobs creation. But even the company behind the Keystone XL project concedes that the entire 1,700-mile pipeline would create no more "no more than a few hundred permanent jobs," according to an environmental attorney and analyst.
Boehner is holding an extension of middle-class tax cuts President Obama has called for to approval of the Keystone pipeline, which would transport oil from tar sands in Canada down to the Gulf Coast.
"The 13.3 million Americans who are out of work will not thank Speaker Boehner when they realize that rather than seriously working on their behalf to advance national job creation, he used their distress to try to get a pipeline that is for the benefit of Big Oil," Anthony Swift, international program attorney and pipeline analyst at the National Resources Defense Council, says in a blog post published Friday.
The $7 billion pipeline has generated a great amount of controversy, both for its potential to damage the environment, as well as for potentially improper corporate influence over the government's permitting process.
(You can read an overall explanation of the Keystone XL project, and its controversies, online here.)
The State Department must give its blessing to Keystone XL because the project would cross the U.S. border.
President Obama pushed any decision on Keystone off to 2013, following disclosures that the independent State Department inspector general had opened an investigation of the handling of the approval process.
Boehner and other Republicans now want to force the president's hand through legislation, a tactic which pipeline opponent Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) calls "completely inappropriate."
Republicans are touting job-creation numbers which are vastly overblown, Swift says.
The State Department finds that the pipeline would only create between 5,000 to 6,000 temporary construction jobs and only 20 permanent jobs, he says.
The legislation House Republicans are offering to force approval of Keystone XL also would exempt the company behind the project, TransCanada, from key U.S. regulations, Swift says.
"That means TransCanada wouldn’t to abide by the same laws that domestic pipelines do – laws intended to protect the nation’s land and water," he says.
Developing clean energy sources would be a better approach to job creation, Swift argues.
"Clean car manufacturers have created over 151,000 quality long term jobs in the United States while saving consumers billions of dollars at the pump," he says. "Between 2003 and 2010, the clean energy sector grew nearly twice as fast as the overall economy. Moreover, a recent study found the U.S. can gain as many as 1.9 million more jobs with a comprehensive energy policy. These clean energy jobs are real, long term, and number in the millions."
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Boehner is holding an extension of middle-class tax cuts President Obama has called for to approval of the Keystone pipeline, which would transport oil from tar sands in Canada down to the Gulf Coast.
"The 13.3 million Americans who are out of work will not thank Speaker Boehner when they realize that rather than seriously working on their behalf to advance national job creation, he used their distress to try to get a pipeline that is for the benefit of Big Oil," Anthony Swift, international program attorney and pipeline analyst at the National Resources Defense Council, says in a blog post published Friday.
The $7 billion pipeline has generated a great amount of controversy, both for its potential to damage the environment, as well as for potentially improper corporate influence over the government's permitting process.
(You can read an overall explanation of the Keystone XL project, and its controversies, online here.)
The State Department must give its blessing to Keystone XL because the project would cross the U.S. border.
President Obama pushed any decision on Keystone off to 2013, following disclosures that the independent State Department inspector general had opened an investigation of the handling of the approval process.
Boehner and other Republicans now want to force the president's hand through legislation, a tactic which pipeline opponent Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) calls "completely inappropriate."
Republicans are touting job-creation numbers which are vastly overblown, Swift says.
The State Department finds that the pipeline would only create between 5,000 to 6,000 temporary construction jobs and only 20 permanent jobs, he says.
The legislation House Republicans are offering to force approval of Keystone XL also would exempt the company behind the project, TransCanada, from key U.S. regulations, Swift says.
"That means TransCanada wouldn’t to abide by the same laws that domestic pipelines do – laws intended to protect the nation’s land and water," he says.
Developing clean energy sources would be a better approach to job creation, Swift argues.
"Clean car manufacturers have created over 151,000 quality long term jobs in the United States while saving consumers billions of dollars at the pump," he says. "Between 2003 and 2010, the clean energy sector grew nearly twice as fast as the overall economy. Moreover, a recent study found the U.S. can gain as many as 1.9 million more jobs with a comprehensive energy policy. These clean energy jobs are real, long term, and number in the millions."
Watch more breaking news now on our video feed:
Bookmark The Washington Current and drop back in for more news from the nation's capital.
Labels: environment, jobs, John Boehner, NRDC, pipelines
posted by Scott Nance at
12:51 PM
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