Republicans push through Keystone bill to set up showdown with Obama

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/jan/29/keystone-xl-pipeline-senate-approval-debate-vote

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Fresh from their first big legislative win in the new Congress, Republicans on Thursday called on Barack Obama to back down on his veto threat and sign into law a bill approving construction of the Keystone XL pipeline.

As the Keystone bill glided to a 62-36 passage in the Senate, with nine Democrats voting in favour, Republicans stepped up their challenge to Obama’s authority and urged him to sign off on the pipeline project.

“The US Senate and House have now passed legislation approving the Keystone XL project, and the American people have repeatedly expressed their support for it,” John Hoeven, the North Dakota Republican who introduced the Keystone bill, said.

“I encourage the president to sign this legislation and work with us not only to build this vital infrastructure project, but also to help us develop a comprehensive, all-of-the-above, energy plan for our nation.”

With Thursday’s vote, the Republicans have made good on their promise to make Keystone the first order of business of the new Congress – although it is highly unlikely to ever become law.

Instead, the Keystone vote produced three weeks of lively debate, with well over 200 free-ranging proposals on every aspect of energy and environmental policy, from solar panels to firearms for Environmental Protection Agency inspectors.

The Alaska Republican Lisa Murkowski, who as chair of the energy committee presided over the debate, said the outcome showed that the Senate – under her party’s leadership – could now get things done.

Republicans inCongress will now work together to produce a final bill, GOP leaders said.

But the White House has said repeatedly that Obama will veto the bill and Republicans do not have the support to overcome it.

However, Thursday’s highly symbolic vote gave the Republicans a firmer platform from which to push Obama to fast-track the pipeline project.

Democrats – who had been anticipating a loss on Keystone from the start – claimed a silver lining in the procedures, saying three weeks of debate had for the first time forced the Republicans on the record about climate change.

“We did find out that the majority of Senate doesn’t think that climate change is a hoax, couldn’t quite agree whether [it]’s significantly caused by man, or just caused by man in some areas. But that was a step,” said Maria Cantwell, a Democratic senator from Washington state.

The three weeks of debate over Keystone roamed the entire landscape of US energy policy, with Democrats proposing amendments to vastly expand solar power or force the pipeline to be built entirely with US steel.

Republicans proposed amendments to ban environmental inspectors from carrying weapons and to strip protections from the lesser prairie chicken.

By Thursday night, the three weeks of debate and 250 proposed amendments were wound up in the bill.

Related: Why are Republicans so obsessed with their Keystone pipe dream? For 35 jobs? | Rep Raul M Grijalva

Undeterred by the prospect of a veto, the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, told reporters he was happy with the result, and that the Keystone vote was a step forward for jobs and energy independence.

Republican leaders said they will now work with the House, which voted on its own version of a measure earlier this month, to present a Keystone bill to the president.

Sixty- two senators – all of the Republicans and nine Democrats – voted in favour of the Keystone bill, according to a whip list compiled by the Hill. The nine Democrats were Tom Carper, Bob Casey, Joe Donnelly, Heidi Heitkamp, Joe Manchin, Claire McCaskill, Jon Tester and Mark Warner.

Republicans have not been able to muster the 67 votes needed to overcome a presidential veto.

Legislative procedures have now stretched over a period of more than six years since the Canadian firm, TransCanada, first proposed building a pipeline to deliver crude oil from the tar sands of Alberta to refineries on the Texas Gulf coast.

But they could – at last – be coming to a close, with the Department of State giving government agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency and the Interior Department until Monday to weigh in with their view of Keystone’s effects on the environment.

Democrats cast the Keystone vote as a handout to a powerful oil lobby and the conservative Koch brother billionaires.

They turned on McConnell for blocking amendments that would have put extra safety obligations on the pipeline.

“This bill is a disgrace,” Barbara Boxer, the California Democrat who had formerly headed the Senate’s environment and public works committee. “This waives every single law that is important to the American people to protect them.”

Brian Schatz, the Hawaii Democrat behind one of the climate change bills, said that for all the sound and fury, the Keystone vote will have almost no effect.

“We vote on Keystone, it will be approved by the House, it will be vetoed by the president and that will be that,” he said. “Legislation has a natural lifecycle, and Keystone is approaching the end of its natural lifecycle – and then we will have to deal with deeper, broader energy issues.”

The Obama administration is expected to make its ultimate decision on whether Keystone is in the national interest in the first half of the year – although earlier such deadlines have slipped repeatedly.

“Given the fossil fuel industry’s stranglehold on our political system, it’s no longer even surprising that this Congress has made it their number one priority to try and force approval of an oil pipeline,” said 350.org Executive Director May Boeve in a statement. “But thankfully, this vote is a farce – because Keystone XL is a decision for President Obama, not the Climate Denial Congress.”

The Republicans’ attention to Keystone consumed the first three weeks of their control of Congress – with senators proposing and disposing of 39 amendments to the Keystone bill.

The most significant of these could well be the measures brought forward by Democrats to test the Republican party line on climate change – which is showing signs of a shift.

In a series of symbolic votes, the Senate was asked whether climate change was real, and whether human activity was partly – or significantly – to blame.

The Senate voted overwhelmingly that climate change is indeed occurring – with only one senator, a Republican from Mississippi, dissenting.

But the senators voted down proposed amendments that said human activity was driving climate change.