Under my plan of a cap-and-trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket…
– Barack Obama, January 2008
The Obama administration today insured us that oil prices will also continue to skyrocket, by blocking the approval of the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada to Texas.
As is typical of this Administration, they passed the blame to someone else, as the deadline imposed by Republicans during the payroll tax extension debate came due.
The Republicans added the deadline language to which the Democrat-controlled Senate and the President agreed as a concession for the extension. This means that the Administration knew the deadline was in the bill when he signed it.
President Obama and his team have sat on this agreement for more than three years, giving the State Department, as well as the Environmental Protection Agency more than enough time to review it. Our Canadian neighbors have long grown tired of the stall tactics, and have threatened to ship the oil elsewhere.
The time has come to get off the bench and green light the pipeline. Despite that the oil is not the same high-quality oil that comes out of the Middle East, it is still can be refined, and produce the same products.
The President did say they could resubmit the proposal with an alternate route around some Nebraska regions of concern, meaning the proposal could come back up again.
Of course, this could turn out being election year politics, since several unions were for the pipeline (since many of the up to 100, 000 jobs would likely be Union) and the environmentalists are against it. Obama could pull the approval back out as an “October Surprise” to try to win the union base back over to supporting him without completely alienating the environmentalists.
The time has come for the 3 years of non-stop politics to stop and address the business at hand. We the people can no longer wait for it for a politically convenient time to do things.
