For six years and with several government studies recommending that the Keystone XL Pipeline be allowed to be built, President Obama has repeatedly punted on the question. Until last week, the White House was clinging to what appeared to be its last excuse for failing to issue a decision.
“There continues to be an outstanding question about the route of the pipeline through one part of Nebraska,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest recently noted. “Once that is resolved, that should speed the completion of the evaluation of that project.”
On Friday, Nebraska’s Supreme Court resolved the issue by throwing out the pending legal challenge to the state law that had authorized Keystone’s route through the Cornhusker State. Three of the seven justices ruled that the plaintiffs challenging the pipeline had failed to establish standing, and under the court’s rules this was enough to throw out the case.
After the decision, the White House fell back upon an even weaker explanation in upgrading its threat to veto the Keystone-related bill that passed the House on Friday with 28 Democratic votes. “Regardless of the Nebraska ruling today,” an Obama spokesman’s statement read, “the House bill still conflicts with longstanding Executive branch procedures regarding the authority of the president and prevents the thorough consideration of complex issues that could bear on U.S. national interests[.]”
This is quite rich indeed. Suddenly, the president who spent so much time arguing that America “can’t wait” for procedural snags — such as the lawmaking power of Congress — has become a stickler for “executive branch procedures.”
What’s really at work here is a civil war within the Democratic Party. The pipeline puts two staple groups from the Democratic coalition at odds with one another. On the one side is the traditionally strong but now weak and dying labor movement. On the other is the growing constituency of urban white gentry liberals who make up the radical environmental movement.
The latter group has been traditionally less important, and its issue (global warming) generates far less interest among voters than that of the unions (jobs). But it also now packs a huge financial punch, thanks to hedge fund trader Tom Steyer, who spent more than $74 million helping Democrats in the November election on the specific condition that this pipeline be blocked.
In reaction to what could be compared to a choice between his own children, Obama has delayed this decision as long as possible. The application for permission to build the pipeline (with private money) has thus languished for six years.
This can and must stop now. Obama can either sign the Keystone bill that just passed the House and will soon pass the Senate, or he can grant the needed State Department permits himself. Alternatively, if Obama chooses to side with environmentalists over one of America’s most successful job-creating industries, then his party may well reap the fruits of his decision in two years’ time.
