Rep. Hank Johnson, D-Ga., protested today on the House floor that the libertarian Koch brothers “control Congress,” arguing that the Republican push for President Obama to approve the construction of the Keystone XL oil pipeline from Canada to Texas is motivated by a desire to reward the Koch brothers for financing the Tea Party during the 2010 election.
“The Koch brothers are a secretive brother-brother combination,” said Johnson in a floor speech about the payroll tax cut and the Keystone pipeline legislation. “They’re all involved in the energy business. And they stand to get quite a bit of return on their investment through the 2010 elections, wherein through their front group, Americans for Prosperity, they financed the Tea Party — which is supposed to be grassroots, but actually its a corporate-driven animal; and the financing for that animal comes from the Koch brothers.”
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Johnson claimed that “the Koch brothers ended up being in control of Congress, using the Tea Party as a front group.” He implicitly rejected the Republican claims that they want Obama to decide on the Keystone bill in he next 60 days, rather than delay the decision until after the election, because of the potential for job creation — a position supported by some Democratic legislators and major union organizations such as the ALF-CIO.
Instead, Johnson suggested that Republicans support the Keystone pipeline because “theres a terminal owned by the Koch brothers, [by] one of their corporate subsidiaries, located at the beginning of this pipeline up in Alberta, Canada, and then along the proposed route of this pipleline are other Koch brother refineries that will process [oil]” carried from Canada in the pipeline.
He also blamed the Koch brothers for the Paul Ryan budget proposal, which he called “inhumane and merciless,” and said demonstrated how Tea Party Republicans “have been quite dutiful in doing the business of the Koch brothers.”
