The Senate issued a symbolic, filibuster-proof endorsement of the Keystone XL pipeline Friday evening, further increasing the pressure on President Barack Obama to green-light the project despite massive resistance from his environmental base.
Seventeen Democrats joined all of the Senate’s Republicans in a 62-37 vote for Sen. John Hoeven’s budget amendment urging approval of TransCanada’s oil pipeline.
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Senators also resoundingly defeated, 33-66, an amendment from Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) that called for “expeditiously analyzing and making decisions” on the pipeline project. Boxer’s proposal included a long list of criteria for the review, including whether the pipeline would increase oil prices, use materials not manufactured in the U.S., affect individual property rights and otherwise “adversely [affect] job creation” and national security.
“Both of these votes make it very clear that the Senate will approve this project if the president doesn’t,” Hoeven (R-N.D.) boasted to reporters afterward.
Read more at POLITICO.
