House investigators have asked Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to testify before the Energy and Commerce Committee about the denial of the Keystone XL permit. The State Department said it could not determine if the pipeline was in the national interest without further environmental impact studies.
“We have asked already Secretary Clinton to come testify before our Committee next week,” said committee chair Fred Upton, R-Mich., today. “If the president wont say yes, we want to let the American people no that we will. No option is going to be off the table; we can’t wait,” he added, in an apparent coopting of President Obama’s “We can’t wait” slogan applied to executive actions that Obama takes to implement measures that Congress will not pass into law.
“[T]he State Department does not have sufficient time to obtain the information necessary to assess whether the project, in its current state, is in the national interest,” said a State Department statement. “[T]he Department [has] called for an assessment of alternative pipeline routes that avoided the uniquely sensitive terrain of the Sand Hills in Nebraska.”
Upton recalled reminded reporters that “in October of 2010, Secretary Clinton indicated that she was inclined to support this project.” In a statement on the committee hearing next week, House Energu and Commerce added that it would like Clinton “to testify on the review her Department has completed as Congress looks at options to restart the project now that the president decided he cannot approve it.”
