Incoming Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has vowed to bring up the controversial Keystone XL pipeline as the first order of business when his Republican Party takes control of the chamber next month.
“We’ll be starting next year with a job-creating bill that enjoys significant bipartisan support. The first item up in the new Senate will be the Keystone XL pipeline,” the Kentucky Republican told reporters Tuesday.
McConnell said he will allow Republican and Democratic amendments to the bill, which is being led by Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D.
An attempt to hold a vote on the pipeline in May collapsed in the Senate over a partisan dispute on amendments.
“We’ll hope that senators on both sides will offer energy-related amendments, but there’ll be no effort to try to micromanage the amendment process,” he said.
The soon-to-be Senate majority leader said he is hopeful a vote on the “very important, job-creating bill” can be scheduled early in the session.
McConnell declined to say what the Senate would work on after Keystone, saying he’ll announce that “a little bit later.”
While Republicans are solidly behind the long-stalled pipeline, the project has divided Democrats and liberal-leaning groups. Environmentalists oppose the proposed pipeline, which would carry Canadian crude oil from Alberta’s tar sands to refineries on the Gulf Coast, while labor groups and some Democratic lawmakers from oil states want the jobs the project would create.
But McConnell said there already are almost 20 pipelines in the U.S. that cross either the Mexican or Canadian borders, and to suggest one more would harm the environment is ludicrous.
“Multiple studies, over and over again, [are] showing no measurable harm to the environment” if Keystone is built, he said. “People want jobs. And this project will create well-paying, high wage jobs for our people.”
A measure to approve the pipeline failed by one vote in November in the Democratic-controlled Senate. But GOP lawmakers believe that with support from centrist Democrats, they could get the 67 Senate votes needed to override a veto from President Obama.
