Those of us who are speaking on this motion to instruct the conferees are from the Energy and Commerce Committee, not the Transportation Committee, which developed the fundamental underlying bill to which this pipeline issue has been attached. The transportation bill provides an enormous amount of money for people to have jobs building the roads, mass transit, other kinds of transportation systems, and that all will be stopped if we don't renew the transportation bill itself. The Senate, on an overwhelming bipartisan basis, got together and passed a transportation bill. The House wasn't able to do that. We were passing short-term extensions of existing law until we passed something to go to conference, and we're now in conference. So the motion is to instruct the conferees to take the House position on this pipeline issue. The problem with it is the President has said he'll veto the bill. He'll veto the transportation bill if the pipeline provision is in it. He said it because he feels it needs to be reviewed before the decision is made on whether to allow this pipeline to be built. I don't consider that unreasonable. What's really going on here is the Republicans want to stick it to the President. This is all politics. They want to make the President have to veto the bill, and then they'll say he vetoed the bill, how outrageous it is. Let's not play politics. Let's reject this motion to instruct.…
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