On the recordJanuary 17, 2012
You are going to be hearing a lot, and we're all going to be talking a lot, about the Keystone pipeline. And the reason that we're talking a lot about it is that between now and February 21, President Obama has a decision to make. President Obama has been tasked by this Congress to make a decision by February 21 on whether or not to approve the Keystone pipeline. Now, the President, frankly, should have approved this project months ago when, back in August, the State Department, which was tasked by the President to make a recommendation, was getting ready to actually make a recommendation to move forward on the Keystone pipeline. And of course what we're talking about is creating jobs in America. There will be 20,000 American jobs created if the President moves forward with the Keystone pipeline. But also American energy security is at stake here. The President has continued to punt this issue. In fact, just a few months ago, the President tried to push this issue off until after the election. Just right after the State Department was getting ready to say, Let's go forward with the Keystone pipeline, all of a sudden, some of the radical environmental groups came forward. And these radical environmental groups, who are against any form of American-created energy that doesn't involve wind and solar power--whether it's oil, gas, nuclear--they're against all American energy. So these radical environmental groups went and had a protest over at the White House.…
