Ed Markey: “protecting the President's veto of the Keystone XL Pipeline Approval Act is about protecting the review process for this…”

“protecting the President's veto of the Keystone XL Pipeline Approval Act is about protecting the review process for this project. The President deserves to have all of the input from the different agencies delivered to him so he can make his decision. Today in the vote that we will be having shortly, we are saying the President should be able to exercise his prerogative to review the pipeline and to decide whether it is in the national interest to have this pipeline constructed through the United States of America. But we are also protecting his prerogative to decide in the end, because this is a pipeline that should be rejected on its merits. The pipeline fails the test on job creation. After it is built, it will only have 35 to 40 permanent jobs that the United States will have on its soil. Meanwhile, we should be having a debate about the wind production tax credit because if we extended that, we would keep 30,000 people working permanently here in the United States, as this wind revolution continues to explode. Last year, there were 5,000 megawatts of solar energy installed in the United States. That is like five huge powerplants. This year 7,500 megawatts, at least, of solar are going to be installed in the United States. And next year 10,000 megawatts, at least, in solar are going to be installed. But that tax break is expiring at the end of 2016.…”