Political Quotes

“Today we vote on S. 2280, introduced by myself and Senator Landrieu. There are actually 54 sponsors on the legislation with us. So we have a total of 56 sponsors of this bipartisan bill. That is the same bill that has been passed in the House of Representatives. That was passed on Friday--the same version. The prime sponsor in the House was Representative Cassidy. The bill we vote on today, S. 2280, is approval of the Keystone XL Pipeline. We have actually passed legislation on the Keystone XL Pipeline before. This is not the first bill. In 2012, we passed legislation that required the President to make a decision on the Keystone XL Pipeline. We attached it to the payroll tax holiday. At that time the President turned down the pipeline project. So today we have submitted a number of different pieces of legislation, but this legislation actually has Congress approving the Keystone XL Pipeline. When the President turned down the project, what we did was we went back and we did the research. Under the commerce clause of the Constitution, Congress has the authority to oversee commerce with foreign powers, with other countries. So in this situation, Congress has the authority to approve the Keystone XL Pipeline crossing the border from Canada into the United States, and that is what we crafted in this legislation.…”