Political Quotes

“I am here this morning to once again talk about the Keystone XL Pipeline, the legislation we will be voting on next week. We will be voting on cloture on the motion to proceed to the legislation. Then, hopefully, we will be debating that bill and offering amendments, which is exactly what we are supposed to be doing in this Chamber. On Thursday, yesterday, we had a hearing on the bill. In that hearing we brought the bill forward. It is a bill I have authored. Joe Manchin is the lead Democratic cosponsor. We have 60 cosponsors on the bill. So we have strong bipartisan support. It is the Keystone approval bill. Essentially, what it does is under the commerce clause of the Constitution of the United States, which authorizes Congress to oversee trade with foreign countries, we approve the Keystone XL Pipeline crossing the border from Canada into the United States. A lot of people do not realize the pipeline carries domestic oil from places such as North Dakota and Montana--the Bakken region of our country--to refineries, and it carries both Canadian and domestic crude. But part of the approval requires approval for crossing the border from Canada into the United States. Typically, that is done by a national interest determination by the President of the United States. But the President has been unwilling to do that now for more than 6 years.…”