Lee Terry: “We have just gone through an hour of talking about uninsured, and I want to talk an hour about creating jobs and that it…”

“We have just gone through an hour of talking about uninsured, and I want to talk an hour about creating jobs and that it is time to build the Keystone pipeline. The Keystone pipeline has just reached its 2,001st day of the birth of its permit, 2,001 days that this country has waited for our President to sign the permit allowing the construction of the Keystone pipeline. Why is the Keystone pipeline important to us? First of all, the Keystone pipeline brings oil from Canada into the United States to six of our refineries. This provides us a level of energy security that is absolutely necessary in today's world. In fact, when I talk about today's world, let's talk about current events for just 1 second here. This is a newspaper article that was just released a few hours ago: Retired General James Jones told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Thursday that approving the pipeline would send a message to Russian President Vladimir Putin and other ``international bullies'' that they cannot use energy security as a weapon. Jones said rejection of the Canada-to-Texas pipeline would ``make Mr. Putin's day and strengthen his hand.'' The Senate panel was holding its first hearing on the pipeline 5 years after it was proposed as Democrats wrestle with its impact on the outcome of next fall's election. The reality is, in a geopolitical sense, Russia is using energy as a new economic weapon to control the countries that it once dominated as the Soviet Union.…”