Political Quotes

“with all of the issues our country faces, here we are debating a Canadian pipeline. What are we doing? A new majority has taken over the Senate and their first bill--their opening gambit--is the Keystone Pipeline. What is going on? Is it about jobs? There has been an awful lot of talk about jobs over the last couple of days, but this opening gambit--both obviously and demonstrably--has nothing to do about jobs. If this were about jobs, instead bring up the Shaheen-Portman energy efficiency bill, the bipartisan bill the Republicans spiked last year. That bill has been estimated to produce nearly 200,000 jobs, more than quadruple the 42,000 jobs supported by the construction of the pipeline. If this were about jobs, bring up the highway bill, which came out of EPW unanimously last year. That bill was estimated to support 3 million jobs a year, 70 times the number of jobs the Keystone Pipeline will produce. Forty-two thousand is a pittance compared to that. Right now the economy is adding over 70,000 jobs every week. In the 3 weeks we spend arguing about this bill, we will add five times as many jobs as the Keystone Pipeline would provide. We matched Keystone in just 4 average days of job growth. Yet we are going to spend 3 weeks on this issue? If this were truly about jobs, bring up an infrastructure bill--the kind our Republican friends have relentlessly stymied when they were in the minority. Set up an infrastructure fund.…”