Steve Cohen: “I yield myself such time as I may consume. As the State Department and the U.S. public consider whether the proposed…”

“I yield myself such time as I may consume. As the State Department and the U.S. public consider whether the proposed Keystone XL tar stands pipeline is in the national interest, it is critical that the most accurate information be made available. That's why I have offered an amendment to this legislation that eliminates a rhetorical, baseless safely claim and replaces it with a substantiated factual statement. TransCanada is engaged in a high-stakes public relations campaign to brand the Keystone XL pipeline as safe and their company as responsible operators. I'm sure that BP Oil said the same thing about Deepwater. But that wasn't true. Just because they say it doesn't make it true. It is one thing for a foreign oil company to employ misleading rhetoric, but it's not the place of the House of Representatives to endorse these mistruths. It only requires a brief objective glance at the safety record to realize that TransCanada's meritorious safety claims do not withstand even the slightest scrutiny. When selling Keystone--that's not Keystone XL, which we're looking at; Keystone, another pipeline--to the U.S., TransCanada claimed the pipeline was ``state-of-the-art,'' and even went as far as dubbing it the ``safest pipeline ever built.'' Well, we're in trouble. {time} 1600 After 1 disastrous year of operation, TransCanada's rosy claims are not reflective of the reality that exists.…”