Steve Cohen: “I appreciate the gentleman from Connecticut for yielding time. I rise in support of the Murphy-Cohen-Welch amendment.…”

“I appreciate the gentleman from Connecticut for yielding time. I rise in support of the Murphy-Cohen-Welch amendment. This amendment sheds light on the oil industry's attempt to pressure the U.S. into approving Keystone XL by threatening to export tar sands to China if we do not approve the pipeline. As Mr. Murphy has well stated, Canada has already said themselves they can't get that oil out of Canada without this pipeline, that they can't get it to China unless they build a pipeline. They want to build a pipeline through America over one of our most important aquifers-- threatening our environment and our drinking water so that Canada can get some oil to possibly go to China. {time} 1610 Canada cannot get it to China without going through the United States, and it makes no sense. The fact is this amendment, like the previous amendments, is just simply putting the facts, the truth, into this particular paper. There is nothing wrong with these. Nobody disputes the facts. In fact, the gentleman agreed on the previous amendment that there had been a dozen leaks of the Keystone pipeline. He mentioned that some of them were very small. The average one is a thousand barrels. So if the Keystone pipeline, which was the safest in the world, was not safe, what's wrong with mentioning it in the findings? And the same thing here. What they said about China is just not true. The only feasible route to export tar sand to China is the Keystone XL.…”