Vote on the $8 billion Keystone project
The Senate is a different matter. Though the pipeline almost certainly would win an up-or-down vote, Nevada Sen. Harry Reid, the chamber’s lame-duck majority leader, has over the past half dozen years used the power of his position to prevent such a vote.
He may do so again this week, though the push for a lame-duck session vote on the $8 billion Keystone project has been driven not by Republican senators, who remain in the minority until January, but by Louisiana Democrat Mary Landrieu, who faces a Dec. 6 runoff election.
“It is time for America to become energy independent,” said Sen. Landrieu, chair of the Senate energy and natural resources committee. “That is impossible without the Keystone pipeline and other pipelines like it.”
We couldn’t agree more with Sen. Landrieu. But, lamentably, her views on Keystone XL are shared by neither the majority of her Democratic colleagues nor, importantly, President Obama.
Indeed, while the Bayou State lawmaker could probably find five Democrats to join her and the 45 Senate Republicans to pass enabling legislation for Keystone, it seems far less likely she can persuade 14 fellow Democrats to join her and Republicans to secure the cloture vote necessary before lawmakers would vote on the pipeline.
And if, by some small miracle, Sen. Landrieu managed to muster the 60 procedural votes for cloture, followed by an up-or-down vote in favor of Keystone XL, the president all but declared Friday that he has no intention of signing legislation clearing the way for the pipeline’s construction.