Washington, DC – Today, President Obama will follow through on a promise to veto legislation to approve the Keystone XL oil pipeline, claiming that Congress is trying to usurp his executive authority and disrupt a review process that he believes is working. Upon news of the eminent veto, Consumer Energy Alliance (CEA), an advocate for energy consumers, released the following statement.
“We are deeply disappointed that the President has chosen to veto legislation that has been passed by overwhelming bipartisan majorities in both the House and the Senate and which reflects the overwhelming bipartisan majority of Americans that support this critical infrastructure project,” said Michael Whatley, CEA’s executive vice president.
“If the president is truly concerned about the process, he must now focus on approving Keystone XL. The State Department has taken six long years to review the proposed pipeline and produced five different evaluations of the project, all of which show that the project is in our nation’s best interest – for the environment, for national security and for economic growth.
“Last May, President Obama announced that he was launching a federal permitting center to cut bureaucratic red tape from stalling good infrastructure projects and put folks back to work rebuilding America. There is no project that needs to be freed from bureaucratic red tape more than Keystone XL. We hope that the President will allow the State Department to complete its review and grant the permit to build this project.”
On May 14, 2014, President Obama addressed federal permitting for infrastructure projects: “We’re cutting bureaucratic red tape that stalls good projects from breaking ground. We’re launching a new national permitting center to implement these reforms. We are aiming to put every major infrastructure project on a public dashboard so everybody can go online; track our progress; hold us accountable; make sure things are coming in on time, on budget; make sure your taxpayer money is being used well, but also make sure that we’re putting folks back to work rebuilding America. That’s our goal.”
CEA and its consumer advocates have long supported the Keystone XL pipeline, sending more than 1.5 million letters to the State Department, the White House and Congress since 2010. In 2014, CEA polling concluded that majorities of voters in nine states also strongly supported the project. For more information on the Keystone XL project and CEA’s support for this critical infrastructure, please visit BuildKXLNow.org.
