E&E News: House Democrats “muted” on Keystone XL Pipeline
In case you missed it, Democrats don’t want to talk about the Keystone XL Pipeline and the thousands of jobs President Biden eliminated by halting the project.
E&E News reports: “Of the press offices for the remaining 16 House Democrats contacted for this story, 11 provided no response or a “no comment.”
Don’t these representatives owe their constituents a straight answer on a policy that will cost thousands of Americans their jobs?
In case you missed it…
How Keystone XL politics have changed
George Cahlink and Emma Dumain
E&E News
February 12, 2021
https://www.eenews.net/stories/1063725017
Last week, two Senate Democrats joined with all 50 Republicans to adopt a nonbinding budget amendment backing construction of the Keystone XL pipeline.
Hours later, Democratic leaders stripped out the amendment and reversed the show of support for the pipeline, which would bring crude oil from Canada into the United States (E&E Daily, Feb. 5).
It was the latest example of how the Keystone XL project, which once had bipartisan backing on Capitol Hill, has become a partisan environmental lightning rod.
The recent Senate action marked the first significant stand-alone vote on Keystone XL since early 2015, when Republicans were in control of both legislative bodies and then-President Obama, who opposed the project, was completing his final term.
That year, 28 House Democrats voted in favor of completing the pipeline, with eight Senate Democrats voting similarly in their own chamber. Although the Keystone XL project in 2015 was backed by Congress, it was ultimately vetoed by Obama.
Six years later, a survey by E&E News found that of the 17 Democrats who still serve in the House today, only a small handful were willing to say definitively that they would vote to support the Keystone XL project again. Only one member said he had changed his mind, while the others declined to comment.
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This shift, and silence, on Keystone XL reflects the growing gulf between the parties on almost any environmental issue — even those once viewed as bipartisan, such as pipeline construction — while giving Democrats and Republicans a new way to placate their bases with far different views on energy policy.
“We’re going to combat climate change in a way we have not before,” President Biden said in signing an executive order in his first full day in office blocking the pipeline, thereby launching a fierce fight with the GOP and fossil fuel backers.
Democrats’ posturing this time around also illustrates the extent to which they are struggling to reconcile old positions with new desires to stand by a new president who is eager to score early political victories.
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Of the press offices for the remaining 16 House Democrats contacted for this story, 11 provided no response or a “no comment.”
They were Sanford Bishop of Georgia, Jim Costa of California, Mike Doyle of Pennsylvania, Al Green of Texas, Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas, Donald Norcross of New Jersey, Kurt Schrader of Oregon, David Scott of Georgia, Terri Sewell of Alabama, Albio Sires of New Jersey and Filemon Vela of Texas.
Others, when approached on Capitol Hill, sidestepped the question.
“I don’t want to talk about that right now,” said Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-N.Y.), the head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee this cycle, who in the past called the pipeline a source of well-paying union jobs.
His predecessor at the helm of the DCCC, Rep. Cheri Bustos (D-Ill.), also avoided comment when recently approached by E&E News.
Rep. Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.), a moderate who in the past favored Keystone XL, now “believes after so many years in limbo it’s just time to move on and supports the president halting the project,” said his spokesperson
The last two House Democrats polled by E&E News were Reps. Marc Veasey and Henry Cuellar, both Texas Democrats who recently signed a letter calling on Biden to reverse his executive order halting Keystone XL.
They were the most unapologetic in their disappointment with the direction of the new administration’s burgeoning energy agenda. And their positions, while departures from the norm, are not surprising given the fossil fuel interests in their shared home state.
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Meanwhile, the National Republican Congressional Committee has sent out multiple press releases in recent weeks vowing to make Democrats from more conservative districts pay for voting against Keystone XL. Bustos and Maloney are among those being targeted by the NRCC.
And rank-and-file Republicans are also helping amplify that message.
“Where’s Sylvia Garcia? Where’s Sheila Jackson Lee?” Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) asked of Texas Democrats at the press conference in Houston last week. “Their constituents work in places like this.”
Read the full story from E&E News.