Liberals Win Big As President Obama Drops The Hammer and Kills Keystone XL

obama-kills-keystone

President Obama said that Keystone XL will do nothing to grow the economy and called out Republicans for falsely inflating the economic impact of Keystone.

The President also gutted all of the Republican arguments for Keystone XL:

The pipeline would not make a meaningful long-term contribution to our economy. So, if Congress is serious about wanting to create jobs, this was not the way to do it. If they want to do it, what we should be doing is passing a bipartisan infrastructure plan that in the short-term would create more than thirty times as many jobs per year as the pipeline would, and, in the long run, would benefit our economy and our workers for decades to come.

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Our businesses created 268,000 new jobs last month. They created 13.5 million new jobs over the past sixty-eight months. The longest streak on record. The unemployment rate fell to five percent. This Congress should pass a serious infrastructure plan to keep those jobs coming. That would make a difference. The pipeline would not have made a serious impact on those numbers and on the American people’s prospects for the future.

Second, the pipeline would not lower gas prices for American consumers. In fact, gas prices have already been falling steadily. The national average gas price is down about seventy-seven cents over a year ago. It’s down a dollar over two years ago. It’s down a dollar twenty-seven over three years ago. Today, in forty-one states drivers can find at least one gas station selling gas for less than two bucks a gallon. So, while our politics have been consumed by debate over whether or not this pipeline would create jobs and lower gas prices, we’ve gone ahead and created jobs and lowered gas prices.

Third, shipping dirtier crude oil into our country would not increase America’s energy security. What has increased America’s energy security is our strategy over the past several years to reduce our reliance of dirty fossil fuels from unstable parts of the world. Three years ago, I set a goal to cut our oil imports in half by 2020. Between more producing more oil here at home and using less oil throughout our economy, we met that goal last year, five years early. In fact, for the first time in two decades the United States of America now produces more oil than we buy from other countries.

President Obama explained that the country has both promoted economic growth and transitioned to clean energy at the same time. In short, Obama exposed Keystone XL as an unnecessary gift to the oil companies.

Liberals have fought for years to stop Keystone, and President Obama delivered a major victory. Obama’s action also signaled a change in US energy policy priorities. President Obama is firmly moving our country to a clean energy economy, as the oil industry fueled Republicans have been routed.



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