A House vote on Friday to fund construction of the Keystone XL pipeline forces President Barack Obama to make a choice on a project he has stalled with help from his "lapdog," outgoing Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Rep. Matt Salmon told
Newsmax TV on Friday.
And if the president vetoes a Keystone measure that lands on his desk in the current lame-duck session, the Republican-controlled Congress that convenes in January — thanks to last week's huge midterm election victories — should send him the bill again, and again, Arizona Republican Salmon told "MidPoint" host Ed Berliner.
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"When I was in Congress before, we put welfare reform on the table for [President] Bill Clinton three times," said Salmon. "He vetoed the first two, and the third time he signed it and took credit for it. You know what? We should do the same thing to this president."
Calling it a "death-by-1,000-cuts" strategy, Salmon said an energized Congress with motivated newcomers and Republican majorities all around must be "as bold as possible" in confronting Obama, and "do whatever we have to do to wear him down and force him to do the right thing."
Salmon, who is also leading a House charge to defund a presidential grant of amnesty for millions of illegal immigrants, predicted that the political environment in which Obama operates will be very different next year.
"The president has thrown out a lot of bluff and bluster over the years," he said, "but without his lapdog Harry Reid to fit stuff in his drawer and make sure it never gets to the president's desk, you're going to be amazed at the different tunes the president is going to sing."
Salmon said that he was "thrilled" with his colleagues for
approving Keystone on Friday.
He was fatalistic about what the lame-duck Senate — still in Democratic hands — might do with a similar bill, given how desperately one endangered Democrat, Sen. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, wants her version to be passed as a way wooing voters ahead of her Dec. 6 runoff election against GOP Rep. Bill Cassidy.
"They're trying to let Mary Landrieu — who is on death row, politically speaking — be the front-runner for the Senate" version of the bill, Salmon said of Senate Democrats. "If they're crazy enough to throw her under the bus, then they deserve what they get."
But even if Obama vetoes a lame-duck Keystone XL package, again stalling the transcontinental oil pipeline between Canada and Texas, "We'll get it through the Senate and the House right after the session begins again," said Salmon.
"It's already been three years too long" he said. "We should have been doing this XL pipeline a long time ago. The president can say, 'If you do this, I'll veto this.' How do you know unless you try?"
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