GOP Leaders: Keystone Veto Leaves Workers, Unions 'Out in Cold'

House and Senate Republican leaders on Tuesday blasted President Barack Obama's expected veto of the Keystone XL pipeline, arguing that the only winners resulting from Obama's actions would be "bureaucrats, extreme environmentalists and the Chinese," Politico reported.

The losers, they contend, would be more than 40,000 Americans who stand to miss out on jobs if continued stalling by the administration ends up killing the project.

Writing in USA Today, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker John Boehner observe that prior to 2009, approval of similar pipelines was routine and politically uneventful.

After Obama took office, however, "liberal extremists have used the project as an environmentalist litmus test for the president," the GOP leaders write. "And he has repeatedly aimed to please, moving deadlines until after elections and stalling the project to near death."

But Keystone kept clearing every environmental hurdle, "leaving behind all the excuses for delay."

Americans deserve an explanation for the lengthy approval process since the filing of the application to build the pipeline — one which has lasted more than 2,300 days, the lawmakers write.

McConnell and Boehner cite figures from Obama's State Department, noting it has said the project would support at least 42,000 American jobs. They add:

"These are good-paying jobs that go to everyone from construction and energy workers to hotel and restaurant employees in small towns along the pipeline."

The big losers resulting from Obama's veto, they write, would be American workers and labor unions that represent them and have been lobbying for the administration to approve the project, and Canada, an American ally and the United States' top trading partner.

"They're all left out in the cold," McConnell and Boehner write.

Unfortunately, they conclude, "the allure of appeasing environmental extremists may be too powerful for the president to ignore. But the president is sadly mistaken if he thinks that vetoing this bill will end the fight.

"Far from it, we are just getting started."

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