Dueling headlines and news articles portray a President that ignores his own jobs council in favor of making politically motivated decisions geared to help his reelection campaign by sacrificing American jobs.The Hill headlines "Obama's jobs council report says 'drill'"
President Obama’s jobs council called Tuesday for an “all-in approach” to energy policy that includes expanded oil-and-gas drilling as well as expediting energy projects like pipelines.
“[W]e should allow more access to oil, natural gas and coal opportunities on federal lands,” states the year-end report released Tuesday by the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness.
The report does not specifically mention the Keystone XL oil pipeline, but it endorses moving forward quickly with projects that “deliver electricity and fuel,” including pipelines.
“The Council recognizes the important safety and environmental concerns surrounding these types of projects, but now more than ever, the jobs and economic and energy security benefits of these energy projects require us to tackle the issues head-on and to expeditiously, though cautiously, move forward on projects that can support hundreds of thousands of jobs,” the report says.
Over at Memeorandum, direct above that headline and article, we see a Washington Post headline "Obama administration to reject Keystone pipeline."
The Obama administration will announce this afternoon it is rejecting a Canadian firm’s application for a permit to build and operate a massive oil pipeline across the U.S.-Canada border, according to sources who have been briefed on the matter.
Now would be a good time to remember that since 2009, Barack Obama has been promising he would focus on "jobs." (Video below)
The Keystone Pipeline has bipartisan support within Congress.
Keystone is a proposed 1,700 mile oil pipeline which would carry oil from western Canada to Texas Gulf Coast refineries, passing through Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas and Oklahoma. This project would created tens of thousands permanent and/or temporary jobs, yet to kowtow to his environmental political base during his reelection campaign, Barack Obama is willing to sacrifice those jobs for his own political gain.
Keystone XL is shovel-ready. TransCanada is poised to put 13,000 Americans to work to construct the pipeline - pipefitters, welders, mechanics, electricians, heavy equipment operators, among other jobs - in addition to 7,000 manufacturing jobs that would be created across the U.S. Additionally, local businesses along the pipeline route will benefit from the 118,000 spin-off jobs Keystone XL will create through increased business for local goods and service providers.
While the Obama administration claims they will allow TransCanada to reapply, Canada is already meeting with officials in the Asian market to sell them their "abundance of oil, natural gas and minerals," instead of American because of the constant delays.
By bowing to the 10 percent of his base that consider themselves "very liberal", Obama is going to be forced to constantly defend this decision to the other 90 percent of the population that will remember and be reminded often during this campaign season, the jobs sacrificed and the loss of an energy source from a friendly nation to continue to be dependent on unfriendly nations for our oil, natural gas and minerals.
[Update] I see another contributor, Findalis, is also talking about this issue.
[Update #2] The RNC has more information on the jobs sacrificed by Obama today with the rejection of the Keystone pipeline.
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