On Nov. 18, 2014, Senator Debbie Stabenow voted no to approve closure on Senate Bill 2280, “A bill to approve the Keystone XL Pipeline.”

Her vote could be counted as the 41st, thus allowing the bill to fail for lack of a filibuster cloture. All Republicans voted yes along with 14 Democrats for cloture, which would have allowed a simple majority to pass the bill. I wondered what information the Senator had that I didn’t have.

Specifically, I wondered what did she know about the intentions of the Canadians, should the pipeline not be built, so I went on her website and asked that specific question.

Her office’s reply on 24 November was certainly quick. Senator Levin’s office rarely bothered to reply to my correspondence. Unfortunately, most of her reply was a canned reply about her general position on energy instead of addressing my question. I asked that particular question because, if the Canadians will sell their oil elsewhere, it’s probable that the Chinese would buy it. The Chinese are not squeamish about using polluting energy to drive their economy.

What good would not building the pipeline do in that case?

One part of Senator Stabenow’s reply was revealing. She wrote, “I have serious concerns that the oil pumped into our country through the Keystone Pipeline will not be used to benefit American consumers and businesses, but will instead be shipped to other countries in order to increase oil company profits. When gas prices here at home continue to rise, it makes no sense to build a costly pipeline through the heartland of our nation in order to lower gas prices for people in other countries!”

Does she not know that oil prices are controlled by global oil supply and demand? There is a worldwide market for oil. We can’t control the price of oil in this country by law.

The price of gasoline has fallen since I wrote the paragraph above in early December, but the logic hasn’t changed. If you like gasoline below $2 a gallon, you would like it even more when Canadian crude reaches the market. Also, since I wrote the paragraph above, the new Congress convened with a Republican majority in the Senate and an increased Republican majority in the House. The Keystone bill in the last Congress had 55 sponsors in the Senate so, with nine more Republicans, the Senate should have the necessary votes to invoke cloture.

It’s likely that a bill on Keystone will land on Obama’s desk, and we learned on 6 January that Obama will veto it. It’s not clear that Keystone has enough support to overcome a presidential veto.

This does not bode well for the next two years.

Barack Obama is an arrogant and very ideological man. We’ve learned these past six years that Obama considers himself the smartest man in America. He talks about compromise, but then he refuses to compromise. If the legislative and executive branch can’t work together on this, a very popular issue, it’s likely that a new deadlock between those two branches of government will replace the old deadlock between the House and the Senate.

Meanwhile, the only thing the federal government continues to do well, in spite of deadlock, is to spend money.

 

Michael Waldron is a retired lieutenant colonel, U.S. Army, who was born and raised in Niles. He previously served on the Niles Community School Board of Education. He can be reached at ml.waldron@sbcglobal.net.