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Boehner will host Keystone pipeline supporters at State of the Union address
House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) will host supporters of the Keystone XL oil pipeline at Tuesday night’s State of the Union address, the latest attempt by the GOP to punish President Obama politically for rejecting the project.
“President Obama’s rejection of the Keystone project has caused a public outcry and provided another example of how his policies are making our economy worse,” Boehner said in a statement Tuesday afternoon. “The president owes America’s workers an explanation, and I hope he will provide one tonight with these leaders and job creators on hand.”
House Republicans have pummeled Obama during the last week for rejecting the pipeline, arguing that the president passed up a prime opportunity to create jobs and boost the ailing economy.
Republicans and industry groups say the pipeline would create about 20,000 temporary manufacturing and construction jobs and more than 100,000 jobs in the long term. Opponents of the pipeline say those numbers are greatly exaggerated, and the White House argues that more jobs will be created by investments in clean energy.
Obama blamed the Keystone rejection on Republicans, who secured inclusion of a provision in the payroll tax cut package that required a decision on the pipeline by Feb. 21. The timeline forced Obama to reject the project, the White House said, because it could not conduct necessary reviews.
Boehner invited four Keystone supporters to attend Tuesday night’s address: they include Ray Brooks, a manager at Marathon Petroleum Co., in Robinson, Ill.; Jay Churchill, a manager at ConocoPhillips’s Wood River Refinery in Roxana, Ill.; Dale Delie, a pipe producer based in Arkansas; and state Sen. Chris Langemeier, a Nebraska lawmaker who authored legislation to reroute the pipeline around an environmentally sensitive region in the state.
Boehner's guests will be a reminder of Obama's decision to reject the project even as a White House official said the president does not plan to talk about the pipeline in his speech.
