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OPINION

Obama Spends More Time Studying XL Pipeline than He Did Solyndra and Still Comes up with Wrong Answer

The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Townhall.com.
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Hopefully, John Boehner, Mitch McConnell and the rest of the GOP are not going to follow their SOP of coming out strong and ending flat on the Keystone XL Pipeline announcement. This is the one bulletproof issue they need to get back on track. I hope they will not end up staring at their shoes again, while the President turns Wednesday’s announcement into an election season win.

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Jay Carney said that the Whitehouse says they hasn’t had enough time to adequately review the issue.

Really?  How long did it take the administration to review Solyndra?

For those who live in the West and believe in multiple use of public lands, we’ve seen this movie before. The Department of The Interior yanked 77 leases because of “inadequate review.” And a federal judge found that Ken Salazar did not have the power to do that.

Under the guise of “preventing lawsuits” and “streamlining” the DOI began created new guidelines for the energy industry and things such as “Master Leasing Program” which in my part of the country mirrors proposed new wilderness, thus any drilling there will either be denied or undergo such an extensive review that it simply will not be worth a company‘s time to apply. The “streamlining” has resulted in energy companies pulling out for the greener pastures of  North Dakota. And if the environmentalists have their way with the fracking fracas, North Dakota could find itself in trouble, too.

Stalling for time as a means to achieve an end is nothing new to this administration. In the case of the intermountain west, forcing the energy industry into a holding pattern was a way to appease a vocal and angry environmental lobby.

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This time around the President cannot truthfully aspire to as lofty a goal as saving the planet. No, the President opted to deny the pipeline and invite Keystone to apply later to buy time to figure out with whose wrath he can most afford to risk: environmentalists who in their usual spirit of compromise want what they want when they want it, facts and jobs and lives be dammed; or the unions who clearly want a piece of the action. We will have to see who has the fatter checkbook. And in the meantime, the pipeline, its jobs and its energy will go to China, who is no friend to the U.S. and has an abysmal human rights record.

As someone who watched solvent people sink into poverty, the foreclosure of homes and self sufficient families become patrons of the local food bank, and who listened to stories of men so despondent over not being able to support their families that they attempted suicide, as a direct result of this administration’s policies, I’ve seen this administration kill jobs.

If you people on the Hill were looking for the issue, the thing you need to get up off the mat, this is it. You need to repeat it over and over again until everyone in America understands what is going on. Every time you open a mic, write an email, talk to your constituents or draft a press release, bring it up. Don’t give him a pass on this one. Don’t put your tail between your legs again and wait to get routed.

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Twenty thousand jobs and another step toward energy independence on the chopping block.

Postscript: Your friends at the Environmental Protection Agency apparently don’t think you are paying enough at the pump. But hey, don’t take my word for it.

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