Will it ever end?
Six months after President Obama nixed the Keystone XL pipeline — a decision it took him seven years to reach — Keystone is back in the news.
The Hill reports that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce — along with Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Dakota, and Texas — filed briefs this week in support of a lawsuit against the Obama administration. Pipeline company TransCanada filed the suit in federal court in January, arguing that Obama exceeded his constitutional authority when he denied a permit for Keystone. (Also in January, TransCanada filed a separate claim under NAFTA arguing that the U.S. should pay the company more than $15 billion to compensate it for “costs and damages that it has suffered” because of Obama’s decision. Boo hoo.)
In the newly filed briefs, the states argue that by rejecting the pipeline, the president dampened employment opportunities. These so-called “employment opportunities” were an oft-cited argument in favor of building the pipeline, but the State Department estimated that Keystone would have created as few as 20 permanent jobs.
Maybe the states could just open one Arby’s and call it even.
