The State Department wants to set the record straight: When they said the Keystone XL pipeline would create 35,000 jobs, they were entirely correct, in some kind of number system where 100 equals 1,000. Otherwise, they may have exaggerated a little.
In testimony before the House Energy and Commerce Committee on Wednesday, Assistant Secretary of State Dr. Kerri-Ann Jones should have said the pipeline’s indirect job potential was 3,500 annual jobs but instead she said 35,000.
Hey, but you know, no big deal — just a slip of the tongue! Except that Republicans and industry proponents of the pipeline are flogging the horse of its job-creation potential, hard, and that horse done DIED. Also, this isn’t even the first overstated estimate of Keystone jobs:
The Obama administration in explaining the denial of the pipeline in a report to Congress also said “the project would not have significant impact on long-term employment in the United States” and acknowledged that claims that over 100,000 jobs would be created by the pipeline were “inflated” based on a misinterpretation of the analysis conducted by TransCanada.
Naturally, the media is picking up the inflated claims, because ooh, shiny thing!
