Keystone Pipeline and Energy Security

Floor Speech

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Mr. GRIFFITH of Virginia. Well, I have to tell you, first of all, I appreciate your leadership on this. Ever since I got to Congress 4 years ago, this has been an important item for you, not just because it will help the United States, not just because it will help your district, but because it is the right thing to do.

I commend you for that hard work that you have been doing and will continue to do until this project is actually approved. I hope that will be sooner than later.

It would be nice if our bill that we had passed with bipartisan support would have action taken on it by the Senate. I don't know how the good Senator sits down with all those bills in his back pocket. He has got a lot of our good bills back there.

Mr. TERRY. We in the House have passed about 430 bills. 89 of them actually gotten out of the Senate. Well over about 100, I guess--maybe even more than 100--actually are like the Keystone pipeline, that would create--immediately create jobs, but yet they are sitting on a desk.

Mr. GRIFFITH of Virginia. That is what we need in this country. We need opportunities. We need abilities. Bottom line, we need policies that will create jobs. I have got to tell you that one of the favorite things that I do as a United States Congressman is I go to the high schools in my district, and I talk with the students.

Sometimes, it is middle school students. Most of the time, it is senior high students. I talk to them, and I talk about how the decisions that we are making in Washington and the policies that we set here in the Nation's Capital will affect them far more than they affect me because, long-term, when you look at the debt and the deficit and you look at the effects on our health care system that have been coming down with various policies, these will all have a greater impact on them than they will on us.

Particularly talking about debt and deficit, I will often say to them: Well, who do you think is going to pay more of that, me at 55 or you at 17 or 18?

They get it real quick. One of the things I always make sure I try to put into the question and answer process as I am talking with the students is this: the United States of America is a great country. We are the number one economic nation. There are a lot of other countries out there that would like to be the number one economic nation.

While things do not look good in the short run, if those of us in Washington, including the President of the United States and the Senate and the House, make the right policies and have a true all-of-the-above energy policy for this country, we can be the number one economic nation, not just for the next decade, not just for the next 20 years, but I submit to you for the next 100 years.

That's a big deal.

That means jobs and prosperity for the people of the United States for a long, long time. Then I say, but if we make mistakes in Washington--if we don't have a true all-of-the-above policy where we use North American oil, natural gas, coal, wind, solar, nuclear, across the board--we can slip out of that number one spot, and we won't have the advantages that the number one economic nation has had throughout history, and I always mention the Keystone XL pipeline. The reason I mention the Keystone XL pipeline is that it sends a message to the world that the United States is open for business, that we want jobs in this country.

We can send those jobs to China if we want, like we have done in so many other areas, but we want those jobs. We want the jobs in laying the pipeline. We want the jobs in doing the refining. We want the jobs that come from having that extra supply right here in our country, whether it be the oil or the gas that is produced from this oil or whether it be the chemicals that we can make cheaper because we have an abundant supply in North American oil.

It is true, as my colleagues have said, that we also want to make sure that we send a message to the world that we are going to stand with our friends in Canada. As the general said today, a former Obama adviser: Let's send a message to Vladimir Putin.

These are all combined in the Keystone XL pipeline, and when you have the reports on the environment that indicate minimal effect--in fact, some would argue that there may even be positive effects by the pipeline because you don't have to worry about the train system--then what you have got is the situation of ``why?'' Why would the President, with all of the reports and with the 2,000 days of study and jumping through hoops, not have already signed it? I am surprised he is not having a press conference as we speak to sign the Keystone XL pipeline. Let's get on with it.

I had one person tell me today that he believes that this is better than the oil that we are importing from Venezuela because it has a less negative impact on the environment, our using this oil from Canada, and the Canadians are working to make their process even better so that it has less of an impact on the environment.

So I thank you, Mr. Terry, for all of your hard work. If you can explain it to me, I would love to hear it, but I can't explain to the high school students in the Ninth District of Virginia why we are not pursuing the Keystone XL pipeline with haste instead of with delay when we know that it will create jobs for American citizens and for people like these high school students will be in a few years when they finish their educations.

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Mr. GRIFFITH of Virginia. Mr. Terry, even though I believe I know the answer to this question, I would just ask you: If the President needs a pen to sign that, would you take it down to him on Pennsylvania Avenue?

Mr. TERRY. I have got an extra one, and I will let him keep it.

Mr. GRIFFITH of Virginia. There you go.

Mr. TERRY. I would even let him keep it.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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