Minimum Wage Fairness Act - Motion to Proceed

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Let me just say to my colleague from North Dakota that we would like to have more North Dakota energy in South Dakota, of course, and have the direct benefit of that, but we focus in our State on jobs, and that is what this is all about--jobs, jobs, jobs.

The President's own State Department says that this project would support 42,000 jobs--16,100 direct jobs including construction, and another 26,000 jobs that would be from indirect spending. That is not us. That is not the Senator from North Dakota, the Senator from Texas, the Senator from Oklahoma or the Senator from Missouri on this side saying it would create jobs. That is the President's own State Department saying it would create jobs and $2 billion in earnings--a $3.4 billion contribution to the U.S. economy. When you think about the States that are impacted--the State of North Dakota directly and my State of South Dakota would be traversed by the pipeline--we have a lot of local and State governments that would benefit from this.

They say in the first year of operations it would generate $55.6 million of tax revenue, $17.9 million in my State of South Dakota. When you talk about what that can do in terms of infrastructure, what it can do in terms of providing revenue to build schools, public services, those sorts of things, it takes the pressure off the local property tax owners, area ranchers, homeowners, and businesses. That is another impact.

I would also say to my colleagues on the floor that it would strengthen our energy security. Some 830,000 barrels a day would come through that pipeline. That is half of what we import from the Middle East and about the total of what we import on a daily basis from Venezuela. So if you look at how much we can ship from that pipeline and how much that lessens the dependence we have on areas of the world that are much less favorable to the United States than is our neighbor of Canada, that is a very real consideration in this debate.

Finally, I would say to my colleague, the Senator from North Dakota--and I thank him for his leadership on this issue--that the time to act is now. This has been studied and scrutinized and reviewed more than any project in history--8 1/2 years, 2,048 days as of Tuesday, today, April 29. Five environmental reviews all concluded the pipeline would not have a significant impact on the environment. Just when you thought the process couldn't be dragged out any longer, this administration once again decided to block construction of this project and delay the national interest determination process.

Sean McGarvey, President of North America's Building Trades Union, called this latest move:

..... a cold, hard slap in the face for hard working Americans who are literally waiting for President Obama's approval and the tens of thousands of jobs it will generate.

That comes from a labor union leader in this country. The unions want this, businesses in this country want it, and the American people want it by overwhelming margins. The only people who don't want it are some of the President's political supporters who, as the Senator from Alabama has pointed out, are extending hundreds, hundreds of millions of dollars, tens of millions of dollars, $400 million, as the Senator from Alabama pointed out. That is what is holding this up.

It is an offense to the American people to have a project like this that can do so much in terms of job creation and lessening our dependence upon foreign sources of energy and helping millions of Americans who are looking for work and simply being held up by the President of the United States. I hope the Senate Democrats and Republicans would come together to pass legislation that supports this pipeline's being built, whether the President agrees to it or not.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source