To Approve the Keystone XL Pipeline

Floor Speech

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Mr. HOEVEN. Today we vote on S. 2280, introduced by myself and Senator Landrieu. There are actually 54 sponsors on the legislation with us. So we have a total of 56 sponsors of this bipartisan bill. That is the same bill that has been passed in the House of Representatives. That was passed on Friday--the same version. The prime sponsor in the House was Representative Cassidy.

The bill we vote on today, S. 2280, is approval of the Keystone XL Pipeline. We have actually passed legislation on the Keystone XL Pipeline before. This is not the first bill. In 2012, we passed legislation that required the President to make a decision on the Keystone XL Pipeline. We attached it to the payroll tax holiday. At that time the President turned down the pipeline project.

So today we have submitted a number of different pieces of legislation, but this legislation actually has Congress approving the Keystone XL Pipeline.

When the President turned down the project, what we did was we went back and we did the research.

Under the commerce clause of the Constitution, Congress has the authority to oversee commerce with foreign powers, with other countries.

So in this situation, Congress has the authority to approve the Keystone XL Pipeline crossing the border from Canada into the United States, and that is what we crafted in this legislation. So rather than the President making a national interest determination, which he seems to be unwilling to do--and I say that based on his actions--we have now been at this for about 4 years in this Senate trying to get approval. But this project has been in the application process for 6 years.

I was Governor of North Dakota in September of 2008 when the TransCanada Corporation applied for a permit to get approval to build the Keystone XL Pipeline. They had already built the Keystone pipeline, so they were applying for approval to build the sister pipeline, the Keystone XL Pipeline. It started in September of 2008, and 2 years went by. We started actually working on it in about 2011 in the Senate, as I say, and we passed legislation, trying to get the President to approve it. But it has now been--and I can show a chart with the time line, but it is a little hard to see--6 years in the permitting process.

The time has come to act. The time has come to act, and that is what this legislation is all about. It provides approval of the Keystone XL Pipeline so they can move forward and it can be constructed.

We have debated this issue in the Chamber for almost 4 years. So we have gone through all of the merits, and we will do that again today. We have not only come to an agreement on getting a vote, but we have also come to an agreement on the parameters for the debate. It is 6 hours of debate, with 3 hours for the proponents and 3 hours for the opponents.

On the Republican side of the aisle we are taking 2 hours solely on the proponent side because all 45 Republican Senators are in support of the project, will be voting for the project, and will be making the case for the project. On the majority side there will be 3 hours for opponents of the project making their case and 1 hour for the proponents making their case, and we will alternate throughout this debate.

We will be having this debate today and we will make our case. I will continue with my colleagues to make the case for the pipeline. There will be Members of the majority party that will make that case and there will be some Members, obviously, in opposition.

So I will reserve some of my time to speak later, but the point I want to make at the outset is this is really about the American people making this case. When we look at this project, it is about energy, it is about jobs, it is about economic growth. It creates tax revenue to help reduce the deficit and the debt. It doesn't cost 1 penny of Federal money or government money. It is privately funded, and it is about national security. It is about national security by helping us build energy security in this country with our closest friend and ally, Canada, working together with Canada so that we don't have to get energy from Venezuela or from the Middle East or from other parts of the world, and so we can produce at home.

That is not only a vitally important issue in terms of our economy and being competitive in a global economy because energy is truly a foundational sector for all the other industry sectors. When we have low-cost dependable energy, we are more competitive as a country, but it really is a national security issue.

I see the good Senator from Vermont is on the floor. He has a bill that deals with how we handle surveillance and covert information, given the terrorist threat we face. It is important that we do that well.

But one of the ways to truly strengthen our country is to make sure we are energy secure, to make sure we don't have to get oil from the Middle East, to help our friends and allies in Europe so they are not dependent on Russia for energy when Putin engages in the kind of aggression he has. So when we talk about this energy issue, it is not just jobs, it is not just the energy we get that makes us stronger in a competitive global economy, it really is a national security issue, and it is long past time to act. It has been 6 years.

Today we will have that debate again, and I hope at the end of the day we will have the 60 votes that we need. We will find out this evening when we vote.

Again, it comes back to what do the American people want. We are here representing the American people. Overwhelmingly, in poll after poll when they have been asked, 60 percent, sometimes 70 percent or more say: Build the Keystone XL Pipeline. That is whom we work for.

I hope today, at the end of the day, that is the work we will get done for the American people.

I see my cosponsor on the floor, and I would turn to the good Senator from Louisiana.

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