U.S. House passes bill to take decision on Keystone XL pipeline out of president’s hands

By a vote of two hun­dred and forty-one to one hun­dred and sev­en­ty-five, the U.S. House tonight opt­ed to approve a Repub­li­can-backed bill that essen­tial­ly seeks to give Cana­di­an petro­le­um giant Tran­sCana­da final approval to build the Key­stone XL pipeline through the Amer­i­can Mid­west (and across the bor­der into Alberta).

Nine­teen Democ­rats sided with two hun­dred and twen­ty-two Repub­li­cans to pass the bill (H.R. 3). No Repub­li­cans vot­ed against the bill, but some did not vote.

The Pacif­ic North­west­’s del­e­ga­tion broke down by par­ty lines. The roll call:

Vot­ing Aye: Repub­li­cans Doc Hast­ings, Cathy McMor­ris Rodgers, Dave Reichert (WA), Greg Walden (OR), Raúl Labrador and Mike Simp­son (ID), Steve Daines (MT)

Vot­ing Nay: Democ­rats Suzan Del­Bene, Rick Larsen, Derek Kilmer, Jim McDer­mott, Adam Smith, Den­ny Heck (WA), Suzanne Bonam­i­ci, Peter DeFazio, Earl Blu­me­nauer, Kurt Schrad­er (OR)

Not Vot­ing: Repub­li­cans Jaime Her­rera-Beut­ler (WA), Don Young (AK)

The nine­teen Democ­rats who vot­ed against pro­tect­ing our envi­ron­ment and for rub­ber stamp­ing Tran­sCanada’s appli­ca­tion to build Key­stone XL were:

• John Bar­row (GA-12) Blue Dog
• San­ford Bish­op (GA-02) Blue Dog
• Cheri Bus­tos (IL-17)
• Jim Coop­er (TN-05) Blue Dog
• Jim Cos­ta (CA-16) Blue Dog
• Hen­ry Cuel­lar (TX-28) Blue Dog
• William Enyart (IL-12)
• Al Green (TX-09)
• Gene Green (TX-29)
• Ruben Hino­josa (TX-15)
• Sean Mal­oney (NY-12)
• Sean Math­e­son (UT-04) Blue Dog
• Mike McIn­tyre (NC-07) Blue Dog
• Patrick Mur­phy (FL-18)
• William Owens (NY-21)
• Col­in Peter­son (MN-07) Blue Dog
• Ter­ri Sewell (AL-07)
• File­mon Vela (TX-34)
• John Yarmuth (KY-03)

(Thanks to Dai­ly Kos for com­pil­ing the list).

The bill now moves to the Sen­ate, which has pre­vi­ous­ly indi­cat­ed its sup­port for allow­ing the pipeline project to go for­ward. How­ev­er, Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma has threat­ened to veto the bill — on Tues­day, the White House released a state­ment mak­ing its oppo­si­tion to H.R. crys­tal clear.

The Admin­is­tra­tion strong­ly oppos­es H.R. 3, which among oth­er things, would: (1) declare that a Pres­i­den­tial Per­mit is not required for the Key­stone XL crude oil, cross-bor­der pipeline, includ­ing the Nebras­ka reroute eval­u­at­ed by the Nebras­ka Depart­ment of Envi­ron­men­tal Qual­i­ty; (2) deem that the final Envi­ron­men­tal Impact State­ment issued by the Depart­ment of State on August 26, 2011, sat­is­fies all Nation­al Envi­ron­men­tal Pol­i­cy Act and Nation­al His­toric Preser­va­tion Act require­ments; and (3) deem that Sec­re­tary of the Inte­ri­or actions sat­is­fy Endan­gered Species Act require­ments enabling the need­ed right-of-way. Fur­ther, the bill would require the Sec­re­tary of the Army to issue project-relat­ed per­mits pur­suant to the Rivers and Har­bors Appro­pri­a­tion Act and Sec­tion 404 of the Clean Water Act, and pro­hib­it the EPA Admin­is­tra­tor from restrict­ing or dis­al­low­ing any activ­i­ties or uses of areas autho­rized by the bill.

H.R. 3 con­flicts with long­stand­ing Exec­u­tive branch pro­ce­dures regard­ing the author­i­ty of the Pres­i­dent, the Sec­re­taries of State, the Inte­ri­or, and the Army, and the EPA Admin­is­tra­tor. In addi­tion, the bill is unnec­es­sary because the Depart­ment of State is work­ing dili­gent­ly to com­plete the per­mit deci­sion process for the Key­stone XL pipeline. The bill pre­vents the thor­ough con­sid­er­a­tion of com­plex issues that could have seri­ous secu­ri­ty, safe­ty, envi­ron­men­tal, and oth­er ramifications.

Because H.R. 3 seeks to cir­cum­vent long­stand­ing and proven process­es for deter­min­ing whether cross-bor­der pipelines are in the nation­al inter­est by remov­ing the Pres­i­den­tial Per­mit­ting require­ment for the Key­stone XL pipeline project, if pre­sent­ed to the Pres­i­dent, his senior advi­sors would rec­om­mend that he veto this bill.

Empha­sis is theirs.

An over­ride of a pres­i­den­tial veto requires a two-thirds vote of each house. There are four hun­dred and thir­ty-five mem­bers of the U.S. House and one hun­dred mem­bers of the U.S. Sen­ate. H.R. 3 did not pass with a two-thirds vote; even if the Repub­li­cans who did not vote in favor yes­ter­day were to have vot­ed aye, the bill would still not have passed with a veto-proof majority.

Repub­li­cans can­not get to a veto-proof major­i­ty in the House to pass H.R. 3 unless more Democ­rats were to flip and cross over. It seems very unlike­ly that any of the Democ­rats who vot­ed nay yes­ter­day would be inter­est­ed in chang­ing their votes in order to over­ride a veto by Pres­i­dent Obama.

Giv­en that the pres­i­dent has threat­ened to veto the bill, it does­n’t seem that Sen­ate Demo­c­ra­t­ic lead­er­ship has any incen­tive to capit­u­late to Repub­li­can demands to give the bill a vote. H.R. 3 may sim­ply die in committee.

Repub­li­cans real­ly want Key­stone XL built, but they’d need the coop­er­a­tion of some oil-stained Democ­rats to pass H.R. 3. They’d need even more Demo­c­ra­t­ic help to over­ride a pres­i­den­tial veto… help they are extreme­ly unlike­ly to get.