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As a key Senate committee cleared legislation approving the Keystone XL oil pipeline, a prominent supporter of the project said Thursday he believes the chamber could have enough votes to override a presidential veto of the bill. Sen. Joe Manchin, West Virginia Democrat, told his colleagues he believes the bill approving the pipeline could garner 67 votes, the number needed to overcome a veto by the president.

Video at link. (CNSNews.com) – Jack Gerard, CEO of the American Petroleum Institute, says President Barack Obama is “factually incorrect” to say that the Keystone XL Pipeline will not benefit Americans. At the press conference in Washington Tuesday, CNSNews.com asked Gerard about Obama’s remarks in November about the pipeline, which, if approved, would transport crude oil from Canada and from two U.S. states to refineries on the Gulf Coast. Jack Gerard, CEO of the American Petroleum Institute, held a press conference with reporters on Jan. 6, 2015 following his annual State of American Energy speech in Washington, D.C. (CNSNews.com/Penny...

President Barack Obama will veto the Keystone XL bill if Congress passes a measure green-lighting the oil pipeline, White House press secretary Josh Earnest announced on Tuesday. Newly minted Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has scheduled a vote on the Keystone XL pipeline project as the first of the new Congress. The bill has some bipartisan support, but environmentalists and progressives have heavily lobbied the White House to oppose the pipeline.... Earnest added that the White House reviewed the text of the bill to authorize the pipeline on Monday....

As a therapist I spend my days doing what I can to help adolescents understand that the human decision-making process is influenced by two general motivators — what we want or hope to be true, and by the facts and credible evidence available to us at the time. We remain subject to both forces throughout our lives, but growing up means allowing the facts to govern the important decisions even if the facts fly in the face of what we want. This is not always an easy sell, and I have little doubt there will be some readers who flat-out...

U.S. President Barack Obama said on Friday that construction of the Keystone XL pipeline to transport crude oil from Canada to the U.S. Gulf Coast would only nominally benefit American consumers and workers. "There is very little impact - nominal impact - on U.S. gas prices, what the average American consumer cares about," Obama told reporters during an end-of-year press conference. In his strongest comments on the Canada-to-U.S. pipeline to date, Obama picked apart some of the most common arguments proponents have used to urge the president to approve it: that it would create jobs, lower domestic gasoline prices and...

In late October, Hillary Clinton traveled to the Hawkeye State to campaign for Democratic Senate nominee Bruce Braley. Hillary offered some choice words about Braley's Republican opponent, Joni Ernst, who'd recently declined to meet with a major state newspaper's editorial board. Ernst's refusal to answer tough questions (besides in her many media interviews and debates, that is) was "disqualifying," the likely presidential candidate averred: Hillary Clinton on Wednesday turned up the heat on Republican hopeful Joni Ernst for skipping meetings with newspaper editorial boards, calling it a “disqualifying” factor in the Iowa Senate race. “You test your candidates. You force them to be...

"Understand what this project is," Obama said at a Nov. 14 press conference in Burma. "It is providing the ability of Canada to pump their oil, send it through our land, down to the Gulf, where it will be sold everywhere else. That doesn't have an impact on U.S. gas prices." We asked several energy economics experts, and they believe that quite a bit -- if not most -- of the Keystone XL crude oil will be bought and used by American refineries. "It’s difficult to say with any certainty, but it is most likely that most would be refined...

WASHINGTON - If you thought the bare knuckled, no-holds-barred, midterm elections were rough, the last two years of Barack Obama's presidency will make that look like a Sunday school picnic. Frustrated by the slow, plodding pace of democracy, the Constitution's checks and balances, and the pertinence of Republicans to want a say in their government, Obama's preparing for all out war in next year's GOP Congress. He has taken to writing his own immigration laws, and by implication, erased Article I, Section 1 of our governing document that says "All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress...

LINCOLN, Neb.— For all the angst and anger over the Keystone XL pipeline in Washington, the project’s fate may lie here in Nebraska, where disgruntled landowners are challenging a state law that officials used to approve the pipeline’s path through their property. After the U.S. Senate rejected a measure to approve the project Tuesday, Republicans who will control the chamber in January said it would be one of the first items on their agenda next year. A more immediate hurdle, though, is the Nebraska suit, which encompasses much of the legal and emotional core of the battle over Keystone. “I...

Opponents of the Keystone XL pipeline are stoking fear about the project by connecting it to two of the biggest bogeymen in politics: Charles and David Koch. The claim goes that the Koch brothers stand to make $100 billion if the pipeline gets built. The figure, which would effectively double the Kochs’ net worth, has bounced around liberal news organizations and was repeated this month by progressive radio talk show and TV host Thom Hartmann on his RT show. Take it with a block of salt, a PunditFact analysis finds.

President Barack Obama might be open to using the Keystone pipeline as leverage with Republicans if they cooperate on other aspects of his long-stalled domestic agenda, such as investing in infrastructure, closing tax loopholes or reducing carbon emissions. After years of fighting over TransCanada's crude oil pipeline from Canada, a Keystone deal is not entirely out of the question, sources inside the administration and others close to the White House told Reuters on Tuesday. With the Senate's narrow defeat of a Keystone bill on Tuesday, Obama avoided the awkward position of possibly vetoing a bill supported by members of his...

As expected, the House today passed a bill from Rep. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) to approve the Keystone XL pipeline. The final tally was 252-161, with 31 Democrats crossing over to vote in favor and one Republican, Rep. Justin Amash (Mich.), voting “present.” In the Senate, the incumbent facing Cassidy in a Dec. 6 runoff was desperately trying to scrape together enough votes to avert a filibuster and save the bill. Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) joined the pro-Keystone forces today, Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) told reporters, adding that she thinks she can get the 60th vote. Bennet didn’t release any statements...

The House of Representatives on Friday passed legislation giving the makers of the Keystone pipeline the go-ahead to build the fourth and final section of the oil transportation system. Republicans have already sanctioned the construction of the XL portion of the pipeline eight times but today it passed language identical to a bill under consideration in the Senate by a vote of 252-161.The Democratically-controlled upper chamber has long declined to vote on the matter but had a change of heart on Wednesday after Sen. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana begged her colleagues to immediately bring the legislation to the floor.

The White House is hinting that President Obama will veto any bill authorizing the construction of the Keystone Pipeline. One of the few bi-partisan pieces of legislation is threatened by the most partisan president in history. The Hill: The White House on Thursday hinted that President Obama could veto congressional legislation approving the Keystone XL pipeline as lawmakers in both the House and Senate were readying votes on the controversial construction project. "Our dim view of these kinds of proposals has not changed,” press secretary Josh Earnest said. Earnest reiterated that the State Department was still reviewing the controversial pipeline...

The White House on Thursday hinted that President Obama could veto congressional legislation approving the Keystone XL pipeline as lawmakers in both the House and Senate were readying votes on the controversial construction project. "Our dim view of these kinds of proposals has not changed,” press secretary Josh Earnest said. Earnest reiterated that the State Department was still reviewing the controversial pipeline project, and that litigation in a Nebraska court still needed to be resolved. On Wednesday, Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.), facing a tough reelection effort, requested unanimous consent to proceed on a vote approving the pipeline. With nearly a...

Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-Louisiana) took to the Senate floor this afternoon to push for the Keystone XL pipeline. "This has been a project that has lingered far too long," she said. "It is clearly supported by 60 or more members of this body. It is a piece of legislation that has been endorsed by the new Majority Leader, to-be Majority Leader, is a cosponsor and a leading cosponsor of the legislation." "I believe it is time to act," Landrieu said. "I believe that we should take the new Majority Leader at his word and stop blocking legislation that is broadly...

Senator Mary Landrieu sure is moving fast to embrace her new Republican overlords. She just might not have the chance work with them. Facing a run-off election in three weeks to hold onto her seat in Louisiana, the woman who is now the most endangered Democrat in America raced to the Senate floor on Wednesday—shortly after it reopened following last week's election—to call for an immediate vote on a top GOP priority: approval of the Keystone XL oil pipeline. "I want to say yes to Majority Leader Mitch McConnell," Landrieu said. "The time to start is now. The public has...

How desperate are Democrats to salvage the one Senate seat they still haven’t quite lost in the midterm elections? Desperate enough to anger their environmental-progressive base and threaten their ability to compete in 2016? It may come down to that question in the lame-duck Senate over the last few days of the Democratic majority. The Washington Post reports that Harry Reid and his caucus may try rescuing Mary Landrieu by passing an approval of the Keystone XL pipeline project, a key policy goal for Republicans and a big economic issue in Louisiana: Senate Democrats are working on plans to...

Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is planning to make ObamaCare a priority in his first weeks as leader of the Senate, vowing a sustained effort to dismantle the law piece-by-piece. Instead of a full repeal, McConnell said the GOP will tackle unpopular aspects of the law such as the individual mandate, the medical device tax and the 30-hour workweek requiring employers to provide insurance. “These are the kinds of things that I believe there is a bipartisan majority in the Senate to approve,” he said in the interview with Time magazine published Wednesday. The only other priority he listed was the...

The jubilant leader of the Republicans in the US Senate, Mitch McConnell, on Wednesday challenged Barack Obama to find common ground with Congress after the Democrats’ crushing defeat in the US midterm elections threatened to test the limits of the president’s power during his final two years in office. In an ambitious speech hours after his party gained control of both houses of Congress, McConnell warned Obama not to “poison the well” by pushing forward with unilateral action on immigration reform, and promised to introduce legislation that would permit the long-delayed Keystone XL pipeline, bitterly opposed by environmentalists. Obama, meanwhile,...