House Speaker John Boehner is bashing the Obama administration for delaying a decision on the Keystone XL pipeline until after the 2012 presidential election, saying the president is sacrificing American jobs for his own political agenda.
Boehner and the GOP are likely to use the move as a new talking point showi,g Obama's close ties to environmentalists, ties that have led him to put an environmentally-approved project ahead of Obama's main topic these days: the creation of jobs.
The Ohio Republican issued the following statement:
“More than 20,000 new American jobs have just been sacrificed in the name of political expediency. By punting on this project, the President has made clear that campaign politics are driving U.S. policy decisions – at the expense of American jobs. The current project has already been deemed environmentally sound, and calling for a new route is nothing but a thinly-veiled attempt to avoid upsetting the President’s political base before the election. It’s a failure of leadership.
“The production of American-made energy has a direct link to American job creation. That’s why House Republicans will soon introduce and pass jobs legislation that ties the permanent expansion of American energy production to an increase in new infrastructure projects. Today is another reminder that the President’s energy policy is destroying American jobs while Republicans are focused on using American resources to put people back to work.”
© Copyright 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.