[Congressional Record Volume 161, Number 13 (Tuesday, January 27, 2015)]
[Senate]
[Page S495]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           KEYSTONE PIPELINE

  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I wish to commend the Senators who are 
working on the amendments on the Keystone Canadian pipeline. This is 
the highest priority of the new Republican majority, a pipeline that is 
being built on behalf of a Canadian company.
  You would think there would be a lot of other possibilities here to 
create jobs for America, but the Senate Republicans are focused on this 
one. Ultimately it will produce 35 permanent jobs in America, and this 
is their highest priority. Had they taken up instead the Federal 
highway bill--a bill which is looming in terms of a deadline this 
year--we literally could have created thousands of American jobs across 
America, not just in one pipeline location. But they chose instead to 
help this Canadian company build this pipeline.
  Sadly, it won't produce products that can help America. We had an 
amendment offered here on the floor that said any refined products that 
came from this pipeline would be sold in America. It was defeated. 
Every Republican voted against that amendment.
  Then we offered an amendment that said this pipeline, if it is going 
to be built in America, should use American steel. Every Republican 
voted against that, save one.
  The notion that we are going to use foreign steel to build a pipeline 
for a Canadian company so that the refined products from that pipeline 
can be exported overseas is somehow, in the eyes of the majority in the 
Senate, an American jobs bill. I don't think the American people would 
agree with that. They would understand, if we were taking up the 
Federal highway bill, that is an American jobs bill. We put 
construction workers across the United States to work and create an 
infrastructure that would build on the economy, creating more jobs in 
communities from Arizona to Illinois, from Florida to the State of 
Washington. But instead we are focused on the Keystone Canadian 
pipeline, the highest priority of the Senate Republican majority.

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