WASHINGTON (CNN) — 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.
House Speaker John Boehner’s office quickly released a statement on Tuesday calling Obama out for opposing the pipeline, a decision Boehner painted as another sign Obama is “hopelessly out of touch” with Americans.
“His answer is no to more American infrastructure, no to more American energy and no to more American jobs,” Boehner said. “Fringe extremists in the President’s party are the only ones who oppose Keystone, but the President has chosen to side with them instead of the American people and the government’s own scientific evidence that this project is safe for the environment.”
The pipeline is currently in a final phase of review from the State Department, which has already concluded that it would have a minimal impact on the environment. But the State Department also assessed that the pipeline would create about 42,000 jobs directly and indirectly during the construction period — but just 50 permanent jobs.
The White House reviewed the text of the bill to authorize the pipeline on Monday, Earnest said.
Previously, Obama had not said if he would veto another bill to authorize the pipeline, but suggested his position hadn’t changed since he threatened to during the 113th Congress.
A bill to authorize the pipeline failed in the last weeks of the Democratic-led Senate last year, but a new Republican majority ensured the vote could reach a 60-vote filibuster proof majority. Supporters of the pipeline would need to whip 67 votes in the Senate to override a presidential veto.
Sens. John Hoeven, R-North Dakota, and Joe Manchin, D-West Virginia, introduced legislation to greenlight the Keystone XL pipeline on Tuesday, just hours before Earnest announced the President’s commitment to veto any legislation.