Ed Henry to Jay Carney: Since 2014 is Obama's 'Year of Action,' Why Won't He Act and Approve the Keystone Pipeline?

A bit of fun from today’s White House blizzard of obfuscation, dodges and outright lies. Fox’s Ed Henry poses a question to WH spokesman Jay Carney: Since Obama is now fond of using executive orders, and he says he cares about creating jobs, why doesn’t he issue one to approve the Keystone Pipeline, which would create thousands of jobs?

This whole exchange is a game, because Henry and everyone else who has paid attention knows that Obama doesn’t even need an EO to get the XL going. Congress is already on the record approving it. The GOP-controlled House did that in May 2013. The Democrat-controlled Senate got there ahead of the House, approving the Keystone 62-37 in March 2013.

So there’s bipartisan support for this in Congress right now. What’s the holdup?

Radical environmentalists including Barack Obama are the holdup. Obama’s warped intent to use high energy prices to force Americans to green is the holdup.

Instead of actually answering Henry’s question, get a load of the blizzard of BS that Carney tossed up.

“Ed, as you know, as has been the practice for many years now of administrations of both parties, the reviews involved in an international pipeline like this, a pipeline that crosses an international boundary, are done or run by the State Department and that process,” Carney dodges. The State Department works for President Obama, of course.

Henry counters, “But you — would be involved in the decision. State Department is involved but it’s been on the desk for two years.”

Carney goes for the obvious lie when the truth won’t do: “What the president did is what the predecessors did what is allowing the State Department to oversee a process where this pipeline is evaluated and when that process is done I’m sure we’ll be made aware of it. But what the president believes is that it’s important to maintain a process that was devised, again, utilized by White Houses of both parties in order to assure that the right decision is made.”

Right. This president really cares what George W. Bush did — only to find ways to blame him for everything. Carney goes on from there to talk about the president “convening stakeholders” and holding meetings, increasing benefits for the long-term unemployed (some of whom could find work on the XL, by the way) and, really, doing nothing at all that actually helps anyone but his fellow partisans.

The Keystone has already been evaluated. A 485-mile chunk of it is already built. There is bipartisan support to build the rest. Obama could turn the project on at any time. But he won’t.