Guest post by Stephen Moore
You’ve got to hand it to billionaire Tom Steyer. He tells Barack Obama and Harry Reid to jump, and they obediently reply: How high?
Mr. Steyer pulled off the policy coup of the year last week when the White House announced it would place the Keystone XL pipeline in regulatory purgatory for another six months at least. Mr. Steyer has promised $100 million to Democrats to beat back Republicans in the midterm elections this fall, and the campaign funds have already paid off in the scuttling of this $3 billion pipeline project. (Remember when Democrats were pro-infrastructure?) President Obama says we have to determine whether it is “in the national interest.”
Mr. Steyer protested this week that he is not the Democratic party’s version of the Koch brothers, who fund efforts to promote liberty and free enterprise. Mr. Steyer says that “there are real distinctions between the Koch brothers and us,” because the Kochs personally benefit from their political advocacy, while he is donating to save the planet. Never mind that he’s a major investor in solar-energy projects that compete with fossil fuels. Let’s just say that Steyer got more than just a lousy T-shirt for his political pay-to-play investment.
But Steyer, like most fanatical greens, really does have an intense hatred of this pipeline — and thus a motive that goes beyond any personal gain. To the far left, Keystone has become the symbol of the North American shale-oil-and-gas revolution that is crushing the brief and ill-fated renewable-energy fad. So anything that would efficiently transport these fossil fuels to market is evil.
For his part, Obama repeated the Big Green mantra that we shouldn’t build the pipeline if it would contribute to “carbon pollution.” By this logic, the U.S. government should shut down the existing 100,000 miles of pipeline in North America and stop all domestic fossil-fuel production.
But all of this is a sideshow to the really big question here, which is whether the GOP leaders are smart enough to capitalize on this Keystone blunder. The controversy exposes a widening fault line within the Democratic coalition that could split the party in two. It’s an intra-party blood feud between the blues and the greens: Blue-collar union Democrats (those who work in the private sector) desperately want the jobs associated with drilling, mining, and building the infrastructure to make those things happen. Many of the big unions, from the Teamsters to the welders and pipefitters, support the project and have furiously objected to Obama’s decision. The project creates 10,000 jobs that would pay between $50,000 and $100,000 a year. This isn’t minimum-wage stuff we are talking about.
Obama has made the laughable claim recently that the pipeline would lead to “only 50 permanent jobs.” So a $3 billion multistate pipeline that stretches more than 1,000 miles shouldn’t go forward, because it won’t boost employment permanently? Someone might want to explain to the president that in the private sector there is no such thing as a permanent job. (Those are to be found only in the government.)