Republican Senate takeover effect on Keystone XL disputed

Nov. 5, 2014, 4 a.m. ·

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With the Republicans taking control of the U.S. Senate, some say legislation previously stymied by Democrats will move ahead – including to approve the proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline through Nebraska. Others aren’t so sure.

Tuesday night, at a loud party celebrating his election as Nebraska’s next U.S. Senator, Republican Ben Sasse was predicting action as a result of his party taking Senate control away from the Democrats. “The Senate used to be the greatest deliberative body in the world. And we need to debate, and we need to amend legislation, and we need to vote and tell the American people what we’re for. And I believe that a Republican majority will try to do that,” Sasse exclaimed.

In an interview Wednesday, the man Sasse will succeed, retiring Republican Sen. Mike Johanns, said the election results will change things for Democratic President Barack Obama. “What this really means is… for the first time in his presidency – remarkably this late in his presidency – he’s finally forced to deal with the reality that the way things work in the United States is that you have to work across the aisle,” Johanns said.

Johanns said the Republican Senate could approve the proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline. The Republican House has approved such legislation, but the Democratic Senate has approved only a nonbinding resolution. “I believe that the legislative body can say to the president ‘Here’s the direction we want to go on this issue. And again, the president is going to have to deal with that,” he said.

That view was disputed by former U.S. Senator Ben Nelson, the last Democrat to hold statewide office in Nebraska. “There is no real constitutional authority for legislation on the Keystone pipeline,” Nelson said. He argued that authority to approve the pipeline rests with the president under his constitutional treaty-making powers.

Obama delayed a decision on Keystone XL earlier this year, noting that the Nebraska Supreme Court still has to decide whether its route was legally approved in this state. Kevin Smith, chairman of the political science department at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, said the president has to decide soon. “With Keystone there’s going to have to be a decision one way or the other. Because effectively, that has been punted on until after the election,” Smith said. “Well, it’s after the election and the decision is going to have to be made one way or the other.”

Pipeline company TransCanada said it will continue to work with legislators who support the project; opponents said they’re confident Obama will veto the pipeline.

As far as new legislation on Keystone or other subjects goes, Smith doesn’t think the Republican takeover will produce much by way of change. “In concrete terms, my suspicion is it will not make much difference at all,” he said.

Smith pointed out that the president will still be able to veto legislation, and Republicans won’t have enough votes by themselves to override vetoes. It takes a 2/3 vote of both houses to override.

Still, Johanns predicted there will be proposals to change Dodd-Frank financial regulations, vote on Keystone approval, and revisit the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare.

Nelson is skeptical. “The Republican caucus will be split into various different factions, given the fact that there are several over there in the Senate on the Republican side who want to run for president in the next two years, and they’ll be doing that,” he said. “That will make it difficult to get any kind of unity there, and I think we’ll see gridlock continue into the future and the blame game will continue.”

Smith, the political scientist, said real change might have to wait until the next presidential election. “I think basically what this does is set us up for the 2016 elections. We’re going to have a government in DC that is probably going to find it just as hard to get things done as the current Congress,” he said. “If we’re going to break the logjam, we’re probably going to have to wait to 2016.”