The privately funded project would create thousands of blue-collar, family wage jobs
January 20, 2012 - In the wake of President Obama's decision on Wednesday rejecting the Keystone XL pipeline project, John Koster blasted President Obama and the Democratic Party for "abandoning blue collar voters from coast to coast".
The Keystone pipeline project is a 1,700-mile expansion of an existing energy pipeline from Canada to the United States. The privately funded project would create thousands of blue-collar, family wage jobs in the U.S. and bring energy security to our nation.
Koster, who is running for Congress in the newly drawn 1st Congressional District said "the so-called 'progressives' who now control the Democratic Party have made a cold, calculated decision to abandon working class voters to appease their base, which is made up in large part by radical environmental activists, who apparently do not care about jobs and families."
"As Americans from coast to coast struggle to make ends meet and find work, I'm enormously frustrated and extremely disappointed in President Obama's rejection of the Keystone pipeline. And where is the strategy for American energy independence? We find ourselves at the mercy of the Arab oil cartel, struggling to keep gasoline prices under $4 a gallon, and this President rejects the Keystone Pipeline?"
"If the voters in Washington's 1st Congressional District want to know what another four years of Obama and the Democrats will look like, they need only look back at the first three. As the working class son of a working class father and mother, I will never abandon the working class," promised Koster. "Blue-collar men and women, union and non-union, built our country and they deserve our support, not the bait and switch political con they are getting from Obama and today's Democratic Party."
As reported in Thursday's Wall Street Journal, GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney said President Obama's action "demonstrates a lack of seriousness about bringing down unemployment, restoring economic growth and achieving energy independence." Newt Gingrich called the decision "a stunningly stupid thing to do."