Republicans : We get to screw up the environment if you want your payroll tax cut extension...."It's a wonderful LIFE!"

The Republican House bill containing the payroll tax cut would also push through a decision by the administration on TransCanada Corp.’s proposed Keystone XL pipeline without further needed environmental studies, which would connect Canada’s oil sands to refineries on the Gulf Coast. Environmental groups are opposing the project that will contaminate aquifers and put citizens lives and the lives of their children at risk.



The State Department, which has jurisdiction because the pipeline crosses an international border, has said it will rule on plan in 2013 to allow time to study a new route that avoids the environmentally sensitive Sandhills region in Nebraska.

President Barack Obama has said he’ll reject legislation to extend the payroll tax if the pipeline language is attached.


While he Labor Department last week said the unemployment rate fell to 8.6 percent in November, the lowest since March 2009, Obama administration officials such as Alan Kreuger, chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, said the global economy remains “in a fragile state.”

The Republican legislation would also require the Environmental Protection Agency to delay new pollution rules for industrial boilers.
Obama advisers have said they would recommend the president veto a delay on the boiler rule.