And Fox News is all over it. The Keystone XL pipeline's friends inside the Beltway, and they are many, have been very optimistic in their predictions of the benefit for the U.S. of construction jobs from the project.
Why all the chatter about Keystone XL jobs? It's because a new voice has chimed in. President Obama has called BS on the extravagant job creation claims being bandied about by Keystone XL lobbyists and their thralls. According to Reuters, the New York Times has quoted the President saying:
Republicans have said that this would be a big jobs generator," Obama said, according to the newspaper.
"There is no evidence that that's true. The most realistic estimates are this might create maybe 2,000 jobs during the construction of the pipeline, which might take a year or two, and then after that we're talking about somewhere between 50 and 100 jobs in an economy of 150 million working people."
Well, you can imagine the reaction from the usual suspects, who took no time to rise in full bray, at the
Chamber of Commerce, the
Wall Street Journal blog and in even darker corners of the Right where I have not the courage to look.
But, I do have the courage to look at this, our President, properly using the Bully Pulpit to chastise Republicans for their paltry interest in real economic stimulus for the USA.