Washington was busy last week. On Tuesday, the Senate refused to authorize the Keystone Pipeline, and on Thursday, President Obama used his executive powers to establish his version of immigration reform. Both events were highly controversial, but more about symbolism than substance.
First, the Keystone Pipeline. The substance of the matter is this: a great deal of oil is being developed in the Bakken field of North Dakota and in tar sands in Canada. That oil is currently being shipped to refineries by truck or rail transport, both of which are more expensive, more vulnerable to accident and more energy consumptive than pipelines. The State Department concluded that the most efficient and environmentally friendly way of moving the oil, American as well as Canadian, would be through the Keystone Pipeline. A side benefit would be jobs, for American construction workers while it was being built and American refinery workers when it was done.
It was defeated because some environmentalists, including some very large donors to the Democratic Party, have made it the symbol of their fight against fossil fuels. James Hansen, America’s most prominent climate change activist after Al Gore, says that building Keystone would be “game over for the planet.” Calling Canadian tar sands the “dirtiest oil on earth,” these groups insist that killing Keystone will ensure that this oil will be left in the ground.
In fact, the amount of oil coming from tar sands is a tiny fraction of the world’s total supply and Canada is fully engaged in producing it. The vote blocking Keystone did not change that reality.
President Obama’s executive action on immigration didn’t change reality all that much either. Most of the people whom he “saved” from deportation were, in fact, never really in danger of it. That’s because our current immigration laws are broken, a nice way of saying that they simply do not work. Under them, close to 12 million people are living in the United States without legal status, many of whom have been here for years if not decades.
That’s roughly twice as many as Hitler rounded up during the Holocaust, four times the total population of the state of Utah and six times the number of people in prisons in the entire country. Obama was correct in saying that we have neither the resources nor the desire to hunt down 12 million people, some of whom are our neighbors and most of whom are children, and send them to a land that is legally theirs but culturally a foreign country.
Obama’s actions are symbolic primarily because they will be in force only while he is in office. The reality of the 12 million will carry over when he is gone. He was correct when he said, speaking of permanent and comprehensive reform, “only the Congress can do that.”
I understand the anger over last week’s actions. There is no question that political considerations dictated the timing of both. However, I say to Republicans, in your responses to the cynicism displayed, don’t overreact. Don’t try to shut down the government in protest. Don’t let the Democrats goad you into even thinking about pursuing impeachment. Complain about executive over-reach all you want right now, but remember — in a little over a month, you’ll be in charge of the Congress. Use that as your platform to show Obama how things should be done.
Pass Keystone and dare him to veto it. Pass your own version of immigration reform and dare him to veto it. Deal responsibly with the substance of governing and let the symbols take care of themselves.
Robert Bennett, former U.S. senator from Utah, is a part-time teacher, researcher and lecturer at the University of Utah's Hinckley Institute of Politics.