Turning the process of enrolling a
bill into stagecraft, Congressional Republicans ceremoniously signed
their bill expediting the foreign-owned Keystone XL tar sands pipeline
today. President Barack Obama has promised a veto of the legislation.
The Hoeven-Manchin bill, S.
1, passed the Senate
62-36 and the House 270-152, neither achieving the two-thirds majority
necessary for a veto override.
Emulating the ceremony of a presidential bill signing, Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-Ohio) signed the enrolled legislation with large metal pens on a table decked with navy blue as other Congressional Republicans stood watching. Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.), who received the ceremonial pen, argued that vetoing the bill would help OPEC. According to the Hill’s Laura Baron-Lopez, “Hoeven asked if the administration really wants to rely on OPEC with the current terror situation with the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.”