Congressman Allen West (R-Fla.) called on the media to “stop being afraid” of President Barack Obama who is “destroying this country.” West made his remarks on Tuesday at a press conference in support of the TransCanada Keystone XL pipeline.
“It’s about time that I asked this from the media: Stop being afraid of this president,” said Rep. West. “Stand up to him and call him out on the shirking of his duties and responsibilities. The House Republicans are passing pieces of legislation, after pieces of legislation about jobs.”[see video at CNSNews.com]
“And here we got a president that’s gone off to Australia, playing golf in Hawaii, and you guys allow him to make this decision to shut down this Keystone XL project,” said West. “The media needs to call out this president and stop coming over here to the House Republicans and telling us what we’re not doing. We’re the ones taking action. The guy sitting at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is destroying this country.”
The 1,661-mile, $7-billion pipeline, which would run from Alberta, Canada south to U.S. refineries on the Gulf Coast, was under review by the State Department until last week when President Obama announced that a decision on whether to approve the project would be postponed until early 2013. The White House said it wanted to consider a new route for the pipeline.
The Keystone project, if approved, would have created an estimated 20,000 jobs.
“This is the most important thing we have to understand, America needs leadership right now and America does not have that,” said Rep. West on Tuesday.
“America needs a commander in chief, instead we have a campaigner in chief, and that’s exactly what continues to happen,” said West. “Whether it’s the decision to go to zero troops in Iraq, which gives a green light to Iran, or whether it’s the decision to shut down what you have heard is a win-win situation for the United States of America and for a new trading partner, which is Canada.”
“We cannot continue to send the hard-earned American taxpayer dollars to OPEC -- nothing but despot dictators, autocrats and theocrats,” West said.
“For 22 years I served in the United States Military and I’ve been on the battlefields in the Middle East, where the funds we are sending to these countries are in turn being turned on our young men and women in combat,” said the congressman.
“It’s about time that I asked this from the media: Stop being afraid of this president. Stand up to him and call him out on the shirking of his duties and responsibilities. The House Republicans are passing pieces of legislation, after pieces of legislation about jobs.”
“And here we got a president that’s gone off to Australia, playing golf in Hawaii, and you guys allow him to make this decision to shut down this Keystone XL project,” said West. “The media needs to call out this president and stop coming over here to the House Republicans and telling us what we’re not doing. We’re the ones taking action. The guy sitting at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is destroying this country.”
At the press conference, other House Republicans criticized the president’s decision on the pipeline, saying it was politically motivated to push it past the 2012 election. Two groups of Obama's political base, unions and environmentalists, are divided over the issue.
Many of the jobs the pipeline would create would go to union workers, including the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, which is headed by Obama-supporter James P. Hoffa.
At the press conference led by Rep. Tim Griffin, (R-Ark.), the lawmakers said delaying the pipeline would cost 20,000 jobs, and warned against losing Canadian crude oil production to China.
Originally posted at CNSNews.com on November 15, 2011.
