Rushmore State News

Rep. Dusty Johnson (R-S.D.) called President Joe Biden's Keystone pipeline shutdown an "attack on the rule of law" after job losses spike.

“Reasonable people can disagree about the future of pipelines. I don’t think though that we should be in a position of undermining the rule of law by changing the rules once a project is already hundreds of millions of dollars into the construction process,” Johnson told The Epoch Times in an interview. “That is a bait-and-switch that heretofore has not been something we see in America.”

With over a thousand workers being laid off since the signing of the executive order by Biden, complaints continue to be the order of the day with rural South Dakota being affected the most.

Johnson and a handful of his colleagues want to challenge the presidential permit authority used by Biden to shut down the pipeline.

"The president’s rejection of all of that, in essence, his veto of all of those dozens of other permits, is a staggering attack on the rule of law,” Johnson said in the same interview, adding, “it’s a mistake, and it risks impacting millions of lives in this country.”

The executive orders not only affect Keystone employees but also thousands of businesses that had invested in South Dakota. On Feb. 8, Johnson, Rep. Kelly Armstrong, and Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-Wash.) sat for an hour-long roundtable with over 20 business owners affected. 

"The O’Connell Family, which owns a gravel pit near the town of Philip, had purchased a new dump truck worth between $60,000 to $70,000 to fill orders they had received in connection with the Keystone XL pipeline. Now, the family is in debt because of the purchase, with no new revenue to count on," The Epoch Times reported. 

Such stories have become the order of the day with small towns like Philip and Midland being also affected as they are located along the Keystone XL route.

“This is going to have a chilling effect on the willingness of Americans to invest in free-enterprise opportunities,” Johnson said. “Because if somebody can make a project like this disappear overnight, they can make other projects disappear as well.”

Johnson also highlighted that the affected businesses are not interested in getting government handouts but want to continue operating. He then accused the president of not reading thousands of pages of evidence that support operation of the Keystone Pipeline. If he had, he would have understood the “incredible environmental precautions that are taken as a part of this project and that the applicant was required to meet under the law." 

TC Energy, the company that commissioned the pipeline had expressed compliance with the aim of achieving zero emissions by 2023 and being fully powered by renewable energy by 2030.

He also said the president made a decision unilaterally without consulting relevant authorities, contrary to his talk of unity and bipartisanship. 

“The reality is he needs to choose a lane; he can work with the AOC wing of his party to put into place liberal policies, and that’s largely what he’s done since being inaugurated,” he said. “Or he can try to find common ground with Republicans.”

Before the shutdown, the Keystone XL pipeline was expected to contribute over $3.4 billion to the U.S. GDP growth, including millions in state and local tax revenue, according to the U.S. Chamber Global Energy Institute.