Obama Lies To Union That Supports Keystone XL Pipeline

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Investors Business Daily:

Politics: The president tells building-and-trades union workers that Republicans have blocked multiple bills putting them to work, even as he blocks an oil pipeline their former union chief supported.

President Obama may have thought he was preaching to the choir when he addressed the AFL-CIO Building and Construction Trades Department Legislative Conference on Monday, blaming Republicans for blocking his attempts at job creation.

But he forgot one of the cardinal rules of public speaking — know your audience.

"I've said now is the time to do this, interest rates are low, construction workers are out of work ... and time after time, the Republicans have gotten together and they've said no," Obama told a packed ballroom at the Washington Hilton.

Left off the teleprompter was the fact that he was speaking to a union group, one of many that has endorsed the union-job-creating Keystone XL pipeline, an issue he dodged in his speech.

"For America's skilled craft construction professionals, any discussion of the Keystone XL project begins and ends with one word: JOBS," Mark Ayers, past head of the group, wrote in the Huffington Post last November. He noted that "the Keystone pipeline represents the prospect for 20,000 immediate jobs, and as many as 500,000 indirect jobs via a strong economic multiplier effect."

Ayers added that "roughly 14% of the American construction workforce is unemployed," a number "significantly higher" than the national average, which has remained above 8% for 38 straight months, a post-Depression record.

A number of unions, a major part of the Democratic base, are backing the project, including the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, the International Union of Operating Engineers, the Teamsters, the Laborers' International Union, the Building and Construction Trades Department of the AFL-CIO, and the United Association of Plumbers and Pipefitters for the United States and Canada.