The WaPo writes:
Predictions of possible jobs are always fraught with complications, guesstimates and fuzzy math, so they often should be taken with a grain of salt. No one really knows exactly how many jobs will be created. So maybe the president is right to be skeptical.
But the president shouldn’t pick and choose how he cites job-creation numbers. Perhaps he is tipping his hand on what he secretly thinks of the Keystone XL by citing a low-ball figure, generated by the pipeline’s opponents, but he should stick to using the official government estimate. (His 2,000-job figure is actually slightly lower than the Cornell estimate.)
Otherwise, the president ironically seems to be signaling that even his own government does not produce the “most realistic” estimate that should be used by reporters.Two Pinocchios
The Washington Post questioning the wisdom of The Anointed One? That’s news.
The Canadian oil will be extracted, Keystone or not. Moving that oil to market will create jobs, Keystone or not. The Keystone pipeline would create some nice US jobs but the pipeline is not that big a deal. The oil itself is the big deal and it will flow to market, no matter what we do. Shipping oil inefficiently, by rail, also creates jobs. Don’t pitch a fit over the details of how the oil is shipped.
Building something like the Keystone XL will produce a rolling wave of jobs along the project and those jobs will end. Construction is like that by its very nature.
The Keystone will leave a path of steady jobs in its wake but far fewer than the construction jobs. Again, it always works like that. If you had to keep spending on the Keystone as if it were still being built, it would be pointless.
The Keystone will also leave a wake of jobs that washes across the entire country and internationally. Cheap energy promotes economic activity. Expensive energy stifles it. Take a look at the UK and Spain.