The Senate passed the pipeline on Monday with a 63-32 vote, four votes away from the two-thirds majority needed to override presidential vetoes.
The House of Representatives passed the legislation easily Friday.
“The fact is this piece of legislation is not altogether different than legislation that was introduced in the last Congress,” said Josh Earnest, White House press secretary, in a press conference earlier this month.
“And I can confirm for you that if this bill passes this Congress, the President wouldn’t sign it either.”
Steven Greene, a political science professor at N.C. State University, said Obama will likely use his veto power significantly more in the last two years of his presidency with both houses of Congress under Republican control. Obama has made only two vetoes since he took office in 2008.
“Democratic filibusters in the Senate will probably still bottle up legislation that Obama would have otherwise vetoed, but you can pretty much guarantee there will be far more vetoes and veto confrontations in Obama’s remaining two years,” Greene said in an email.
Obama said in a statement that although the pipeline would create a few thousand temporary jobs, it would have a negligible impact on gas prices and there are better options for job creation, such as infrastructure projects.
“If we were rebuilding our roads and bridges around the country, something that Congress could authorize, we could probably create hundreds of thousands of jobs or a million jobs,” Obama said.
