Heitkamp warns Obama on Keystone XL Pipeline approval

• %27The Keystone Pipeline decision has taken longer than it took us to defeat Hitler%27
• Obama lost North Dakota by 22 percentage points in 2012%3B she won in the year%27s closest Senate race

WASHINGTON — Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, a freshman Democrat from North Dakota, is ready to take on President Obama over the long-delayed approval for the Keystone XL Pipeline — and she predicts her side will prevail.

"We know that we have the votes here in the Senate; we certainly have the votes in the House," she told USA TODAY on Thursday. "In fact, I think we could build enough votes to override a veto."

Still, she opposes the suggestion by some pipeline supporters that the permit be used as leverage in last-ditch negotiations over funding the government, saying the issues should be considered separately. She predicts those budget talks are going to fail before Tuesday's deadline, prompting a partial government shutdown.

"My guess is it's unfortunately going to take a very dramatic act for people to realize that we're playing a game of Russian roulette with a very fragile economic recovery," she said on the weekly newsmaker video series Capital Download. "I think it's going to take a shutdown to achieve results."

She is impatient on both fronts: for Congress to negotiate a so-called continuing resolution that is "clean," funding the government without being tied to extraneous issues, and for the president to decide what to do about the pipeline.

"The Keystone Pipeline decision has taken longer than it took us to defeat Hitler," she said. "There's just something wrong with this process."

Obama "got himself painted into the corner" by environmentalists who oppose the pipeline, she said. "He's having a very difficult time to find a real, factual, legal reason to deny the permit."

The pipeline, which would carry millions of gallons of crude oil from Canada to Gulf Coast refineries, has been waiting for five years for the Obama administration permit required because it crosses an international border. Opponents argue that constructing the pipeline and extracting more oil from the Alberta oil sands will cause serious environmental damage. Supporters say it would create jobs and enhance energy independence.

Heitkamp is equally caustic about regulations proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency to limit emissions in new power plants, saying administration policies consistently reflect "an irrational dislike of coal."

"As the technology delivers, there's going to be an appropriate response to the concerns of the American public about carbon. It's just not there yet," she said. "This rule will do precious little to deal with a carbon problem as they see it. It really becomes, 'We're going to burden the American public and the consuming industries ... to no good environmental end.'"

Those views put her at odds not only with the president but also with most of her fellow Democrats — perhaps not surprising for a "blue" senator from a solidly "red" state. North Dakota hasn't voted for a Democrat for president since 1964, when Heitkamp was 9 years old. In 2012, Obama lost the state to Mitt Romney by an overwhelming 22 percentage points while she won in the closest Senate race of the season.

Now 57, the plain-spoken Heitkamp was the first woman to be elected to the Senate from North Dakota, and is now one of a record 20 women serving there. Asked whether women govern or legislate differently from men, she said, "I will say this: I think we measure our success on results, not whether we got our picture in the paper."

She said she is putting her faith in Senate Agriculture Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., to figure out a way to get the farm bill approved, albeit not before it expires early next week. The Senate passed a version of the bill but House Republicans then slashed billions of dollars from the food stamp program, setting up yet another legislative showdown.

"It's a metaphor for what's wrong here," Heitkamp said. She sees a long-term strategy directed not only at the nutrition programs, which have long made the farm bill appealing to members of Congress who represent cities, but also at the agricultural programs that she says provide a safety net for farmers in the Peace Garden State and other rural areas.

"This is a strategy to make the farm bill less relevant to a broader membership," she warned, "and I fear that some of our farm-based members in the House have kind of bought the theory that this is the path forward."

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