Democratic leadership squeaked out a 56-42 vote. | John Shinkle/POLITICO Senate's Keystone message to W.H.

Thursday’s squeaker of a Senate vote on the Keystone XL pipeline serves both as a warning to President Barack Obama that a majority of both houses of Congress supports the pipeline and as encouragement to Republicans to keep pushing the issue.

Obama had personally lobbied Senate Democrats with phone calls urging them to oppose an amendment to the highway bill that would fast-track the Canada-to-Texas oil pipeline. And as it turned out, he needed every bit of their help.


In all, 11 Democrats joined 45 Republicans to support the pipeline. Only the fact that 60 votes were needed for passage saved the White House from an embarrassing defeat.

( Also on POLITICO: Oil industry jumps gun on Keystone vote)

Sen. Dick Lugar (R-Ind.) wryly congratulated Obama on his lobbying efforts.

“That was very strong work by President Obama himself, making personal calls to Democrats,” Lugar said. “He understood that a majority of the American public and a majority at least of the Senate are strongly in favor of this project.

“So I suppose you give credit to the president for once again blocking something, but I don't think the president really wants to do that indefinitely,” he added.

“We got a majority in the Senate,” said amendment sponsor Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.), who noted that two senators — Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) and John Thune (R-S.D.) — were absent. “So we would have had 58 votes had all Republicans been able to be here.”

Republicans promised that the issue, which has been a staple of the campaign trail since Obama first attempted in November to punt the decision until 2013, will not go away.

“We’re very close to the 60,” Hoeven said. “It’s hard to say exactly which members maybe would have supported without White House intervention, but I think the important thing is that the support is there, and the support is there because the public wants this to happen.

“The pressure is just going to increase on the administration to get this project done,” Hoeven added.

The 11 Democrats who crossed party lines to support the amendment were Max Baucus of Montana, Mark Begich of Alaska, Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, Kent Conrad of North Dakota, Kay Hagan of North Carolina, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Claire McCaskill of Missouri, Mark Pryor of Arkansas, Jon Tester of Montana and Jim Webb of Virginia.

Landrieu said she was not among those getting a call from Obama. And she was not surprised to see 10 Democrats join with her to cross party lines.

"We would rather build up the capacity in North America for energy that we need than have to rely on far-flung places of the world, whether it's the continent of Africa or the Mideast,” Landrieu said. “If we continue to drill more at home ... and continue to conserve ... we can make a great deal of headway.”

Landrieu, who has long been a lonely Democratic voice on oil drilling — supporting, for example, drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge — said both sides need to cool down.

"I've said both parties have been too strong on the rhetoric. Republicans think they can drill their way out — they're wrong. ... And Democrats think we don't need to drill more," she said.

She also won a big personal victory Thursday, as the Senate easily passed her highway bill amendment to divert 80 percent of fines paid by BP related to the 2010 oil spill to Gulf Coast restoration programs.

Manchin also said he didn’t speak to the president. “No, I did not. They knew my position and I think they were very respectful of that. We just respectfully disagree,” he said.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who had negotiated the 60-vote threshold, said Republicans “should stop treating it like a political football.”



“Half of the pipeline is already being built, and the company building the pipeline is submitting another application for the remainder of the route,” Reid said.

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) was confident in the final result. “We knew all about it. We set it at 60.”

White House spokesman Clark Stevens called the amendment, which would have OK’d Keystone despite an undetermined final route through Nebraska, “another misleading effort by Republicans to play politics with a pipeline project whose route has yet to be proposed.”

“As the president has made clear, we will ensure any project receives the important assessment it deserves, and the administration will base a decision to provide a permit on the completion of that review, a process that was unfortunately blocked by Republicans in December,” Stevens said. “Meanwhile we continue to take steps to support American-made energy, including doing all we can to expedite construction of a pipeline from Cushing, Okla., to refineries along the Gulf Coast.

Adam Snider contributed to this report.

This article first appeared on POLITICO Pro at 6:41 p.m. on March 8, 2012.