In what will come as no surprise, President Obama is likely to veto this the House’s Keystone XL bill recently approved by the Senate after weeks-long debate on amendments.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell advised against the action, “There’s a lot we can get done together if the president puts his famous pen to use signing bills rather than vetoing legislation his liberal allies don’t like.”
The political reality of the divided government best explains the Democrat strategy in the Senate. They seem intent on filibustering and derailing legislation that has bipartisan support in order to prevent a possible override of an Obama veto.
President Obama has vetoed fewer bills then his recent predecessors. George W. H. Bush exercised the presidential veto 44 times in one term, while Bill Clinton and G. W. Bush vetoed 37 and 12 bills, in their respective two term presidencies.
FiveThirtyEight‘s Leah Libresco calculates Obama has also vetoed a lower percentage of total bills that have come before him. However, while the the XL veto will only be his third since taking office in 2009, a flurry of bills passing out of the new Republican-controlled Congress will virtually guarantee a great many vetoes to come.
