{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.thune.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ID=82bfd283-4009-4045-be73-19870d92eee8", "Thune Discusses Keystone Vote, Climate Change, Immigration On Fox News Sunday", "2014-11-16", "2014", "2014-11", "Republican", "House", "SD", "John Thune", "T000250", "www.thune.senate.gov", null, null, "legacy", "WASHINGTON, D.C.\u2014U.S. Senator John Thune (R-South Dakota), Chairman of the Senate Republican Conference, today appeared on \u201cFox News Sunday\u201d with Chris Wallace to discuss the upcoming Senate vote on Keystone, the president\u2019s one-sided emissions deal with China, and the president\u2019s potential executive action on immigration.\r\nClick here to watch Thune's full interview.  \r\nOn the upcoming Senate vote on the Keystone XL pipeline: \r\n\u201cIf the Democrats were serious about this, we would have voted on this years ago. This thing has been hanging around now for six years. There\u2019s been five environmental impact reviews of the Keystone pipeline, all of which have come back and said it would have minimal impact on the environment. The president\u2019s own State Department says it would support over 40,000 jobs. In my state of South Dakota, three to four thousand jobs, $100 million in earnings, $20 million in property tax revenue. This is an issue \u2013 a no-brainer in the eyes of the American public, which finally, finally is coming to the floor of the United States Senate, not because they\u2019re worried about American jobs, but because they're worried about the job of a senator from Louisiana.\u201d\r\n\u201cThe Canadians are going to produce the oil. The only question is whether or not America\u2019s going to benefit from it and we\u2019re going to get the jobs that come with it and whether we\u2019re going to replace the oil, the same type of oil that\u2019s coming in from Venezuela, which is what the State Department said this project would do.\u201d\r\nOn the president\u2019s one-sided emissions deal with China:\r\n\u201cWhat the president agreed to was a bad deal. It\u2019s all pain and no gain for the American people. It\u2019s one-sided, it\u2019s non-binding. There\u2019s a hope that someday down the road, the Chinese might, might actually reduce, at the same time the United States makes reductions twice at what we\u2019re planning right now. And what that means is, a 90 percent increase in utility rates for people, low-income people in places like South Dakota.\r\n\u201cAnd I guess what I would say to that is, if you trust the Chinese on something like this, I\u2019ve got some oceanfront property here in Sioux Falls, South Dakota for you, because this is a one-sided \u2013 and it is a non-binding deal that we have agreed to, and I don\u2019t expect that we\u2019re ever going to see China agree to it in the end.\u201d\r\nOn the president\u2019s potential executive action on immigration:\r\n\u201cI think Republicans, Chris, are looking at different options about how best to respond to the president\u2019s unilateral action, which many people believe is unconstitutional, unlawful action on this particular issue. But my concern is \u2013 shutting the government down doesn\u2019t solve the problem. My concern is what happens if we end up shutting down what could be a record of legislative accomplishment that\u2019s there for the taking if the president would choose cooperation instead of conflict. This president right now is choosing friction, partisanship instead of cooperation. There\u2019s an opportunity for us to get some things done here, and instead the president is going down this unilateral path, and it\u2019s going to make it very hard for us to get anything done on immigration or any other issue, for that matter.\u201d\u00a0\r\n###", 1, "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z", "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.thune.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ID=82bfd283-4009-4045-be73-19870d92eee8"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 0.6321310065686703, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}