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Three years ago, Joe Biden fired me.
Neither my colleagues nor I knew that the president had this power. We learned of that difficult situation when he signed an executive order canceling his Keystone XL pipeline. For his 11,000 people working on this project, it meant layoffs. For me, that meant returning to my farm in Texas and raising my three sons with no income.
We often hear that “construction jobs are always temporary,” and that's true to some extent. When the economy is healthy, talented construction workers are lining up to get the next job while working full time to finish their current job.
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As a pipeline welder, I usually had a job guaranteed for years. President Joe Biden's Keystone decision undone all of that. After the president made his position clear, no one tried to build the pipeline.
Biden revoked the federal permit for the Keystone XL pipeline hours after taking office. (Jason Franson/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
But this isn't just about me and my colleagues. This is not just a story in our industry. Biden's decision affected all Americans. Prices for everything went up, including gas, groceries, and electricity.
You don't need an advanced economics degree to understand that when the supply of energy is limited, prices rise. When energy becomes expensive, everything becomes expensive. And the first domino fell the day we were laid off.
More than just a 3,000-mile pipeline network stretching from Canada to the United States, Keystone represents a much larger assault on energy independence. According to Biden's logic, it's wrong to build pipelines with our most powerful allies, but it's okay to import oil and gas from adversaries like Venezuela.
No one explained why it would be preferable to lay off American energy workers while allowing the expansion of the foreign energy workforce. Or why we are losing our jobs to fight climate change while Iran is hiring more oil and gas workers.
Some might say that our dismissal was not a surprise and that we should have been prepared for it. After all, Biden made it clear during his 2020 campaign that he wanted to cancel the domestic energy industry. He even bragged about it. He told young climate change activists, “Look into my eyes. I guarantee you. I guarantee you, we're going to phase out fossil fuels.”
Like all of his other orders and regulations to punish fossil fuels, canceling Keystone was just a campaign promise. I'm not surprised, but I wish the results would have convinced him to change course.
Look at what's happened since then. The cost of living has increased for American working families, the weakening of the American energy industry has exacerbated wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, and emergency oil supplies have fallen to dangerously low levels.
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Russia and Iran are more powerful and wealthier now than they were when Biden took office, and all Americans should be concerned that this is all because of petty politics. If my job is a political pawn, so can yours. We should all be concerned when the president goes after us for political reasons and ignores the damage to the national economy and our security.
On January 24, 2017, opponents of the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines protested President Donald Trump's executive order to advance construction at Lafayette Park next to the White House in Washington, DC. Hold a meeting. (Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)
This is not a pity party. Losing your job is something that many people experience, regardless of industry. Many of us find work in other fields and my 30 years of experience in this field helped me find work as an inspector in other fields.
However, the damage will be felt in the future. Younger generations have dropped out and the talent pool has shrunk. We are not training the next generation of professionals.
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America has weathered storms before and come out on top, but everyone understands that we have entered a new phase of politics, where the president and his team wage war on the people for political purposes. think. We will get through this, but sadly we will end up even poorer and weaker.
3 years is a long time. No one disputes that we are better off now than we were before. It may be too much to ask that we go back to what used to work, stop attacking this vital industry, and leave workers alone. My guess is that most Americans would agree that this is the best decision for Biden if he truly loves the country he intends to lead for another four years.
