President Obama “has officially vetoed a bill to approve the Keystone XL pipeline, marking his third rejection of congressionally approved legislation during his six years in office,” NBC News reports.

“Congress could override the veto if two-thirds of both the House and the Senate vote to do so, but lawmakers aren’t expected to reach that threshold.”

A bill to approve the Keystone XL pipeline cleared a major hurdle in the Senate by a 62 to 35 vote, bringing the Republican-controlled Congress a step closer to a confrontation with the White House, Roll Call reports.

Senate Republicans would need 67 votes to override a promised veto by President Obama.

The White House says President Obama would veto Keystone pipeline legislation, the AP reports.

A spokesman says there is a “well-established” review process that is being run by the State Department that should not be undermined by legislation.

First Read: “Beyond today’s drama in the House, it’s also the start of the new GOP-controlled U.S. Senate. But here’s something to chew on: Republicans now have complete control of Congress, and the first thing they want to get done is … the Keystone XL pipeline? That’s the statement they want to make after their midterm victories?”

“We get the politics of Keystone; we’ve been covering the issue for years now. But it’s such small ball — and it’s even smaller now in the midst of the lowest gas prices in years and 200,000-plus jobs being created each month. We’ve got to ask: All that money spent on the midterms, all that jockeying for control of the Senate, and first real statement from the new GOP majority is Keystone? It’s small-ball politics, whether you’re on the right, left or in the middle. It’s certainly no Contract with America.”

“Senate Democrats narrowly defeated a bill 59 to 41 that would have approved the construction of the Keystone XL oil pipeline, rebuffing their Democratic colleague, Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA), who had hoped to muscle the legislation through in advance of her uphill runoff election fight back home,” the New York Times reports.

“The battle over approving the pipeline, which will carry petroleum from the oil sands of Canada to the Gulf Coast of Texas, ultimately became a proxy war for the Louisiana Senate seat, where Ms. Landrieu and Republican Representative Bill Cassidy are locked in fight for votes in their oil-rich state ahead of the Dec. 6 runoff election.”

Roll Call: “Republican leaders plan to bring the pipeline legislation back up next year, when GOP reinforcements appear certain to bring it over the line and to President Obama’s desk.”

[speech_bubble type=”std” subtype=”a” icon=”pwdome.jpg” name=””]President Obama got the result he wanted. He doesn’t have to show his hand on Keystone XL until next year. [/speech_bubble]

“The White House played somewhat coy last week — blasting the congressional approval as an improper short-circuit of the review process currently underway at the U.S. State Department without explicitly saying that Mr. Obama would veto the bill,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

“The hedging on the Keystone issue leaves Mr. Obama’s options open. He could kick the Keystone bill back to Congress, where it’s very unlikely to clear the two-thirds vote threshold needed to override. Or he could sign it — or simply allow it to sit on his desk and become law without signing it, another option available to him — and take heat from progressives who have been loudly urging the him to ax the project.”

The New York Times reports that people “familiar with the president’s thinking say that in 2015 he might use Keystone as a bargaining chip: He would offer Republicans approval of it in exchange for approval of one of his policies.”

Jonathan Chait: “The superficial logic of a Keystone trade makes sense. Obama doesn’t really care about the project much one way or the other. He regards it as a sideshow with negligible effects on climate change. Republicans, on the other hand, constantly implore him to approve it. That would seem, on the surface, to lay the basis for a logical trade of one kind or another.”

“The trouble is, there’s little reason to think Republicans actually care about approving Keystone. Its value to them lies entirely in its use as a talking point. The pipeline is an easy, tangible example of a thing they propose to create jobs. In fact, the number of jobs the pipeline would create is pathetically negligible — around 2,000 jobs a year for two years to build it, after which maintaining the pipeline would require about 35 jobs. But the number of jobs Keystone creates is not the point. The point is that it sounds like something that creates jobs, because describing an actual tangible project makes it easy to visualize how people would be put to work on it.”

Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) and other supporters of the Keystone XL oil pipeline “are stuck at 59 votes — one vote shy of the supermajority they need to move their bill forward on Tuesday,” The Hill reports.

However, Landrieu remained adamant on Monday evening that she had the 60 votes.

Politico: “The parlor game on Capitol Hill regarding the 60th vote has become so intense that Democrats merely rumored to be thinking about voting ‘yes’ have found themselves under attack from pipeline opponents on social media.”