The $7 billion Canada-to-U.S. oil pipeline that vaulted to the upper echelon of energy politics this fall remains one of the only issues keeping Congress in session heading into a Christmas week.

With a massive blueprint to fund the government through October set to pass both the House and Senate by tomorrow (see related story), Republicans today continued to push for a fast-tracking of the Keystone XL pipeline as imperative to win their votes for a White House-backed payroll tax cut extension.

House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) told reporters this morning that he would insist on language setting a 60-day deadline for an Obama administration ruling on the XL line, a top priority of oil industry and business interests eager to secure its 800,000-barrel daily import capacity of Canadian oil sands crude.

If Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) were to send a two-month extension of payroll tax cuts back to the House following an expected weekend session, Boehner said today, "we will make changes to it, and I will guarantee you that the Keystone pipeline will be in there when it goes back to the United States Senate."

Republicans have spent the week hammering at Reid and the White House for resisting their pipeline plan, publicly tallying the number of upper-chamber Democrats who support a quick federal permit for the project despite their party leaders' insistence on a longer environmental review for it.

Boehner's aides today posted a fresh roundup of pro-Keystone XL comments made by Democrats "in the week since the leader of their party said he would 'reject' Keystone's inclusion in a jobs bill extending payroll tax relief and unemployment insurance." The use of that verb by President Obama last week, rather than a direct veto threat, has galvanized GOP hopes that their pipeline provision could remain in a final payroll tax-cut deal and heightened the prospects for congressional debate on the issue in the run-up to Christmas Day (E&ENews PM, Dec. 7).

The oil industry today lent its support to Boehner's insistence on keeping Keystone XL on the table. The State Department's postponement last month of a final permit decision for the pipeline until 2013, citing the need for an alternative route review in Nebraska, was a sop to environmentalists who "essentially oppose all consumption of oil and natural gas," American Petroleum Institute President Jack Gerard told reporters today.

"We will continue to press for a favorable outcome" on the pipeline, Gerard added, "as soon as possible."

Conservationists who marked the delay of State's pipeline ruling as a major victory were similarly resolved today to beat back the GOP provision as payroll tax negotiations lurch into next week. "The fight is not over," Natural Resources Defense Council President Frances Beinecke said in a statement.

As the pipeline remained the most enticing cause for conservatives to push after a final 2012 spending bill erased the bulk of their efforts to beat back White House environmental policies, another provision attached to the GOP's payroll tax plan remained on the table as well. That add-on, which would roll back U.S. EPA emissions limits for industrial boilers, may have decreased in practical value for Republicans as the agency eases it to assuage industry concerns -- but defanging the impact of the so-called Boiler MACT rule ultimately could make it a more acceptable rider for Democrats to include in a final payroll tax agreement.