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Men held for trying to rob Aaron Schock's home Two men are being held on $70,000 bond each after they allegedly tried to rob Rep. Aaron Schock’s home. Illinois’ Peoria Journal Star reported on Monday that Derek H. Martin, 24, and Adam F. Bennett, 27, were charged with attempted residential burglary. Martin was also charged with felony possession of a firearm. Story Continued Below The home involved is rented by Schock; he is not the owner of the property. The two were allegedly caught red-handed when a realty company called police after men were reported to be seen in the vacant home. Prosecutor David Kenny said the suspects were found holding a handgun and a Journal Star article that detailed the property as usually being vacant. Schock, a Republican who represents Illinois’ 18th Congressional District, was not home at the time. “The article got printed that a home on the north end of town was vacant. That, to me, is a want ad for anybody, regardless of who lives there, to break in,” Schock said, according to the Star. “I don’t have an issue with people trashing on me. I think the question it begs is, ‘What was the news?’ And was it really warranted to advertise that a home was vacant?” The court appearance comes at a time when Schock has been in the media spotlight after reports surfaced revealing his lavish spending and “Downton Abbey”-inspired congressional office.

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House sends Keystone bill to White House doom The House easily passed a bill on Wednesday that would allow construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, setting up President Barack Obama to issue the third veto of his presidency. The vote capped off a four-year Republican effort to force Obama to approve the Alberta-to-Texas oil artery, but the weeks of debate in the Senate and two votes in the House this year on the $8 billion project are likely be little more than a political exercise. Keystone backers lack the votes to override the veto. Story Continued Below Following the expected veto, the fate of the Keystone will remain solidly in the hands of the Obama administration, which has spent six years examining the oil sands pipeline project but has set no deadline to make a decision. The 270-152 vote in the House saw 29 Democrats voting in favor of the measure, while every GOP House member except one voted to push Keystone through. The White House has steadfastly opposed the pipeline bill on the grounds that it would wrongly strip authority from the president to judge whether cross-border infrastructure projects are in the national interest and would prematurely end a long-running Obama administration review that is entering its last lap at the State Department. And though Obama hasn’t tipped his hand on whether he would approve the Keystone project, he has expressed skepticism over the impact on job creation that its backers have touted and questioned whether the additional fuel would remain in the U.S. to benefit consumers here. Still, Republicans held out hope that they might change Obama’s mind before he uncaps the veto pen. “[T]he president shouldn’t stand in the way of creating those good American jobs and that important energy security,” House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) told reporters before the vote. And earlier on Wednesday, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) accused Obama of standing far outside the mainstream on the pipeline. “Keystone has been reviewed and approved several times; … instead of listening to people, the president’s standing with a bunch of left-fringe extremists and anarchists,” he told reporters. Democratic leaders in both chambers are confident they can keep the Keystone bill from winning the two-thirds support needed to overcome Obama’s threatened rejection. Overriding the president would require four more Senate Democrats and 20 more House Democrats to join the GOP. House Energy and Commerce Chairman Fred Upton (D-Mich.) told reporters Wednesday that he anticipates Republicans would hold a vote to try to override Obama’s Keystone veto despite their slim chances of success. Another senior Energy and Commerce Republican, Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas), said that “if we’re close enough that it’s possible, I’d be a supporter of” trying to override Obama. Because it is the Senate’s version of the bill that is headed to the president, however, the Senate GOP would have to win an override vote before House Republicans could take their turn. Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.) said Republicans were considering a vote to override a veto. “We may very well want to test to see if there is support to override,” he said. Environmental groups are watching the drama play out in Washington with increasing confidence that the president will ultimately deny the pipeline a border-crossing permit on climate change grounds, particularly after the Environmental Protection Agency carved out new political cover for such a decision. In comments on the pipeline’s environmental assessment, EPA said State should give “additional weight” to whether the sharp drop in oil prices since last summer would increase the pipeline’s environmental impact, making its fate more vital to ensure future production in the carbon-rich Canadian oil sands. State’s environmental report issued last year had said that high oil prices provided an incentive for oil companies to ship the fuel from the Alberta oil sands via truck or train even if the pipeline were not built. But with oil prices at roughly half the level than a year ago, the pipeline’s importance to the economics of the oil sands has grown, opponents say. Obama, who has turned his attention in the past two years to reining in greenhouse gases, has said a key test for the pipeline would be whether it significantly exacerbates climate change. “On the heels of the EPA’s confirmation that Keystone XL fails his climate test, we commend President Obama for his commitment to veto the bill and urge him to reject the pipeline permit once and for all,” Tiernan Sittenfeld, a League of Conservation Voters senior vice president, said in a statement. Secretary of State John Kerry could send Obama his recommendation on whether the pipeline is in the national interest — a broader question than environmental impact, examining Keystone’s geopolitical and economic value — any day now. But the president is not required to make a final ruling by a certain time. “It’s an ongoing process that doesn’t have a deadline,” State spokeswoman Jen Psaki told reporters when pressed on the department’s long-running Keystone review. Still, most observers expect Obama to settle on the pipeline’s future before Republicans set up another politically risky veto by trying to attach Keystone to a spending bill or other legislation considered must-pass.

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DHS funding fight threatens Secret Service, FEMA The way things are going in Congress, the Department of Homeland Security could be lucky if it gets just enough funding next week so it doesn’t have to shut its doors. But in reality, a continuing resolution is just about the worst way that Congress could solve the funding problem, short of actually shutting the department down. Story Continued Below Customs and Border Protection wouldn’t be able to upgrade its mobile video systems to patrol the Rio Grande Valley. The Federal Emergency Management Agency wouldn’t be able to write the grants that pay the salaries of state and local emergency management officials. It might also have to cancel a series of training workshops next month for first responders. And the 2016 presidential candidates have a stake in this, too: the Secret Service won’t be able to train the security details that are supposed to protect them on the campaign trail. It won’t be able to start training the agents who will be assigned to President Barack Obama when he leaves office, either. Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson has been warning Capitol Hill of the downsides of a continuing resolution, telling lawmakers that short-term funding won’t solve his problems. A continuing resolution wouldn’t include any of the money the department is supposed to get for new initiatives — it just keeps last year’s funding on autopilot. And it can’t issue the grants that help pay for emergency response and equipment upgrades, as well as the ones that fund surveillance cameras to look for terrorists in New York. With the department’s funding scheduled to run out after Feb. 27, there is no constructive solution that is anywhere close to happening. The White House and Republican leaders aren’t talking to each other about a deal. And a “clean” funding bill isn’t in the cards either; even if House Speaker John Boehner wanted to bring one up, Republicans say there aren’t enough votes to pass it, even with Democrats’ help. That leaves the non-solution — a short-term continuing resolution — as the only solution that stands a chance. It’s also the only one that Congress could pass quickly. Once lawmakers return next week, the House and the Senate will only have four legislative days to solve the problem, not nearly enough time to solve their bitter disagreements over the Republican efforts to block Obama’s immigration executive actions – a set of sweeping directives that have been temporarily halted by a federal judge in Texas. If Congress can’t do any better than a series of continuing resolutions, the damage will mount quickly. The Secret Service won’t have the $21 million it needs to train the security agents for the 2016 campaign and purchase new vehicles and equipment, or the $4 million for the training of Obama’s post-White House security detail, according to spokesman Ed Donovan. And it won’t get the $25 million it has been promised to make the changes an advisory panel recommended after last year’s security breach at the White House, including 85 more agents to guard Obama and 200 new uniformed officers to protect other facilities. There’s no way to know how many presidential candidates the Secret Service will have to protect, Donovan says — that’s a decision that will be made by Johnson in consultation with the top congressional leaders. But it has to be ready to guard as many as 10 candidates, he said, and “we can’t just throw them out there on the campaign trail.” Customs and Border Patrol wouldn’t have the $90 million it needs for mobile video equipment in the Rio Grande Valley — a response to the influx of unaccompanied immigrant children last year — or $12 million to upgrade the X-ray equipment for screening cargo at the ports, according to CBP Commissioner Gil Kerlikowske. A short-term continuing resolution would also make it harder to deal with contractors, Kerlikowske said, because “they don’t know if you have funding for two or four months.” And FEMA officials say they won’t be able to issue the grants to pay for more than 1,800 firefighter positions throughout the country, replace aging fire vehicles, or provide new breathing gear for fire departments. They’re also warning that state and local emergency departments are under strain — and might have to start furloughing their own people — because FEMA hasn’t been able to fund the Emergency Management Performance Grant, which pays for many of the local officials’ salaries. There’s no guarantee that Congress will even get its act together long enough to pass a continuing resolution, now that some Republicans — including Boehner — are talking openly about letting the department shut down and blaming it on Senate Democrats. And publicly, at least, GOP leaders are happy to keep the staredown going. “The pressure mounts on the Democrats too,” House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) told POLITICO. “I think everyone in leadership has made it clear that we’ve done our jobs.”

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Harry Reid: 'I'm running' in 2016 Sen. Harry Reid summoned dozens of staffers to the Senate’s Mansfield Room Tuesday and delivered a clear message: He’s running for reelection next year. The comments are in part aimed at putting to rest growing speculation inside the Senate that the 75-year-old Nevada Democrat — badly hurt from a painful injury to his right eye — would call it quits after nearly three decades in the chamber. The Senate minority leader faces what could be a difficult reelection race next year, plus his would-be successors are ready to run the Democratic Caucus the moment he calls it quits. Story Continued Below But Reid told roughly 50 aides at an unusual all-staff briefing just off the Senate floor that he is definitely running in 2016, prompting a round of applause, according to attendees. And in a brief interview with POLITICO, Reid made clear that he’s directed his top political aide, Rebecca Lambe, to continue hiring senior-level staff, including a campaign manager. “I talked to Rebecca this week, they are still interviewing people, the answer is yes,” Reid said when asked if he was 100 percent committed to running. Asked if there was anything that could change his mind, Reid said: “I’m running. You asked a question that has no answer. I’m going to run.” Reid’s unequivocal comments are a change since a news conference last month when he said that he planned to run “at this stage.” Reid, of course, has ample time to decide if he wants to ultimately retire at the end of this Congress. He’s already been one of the longest-serving Democratic leaders, with some in the party eager for fresh blood, plus he would likely have to mount a vigorous campaign to win a sixth term. Republicans are trying to field a top-tier candidate against him, with GOP Gov. Brian Sandoval at the top of the list of potential candidates, though few believe the governor will mount a bid. It also remains to be seen how Reid’s recovery progresses. Reid, who has a large white bandage covering his right eye and a deep purple bruise on his jaw, is slated to undergo a second eye surgery Wednesday in an attempt to help him regain sight in his injured eye. The freakish accident occurred on New Year’s Day at his home outside of Las Vegas, where a rubber resistance band Reid was using to exercise snapped, sending him crashing into cabinets in his bathroom, breaking bones around his eye and smashing four of his ribs. He has missed much of the first several weeks of the new Congress as he’s recovered at his condo at the Ritz-Carlton in Washington. After his second surgery Wednesday, Reid’s office said, the senator will spend the rest of the week absent from the Senate. He’s expected to return once the Senate reconvenes Feb. 23 following a Presidents Day recess. Reid is acting like the eye injury has not altered his plans — or his sense of humor. As he walked by a reporter in the halls of the Capitol, he pointed to his eye and said, “I’m keeping my eye on you.”

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Net neutrality: A lobbying bonanza Whether you view net neutrality rules as a government takeover of the Internet or the only way to save the Web from corporate meddling, one thing is certain: The issue has been a boon to Washington lobbyists, lawyers and activists — and they’re poised to continue cashing in for years to come. The fierce debate over FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler’s proposal, which is headed for a commission vote Thursday, has proven to be a prime business opportunity for K Street, as some of the biggest U.S. companies and their trade groups try to sway opinion at the agency and on Capitol Hill. Lawmakers and consumer groups also have seized on the issue — and the passion it evokes — to drum up cash and support. Story Continued Below Wheeler’s plan would regulate broadband like a utility to ensure Internet providers don’t block or slow Web traffic. While the chairman appears to have the commission votes to advance his vision, telecom giants that oppose burdensome new rules are preparing to challenge the agency in court, and GOP lawmakers are readying a political counter-offensive — meaning the Beltway’s net neutrality feeding frenzy is only just beginning. “Every time we’ve had something like this before, whether it’s in telecom or banking or health care, it becomes a lobbying and fundraising extravaganza, and net neutrality is no different,” said Bill Allison, senior fellow at the Sunlight Foundation. “When Congress gets going, that’s when you’re going to see the fundraisers … off specific issues like this.” Major Internet service providers AT&T, Comcast and Verizon are among the biggest opponents of Wheeler’s plan, and they have been fighting it intensely. They spent a combined $44.2 million to lobby Washington on a host of issues last year, with net neutrality among their top agenda items, according to company disclosures. Executives like AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson, Comcast CEO Brian Roberts and Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam have personally met with Wheeler to press their views. Silicon Valley giants like Google and Facebook have backed strong net neutrality rules, primarily via their trade group, the Internet Association. But the debate has also drawn in fresh-faced tech players like Wordpress.com operator Automattic, crafts website Etsy and funding platform Kickstarter. The firms have taken an active role, working closely with groups like Engine Advocacy to press the case for robust open Internet protections in Washington. With the FCC now poised to pass Wheeler’s proposal on a party-line vote, the telecom industry appears increasingly ready to sue, a move that would touch off another — potentially lucrative — chapter for participating D.C. law firms. AT&T’s Stephenson said this month that “all of us in the industry” may ask courts to halt Wheeler’s order. The legal challenge, once it gets underway, is expected to span multiple years and eventually could land at the Supreme Court. “There are many interested groups and constituencies who have been following this, who will be actively involved no matter what happens,” said Peter Karanjia, a telecom lawyer at Davis Wright Tremaine LLP and a former FCC official. “There could be skirmishes over which court hears the inevitable legal challenge … and there will probably be filings in different appellate courts.” Congress has emerged as another battleground on net neutrality, providing a new front in the lobbying war. House and Senate Republicans recently launched investigations into White House interference with the FCC’s decision making, and GOP lawmakers are drafting legislation that would replace Wheeler’s order with weaker net neutrality rules. Republican leaders, meantime, want to update the country’s guiding telecommunications laws — a process that could redefine the scope of the FCC’s regulatory power. The congressional efforts create new opportunities to shape the debate, particularly for the major telecom carriers, which donate extensively to congressional campaigns — and write regular checks to lawmakers who serve on key committees overseeing the industry. On the tech side, companies like Etsy, Tumblr and Lyft have mobilized, launching the Internet Freedom Business Alliance, which is focused on winning new net neutrality converts among skeptical conservatives. “It’s similar to any other high-profile, in-the-moment issue that’s had years of work behind it,” said Andrew Shore, a lobbyist at Jochum Shore & Trossevin PC who heads the new group. “We’ll continue to work with Congress to make sure that the strong rule to protect the open Internet stays in place, regardless of who’s producing those rules.” Some lawmakers have tried to use the net neutrality issue to rally their political base. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) — a fierce critic of broadband regulation — regularly shares comments and videos slamming the FCC’s actions on Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) last year recorded a video for the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, which redirected users to a way to donate to net neutrality advocates. After President Barack Obama publicly endorsed utility-style regulation of broadband in November, Organizing for Action, the group spun off from his re-election campaign, blasted a statement to supporters touting the news — and included a donation link. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which raises money for House Democrats, did the same. Consumer advocacy groups have also sought to tap into the net neutrality passions of their supporters. Free Press, which has pushed the FCC to embrace tough broadband regulation, launched a campaign in May to raise $50,000 to “save the Internet” and said it could achieve a matching donation if it reached its goal. The donor, which wasn’t revealed publicly, was the Sy Syms Foundation. Another group, Demand Progress, received $175,000 last year to protect the open Internet from a fund supported by the Ford Foundation. The group has collected contact information from people who sign its petitions to recruit them for future campaigns. “Are we fundraising off net neutrality? Absolutely,” said Free Press President Craig Aaron, noting his group has put that money back into issue advocacy. But, he added: “If there’s a ‘business’ of net neutrality, folks like Free Press and our allies are seriously outgunned.”

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Hostage death exposes problems in U.S. response The death of aid worker Kayla Mueller is fueling charges that bureaucratic infighting and poor communication among U.S. government agencies have hampered efforts to save U.S. hostages held by ISIL or other militant groups. Some family members of hostages say the government’s system for dealing with hostage negotiations lacks coordination and leaves desperate families in the dark. At the White House, the Obama administration faced new questions Wednesday about whether it did all it could to save Mueller, a 26-year-old peace activist from Arizona. Story Continued Below On Capitol Hill, Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.), who has pressed the White House to streamline the handling of international hostage crises, told POLITICO he will soon introduce legislation that would shift leadership from the FBI to a governmentwide coordinator. The coordinator, he said, might put the Defense Department or the Central Intelligence Agency in charge of responding to a hostage-taking that takes place in a conflict zone overseas. With their larger footprints abroad, those agencies stand a better chance of avoiding the bureaucratic tangles and inertia that have plagued the U.S. government’s response to the plight of captured Americans, the congressman argues. “The administration has to have a coherent policy that uses the people who have the best chance of getting American and allied hostages home alive,” said Hunter. “That’s not the FBI, unless the hostages are in the Capitol building or somewhere else in the United States.” Hunter contends that the FBI is ill-suited to investigating and resolving hostage situations that take place in chaotic places like Syria, Libya or Yemen. “If the FBI wants to close down some of the stuff they’re doing here in the U.S. and move 2,000 agents to each of these hot spots, I guess that could work out — in the next 20 years or so,” the congressman said sarcastically. “What we’re talking about is actually having a shot at hostage recovery and the only guys who have a shot at it are the ones running networks tracking down terrorists and [their] organizations,” such as the military or the CIA, Hunter added. “What you don’t want are people who are not out there talking to them every day, paying people off and getting information.” Families who’ve pressed or are still pressing for the release of loved ones overseas seem to disagree about whether there’s a major problem with U.S. hostage recovery efforts or the FBI’s role. The mother of James Foley — an American journalist held hostage in Syria for more than a year and a half before being beheaded by ISIL in August — said Wednesday she doesn’t fault the FBI in particular but does favor a strong governmentwide coordinator to handle hostage cases. “I think the FBI is good at getting information. I think the problem is they didn’t know what to do with it,” Diane Foley said in an interview. “Everybody’s hands seemed to be tied, and nobody was accountable to get them home. … It was really bungled big time.” Mueller’s family expressed praise for the FBI in a statement released Tuesday. “We would like to thank the FBI agents that have been working with … the family. They have been amazing,” said Lori Lyon, one of Kayla Mueller’s aunts. By contrast, the parents of freelance journalist Austin Tice — still missing after being captured in Syria in 2012 — complain of disarray in the response of government agencies, including the FBI. “Amongst the agencies, the FBI, the intelligence community, the State Department and some elements of the White House, information sharing is very poor,” Tice’s father, Mark, said last week at the National Press Club. “I’m not telling you secrets because each of those agencies have told us the same thing. That’s something that needs to be fixed. … You need to [have] clear driving lanes. Who’s responsible for what. Who’s in charge. Who’s accountable. It’s not there yet.” Tice’s parents have called for the same type of post Hunter’s legislation would establish — a permanent, designated office in the government to coordinate response to hostage-taking overseas. “It’s appalling to us that no such entity currently exists,” Tice’s mother, Debra, said. “There is no agency, no person solely committed to the singular objective of the safe return of the hostage. That has to change.” The Tices have also complained that the FBI reluctantly shares information with families, citing classified information concerns. However, families of U.S. military prisoners whose cases are handled by the Pentagon have received detailed intelligence briefings, a Hunter aide said. Last fall, after complaints from hostages’ families about their dealings with the government, the Obama administration launched a “comprehensive review” of how such cases are addressed. However, there are questions about the depth of that review. A letter the Pentagon sent in November seems to pre-suppose that the FBI will retain its key position in hostage cases. “This review will seek to integrate innovation and non-traditional solutions to result in recommended actions to improve interagency coordination and strengthen the whole-of-government approach led by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the State Department,” Undersecretary of Defense Christine Wormuth wrote to Hunter. At the White House, President Obama said that a U.S. military raid he ordered in July was aimed at rescuing Mueller, in addition to others being held captive in Syria. Press secretary Josh Earnest said the president did not dawdle in green-lighting the rescue mission, as some reports suggested. No prisoners were found by the U.S. commandos who stormed the site. “I can confirm for you there was no delay in the president’s decision to order this military raid as soon as he and his military advisers and his national security team had confidence, based on a high degree of confidence, where exactly she was,” Earnest said. “And that is why the president can say unequivocally that he and his administration and this government did everything that we could to try to secure the safe return of Kayla Mueller.” The White House and other administration officials did not respond to questions about what actions they took in Mueller’s case between the July raid and the family’s receipt of an email over the weekend with photographic proof that Mueller was dead. ISIL has claimed she was killed in a Jordanian air raid, but Earnest said he doubts that is true. The drive to shift overseas hostage cases away from the FBI and toward the military dovetails with a recurring GOP critique of the Obama administration: that it treats the battle against terrorist groups too much like a traditional law enforcement operation rather than a military campaign. A White House spokesman said he would have no comment on Hunter’s legislation until it is officially introduced. However, a U.S. official defended the FBI’s role in the process and called the congressman’s proposal misguided. “I don’t know where the congressman is going because it doesn’t make any sense,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “To say the FBI ought to be taken away because [they’re] nice or whatever doesn’t make any sense because it’s not [the FBI’s]. … It’s an interagency effort where it’s all hands on deck.” The official said the FBI brings a “skill set” in dealing with families, handling ransom demands, conducting interviews and collecting evidence, but works closely with the military in conflict zones. A former FBI official said the July raid to try to rescue Mueller and other hostages confirms that the FBI’s role doesn’t inhibit assertive action to recover hostages. “What’s the problem? The FBI didn’t stand in the way of multiple attempts to rescue American hostages,” former FBI Assistant Director for International Operations Tom Fuentes said. “The fact that [Mueller] got killed or wasn’t rescued had nothing to do with whether the military or any one agency had the lead. If the intelligence is there, the president is going be the one that has to authorize the mission because it is so risky and requires so much coordination.” Some officials suggested that the challenge in recovering hostages held in Syria isn’t a problem of interagency cooperation or communication. They say it centers on very limited intelligence about where prisoners are being held and by whom. “It is a tremendously challenging collection environment for all of our intelligence agencies because we’re not present on the ground there [in Syria] in the traditional way,” National Counterterrorism Center Director Nicholas Rasmussen said Wednesday at a House Homeland Security Committee hearing on the so-called foreign fighter threat. “We don’t have the footprint on the ground that we would have in many places around the world with a diplomatic, military and intelligence presence. And so, we’re forced to be more creative, more innovative, more entrepreneurial in trying to close that gap.” “I would not argue, though, that we have closed the gap on where we need to be in terms of our understanding with granularity what’s going on on the ground in Syria,” Rasmussen added. Still, some officials who’ve handled hostage cases say Hunter’s proposal for a dedicated leader of hostage recovery efforts outside the FBI has merit. “It’s probably not a bad idea,” said former CIA officer Bob Baer. “The problem with leaving the FBI in charge is they are looking for an indictment and that isn’t really tied to your first interest. We don’t need to worry about indicting Jihad John. … The problem with having the police in charge of this is they’re really not geared towards intelligence collection.” Former National Security Council official Dane Egli said he doesn’t object to the FBI’s current role but believes there is wisdom in designating a government-wide coordinator. “You need a neutral arbiter who can bring together interlocutors across the interagency, which is a complex web sometimes,” he said. “The point is to have a more visible, active coordination.” Hunter said he plans to offer the legislation as an amendment to this year’s National Defense Authorization Act. He said he expects the measure to have wide support in the House Armed Services Committee, on which he serves. But he also expects a fight from others on Capitol Hill, including the FBI. “I expect them to be even more resistant than they have been to giving up any turf, even if it’s for the betterment of the families, the hostages or our country,” Hunter said.

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John Kerry, Afghan President lay groundwork for postwar relations U.S. and Afghan leaders laid the groundwork Monday for new relations between the two countries linked for years as war partners, including plans to seek American funding to maintain an Afghan security force of 352,000 and discussions about future U.S. troop levels as the war winds down. The all-day session, at Camp David in Maryland's bucolic Catoctin mountains, included dozens of U.S. and Afghan officials, including Secretary of State John Kerry, Defense Secretary Ash Carter, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and chief executive Abdullah Abdullah. The talks were aimed at relaunching a U.S.-Afghan relationship strained by nearly 14-years of war and America's often-testy relations with the former president, Hamid Karzai. During the meeting, the U.S. agreed to seek funding through 2017 for an Afghan force of 352,000, a level the nation has yet to meet. U.S. administration officials said the Afghan government is trying to improve recruiting to make up for security forces who leave the service or simply abandon their jobs. They also agreed to require the Afghan government to complete specific reforms and meet other milestones in order to receive up to $800 million. U.S. officials said the Afghans suggested the incentive-based funding idea. The leaders of the two nations also said they would restart routine ministerial-level Defense and State Department meetings. Ghani is expected to meet with President Barack Obama on Tuesday, a meeting during which officials expect the U.S. to make clear its decision to slow the pace of the withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan. Obama has promised to pull all remaining troops out by the end of his presidency. But deficiencies in the Afghan security forces, heavy casualties in the ranks of the Afghan army and police, a fragile new government and fears that Islamic State fighters could gain a foothold in Afghanistan have combined to persuade Obama to slow the withdrawal.Instead of trimming the current U.S. force of 9,800 to 5,500 by the end of this year, U.S. officials say the administration now might keep many of them there well into 2016. Obama has said that after that, the U.S. will maintain only an embassy-based security force in Kabul of perhaps 1,000 troops. Ghani, who has expressed worries about Islamic State militants trying to gain a foothold in his country, has pressed to keep more U.S. troops there longer, but Obama has promised to end both wars in Afghanistan before his presidency ends in January 2017. During a visit to the Pentagon Monday, Ghani thanked U.S. troops and taxpayers for their sacrifices in nearly 14 years of war. He pledged that his impoverished country will not remain a burden to the West. "We do not now ask what the United States can do for us," Ghani said in remarks meant to bolster the Obama administration's conviction that he is a reliable partner worth supporting over the long term. "We want to say what Afghanistan will do for itself and for the world," he added. "And that means we are going to put our house in order."It was a poignant setting for the start of Ghani's visit. On Sept. 11, 2001, terrorists hijacked an American Airlines jetliner and flew it into the Pentagon, killing all aboard and 125 people in the building. The U.S. responded to the attacks on Washington and New York's World Trade Center by invading Afghanistan a month later, beginning the longest war in American history. On arrival at Camp David, Ghani emphasized what he called a new phase of the U.S.-Afghan relationship. "It's time for Afghanistan to reciprocate the gift that the United States has so generously provided over the years," he said. "Reciprocating the gift means owning our problems, solving them and asking of ourselves what we must do for ourselves and for the region." At the Pentagon ceremony, Carter praised Ghani as a committed leader who knows that "Afghanistan's future is ultimately for the Afghans to grab hold of and for Afghans to decide." Those themes emphasized by Carter and Ghani - that Kabul's new leaders are more reliable and appreciative of U.S. assistance and that the U.S. alone cannot solve Afghanistan's problems - are central to the administration's approach to carrying out Obama's pledge to end the war. Ghani proclaimed at the Pentagon ceremony that the U.S. is supporting the winning side. "We die. But we will never be defeated," Ghani said. "Terrorism is a threat. It's evil. But we the people of Afghanistan are willing to speak truth to terror by saying no, you will never overwhelm us, you will never subdue us. We are going to overcome." "And in this endeavor our partnership with the United States is foundational because we will be the first line of defense for freedom globally," he added. Ghani's relationship with Washington stands in stark contrast to that of his predecessor, Karzai, whose antagonism toward the U.S. culminated in a refusal to sign security agreements with Washington and NATO before leaving office last year. Ghani signed the pacts within days of becoming president in September, and he has since enjoyed a close relationship with American diplomats and military leaders.

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Leon Panetta blasts ‘total dysfunction in Washington’ Former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta says the nation’s most pressing security threat is coming from the capital itself. “It’s the — the total dysfunction in Washington, the fact that so little can be done by the Congress,” he said in an interview aired Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “They can’t even resolve the issue of homeland security. They can’t deal with budgets. They can’t deal with immigration reform. They can’t deal with infrastructure. They can’t deal with other issues.” Story Continued Below And Democrats and Republicans alike have criticized President Barack Obama’s proposal to authorize the use of military force against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, saying it goes too far or does not go far enough. “If they wind up not being able to deal with this war authorization,” Panetta said, “that sends a terrible message to the world.” Panetta, who was also CIA director in the Obama administration, said the president “has struck … a pretty good balance” with his proposal. “It probably should have been done six months ago,” Panetta added, “but I’m glad that the president has sent this up.”

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Perez brokers end to West Coast ports impasse President Barack Obama’s ports gamble paid off. A bitter nine-month dispute between shipowners and dockworkers at 29 West Coast ports ended Friday night after Labor Secretary Tom Perez helped broker a tentative new contract. Story Continued Below If the deal is approved by rank and file members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, activity will return to normal at the ports, which are responsible for about $1 trillion in cargo annually. The agreement marks a significant victory for Perez, who flew to San Francisco Tuesday to broker an agreement. Had Perez failed, the parties would have been called to Washington, and Obama might have felt compelled to use his authority under the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act to end the dispute. Such a move would have almost certainly favored management and angered organized labor at a time when it is already bristling at the president’s trade agenda. “One thing I’m learning as I travel the country is, there’s a lot of people out there who don’t like Washington,” Perez said in a press call Friday night. “And so we set out Tuesday [and said] we can either resolve it this week here in California or we can travel to Washington, D.C., and go to the White House until we’re done.” A White House press statement termed the deal “great news for the parties involved in the negotiation and a huge relief for our economy,” adding that the president was “grateful to Secretary Perez for his hard work bringing about a successful resolution to this dispute, and for the help of federal mediator Scot Beckenbaugh.” Obama, the statement said, “calls on the parties to work together to clear out the backlogs and congestion in the West Coast Ports as they finalize their agreement.” “President Obama took a big political risk by directing Perez to get involved,” observed former Deputy Secretary of Labor Seth Harris, “and the gamble paid off.” To clinch the deal, Perez had to negotiate a major overhaul of union-employer arbitration procedures. Shipowners and dockworkers had been deadlocked for weeks on how future contract disputes would be arbitrated. The workers, represented by the ILWU, had reportedly asked for the removal of a previously designated arbitrator that they viewed as too pro-business. Under the tentative contract, the parties agreed to to create a new process for the selection of arbitrators, Perez said. “I don’t think anyone knows who the next arbitrator will be,” Perez said. “What I do know, and have great confidence in, is the new arbitration system is going to ensure that everybody gets a fair shake.” Additional details of the agreement are not yet available. The dispute affected a variety of U.S. industries. California citrus exports suffered and automakers like Honda were forced to slow down production. The situation worsened over President’s Day weekend when the PMA shut down the ports to new traffic. Perez told reporters Friday that he had been in touch with the president throughout the week on the dispute. He said the ILWU’s steering committee approved the agreement unanimously, and he expressed confidence that the rank-and-file would ratify it.

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Sen. Mark Kirk softens on ‘coffins’ One day after threatening to pile “coffins” outside Democratic offices if the Department of Homeland Security shuts down, Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) said Wednesday that he would support the clean DHS funding bill that Democrats have been demanding for weeks. Must-pass funding for DHS has been locked in a political stalemate in a dispute over President Barack Obama’s executive actions on immigration, which Republicans are trying to undo through amendments to the Homeland Security bill. Story Continued Below But on Wednesday, Kirk sided with Democrats who had been pushing Republicans to pass a clean funding bill without immigration riders. “My hope is that we pass it clean now,” Kirk said Wednesday. “As the governing party, we should govern. I would think we should just pass a regular appropriations bill under regular order.” At least in tone, Kirk’s comments were a sharp contrast from his comments to POLITICO on Tuesday, in which he blasted Senate Democrats’ behavior during the funding impasse. Democrats have filibustered the DHS legislation three times. “The Republicans — if there is a successful attack during a DHS shutdown — we should build a number of coffins outside each Democratic office and say, ‘You are responsible for these dead Americans,’” Kirk said Tuesday. But Kirk has also advised against the Republicans’ defunding strategy, telling POLITICO in January that doing so “leads us to a potential government shutdown scenario, which is a self-inflicted political wound for Republicans.” Though he has not explicitly called for a clean funding bill, Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.) has also opposed the Republican strategy of blocking Obama’s executive actions through the appropriations bill.

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Bipartisan group of senators push Obama to help arm Ukraine A bipartisan group of senators is putting increasing pressure on the Obama administration to further sanction Russian President Vladimir Putin and provide Ukraine weapons to take on Russian-backed rebels. Led by Sens. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.), 10 senators wrote Secretary of State John Kerry on Friday raising concerns after news reports out of Europe indicated a faltering ceasefire agreement between Ukraine and Russian separatists. The lawmakers said that without more intervention from the United States and its allies, “a Russian-imposed military outcome will continue to unfold in Ukraine.” Story Continued Below “We urge the immediate tightening of international sanctions against Russia and the provision of defensive weapons to Ukraine so that it can defend its territorial sovereignty,” the senators wrote Kerry. “We must redouble allied efforts to ensure Ukraine’s long-term economic and political future as it undertakes courageous economic reforms in the face of Russian destabilization.” The alarm in the Senate comes as a cease-fire that went into effect this week appears increasingly fragile, with rebels advancing further into Ukraine. U.S. officials have said they see Russian equipment continuing to roll into Ukraine over the border. The senators show open disdain for Putin in the letter, calling him “delusional” for denying Russian backing for the separatists in eastern Ukraine and concluding that the Russian president has “selfishly gambled his own nation’s economic and international standing and the futures of the Russian people on this tragically misplaced paranoia.” Such barbs from U.S. lawmakers have clearly aggravated Putin in the past. Last year, Putin put Durbin and McCain on a list of officials to be sanctioned by Russia, a move that was greeted as a badge of honor by the duo. The United States has sanctioned Russia repeatedly since the conflict with Ukraine began last March, but the lawmakers said Friday the Obama administration should “consider imposing additional sanctions and penalties that will increase the cost of Putin’s actions,” including booting Russia off a global financial system. The letter to Kerry on Friday was also signed by Republican Sens. Rob Portman of Ohio, Mark Kirk of Illinois, Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire as well as Democratic Sens. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire and Bill Nelson of Florida.

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Nancy Pelosi leads House delegation to Cuba House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi traveled with a congressional congregation to Cuba on Tuesday. The trip is the first official House delegation to travel to the island nation since President Barack Obama announced late last year an easing of trade restrictions with the Castro regime. Story Continued Below “This delegation travels to Cuba in friendship and to build upon the announcement of U.S. normalization of relations and other initiatives announced by President Obama,” Pelosi (D-Calif.) said. “This delegation will work to advance the U.S.-Cuba relationship and build on the work done by many in the Congress over the years, especially with respect to agriculture and trade.” The delegation includes Democratic Reps. Eliot Engel of New York, Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, Collin Peterson of Minnesota, Anna Eshoo of California, Nydia Velázquez of New York, Jim McGovern of Massachusetts, Steve Israel of New York and David Cicilline of Rhode Island. Engel is the ranking member of the Foreign Affairs Committee. The lawmakers will meet with Cuban government officials, Cardinal Jaime Ortega y Alamino and local community leaders.

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GOP pollster: Most Americans support Benjamin Netanyahu speech Congressional Democrats are demanding that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu cancel or delay next month’s address to Congress, but a new survey by a Republican pollster says Americans want the show to go on. The poll — conducted by McLaughlin & Associates, a pollster that worked for former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) — found that 59 percent of Americans support Netanyahu’s speech to Congress and only 23 percent oppose, according to results obtained by POLITICO. McLaughlin & Associates CEO John McLaughlin has also advised Netanyahu during his current reelection campaign. Story Continued Below Many Democrats have publicly bashed the planned speech for being scheduled just weeks before the Israeli elections and have lambasted House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) for seeking to bring a critic of President Barack Obama to Capitol Hill at a crucial moment during nuclear negotiations with Iran. They have also criticized Boehner for not notifying the White House of the invitation. But the poll concluded that 36 percent of people strongly support the March 3 address, while just 11 percent strongly oppose it. The survey also found that 79 percent want to require both Obama and Congress to vet a deal that would ratchet down Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for further loosening of some sanctions. Congressional Republicans are increasingly shifting their stance on the Iran toward requiring congressional approval for a deal, as opposed to imposing new sanctions. The White House opposes both options. The poll was conducted from Friday to Tuesday and surveyed 1,007 likely general election voters. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.

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Ash Carter confirmed as defense secretary Moving quickly, the Senate on Thursday easily confirmed Ash Carter as President Barack Obama’s fourth secretary of defense. The vote was 93-5, with five Republicans voting no: Sens. Mark Kirk of Illinois, Roy Blunt of Missouri, John Boozman of Arkansas, and Mike Crapo and Jim Risch, both of Idaho. Story Continued Below A former deputy defense secretary and chief Pentagon weapons buyer, Carter was confirmed a little over a week after his confirmation hearing, sailing through the Senate in a speedy process that saw no serious objection to his qualifications to lead the sprawling Defense Department. He’s expected to be sworn into office on Tuesday. It was a starkly different story from that of outgoing Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, who faced a bitter confirmation process and was subject to a filibuster before ultimately being confirmed, 58-41. Hagel was attacked over his comments and positions on Israel, Iran and nuclear weapons, and the former Nebraska senator’s past speeches and financial connections were closely scrutinized by his onetime Republican colleagues. Carter’s qualifications and stances, on the other hand, were hardly discussed during his daylong hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee, which unanimously approved his nomination Tuesday, 26-0. Indeed, Carter was praised by Republicans, who said his challenge will be at the White House — and whether the National Security Council will continue what Republicans charge has been micromanaging military affairs. “I intend to support Ash Carter’s nomination, but my support is conditioned on this request: The incoming secretary needs to have the courage to speak truth to power — to Congress, yes, but also to his commander in chief,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said on the floor Thursday. At his confirmation hearing, Carter sought to highlight his independence, saying he would be a “stickler for the chain of command.” While he toed the administration line on most issues, like its strategy against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, Carter broke with the White House to say he’d back providing arms to Ukraine and would support reviewing the Afghanistan withdrawal timeline. Senate Armed Services Chairman John McCain (R-Ariz.) said Carter would be a good manager at the Pentagon but doubted that he would change the White House’s tune on the larger national security issues. “I’m confident that he has no influence whatsoever,” McCain said. “Nor did his three predecessors.” Other Republicans were more hopeful, saying that if anyone could force the White House to listen to the military’s leaders, it was Carter. “If he can’t do it, no one else can,” said Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.). “I can’t think of anyone else who could do it better than him.” Not all Republicans were convinced. Blunt, for instance, faulted Carter for being unable to articulate the Obama administration’s strategy to defeat ISIL in Iraq and Syria. “We don’t need another secretary of defense that doesn’t understand what the plan is and can’t communicate that plan to either the Congress or the country or our friends around the world,” Blunt said on the Senate floor ahead of the vote. At the Pentagon, defense officials were preparing to complete the transition from the outgoing Hagel to the incoming Carter. Often, newly confirmed secretaries are sworn in behind the scenes to ensure the continuity of leadership — especially since the secretary is one half of the National Command Authority, along with the president in his role as commander in chief. Public, ceremonial arrivals at the Pentagon typically follow later. Some key personnel choices for Carter’s front office are also taking shape. He’s expected to name Air Force Undersecretary Eric Fanning as his new chief of staff and the Army’s chief of public affairs, Maj. Gen. Ron Lewis, as his top military assistant, POLITICO has confirmed. When Carter finally arrives at his Pentagon office, his agenda will be packed. He — not Hagel — is set to formally roll out the Pentagon’s fiscal 2016 budget proposal to the House and Senate Armed Services Committees next month. He’ll likely join the debate inside the administration over arming Ukrainian troops. And he’ll need to get into step with the daily operations against ISIL. The array of problems has caused some defense observers to proclaim themselves baffled that Carter would even want the job. When Hagel’s resignation was announced in December, Michèle Flournoy and several other top contenders took themselves out of the running. For conservative critics especially, the rash of crises around the world is evidence of the failure of national security in the Obama era. Thomas Donnelly, a top national security scholar with the American Enterprise Institute, told House members Tuesday the problems facing the Defense Department — and the U.S. — are caused by what he called a failure of commitment, not of hardware. “Nobody doubts the United States’ ability to … wreak havoc on our adversaries,” he said. “The question is in our willingness to do so.”

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House Benghazi Committee lines up Obama administration witnesses The House Benghazi Committee is set to interview nearly two dozen senior Obama administration officials in the next three months. Republican Chairman Trey Gowdy announced on Friday that top officials close to both President Barack Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have been called to appear for the House panel investigating the 2012 terrorist attacks in Libya. Story Continued Below Included on the witness list is former White House press secretary Jay Carney, Gen. Martin Dempsey, former national security adviser Tom Donilon, current adviser Susan Rice, Jake Sullivan, a former deputy chief of staff to Clinton, deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes, former CIA Director David Petraeus and former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta. White House chief of staff Denis McDonough is on Gowdy’s witness list as well. “I am announcing an ambitious timeline for interviews consistent with my plan to speed-up the pace of the investigation” Gowdy said. “I intend to stay with this schedule and will issue subpoenas if necessary.” Also included are State Department “whistleblower” Mark Thompson, former Assistant Secretary of State Andrew Shapiro, former U.S. Ambassador Thomas Pickering, former Director of the National Counterterrorism Center Matt Olsen, retired Navy Adm. Mike Mullen, former deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency Michael Morell, Clinton Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills, State Department official Charlene Lamb, State Department Undersecretary of State for Management Patrick Kennedy, former White House National Security Council staffer Benjamin Fishman and retired foreign service officer William Burns. Sullivan and Lamb are considered key figures in “Clintonland” while Mullen and Pickering chaired the State Department’s investigation into the attacks — a probe Gowdy has criticized for failing to interview Clinton. Gowdy added in a letter sent to ranking member Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) that he plans to schedule an interview with Clinton “as soon as possible.” Cummings said in January that Clinton told him verbally she would appear before the panel to answer questions on the Obama administration’s response to the attacks. The witnesses will appear before the panel without a subpoena, but Gowdy warned in his letter that if the State Department, CIA and Obama administration do not meet a timeline set between Gowdy and the administration, he would be prepared to issue formal requests for testimony. “All told, over the next three months, the committee will gain access to information not fully considered by any committee of Congress to date from the nearly three dozen witnesses identified,” Gowdy wrote. The White House would not be forced to comply with any subpoenas as the bulk of the witnesses requested would be shielded by executive privilege. Cummings criticized the witness list on Friday, calling it redundant. “A majority of these witnesses have already provided information to Congress through prior interviews and testimony – in some cases multiple times – during seven previous congressional investigations,” the Maryland Democrat said. Democrats on the panel have grown increasingly critical of Gowdy’s direction of the committee since the beginning of the year. Cummings has blasted the chairman for moving too slowly with hearings and investigations, shutting Democrats out of key interviews and arguing that Gowdy is operating outside the normal bound of committee rules. “This new list of 20 senior officials was released to the press before the Committee actually invited a single one of these individuals to come in for an interview, raising further questions about the purpose of these interviews,” a Democratic staffer said on background. The interviews will be completed by the end of April, Gowdy said. Thompson previously testified to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee that Clinton allegedly cut the State Department’s counterterrorism bureau from the response to the Sept. 11, 2012, attacks, which left Ambassador Chris Stevens dead. Naming these key witnesses is, to date, the most aggressive action Gowdy has taken since the panel was created last May. The loquacious Republican has preferred to operate in private when interviewing witnesses and requesting troves of documents from the State Department and CIA. The committee has received more than 40,000 documents, Gowdy said last month, but is still in negotiations with the Obama administration for thousands more. Gowdy has repeatedly stressed that he was unwilling to call in key witnesses before he felt confident with the information the committee received. Rice’s inclusion on the list is a signal the seven Republicans on the panel will focus on a series of talking points that the national security adviser, then the U.S.’s ambassador to the United Nations, delivered on the Sunday shows following the attacks. The details Rice presented have been heavily criticized for purporting that an anti-Islamic video spurred the attacks. There also has been great attention paid to the White House’s involvement in drafting and revising those talking points.

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Keeping the heat on the Secret Service Republicans and Democrats on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee rarely agree on anything, but Reps. Jason Chaffetz and Elijah Cummings are turning up results in their drive to dump the top leadership at the troubled Secret Service. Only a handful of the agency’s senior leaders are still hanging on from two years ago, when Chaffetz, now the committee’s Republican chairman, began investigating misconduct. Just this week, he and Cummings — the committee’s top Democrat — helped shove much-maligned Secret Service Deputy Director Alvin “A.T.” Smith to the exit. Story Continued Below It’s been a rough period for the Secret Service, from a 2012 scandal involving prostitutes in Colombia to last year’s White House fence-jumper. But the agency’s progress since then will also be on display Thursday when the Oversight Committee hears from four witnesses who probed the agency last fall. Both Cummings and Chaffetz give much of the credit to their own ability to work together, which they call a departure from the often-acrimonious tenure of former committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.). “The unified front is obviously more effective. It’s pretty hard to say no and disregard us when we’re united,” said Chaffetz, from Utah. “I’ve been working with Elijah Cummings on the Secret Service issues for months … and it’s yielded visible results. We’re not done yet.” Chaffetz argued that if he can “call balls and strikes” by working alongside the Maryland Democrat, the Obama administration may be more apt to work with the committee’s document requests and investigations. Cummings agreed. “I have always believed that our committee’s oversight is most effective when it is bipartisan, and I am encouraged so far at the way we have been conducting our work,” the Maryland Democrat said. Both Republican and Democratic lawmakers credit Chaffetz with pushing the Secret Service to the forefront of the committee’s agenda when he was still just a rank-and-file member in the previous Congress. He pressured the agency for explanations on a series of incorrect comments it had made to the media on the timeline of fence-jumper Omar Gonzalez’s entry to the White House. Chaffetz also helped spur reports on the agency’s failure to stop an armed man from entering an elevator with President Barack Obama and its slowness to realize that a shooter had grazed the White House in 2011. Last month’s crash of a federal employee’s small drone on the White House grounds also raised questions about the Secret Service’s ability to prevent aerial threats to the president. Now Cummings and Chaffetz are focusing on how to reform the agency. Acting Director Joe Clancy has outlined steps he’s taken to correct management and training problems during his closed-door briefing with the lawmakers, a staffer for the committee said. At the top of the list is creating new pathways for senior officials, including the chief financial officer and chief operating officer, to get greater authority to raise concerns about funding and management problems. Chaffetz said he is also eagerly waiting to see whom the Obama administration taps to permanently replace former Director Julia Pierson, a decision he said he expects in the coming weeks. “They need a new director who can form the agency with their vision,” he said. “There are massive management and training issues and they need to be a solid manager of people and have a vision to create an elite agency.” The latest concrete result from Chaffetz’s pressure is this week’s news that Smith is stepping down as deputy director and will be reassigned to another post in the Department of Homeland Security. Complex personnel laws hinder the Secret Service from firing the former director of operations outright, and the Secret Service declined to comment on Smith’s new role. Chaffetz said he repeatedly argued during meetings with Clancy, DHS officials and senior White House officials that Smith, a 28-year-agency veteran, was a major drag on the agency’s morale and operations. Cummings and Chaffetz met with Clancy during a classified meeting Tuesday, which followed two private meetings in February with the White House and Homeland Security Deputy Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. The lawmakers have two more meetings in 2015 on the Secret Service’s response to the White House jumper and a shooting outside Vice President Joe Biden’s Delaware home. Chaffetz “specifically said Smith needs to go [during these meetings], and the fact that ranking member Cummings went hand and hand with him only made it stronger,” said an Oversight investigator familiar with the conversations. Smith also drew criticism for approving changes to how new recruits and officers are trained that lawmakers have complained leave the agency short of well-trained officers ready to respond to security problems. Last year, Smith also took criticism after revelations that he had diverted agents from the White House to check in on a Secret Service administrative assistant who was involved in a dispute with a neighbor. More than two dozen whistleblowers contacted Chaffetz during the two years he’s run point on the Secret Service investigation for the House — and nearly all of them complained about Smith’s role, he said. Smith, who had been part of the protective detail for Hillary Clinton when she was first lady, made headlines in 2000 when he married one of Bill Clinton’s cousins. He was one of the last senior directors to keep his post after Gonzalez jumped the fence Sept. 19, one of a series of episodes that prompted deep skepticism on the agency’s ability to protect Obama and his family. Pierson resigned weeks after that incident. Also forced out were Dale Pupillo, the assistant director for protective operations; Paul Morrissey, who headed the investigations unit; Jane Murphy, who handled government and public affairs; and Mark Copanzzi, the agency’s chief technology director. Two other assistant directors, Vic Erevia and Gregory Marchio, also quietly announced their retirement. Chaffetz said he still has “deep-seated concerns” that the agency is “failing” in six areas: technology, training, leadership, culture, protocol and budget. “I see them failing at all six of those areas,” he said. “They really haven’t had oversight in the last 15 years, so this is somewhat new to them and they are somewhat resistant still.” The controversies prompted Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson to create a Secret Service-focused panel to investigate how Pierson and other senior officials were kept in the dark about security risks and why proper protocols weren’t followed when Gonzalez scaled the fence. That panel released a scathing report on Dec. 15 that criticized the agency for failures on training, security and leadership. The panel also called for a new director. Clancy had been scheduled to testify at Thursday’s hearing on the steps the agency has taken to improve its management, but Chaffetz said the committee answered the Secret Service’s request to postpone his appearance after Smith’s sudden departure. The panel plans to reschedule with Clancy in “the coming weeks,” Chaffetz said.

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The GOP game plan on net neutrality The finish line for the FCC’s new net neutrality proposal is drawing closer — and Republicans are looking for every avenue to throw up last-minute roadblocks. GOP leaders are mounting a multipronged attack on Chairman Tom Wheeler’s rules, which would tighten regulation of Internet service providers to ensure all Web traffic is treated equally. They’ve launched investigations into alleged White House interference in the FCC process, drafted an alternative and weaker net neutrality bill, complained the agency is drawing up plans behind closed doors — and even used net neutrality as a political rallying cry to supporters. Story Continued Below The moves amount to an emerging game plan for how Republicans plan to oppose the net neutrality rules, which have the backing of President Barack Obama. While the FCC’s Democratic majority is expected to approve Wheeler’s proposal at its Feb. 26 meeting, the GOP is doing everything it can to cause a delay — or make the move as politically painful as possible. “The reason you’re seeing so much activity is because there’s so much fundamentally wrong with what the FCC and the White House is doing to regulate the Internet,” said former Sen. John Sununu (R-N.H.), who now serves as honorary co-chairman of Broadband for America, a nonprofit supported by the telecommunications industry. “On substance, there are fundamental problems with this kind of an over-reaching regulatory approach. In terms of process, there are fundamental problems with the way this has been pursued.” House Oversight Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) and Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Chairman Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) have both announced probes into whether the White House improperly influenced the FCC, which is an independent agency. Obama inserted himself into the debate last fall, calling on the FCC to regulate broadband like a utility — a tough approach ultimately endorsed by Wheeler. While nothing prevents the president from expressing his views, the question of White House influence over the new rules is catnip for both Chaffetz and Johnson, who are new to their committee leadership posts and eager to seize their oversight roles. “He’s supposed to be an independent agency,” Johnson said in an interview off the Senate floor Tuesday, referring to Wheeler. “We’re trying to find the communications between himself and the White House, his agency and the White House, to see if this really was an independent act.” Another GOP strategy on net neutrality: legislate. The party, which previously viewed any net neutrality rules as a solution in search of a problem, has come to the table with a bill that would prevent ISPs from blocking or throttling Web traffic — while also avoiding utility-style rules for broadband and tying the FCC’s hands on regulating the Internet. Senate Commerce Chairman John Thune (R-S.D.) and his House counterparts Reps. Greg Walden (R-Ore.) and Fred Upton (R-Mich.) are seeking bipartisan support for their measure, which they say provides more solid legal footing and is better able to withstand lawsuits from the telecom industry. But they’ve had trouble attracting Democrats, who say the bill effectively handcuffs the FCC and is riddled with loopholes that could allow for pay-for-play online “fast lanes.” On another front, GOP lawmakers are increasingly making an issue out of transparency, chiding the FCC for not releasing Wheeler’s plan for public debate prior to the agency’s vote. And they’re getting an assist from the FCC’s senior Republican, Ajit Pai. Pai drew attention last week for tweeting a photo of himself with a printout of the Wheeler net neutrality proposal, saying, “I wish the public could see what’s inside.” At a press conference Tuesday, Pai — who spoke at the FCC dais where the chairman presides over agency meetings — lambasted the rules and repeatedly called on Wheeler to fully reveal what he termed “the president’s plan.” “The American people are being misled about President Obama’s plan to regulate the Internet,” the commissioner said. “Last week’s carefully stage-managed rollout was designed to downplay the plan’s massive intrusion into the Internet economy and to shield many critical details from the public.” FCC officials and Pai, however, have noted the agency traditionally does not allow the publication of items before they’re approved by the commission — and Pai himself refused to release the Wheeler proposal. As the net neutrality debate generates national headlines, Republicans like Sen. Mike Lee have also begun to use the traditionally wonky issue to rile up their base. Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) sent an email to political supporters likening Wheeler’s plan to Internet censorship in Turkey and Iran and asking for signatures opposing the rules. The subject line of Sasse’s email: “Putin and Obama in charge of the Internet?” The message is hyperbole — Wheeler’s proposal wouldn’t give the FCC control over Internet content — but it underscores how much Republicans are opposed to new forms of what they call government over-regulation. “People on the right and in the middle are finally understanding that this debate isn’t really about ‘net neutrality’ at all,” said Berin Szoka, president of TechFreedom, a conservative think tank.

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Candidate Fatigue Syndrome This article originally appeared on Slate.On Thursday, Jeb Bush used the video broadcast app Meerkat to live stream his visit to Atlanta to his Twitter followers. Every candidate wants to find a way around the press to speak to voters, and this was immediately heralded as a new way to do just that. It's not just the mainstream media that Bush is avoiding--it's also the conservative fire his campaign will draw. The former Florida governor needs a way to mainline information to his supporters to keep them from getting jittery.For Bush the bigger upside of a performance only viewed by400 people (many of whom were reporters) was that he looked new and modern. You knew that was the goal when his all-but-declared campaign's chief strategist Mike Murphy tweeted: "Going direct to audiences via smartphone video? Sounds like great idea to me. @JebBush has lots to say, all social media tools of interest." (I don't think you mean that about Tinder, Mike, regardless of what it did for JFK). Murphy knows that the press loves to write stories about itself, and in those stories Bush's use of the new medium reached a wider audience than the one he broadcast to on Meerkat. What it told that more traditional audience was that Bush was not a man of the past from a family of the past. He's a candidate of the future. That's why he launched his Right to Rise PAC on Instagram. He's already in the future right now! Come join him. The truth is that the candidates are too much with us. Whatever the motivation, whether it's channeling the message directly to your core fans or making the wider world think you're a modern whiz, candidates are taking to every outlet to weigh in on this and that. Hillary Clinton fired up the Twitter account the other night to opine about the GOP budget. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker sent a selfie and tweaked New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie over the Green Bay Packers. Sen. Rand Paul regularly trolls Hillary Clinton on Twitter while inhabiting the id of a 17-year-old. This pace is only going to quicken as we get closer to voting time.Now that candidates are trying to be content providers on so many different channels, the question is whether they will face the same problem with overload those of us in traditional media face. People don't want to hear from us as often as we arrive in their email inboxes or Instagram feeds with something we find really charming. We all know people who we follow because every second thing they say is interesting or clever, but we are also irritated by those same people because the other half of what they say is either an irritation or an interruption. (Some of those people may very well be the author of this article.) The challenge is not just the irritation from overload, but that when you talk too much, fewer people listen. As Mat Honan wrote in Wired, this has become an increasing worry for services that want to push new information to people who sign up for their apps. Just because you asked to be pinged by this service doesn't mean you'll want to be when the email arrives.This happened long ago to President Obama. Structures put in place during campaigns stay in place during the presidency, which means presidential speech becomes threadbare even before the candidate takes office. That is why candidate Newt Gingrich said as president he wouldn't talk much as president. (It's also possible this was a prophylaxis meant to assuage those fearful of a voluble Gingrich presidency.)There are other challenges. The more channels, the more opportunity for the campaigns to occasionally get wound up into madness. The Obama campaign once argued that Clinton's embellishments about a trip to Bosnia disqualified her for higher office. The Clinton campaign once suggested that because Obama said he wanted to be president in elementary school, it showed how unyieldingly ambitious he was. These are not the gotcha moments created by the press or a waiter with a hidden phone camera. They're home-cooked, and they get amplified when you have more ways to sound off. You can also become a meme when you're producing constant content, handing your opponents a chance to mock you with your own product.Finally there is the problem of weak content. Candidates want to convey that they are innovative and savvy, but there is nothing disruptive about broadcasting a political speech. It's just a fancy press release that can quickly feel like spam. What would truly be disruptive is if a candidate used his ability to broadcast from anywhere in a meaningful way. Let's see a candidate use Meerkat from the day he spent with unemployed job applicants learning about what it's like to find work in this economy or the day he spent at the supermarket trying to feed a family of four on a median income. Or maybe someone could use a new medium to explain a policy issue in a way that makes the challenges clearer to voters. Surely there are more clever ways to use the new mediums? If not, we can just wait around for Naked Mole Rat app, the next new digital innovation in the Meerkat mammal group.

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Loretta Lynch poised to clear key panel Loretta Lynch has enough votes to clear a key committee on her confirmation as the nation’s next attorney general, as two Senate Republicans said Thursday that they’ll back her and another one indicated his potential support. Republican Sens. Orrin Hatch of Utah and Jeff Flake of Arizona both said after Lynch testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee that they would vote to confirm the federal prosecutor, believing she is qualified to succeed Eric Holder. Story Continued Below Hatch announced his decision during the second day of Lynch’s confirmation hearing, where a panel of witnesses testified on her qualifications and on the broader controversies involving the Justice Department under Holder. “For too long, [the Justice Department’s] decisions have been politicized and its leaders have facilitated executive abuses by this president rather than upholding the rule of law,” Hatch said. “Throughout her confirmation hearing, Ms. Lynch has demonstrated her qualifications and made specific commitments to work with Congress.” Later Thursday, Flake said he supports her too, adding: “I think the president ought to get his people, unless there’s some disqualifying thing.” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), another member of the Judiciary Committee, said he was “inclined” to back Lynch. Presuming that all nine Democrats on the Judiciary Committee back Lynch, she would need only two GOP votes to clear the panel. A committee vote is not expected until after the mid-February congressional recess. The committee’s chairman, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), said he still has several questions for Lynch and wants to know how she would mend a Justice Department that he viewed as “politicized and otherwise broken” before he decides how he will vote. “Nothing about her qualifications. They’re outstanding,” Grassley said when asked if he considered anything Lynch said during her hearing disqualifying. “The question is, is she willing to take an independent point of view and turn things around?” Four of the committee’s Republicans — Jeff Sessions of Alabama, David Vitter of Louisiana, Ted Cruz of Texas and Mike Lee of Utah — are expected to oppose her nomination. Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas) is still undecided, a spokeswoman said. Also unknown are how the two freshman Republicans on the committee will vote. Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said he is undecided, noting that he is “taking in all the information.” Sen. David Perdue (R-Ga.) declined to comment. Though they were split on whether they would support Lynch, Senate Republicans had a clear strategy on Day Two of her confirmation hearing: Make it all about Holder and the controversies that have lingered during his six-year tenure as President Barack Obama’s attorney general. Former CBS News correspondent Sharyl Attkisson blasted the Obama administration’s behavior toward the press, accusing the Justice Department of stonewalling access. Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke testified that the attitude at Justice, under Holder, “has been almost hostility” toward local law enforcement officials. And Jonathan Turley, a constitutional scholar who is representing House Republicans in their Obamacare lawsuit, told senators: “The Justice Department is at the epicenter of a constitutional crisis.” The witnesses called by Republicans said little about Lynch herself, who had sat through nearly eight hours of grilling on Wednesday by the committee’s 20 members. Meanwhile, Democrats tried to steer the focus of Thursday’s second round to the Brooklyn federal prosecutor’s own record. “Many of these [witnesses] will speak to the many ways the Department of Justice, under its current leadership, has failed to fulfill some of the most basic aspects of its mission,” said the committee’s chairman, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa). “The question for me and lot of members on this side is whether Ms. Lynch is committed to leading the Department of Justice in a new direction.” Democrats spent much of the second day of Lynch’s confirmation hearings — which she did not attend — trying to make the case that she deserved to be confirmed based on her record and legal expertise. Three of the Democratic witnesses knew Lynch personally, including David Barlow, a former federal prosecutor from Utah who has also served as legal counsel for Lee. Barlow testified about his time working with Lynch on the attorney general’s advisory committee — roughly a dozen U.S. attorneys who advise Justice Department leadership on various policy matters. “Through these experiences, my initial impressions of Loretta Lynch were fully confirmed: She is tough, fair, gracious, smart and independent,” Barlow told the committee. When Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) asked the nine witnesses to raise a hand if he or she opposed Lynch’s nomination, none did. And Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) complained that the Holder-bashing was “frankly beneath the dignity of this committee,” saying the hearing was becoming a “sound bite factory for Fox News and for conspiracy theorists everywhere.”

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Ash Carter vows to be ’a stickler for the chain of command’ Ash Carter vows to be a “stickler for the chain of command” if confirmed by the Senate as the next secretary of defense, according to the opening statement prepared for his confirmation hearing Wednesday. “I have promised President Obama that, if I am confirmed, I will furnish him my most candid strategic advice,” Carter says in his opening prepared remarks for the Senate Armed Services Committee, obtained by POLITICO. “The law also prescribes the chain of command and, if I am confirmed as secretary of defense, I will be a stickler for the chain of command.” Story Continued Below Carter’s comments allude to Republican criticisms that the White House micromanages Pentagon affairs, making it difficult for Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel — or Carter, or anyone else — to effectively carry out the job. The former deputy defense secretary also makes the case for his support of acquisition reform, saying he’s “echoing” the call for major reforms by Committee Chairman John McCain (R-Ariz.). And Carter urges Congress to work with the Pentagon to end sequestration, saying he backs the Obama administration’s fiscal 2016 defense budget that busts through the sequestration spending caps by $35 billion. “I very much hope that we can find a way together out of the wilderness of sequester,” Carter says in his prepared remarks. “I am not familiar with the details of the FY 2016 budget submitted a few days ago, and if confirmed I will come back here for a full posture hearing to discuss them. But I strongly support the president’s request for relief from the sequester caps in fiscal 2016 and through the future year defense plan.” Carter, who will be introduced to the committee by former Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), is likely to face tough questions at Wednesday’s hearing on everything from the budget to Obama’s foreign policy strategy, in which Republicans are likely press Carter on his ability to be an independent force at the Pentagon. In a 91-page pre-hearing questionnaire, Carter did not provide much detail on how he’d handle the major national security crises facing the U.S., though he did say he’d recommend changes to the U.S. withdrawal policy in Afghanistan should circumstances change there. Still, Carter’s confirmation is hardly in doubt, no matter how pointed the questions may be. He has the support of most senators on both sides of the aisle, including McCain, who is eager to move Carter’s confirmation through the committee as quickly as possible, potentially shortening the period that senators can submit follow-up questions after the hearing in order to get a full Senate vote more quickly. Wednesday’s hearing, though, is expected to stretch from morning to night. “It will go for a long time,” McCain told POLITICO.

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Cruz: Block Lynch until Obama blinks on immigration Texas Sen. Ted Cruz is demanding that Republicans block the nomination of Loretta Lynch as attorney general until President Barack Obama relents on his immigration policies. The likely presidential candidate said in an interview Tuesday that Republicans should use “every procedural tool” to block Obama’s move to defer deportations for roughly 5 million undocumented immigrants — calling on the GOP-led Senate Judiciary Committee to block her nomination and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to deny her a confirmation vote on the floor. Story Continued Below “For several months now, I have called on the Senate majority leader to halt confirmations of every nominee executive and judicial, other than vital national security positions, unless or until the president rescinds his unconstitutional amnesty,” Cruz told POLITICO in the Capitol. “We have an opportunity in front of us right now with Loretta Lynch — a nominee for attorney general — who has fully embraced and flat-out promised to implement the unconstitutional amnesty.” Denying her confirmation, the conservative firebrand said, is “a concrete and definitive step we can take right now, using the tools that the Constitution gives Congress to rein in the president’s lawlessness.” The sharpened rhetoric comes as Republicans face a political quandary on immigration. Senate Democrats on Tuesday filibustered a $39.7 billion House bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security because Republicans included provisions to block the president’s post-election immigration move, along with a 2012 action to defer deportations for people brought to the U.S. illegally at a young age. But McConnell and top Republicans have vowed not to shut down the vital security agency, forcing the GOP to decide how else to respond forcefully to the administration. Yet the Senate GOP Conference has little appetite so far for denying Lynch’s nomination, given that a number of Republicans have lauded her qualifications as a federal prosecutor. Plus she would be the first female African-American attorney general and would succeed an official the GOP largely disdains: Eric Holder. In an interview Friday, McConnell said he “absolutely” would give Lynch a vote on the floor. “I can’t imagine any circumstance in which a president’s nominee for a Cabinet position would not be given a courtesy of a vote on the floor of the Senate,” McConnell said. At her confirmation hearings last week, Lynch said she was not involved in the president’s immigration decisions but contended that the administration’s legal rationale was “reasonable.” “I don’t see any reason to doubt the reasonableness of those views,” Lynch told the Senate Judiciary Committee. With the GOP set up for its biggest clash with the White House since taking control of both houses of Congress a month ago, the tensions are running high over immigration. At a news conference Tuesday, House Speaker John Boehner singled out Cruz and Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), another immigration hard-liner, calling on them to lead the Senate push to block Obama’s executive action. “It’s time for Sen. Cruz and Sen. Sessions and Senate Republicans and Senate Democrats to stand with the American people and to block the president’s actions,” Boehner said. Cruz said he hadn’t seen the speaker’s remarks and declined to comment Tuesday morning. But the 44-year-old former Texas solicitor general said Republicans needed to “honor the commitments and do what we said we would do” before November’s elections. “Far too many Americans are losing faith in our elected officials,” said Cruz, who was elected in 2012. “They’ve seen too many times politicians who say one thing and do another.”

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President Obama: Mitt Romney cares about poverty? ‘That’s great … Let’s do something about it.’ The mocker-in-chief is back, and once again his target was Mitt Romney. President Barack Obama broadly took swipes at Republicans on Thursday night for “starting to sound pretty Democratic” in their messaging about poverty and the middle class — and he took a thinly veiled swipe at his former GOP sparring partner from the 2012 presidential campaign. Story Continued Below “Even though their policies haven’t quite caught up yet, their rhetoric is starting to sound pretty Democratic,” Obama said of the Republicans during a House Democratic retreat. “We have a former presidential candidate on the other side and [who is] suddenly deeply concerned about poverty.That’s great, let’s go. Let’s do something about it.” The former Massachusetts governor, who has been flirting with mounting another presidential campaign, made poverty a theme Wednesday as he criticized Hillary Clinton over middle class policies and jobs during a speech at Mississippi State University. Romney said the U.S. needs to “restore opportunity, particularly for the middle class” and “lift people out of poverty” — topics he’s hinted would be at the cornerstone of his third presidential run, if he were to enter the race. “I also met folks who had been in poverty from generation to generation. These we have to help escape the tragedy and the trap of chronic generational poverty,” Romney said at the time.

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Joe Biden to House Democrats: Sell mending economy to voters Vice President Joe Biden challenged House Democrats here to do a better job of communicating to voters that the economy is on the mend - arguing that if the party can’t sell the recovery, Republicans will co-opt the success of Democratic policies. Closing out the three-day Democratic retreat Friday, Biden lamented that Democrats have not gotten enough credit for pursuing economic policies that have help the country add jobs and protect middle-income earners claw their way out from a decade-long recession. Story Continued Below “Together we made some really tough decision. Decisions that weren’t at all popular and hard to explain. Hard to communicate why it was so important and the decisions had real political cost,” Biden said. “A lot of my friends and your friends in this caucus aren’t here today because they had the nerve to stand up and do what they thought was right, knowing that they were going to face unrelenting political criticism.” He added, “It’s becoming clearer and clearer that that decision you made, the decisions the administration fought for the were the right ones. They worked for America.” President Barack Obama delivered a similar message to lawmakers Thursday evening, arguing that after a tough midterm election loss that saw the Senate switch to GOP control, Democrats must take more credit to defend the stimulus and Obamacare. Democrats also lost 13 seats in the House. And just like Obama, Biden took plenty of jabs at congressional Republicans. He mocked comments by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) that the economy improved in November and December because of the “expectation of a new Republican Congress.” Biden said the GOP is having an “epiphany” that focusing on the middle class is a winning political strategy. “McConnell is a friend of mine. I get on with McConnell….[but] Mitch, it’s recovery,” Biden said. “It’s recovery that Leader McConnell likes to claim….Watch it guys, mark my worlds, the Republican Party is going to try and claim this reassurance and they are going to misrepresent that its because of policies they supported.…It’s a bunch of malarkey.” Democrats, Biden said, need to fight for a narrative that the recovery occurred because of their party, saying “if we don’t speak up and reassert the case we made, it might stick politically. These guys are pretty good.” But Biden also had some tough words for members in his own party who are still focused on the midterm election loss. Democrats have laid blame on the White House, poor messaging from the campaign arms and leaders in the House and Senate for the shellacking the party took, but Biden said it’s time to stop “nitpicking.” “Stop nitpicking those of you who said we should have done a, b or c,” Biden quipped. “Embrace success. Make the case. We have a chance to generate a new consensus in this country.”

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GOP to take on Barack Obama at Ash Carter hearing Ash Carter will be in the witness hot seat at his confirmation hearing Wednesday, but it’s President Barack Obama who will really be on trial. Republicans who now control the Senate Armed Services Committee plan to make Carter’s confirmation hearing to become defense secretary all about the commander in chief, using the daylong grilling as a forum to excoriate the president’s foreign policy and national security strategy. Story Continued Below “It’s an opportunity to showcase how miserable a failure his foreign policies are, and if Ash Carter doesn’t recognize it’s not working, he’s going to have a hard time,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) told POLITICO. “Clearly, it’s not working.” Republicans have several reasons to zero in on Obama at Carter’s hearing. First, the former deputy defense secretary’s confirmation is all but certain in the Senate. He’s respected on both sides of the aisle. And he’s earned praise even from Republicans who routinely vote against the president’s nominees — and who went after Chuck Hagel’s record at his now infamous confirmation hearing two years ago. More important, Carter’s hearing provides a high-profile venue for Republicans to detail what they see as the president’s across-the-board foreign policy failures, setting the table for the 2016 presidential race in which the GOP is eager to take back foreign policy as a winning issue. In the 2012 campaign, Obama was a rare Democrat who could work foreign policy to his advantage following the end of the war in Iraq and the killing of Osama bin Laden. Fast-forward two years, and things look very different. U.S. troops are back in Iraq to help battle a new and resurgent foe, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. President Bashar Assad is still in charge in Syria, which has fallen even deeper into chaos with the rise of ISIL. And the administration’s “reset” with Russia is all but dead after Moscow’s incursions into Ukraine. “Republicans on the Armed Services Committee are going to be very eager to lay the groundwork to make clear this president spent the last six years complaining about the legacy left to him by his predecessor, and he’s going to leave his successor with a situation that’s even worse,” said Danielle Pletka of the conservative American Enterprise Institute. Senate Armed Services Chairman John McCain (R-Ariz.), who lost to Obama in 2008 and has been an increasingly harsh critic of the president’s national security moves, has backed an approach looking toward 2016, with his early hearings featuring luminaries like former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and retired generals such as James Mattis. Carter is sure to face questions on Obama’s strategy against ISIL — or lack thereof, as many Republican see it — and how he believes the U.S. should deal with Assad. He’ll be pressed as well on whether he would break with Obama and support giving weapons to Ukraine, and on how he’d handle the transfer of terrorist detainees at the U.S. military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, if he believes they are still a threat. Carter has been publicly quiet on the rise of ISIL and the U.S. strategy to battle it. But he did fight alongside then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta in 2011 for Obama to keep U.S. troops in Iraq, according to an essay adapted from Panetta’s memoir, “Worthy Fights.” Things won’t get any easier for Carter on the defense budget, just released Monday, as he’d effectively be asked to defend a budget that he didn’t build — not to mention explain how he plans to help stop the military from being cut under sequestration. “It’s clear we do not have a national strategy,” said Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.). “It’s an absolute duty of the majority party in the Senate to demand that the president articulate a strategy. … I think the Senate would make a big mistake if it didn’t use that opportunity to inquire of the top defense official in America, to be, what he thinks the proper strategic policies should be.” Sen. Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma, the committee’s former ranking Republican, said he wants to help ensure “the American people know what’s happening to our military with all the threats out there that are unprecedented in the history of this country.” “We have to be redundant and keep driving that home,” Inhofe told POLITICO. “Ash Carter will provide a route for that.” Still, Republicans run the risk of going too far with their criticisms of Obama, said Michael O’Hanlon, a senior fellow at The Brookings Institution, given that Carter served as a top Pentagon official for most of the president’s six years in office, first as the chief acquisition official, then as deputy defense secretary. “The question is, how far do they push it?” O’Hanlon said. “He can’t be absolved of responsibility of all sins that they want to impart to Obama. If you took that to its logical conclusion, Republicans wouldn’t want to confirm Carter.” Carter’s best strategy might be to tackle the criticisms country by country, O’Hanlon said, acknowledging problems in places like Syria but also contending all the blame doesn’t fall at the feet of the Obama administration. Perhaps most difficult for Carter is the high wire he must walk to showcase his independence while still defending the president. Over the past year, Obama has been slammed by two of his previous defense secretaries, Robert Gates and Panetta, for the White House’s incessant micromanagement of military issues — and Hagel has hinted at the same. Indeed, when Carter was first named in December as Obama’s pick to replace Hagel, many Republicans said it didn’t matter who Obama selected if the National Security Council didn’t ease its stranglehold on the military. So, Republicans are sure to press Carter on his willingness to be independent from the White House and speak up when he disagrees with the president. “I don’t expect him to throw his president over, but I do expect him to speak truth to power,” said Graham, who added that sort of independence was lacking under Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in the George W. Bush administration. Some Republicans, at least, believe Carter is someone who can finally stand up to Obama and his White House team. “He’s totally apolitical; he’s totally capable,” Inhofe said. “I’m tired of people doing things for political purposes in this administration. It just seems like Obama is dictating things to them — but that’s not going to happen to Ash Carter.” Democrats are expecting a foreign policy barrage from Republicans during the hearing, but they say they’re confident Carter will show he’s capable of managing the sprawling Pentagon bureaucracy and the larger foreign policy issues. “It’s largely going to be an issue about big picture strategy rather than about whether Ash Carter is qualified to be at the helm of that very complicated organization,” said Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.). “Everybody knows he’s the guy. If anybody can manage that complicated organization, Ash Carter can.” And Obama won’t be the only one Carter is answering for on Wednesday. Republicans — particularly 2016 presidential prospects — are likely to target Hillary Clinton as well in their foreign policy takedown of the administration, looking back to Obama’s first term when Clinton was secretary of state. Of the 14 Republicans on the Armed Services Committee, two are already likely presidential rivals: Graham and Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas. In fact, Cruz began gaining his outspoken Senate reputation with his line of inquiry at Hagel’s confirmation hearing, when Cruz took the unusual step of airing a video clip of Hagel, then later questioning whether the former Republican senator from Nebraska had received funding from North Korean sources. “Certainly, there will be some early 2016 grandstanding, and probably an effort to implicate Obama’s first term,” O’Hanlon said. “I expect any potential opponents can try to drag her [Clinton] into the mess, too. There will be sharp elbows on some issues.”

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Keystone votes fail in Senate Republicans’ Keystone XL pipeline push was stopped short by the first Senate filibuster of 2015 as Democrats blocked Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s bid to end debate on the bill. The new Senate majority will now extend its debate on approving Keystone — a measure that was seen as an easy GOP win just weeks ago — as Democrats pressed McConnell to hold more amendment votes as proof of his commitment to a more open process in the chamber than their own party used while it was in power. Story Continued Below A pair of 53-39 votes against ending debate on Keystone might have reached the 60-vote threshold they needed, however, had two absent pro-pipeline Democrats voted with the GOP Monday night, and winter storms not prevented some Republicans from reaching Washington. “We’re not trying to prove a point to Senator McConnell,” Sen. Chuck Schumer, Democrats’ No. 3 leader and top message man, told reporters after the votes. “We hope his takeaway is that he’s got to keep the process open.” The legislation that would yank President Barack Obama’s authority over the pipeline on Monday lost a vote from one of its longtime backers, Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) — now a member of party leadership as chief of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee — but picked up a vote from Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.), the former DSCC chairman who has not formally signed onto the pipeline bill. Two other Democrats who have backed stripping Obama’s power to decide on a Keystone permit, Sens. Claire McCaskill and Mark Warner, missed the Monday vote. “I’d like to see us decide Keystone and move on,” Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, one of the pro-Keystone Democrats who voted with the GOP to cut off debate, told reporters. Keystone’s backers initially expected the pipeline votes would end this week. But Democratic anger over the majority leader’s move to close off the debate on their amendments last week has made the pipeline bill a power struggle, with Democrats pushing McConnell to continue the freewheeling energy debate on the floor that has delved into topics ranging from climate change to eminent domain. Republican aides knew ahead of Monday’s filibuster that they could not muster 60 votes, thanks in part to inclement weather that drove the number of absences up to eight. Besides McCaskill and Warner, who is traveling with Obama in India, four GOP senators were also unable to make the vote. “That’s politics,” said one Senate GOP aide, referring to Democrats’ insistence on more votes before ending the Keystone debate. “At what point are these amendments no longer a sincere effort to improve the bill and just an effort to kill it by delay — that’s a determination Leader McConnell is going to have to make at some point.” The Keystone bill’s future now may depend on whether the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee’s leaders, Chairwoman Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), can hammer out an agreement for more amendment votes that satisfies the bill’s Democratic supporters. Those Keystone boosters in Obama’s party “need to be talked to,” Heitkamp said. McConnell spokesman Don Stewart sought to draw a contrast with a November vote that nearly succeeded in approving the pipeline and attracted nine Democratic senators with no amendments considered. In addition to Tester, two of those Democrats voted against ending debate Monday: Sens. Bob Casey and Tom Carper. The GOP aide, speaking candidly on condition of anonymity about the outlook for the Keystone bill, said McConnell could set up a new vote to cut off debate by Thursday, but that the chamber could see the pipeline debate carry on into early next week. On Feb. 2, the Obama administration’s years-long review of a border-crossing permit for the Alberta-to-Texas pipeline enters its next stage as agencies such as EPA and the Interior Department face a deadline for commenting on the State Department’s finding that Keystone is unlikely to have a significant environmental impact. Greens and liberals have lambasted that conclusion as ignoring the carbon emissions from extracting and burning the oil that Keystone would carry. The American Petroleum Institute’s top lobbyist, Louis Finkel, indicated that an oil and gas industry that has waited for the Keystone approval for years was not concerned about the bill’s latest delay. “Clearly, there’s a period of adjustment” when a new majority takes over, Finkel said, adding “both parties are feeling their way through.” But one former Senate Republican aide acknowledged that Monday’s Keystone vote presents political pitfalls for Republicans despite its procedural necessity. “The optics really matter on this fight more than other fights because at this point it’s purely political,” the aide said. “You don’t want to take an optical hit by putting up a vote when you know you don’t have 60.” Still, that doesn’t mean the bill is in trouble, the former aide added. “It’s not going to be clean, but it’s going to get done.” Whenever the Senate finishes work on its bill approving the heavy oil pipeline — which Obama has threatened to veto — it must either be go into conference with the House or sent across the Capitol for a second vote, thanks to the successful attachment of amendments this month.

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Lobbying push puts obscure tax at top of Obamacare repeal agenda An obscure Obamacare tax on medical devices has emerged as the Republicans’ best chance of repealing part of the health care law this year. The tax may not be what ordinary Americans who oppose Obamacare focus on — or even know about. Story Continued Below But a massive, sharply focused lobbying campaign, combined with a lucky concentration of medical device companies based in Democratic states like Massachusetts and Minnesota, explain why the 2.3 percent tax on the sale of devices including pacemakers and artificial joints has gained special status. It stands apart from dozens of new taxes and fees in the health law and more widely vilified provisions like the individual mandate. “Repeal of the device tax already has strong bipartisan support,” Stephen Ubl, CEO of the industry’s largest trade group, AdvaMed, said last week, citing Democratic sponsors of repeal bills introduced last month. “House and Senate leadership have prioritized action on these repeal bills in 2015.” An overwhelming but nonbinding bipartisan Senate vote to repeal the tax in 2013, prior House votes to scrap it and the fact that getting rid of the device tax has endured as a top anti-Obamacare priority for the new GOP majority is a testament to the lobbying campaign that began before the device tax was even enacted. House passage under the newly expanded GOP majority is practically guaranteed. The fight has always been in the Senate — and that’s where it’s playing out. Plenty of Senate Democrats would vote for repeal in theory. But some insist on finding a way to make up for the estimated $26 billion hole that repeal would leave in Obamacare financing over the next 10 years. And there’s no agreement on whether or how to do that. Even Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey, liberal firebrands from Massachusetts — a device industry stronghold where Boston Scientific is based — have spoken out against the tax. But neither has signed onto a bill. Markey has proposed eliminating tax breaks for oil companies as a pay-for — a nonstarter with Republicans. Yet the lobbying has momentum. The geography of the device industry helps. One of country’s largest medical device makers, Medtronic, is based in Minneapolis, and Democratic Minnesota Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Al Franken have led efforts to build support for repeal on their side of the aisle. They’ve sponsored a bill, along with Democrats Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, Joe Donnelly of Indiana and Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire and five Republicans. “It’s one of those things — every state and every congressional district has got kind of a cool company that does really innovative things,” said Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), who opposes repeal. “Republicans are looking for parts of the health care law they can attack, and it’s a tax, and everybody hates taxes, and I think it’s kind of the perfect storm for all that.” If all 54 Republicans would vote for the bill, that would give it 59 votes off the bat — one shy of the 60 ultimately needed for passage in the Senate — that is, assuming there’s agreement on how to pay for it. Franken, too, says he wants “a responsible offset,” according to his office, and the pay-for challenge has proponents considering whether it should be part of a larger package of legislation, not a focused quick hit against an Obamacare provision. Klobuchar suggested it might fit into a bigger tax bill. “My colleagues and I are continuing to work on finding a way to pay for the repeal, and I also continue to believe this could be done as part of comprehensive tax reform,” Klobuchar said in an emailed statement. The medical device industry was just one of several health care sectors that were tapped to fund Obamacare, along with drug companies, hospitals and health insurers. The rationale was that they all stood to benefit from massive health coverage expansion and closing the Medicare prescription drug “donut hole.” But the device industry contribution is the only one that Congress has put on the table. Initially, the medical device tax was proposed to bring in $60 billion over 10 years. The industry fought it from the outset, and resistance from its Democratic allies effectively cut the total in half, changed it from a set amount to a percentage of sales — and allowed the device companies to deduct the Obamacare-related fees from their taxes. But unlike the hospitals and insurers, for instance, which have a host of priorities when it comes to Obamacare, the medical device industry has remained single-mindedly focused on repealing the tax. Health insurers have been complaining about a far larger tax on their plans that began this year — one expected to raise about $100 billion over 10 years. They are a powerful voice in Washington — but their campaign hasn’t gained as much traction. “The insurers, the hospitals, they have so many issues that they have to balance,” a Republican lobbyist said. “It’s simpler for the device industry.” The medical device lobbyists argue that unlike other sectors that were included in Obamacare negotiations and received explicit benefits from the insurance expansion, device manufacturers don’t stand to gain from it because they sell primarily to seniors who are already insured by Medicare. On Wednesday, AdvaMed estimated that 39,000 jobs over five years would either be lost to slower growth or eliminated due to the tax. A survey of its members found that research and development has suffered at over half of manufacturers, too. Some policy experts and fact-checkers have sharply challenged the industry claims, and the Congressional Research Service predicted the tax would have “fairly minor effects,” with output and employment in the industry falling no more than 0.2 percent. But AdvaMed has been adept at getting out that job-killer message. The group spent about $2.4 million in 2013 and again in 2014, about 60 percent more than the roughly $1.5 million spent in each of the two years before that. “It’s been just straight up educating policymakers about the fundamental flaws of the policy and the impact that it’s had on the industry,” J.C. Scott, the top lobbyist at AdvaMed, said of the effort. David Nexon, AdvaMed’s domestic policy director, is the former Democratic staff director for the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee and was a longtime health adviser to the late Sen. Ted Kennedy. Republican and Democratic lobbyists said Nexon has played a major role in shaping the bipartisan strategy. And AdvaMed is by no means the only voice for medical device companies on the Hill. In fact, the trade group represents a small fraction of the industry’s lobbying. The industry as a whole has spent over $30 million on lobbying in each of the past four years, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Medtronic alone spent more than $5.3 million last year — small change given what’s at stake. In 2012, the company estimated it would pay $125 million to $175 million a year because of the tax. Medtronic did not respond to calls for comment. Because the tax is just a mechanism for paying for Obamacare and not essential to its broader aims, repeal is an easier sell. Democrats who back the Affordable Care Act couldn’t tolerate repealing any core component, like the individual mandate, that would undermine the goals of covering millions of Americans and making the insurance market work better. But they can dislike a tax that hurts industries back home. “It’s very easy for proponents of the Affordable Care Act to support medical device tax repeal but still be for the primary aims of the law,” said Larry Levitt, senior vice president at the Kaiser Family Foundation. But some Obamacare advocates bristle at the idea that the device industry should be exempt from contributing. They worry it will embolden other industries to try to recoup their contributions — unraveling the fiscal foundation of the health law.

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Mitch McConnell’s way At a closed-door lunch late last month, one Republican senator after another questioned how their party will escape its political jam on immigration. But the most important man in the room wasn’t offering many answers. The GOP-led House had just created a quandary with no easy way out — passing a $39.7 billion Department of Homeland Security spending bill loaded with riders on immigration policy that stand no chance of clearing a Democratic filibuster in the Senate. And with funding set to run out at the end of February, some GOP senators were in no mood to play endless games with the House. Story Continued Below “We just need to rip the Band-Aid off,” said one Republican senator, saying the Senate should strip out all the immigration language and pass a “clean” DHS funding bill. “I think the House guys rolled a grenade in the room,” a second GOP senator said later. In the middle of it all, showing little emotion as usual, was the person who holds the key to the most important questions facing the Senate these days: Mitch McConnell. McConnell, the shrewd new Senate majority leader, acknowledged that the immigration matter poses “a challenge” but said little about the way forward — even as the DHS funding battle begins in earnest on Tuesday, senators said. It was vintage McConnell: Listen to the competing options Republicans lay out, see whether there’s consensus, keep your cards very close to your vest — then strike when allies and opponents alike are trying to figure out your next move. And as McConnell now heads into a tumultuous period atop the Senate, with huge fights looming over immigration, national security, the budget, highway funding and taxes, the Kentucky Republican is playing an inside game to keep his party’s warring factions together and outmaneuver a recalcitrant and robust Democratic minority. Yet with 54 GOP seats, six shy of overriding a Democratic filibuster and 13 short of overriding a presidential veto, McConnell says there are limits to what he can do. “What I would also remind everybody and mentioned to our House friends at our joint retreat: How would you like to have to get 261 votes on almost everything you do?” McConnell said in a phone interview. “I hope that some day we will have a supermajority in the Senate, but for 100 years we haven’t, and there are some obvious limitations.” To overcome the next round of tests, McConnell has set up meetings and briefings to get back-channel intelligence with the blocs of his caucus. He has instituted a weekly Wednesday meeting with committee chairmen in the Strom Thurmond Room just off the floor, where he suggested last week he may hold off on pushing new Iran sanctions until after March, senators said. He promises to invite the 12 GOP freshmen to monthly sessions in his leadership suite, which boasts grand views of the National Mall. He’s even inviting Utah Sen. Mike Lee, leader of the Senate’s conservative Steering Committee and close ally of tea party firebrand Ted Cruz, to sit in on his weekly leadership meetings. To keep his caucus on the same page, McConnell sends out nightly emails to all GOP senators, including one that defended his refusal to let Democrats stage brief debates on their amendments to the Keystone XL oil pipeline bill before Republicans tabled them — a move that had given the Democrats a rallying cry. To help his most vulnerable senators, McConnell is also on an aggressive fundraising drive, including helping North Carolina Sen. Richard Burr pull in $1.1 million last Wednesday night, while vowing to help promote their proposals on the floor and give them chances to break from the party line. To keep tabs on the House, McConnell leans heavily on Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio). For intelligence on Democrats, Texas Sen. John Cornyn, the GOP majority whip, often shares useful tidbits after working out in the Senate gym nearly every morning with New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, a top Democratic leader. “We talk a little business, we talk a little smack,” said Cornyn, who typically runs on the treadmill while Schumer rides the exercise bike. While the final outcome of the legislative fights remains an open question, what McConnell can control is the Senate’s schedule. To that end, he has promised a return to so-called regular order, loosening the grip on the amendment process from the days that Nevada Sen. Harry Reid, now the Democratic minority leader, ran the chamber. The move, Republicans say, is an attempt to restore the Senate to its deliberative nature, but it could very well slow down the GOP agenda. In his first legislative test, McConnell pushed through the bill to mandate construction of Keystone, after three weeks of at times acrimonious debate and 47 votes on the floor. When McConnell announced that the number of votes on amendments had exceeded the 15 that Democrats had allowed in all of 2014, Hawaii Democratic Sen. Brian Schatz jokingly told the GOP leader he “wanted to applaud, but I’m on Team Blue.” There were so many votes that Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) told McConnell he needed to limit them to 10 minutes apiece, rather than letting them drag on to 15 minutes, saying that “if mothers ran the Senate, they would understand the concept of behavior modification.” “If he were a mother, he would understand you have to inflict some pain in order to get behavior to modify,” McCaskill later said, recounting her conversation with the majority leader on the Senate floor. Still, the Keystone pipeline, which was approved in the Senate last week with the backing of nine Democrats, amounted to a legislative layup compared with the rigorous battles ahead. On Tuesday, Senate Democrats plan to filibuster the House’s Homeland Security funding bill, which includes provisions to block President Barack Obama’s unilateral decision to defer deportations for roughly 5 million undocumented immigrants. Senate Democrats say they’ll accept only a clean bill, giving McConnell a choice: He can heed the Democratic demands or push the fight closer to the Feb. 27 deadline, risking a shutdown for an agency central to national security. House conservatives are warning McConnell not to cave. “I didn’t set the high expectations: It was Mitch McConnell and every other candidate, who said, ‘We were going to stop the amnesty; we are going to stop Obamacare; we are going to take on this president,’” said Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R-Kan.). Added Rep. Mick Mulvaney (R-S.C.): “All I know is 60 votes has been the rule in the Senate for a long time. Other Republican Congresses have gotten stuff done. Go find a way to make it happen.” McConnell decided to move the measure straight to the floor, bypassing the regular order that would have allowed the Senate Appropriations Committee to take it up initially. Senate Appropriations Chairman Thad Cochran (R-Miss.) said letting his panel consider the bill first “would be my preference.” But, he added, “It’s a leadership call.” McConnell, who clearly knows where the votes are in the Senate, doesn’t want conservatives to think he’s planning to do anything other than try to pass the House plan — though he’ll clearly need some Plan B after the Democrats block it. Asked Friday whether he would rule out moving a Homeland Security bill that doesn’t block Obama’s immigration policies, McConnell said he didn’t have “any announcements to make today about the way forward on that.” And, asked whether he would bring up the House bill repeatedly to spotlight the Democratic obstruction, McConnell laughed and said: “How many different ways are you going to ask the same question?” Given the nature of the Senate, where the minority can stall and derail legislation, McConnell is trying to keep expectations in check while also promising to be fair to the president’s nominees. (He said he “absolutely” would bring the nomination of Loretta Lynch for attorney general to the floor for a confirmation vote.) Since voters started popularly electing senators in 1914, McConnell said, GOP senators have never occupied more than 55 seats. “In other words, the American people have never given us the kind of hammerlock on the Senate that the Democrats had during the New Deal, during the Great Society and the first few years of Barack Obama. That’s just the way it is,” McConnell said. Asked whether he was lowering expectations, McConnell deadpanned: “No, it’s just stating the facts.” Just as he’s managed to run the Senate floor, he’s also been on a relentless fundraising drive — and last week, the two conflicted. McConnell, the Republicans’ biggest fundraising draw, was slated to headline back-to-back money events Wednesday night for his party’s efforts to keep its thin majority, but his new freewheeling Senate had scores more amendments left to consider. Mississippi Sen. Roger Wicker, head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, buttonholed McConnell on the floor and pointed to the clock as it was quickly approaching dinnertime. The two parties later agreed to delay the rest of the votes until the next day, allowing McConnell to swing by two events, including the big cash haul for Burr. “Of course, first and foremost — we have a job to do,” said Wicker. “But we had people who planned for quite some time and were expecting to see us. And we have to be mindful of that, also.” The next day, Burr pushed an amendment to reauthorize the federal Land and Water Conservation Fund, but attaching it to the Keystone pipeline could have complicated its chances for quick passage in the House. So McConnell persuaded three GOP senators — Georgia’s David Perdue and Johnny Isakson, and Jerry Moran of Kansas — to flip their votes and oppose the Burr plan. It was defeated by one vote, though Burr received assurances it would come up again and Isakson now hopes McConnell will repay the favor. “To accommodate the leader was the right thing to do,” Isakson said. “Hopefully, I got a chip in the barrel somewhere.” McConnell also did a favor for Ohio Sen. Rob Portman, who could face a tough reelection next year, by putting forward his energy efficiency proposal in one of the first votes of the new Congress. “He has spent a lot of time with those of us who are up in 2016,” Portman said. In the interview, McConnell said the free-flowing set of amendment votes will also offer his vulnerable senators an opportunity to show independence from their party’s leadership. That, he contended, didn’t happen in Senate votes leading up to the 2014 elections that red-state Democratic senators lost in states like Arkansas, North Carolina, Louisiana and Alaska. “Many of these red-state Democrats were defeated with ads that said they voted with the president 98 percent of the time,” McConnell said. “In other words, they were not able to have the opportunity to demonstrate through voting on the Senate floor their differences with the national Democratic Party. I think our senators from blue and purple states appreciate the opportunity to point out to their constituents where they may differ with us on some of the issues.” Often, few senators know his next step. When Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) pushed an amendment saying climate change is not a “hoax,” Republicans saw an opportunity to vote for it because it did not attribute the phenomenon to human activity. But virtually nobody knew that was the GOP’s plan until McConnell made his preference known moments before the vote from the well of the chamber, sources said. “Sen. McConnell is a famously deep thinker,” Cornyn said, “and he keeps a lot of his thoughts to himself.”

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9 Republicans launch House Freedom Caucus Nine Republicans officially launched a new caucus Monday to advocate for conservative legislation in the House. Founded by some of most hard-line GOP lawmakers, the House Freedom Caucus will lobby for bills that would limit the size of the government. Story Continued Below “The House Freedom Caucus gives a voice to countless Americans who feel that Washington does not represent them. We support open, accountable and limited government, the Constitution and the rule of law, and policies that promote the liberty, safety and prosperity of all Americans,” the caucus’s mission statement reads. The founding members include Republican Reps. Scott Garrett of New Jersey, Jim Jordan of Ohio, John Fleming of Louisiana, Matt Salmon of Arizona, Justin Amash of Michigan, Raúl Labrador of Idaho, Mick Mulvaney of South Carolina, Ron DeSantis of Florida and Mark Meadows of North Carolina. The group will serve as a policy alternative to the Republican Study Committee, the decades-old conservative group that lobbies GOP leadership to push legislation rightward. While some of the Freedom Caucus members will leave the RSC, which has been criticized by some members for growing too large, lawmakers are able to be active members of both groups. The Freedom Caucus will be an invite-only group, and members involved with the planning said they will invite around 30 lawmakers to join. If the caucus can boast a 29-person membership, it would be in a position to block Republican legislation that members don’t support.

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Obama: I should've "closed Guantanamo on the first day" Asked what advice he'd give himself if he could go back to his first day in office, President Obama said Wednesday, "I would've closed Guantanamo on the first day." "I didn't because at that time we had a bipartisan agreement that it should be closed," Mr. Obama said at a town hall-style event in Cleveland, Ohio. "I thought that we had a consensus there that we could do it [in a deliberate] fashion." Instead, he continued, "The politics got tough, and people got scared by the rhetoric around it... The path of least resistance was to leave it open, even though it's not who we are as a country."Closing the prison at Guantanamo Bay was one of Mr. Obama's central 2008 campaign promises. In his very first days in office, he did, in fact, sign an executive order to close the prison within a year. Later in 2009, he issued a memo that called for a prison in Illinois to be prepared for the transfer of the Guantanamo detainees. However, the effort faced strong opposition in Congress, and in 2010 lawmakers passed new rules restricting the transfer of Guantanamo detainees. Mr. Obama signed it because it was part of a larger, must-pass defense spending bill.So, Mr. Obama said Wednesday, "Instead we've had to just chip away at it, year after year after year, but I think in that first couple of weeks we could've done it quicker." Last month, outgoing Attorney General Eric Holder said there's still a "realistic possibility" that the detention center could close before the end of the Obama administration. Earlier this week, former Vice President Dick Cheney slammed Mr. Obama's foreign policy moves, including his interest in closing the Guantanamo Bay prison."It's still there for a reason," Cheney said in an interview with Playboy Magazine. "You've still got a couple hundred really bad guys, terrorists, who you need to have some place you can keep them. You don't want to bring them to the United States and give them the rights and prerogatives they would have as an American citizen in a legal proceeding. If anything, we've let too many of them go, in terms of those who have returned to the battlefield." Besides closing the Guantanamo prison, Mr. Obama said that if he could go back to his first day in office, he'd consider dying his hair. "A year in it was too late," he said.

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Ryan looking for 'common ground' on tax reform House Ways and Means Chairman Paul Ryan said on Sunday he still stands ready to compromise with President Barack Obama on tax reform if they can “find common ground.” “We got to get this economy growing,” the Wisconsin Republican said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “We have had such a stagnant economy, the slowest recovery since World War II. Middle income wages are stagnant. We’ve got to break out of this slog. And I do believe that there are things we can do hopefully in the next year to get this economy growing faster.” Story Continued Below “We want to work with this administration to see if we can find common ground on certain aspects of tax reform.,” he said. “And we want to exhaust that possibility.” “If and when that possibility is exhausted, then we will put out what we think ought to be done,” Ryan added, addressing GOP tax strategy. “So, we fully intend on the Ways and Means Committee of showing what full, comprehensive tax reform for everybody, individuals and families alike, looks like.” The tax increases the president advocates, Ryan said, are one large area where Republicans and Democrats disagree on how to proceed. “We’ve got to get this economy growing,” Ryan said, citing the tax code as a means for creating economic growth. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew will testify before the Ways and Means Committee on Tuesday to discuss tax reform, Ryan said.

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Loretta Lynch: ‘Waterboarding is torture’ Attorney general nominee Loretta Lynch told senators on Wednesday that acts of waterboarding constitutes torture — and are “thus illegal.” Her statement came after Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) asked whether she believed waterboarding was torture. Leahy also referred to the report on enhanced interrogations that the Senate Intelligence Committee — then under Democratic control — released in December. Story Continued Below “Waterboarding is torture, Senator,” Lynch said in her testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee. “And thus illegal.” Terrorism and national security issues have been among the topics raised early in Lynch’s confirmation hearing. In her opening remarks, she noted that her office, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, has tried more terrorism cases than any other federal prosecutor’s office has since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. “I pledge to discharge my duties, always mindful of the need to protect not just American citizens, but also American values,” Lynch told senators during her opening statement.

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Pelosi searches for a game plan Nancy Pelosi has big problems in her ranks. The California lawmaker is facing some of the most serious unrest she’s ever seen in her dozen years as the leader of the House Democrats: Members complain that the party has no message and no clear plan to retake the majority, despite good news on the economy that should have brought rewards at the polls. They also accuse senior lawmakers of failing to pull their weight in dues as they occupy coveted committee slots. Story Continued Below Pelosi remains the pre-eminent force in her caucus, and nobody is stepping up to challenge her. But the heightened criticism comes at a time when she has few cards to play to win members’ loyalty, thanks to big losses in November that shrank the number of Democratic seats on highly sought-after committees. The discontent will be at the forefront of the House Democratic Caucus’ three-day retreat this week in Philadelphia. Based on public and private conversations with more than a dozen Democratic lawmakers, the complaints range from the way the party fills top committee slots to its seeming inability to craft an economic message that appealed to voters. “What crystallizes the frustration and concern you see in the Democratic Caucus is the disconnect between the economic numbers and … the electoral numbers we’ve suffered these last six years or so,” Connecticut Rep. Jim Himes said. “So that provokes a lot of soul-searching. Do people not know what is happening in the economy? Do they not believe us that we have something to do with the recovery?” Virginia Rep. Gerry Connolly said Democrats are hungry for answers. “I think there’s a growing desire within the Democratic Caucus, at least from Democrats that I talk to, to try to get to a fundamental understanding of what went wrong, not only in this midterm but in the previous midterm, if we’re going to grow and we’re going to avoid becoming a permanent minority here in the House,” he said. Another Democrat, speaking on background, questioned the brand of economic populism the party has been preaching. “For me, my evangelical mission is to try to persuade Democrats that we have to pay more attention to the suburbs,” the Democrat said. “And the economic message for the suburbs has to be broader than unemployment insurance and minimum wage, although both are important. They don’t resonate in the suburbs.” For some Democrats, a retooled message is the only way to dig themselves out of their deep hole. Nearly two dozen members of the New Democrat Coalition — a group of pro-business lawmakers — are expected to carry that plea to the retreat after House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) pressured them to speak up. Coalition members often skip caucus meetings and the annual retreat but have signed up this time. In the past, Pelosi’s stature in the caucus tamped down any dissent. She outworked, out-hustled and outmaneuvered any potential rival, and her influence — bolstered by the millions she raises for House Democrats — is still unmatched. Even after November’s losses, the Democrats unanimously elected her to continue serving as minority leader. “You heard the vote on the floor when we were trying to elect a speaker,” said California Rep. Xavier Becerra, the chairman of the Democratic Caucus. “I think it was pretty clear, as diverse a group as Democrats are, we are very united behind Nancy Pelosi.” But she is not as unilaterally formidable as she once was. That was shown by her failure in November to get a key ally, California Rep. Anna Eshoo, elected to the top Democratic spot on the Energy and Commerce Committee and the failed attempt to force changes to the $1.1 trillion government spending bill that Republicans crafted in December. A handful of Democrats voted for that bill under White House pressure, but Pelosi’s office argued that she persuaded some on-the-fence Democrats to oppose the measure. And aides close to Pelosi point out that in the three weeks since the new Congress started, she’s managed to create a coalition of Democrats to beat back a number of Republican priorities and given the White House room to threaten a veto by having the votes to sustain it. “Pelosi is invigorated by the challenge of building consensus around a new, economic message, and she’s shown her members she’s listening by bringing new blood to the table,” said a source close to Pelosi. “And with her sustaining veto threats on every key piece of the Republican agenda, there’s no question that her power and influence in this Congress has risen.” Still, Pelosi is trying to adjust. She is taking the angst seriously and has tried to quell discontent by appointing junior members to newly created task forces, giving some fresh faces a chance to shine. While the top four positions of Democratic leadership remained static, Pelosi made the surprising move of choosing New Mexico Rep. Ben Ray Luján to run the House Democrats’ campaign arm. She also created two task forces focused on addressing the most prevalent criticisms of the Democrats’ midterm election strategy and authorized her deputies to survey members on what they want to change. Luján said that in conversations with donors and candidates, Democrats are stressing their stark differences from Republicans on economic policies for the middle class — issues President Barack Obama touted during his State of the Union address. “Democrats are unified around middle-class economics, and it’s where we are and it’s where we are going into the retreat and in 2016 and beyond,” Luján said. Both of the new task forces are run by longtime Pelosi allies: Rep. Steve Israel of New York is the party’s new messaging guru, while Assistant Leader Jim Clyburn of South Carolina will head the so-called outreach and engagement committee. But those bodies were filled out by younger members like Rep. André Carson of Indiana, Cedric Richmond of Louisiana and Joaquin Castro of Texas. Pelosi also tapped Himes to sit on that panel. Even with fewer Democratic spots on House committees, Pelosi tapped a quarter of the sophomore class to serve on the so-called A-list panels, an aide said. Wisconsin Rep. Mark Pocan, who was named to the Education and the Workforce Committee during his freshman year, defended Pelosi and said she made an effort to get him onto his first-choice panel. “No freshman was on it until I was put on it last year, and now I’ve moved up like five slots in seniority, so that is exactly what I wanted,” Pocan said. Still, the discontent is widespread.

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Democrats likely to block House immigration bill Senate Democrats sound increasingly likely to prevent the House’s Homeland Security funding bill from even coming to the Senate floor for debate, which would mark their second filibuster of the young Congress. Democrats on Tuesday laid out their opposition to the House’s funding bill in a letter to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), urging him to rid the Department of Homeland Security bill of the policy riders that would block the president’s executive actions that shield millions of undocumented immigrants from deportation. Story Continued Below That’s not going to happen, so now the Senate minority is weighing going a step further and preventing the bill from even being debated on the floor of the Senate, according to Democratic aides and senators. This would prevent consideration of any amendments to the bill, but also flex Democrats’ minority muscles and create a scheduling headache for Republican leaders. Those GOP leaders would be forced to find something else to put on the Senate floor and figure out how to fund DHS past Feb. 27 while also satisfying Republicans furious with Obama’s immigration policies. “I don’t know of anybody on the Democratic side that believes that the riders that the House put on are something that we should vote for,” said Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), the top Democrat overseeing funding for the Department of Homeland Security. Democrats complained bitterly for years about Republicans blocking their legislation from even being debated on the floor, but party aides said they are strongly considering stopping the hardline DHS bill in its tracks with a filibuster. Democrats see no upside to allowing the DHS bill to come to the floor of the Senate, namely because they don’t believe they will be allowed to vote on their clean funding bill as an amendment. “The House bill is DOA so why waste time on it?” said one Democratic aide. Republican leaders still won’t say what the ultimate end-game is for Homeland Security funding, other than that the Senate will vote on the House-passed bill that eviscerates the presidents executive action. It’s not clear either what the Senate would consider next if the DHS bill dies early next week. “We have options,” said Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas.). “But we’re committed to fighting for the House position and that’s what we’re going to be doing.” McConnell says the Senate will consider the Department of Homeland Security funding bill next as soon as the chamber wraps up approval of the Keystone XL Pipeline. On Monday, Senate Democrats blocked McConnell’s attempts to finish the Keystone bill, demanding more votes on amendments, their first filibuster of the year.

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Barack Obama threatens to veto attacks on his immigration policy President Barack Obama vowed to House Democrats on Thursday night that he would “happily” veto any legislation that would “compound” the country’s immigration problems — posing yet another challenge to Republican efforts to pass a Homeland Security spending bill by next month’s deadline. “If rather than try to solve the broken immigration system they compound the problem, I’ll veto it,” the president said in a buoyant and aggressive speech at a retreat for Democratic House lawmakers in Philadelphia, echoing the feisty approach his administration has taken to dealing with the Republicans who control both ends of the Capitol. He also promised once again to veto bills that would repeal Obamacare or roll back Wall Street regulations. Story Continued Below Proclaiming that “America has come back,” he urged Democrats to stand proudly on the economic policies they have pursued during his time in the White House, saying that “the record shows that we were right” — despite the drubbing their party took at the polls in November. And he called for a narrower approach to the spending cuts that are now driven by the annual sequester process, saying they should be “a scalpel and not a meat cleaver.” “Let’s make sure we are funding the things that American families need,” he said. Obama spoke just days before Senate Democrats are promising to filibuster a House-passed bill that would fund the Department of Homeland Security while rolling back years of the president’s immigration policies, including last fall’s decision to shield potentially millions of undocumented immigrants from deportation. Senate Democrats are demanding a “clean” DHS bill, while conservative House Republicans have warned that no such bill could pass their chamber. DHS funding is due to run out Feb. 27, but POLITICO reported Wednesday that some top House Republicans believe a funding lapse may not be so worrisome because most of the department’s employees are considered essential and would stay on the job — though their paychecks would be withheld. “In other words, it’s not the end of the world if we get to that time because the national security functions will not stop,” Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.) said at the time. While Diaz-Balart said Congress shouldn’t ignore the funding deadline, Obama repeatedly seized on the “not the end of the world” line Thursday night. “You think we can afford to have our Department of Homeland Security not functioning because of political games in Washington?” Obama asked. As for Obamacare, the president said: “I hear Republicans are holding their 50th or 60th vote to repeal or undermine the Affordable Care Act. I’ve lost count at this point. But if that bill actually ever reached my desk, I would happily veto it.” House Republicans are scheduled to vote next week on legislation that would repeal the president’s signature health care law. Obama also mocked Republicans for “starting to sound pretty Democratic” in their messages about poverty and the middle class, including a not-so-veiled swipe at former — and possibly future — presidential candidate Mitt Romney. “Even though their policies haven’t quite caught up yet, their rhetoric is starting to sound pretty Democratic,” Obama said. “We have a former presidential candidate on the other side and [who is] suddenly deeply concerned about poverty. That’s great, let’s go. Let’s do something about it.” Obama went further during a question-and-answer session held with members behind closed doors. He said Republicans “don’t have an agenda” in a response to a question from Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio) on infrastructure, and joked that House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) “took care” of the White House proposal to tax 529 college savings accounts, according to sources in the room. And he asked lawmakers for time to negotiate a deal with Iran overs its nuclear facilities. “My simple request, which I do not think is unreasonable, is for Congress to let this play out for two to three months,” Obama said, according to sources. Obama also took a question on his State of the Union request for the ability to fast-track trade deals. He told members concerned about trade to “keep your powder a little dry” and “be strategic.” Earlier Thursday night, in his speech to the Democrats, he strongly repeated his pledge to campaign on the “middle-class economics” policies he had outlined in the State of the Union — policies that he said have already helped rebuild the economy from a deep recession. “It’s pretty rare when you have two visions [and] a vigorous debate, and then you test who’s right,” Obama said. “And the record shows that we were right.” He added: “You and I together made some really tough choices, sometimes some politically unpopular choices, and America has come back.” Obama also challenged Democrats not to back away from their political achievements — arguing that if the party had been more forceful in touting the economic benefits Americans have seen, Democrats may have been more successful at the polls. “I will just say, obviously, we were all disappointed in the outcome of the last election. We’ve heard a lot of reasons for it and I’m happy to take on some of the blame,” Obama said. But he urged lawmakers to “stand up straight and proud and say, ‘Yes, we believe everybody in this country should have health insurance.’” “We believe in middle class economics and we don’t apologize,” he said. But Obama acknowledged that middle-class families are still feeling the pinch from job losses and stagnant wages lingering from the economic downturn. “What everybody here understands is the ground that middle class families lost … still needs to be made up,” Obama said. “As much as we should appreciate the progress that’s been made, it shouldn’t be a cause for complacency. Because we’ve got more work to do.”

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Rand Paul to oppose Loretta Lynch for attorney general Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky announced Wednesday night that he will vote against confirming Loretta Lynch for attorney general because of differences over civil liberties issues, declaring that her views ride “roughshod on our constitutional rights.” Lynch, the U.S. attorney in Brooklyn, would be the first African-American woman to serve as attorney general. Story Continued Below Paul, a likely 2016 presidential candidate who has made criminal justice reform one of his signature issues, said in a statement: “Mrs. Lynch has a track-record of violating the individual freedoms granted to us by our Constitution. She considers civil asset forfeiture to be a ‘useful tool,’ while I consider it to be an infringement on the Fifth Amendment. She remains non-committal on the legality of drone strikes against American citizens, while I believe such strikes unequivocally violate rights granted to us by the Sixth Amendment. “Mrs. Lynch also supports President [Barack] Obama’s calls for executive amnesty, which I vehemently oppose. The Attorney General must operate independent of politics, independent of the president and under the direction of the Constitution. I cannot support a nominee, like Mrs. Lynch, who rides roughshod on our Constitutional rights.” Paul first announced his opposition on Fox News’ “On the Record with Greta Van Susteren.” The Kentucky senator appears to be the first Senate Republican who does not sit on the powerful Judiciary Committee, which is taking up Lynch’s nomination to be the nation’s most powerful law enforcement official, to oppose her confirmation. Several GOP senators on the committee have indicated they will oppose Lynch based on her support for the president’s executive actions on immigration. They include Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, another potential contender for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination. Sen. John Cornyn of Texas — the majority whip, and a member of the Judiciary Committee – announced his opposition earlier Wednesday. “While she has an impressive record as United States attorney, as you know, she will become the chief advocate for the president’s policies as attorney general,” the Republican said. “Her testimony expressing support for the president’s unconstitutional executive action, and for her support for a number of the president’s other policies, make it impossible for me to vote for her nomination.” Despite the mounting Republican opposition, Lynch is still expected to be confirmed to succeed Eric Holder to lead the Justice Department, barring any major last-minute hiccups. All Senate Democrats are expected to support her, and a handful of Republicans – such as Sens. Orrin Hatch of Utah and Jeff Flake of Arizona – have also said they’ll vote to confirm her. A vote on Lynch in the Judiciary Committee isn’t expected until at least the last week of February, which would put her on the Senate floor in early March.

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Commission pushes military health and pension reforms A high-profile commission to overhaul military pay and benefits is pushing to dissolve the TRICARE health care system familiar to troops and their families into a new program and scale back the pensions for service members who stay long enough to retire. But its recommendations, which could eventually lead to savings of $12 billion a year, immediately drew some backlash and face a steep climb on Capitol Hill. Even members of the commission downplayed the urgency of reforming the current pay and benefits system that Pentagon leaders say is getting too expensive and threatening the core of the military. Story Continued Below “It’s my hope all of [the recommendations] would end up in legislation and be adopted,” said Commission Chairman Alphonso Maldon, who would not characterize the current system as unsustainable even when prodded by reporters. The next step: selling the proposals to members of Congress who’ve been skeptical all along of the Pentagon’s warnings that escalating personnel costs were going to eat it alive if not reined it. The nine-member commission, which released its final report Thursday, is pressing for retired service members to get a smaller pension that would equal 40 percent of their salaries after 20 years of service instead of the current 50 percent. But the panel would grandfather current retirees and service members under the existing pension system unless they chose to opt out, meaning the cut would largely affect just new recruits. At the same time, the panel is pushing for a new retirement benefit for all service members: a 401(k)-style savings plan in which the government would contribute. The plan would provide retirement benefits for the 83 percent of enlisted men and women who never reach the 20 years required for a pension, something that disproportionately goes to higher-paid officers, the commission said in its final report. On TRICARE, the panel is recommending the development of a new health care system in which active-duty family members, members of the Reserves and retirees would pick private-sector insurance from a menu of plans. Active-duty family members would be reimbursed for the cost of these private-sector plans through a new Basic Allowance for Health Care. Active-duty service members, meanwhile, would see their health care unchanged: They’d continue to receive care from military treatment facilities. And retirees who qualify for Medicare would get to keep the TRICARE-for-life program that picks up health care costs that Medicare doesn’t cover. The panel made a number of other recommendations, including the creation of a new joint medical directorate and increased funding for on-base childcare centers. And it recommended keeping the current subsidies for the military commissaries that are popular among service members and their families. So far, the commission has avoided its worst nightmare: knee-jerk statements of opposition. But there’s not much enthusiasm either for the proposals, despite their projected savings. The commission members, who are set to testify next week before the House and Senate Armed Services committees, portrayed their efforts not as a cost-cutting exercise but as an attempt to modernize a system that been largely unchanged for decades — and has been criticized for allowing little career flexibility. The commissioners also sought to allay concerns about retention, saying their recommendations would leave in place financial incentives to keep best-and-brightest service members in uniform. In a statement, House Armed Services Chairman Mac Thornberry (R-Texas) pledged to “thoroughly study” the recommendations “to understand how they will affect our ability to recruit and retain the top quality individuals we need.” The committee’s ranking Democrat, Adam Smith of Washington state, said he’s “hopeful that, after careful review, the commission’s recommendations will present Congress with an opportunity to finally begin to address this issue.” The powerful Military Officers Association of America, which has lobbied in recent years to scuttle Pentagon-proposed cuts to military benefits, also vowed to study the recommendations — and notably didn’t oppose any of them in its initial response. “We’ll have to evaluate” the report “to determine what recommendations we can support and which ones require greater scrutiny, such as retirement and health care changes,” said MOAA President and CEO Norb Ryan. And Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said the Pentagon “will analyze the commission’s proposals in full detail.” “While the recommendations released today will not affect the budget request that the president will submit to Congress next week, they will inform discussions that DOD will have with Congress over the course of this year,” he said.

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FCC chair proposes 'bright-line' net neutrality rules Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler confirmed Wednesday he’s seeking strong net neutrality rules that regulate broadband service like a utility, matching a vision laid out by President Barack Obama and setting up a high-stakes standoff with the telecom industry and congressional Republicans. The move, which Wheeler announced in an online op-ed in Wired magazine, is expected to meet heavy resistance from the GOP Congress and Internet-service providers, which warn it will lead to burdensome regulation and hinder investment. AT&T has already said it will challenge such rules in court. Story Continued Below Wheeler’s plan would prevent broadband providers from engaging in pay-for-play deals with companies for faster delivery of their content to consumers. It would also extend net neutrality rules to mobile devices and give the agency new authority over “interconnection” agreements between ISPs and companies like Netflix aimed at unclogging network congestion. The full five-member commission is slated to vote on Wheeler’s plan on Feb. 26. “I am submitting to my colleagues the strongest open internet protections ever proposed by the FCC,” the chairman wrote. “These enforceable, bright-line rules will ban paid prioritization, and the blocking and throttling of lawful content and services. I propose to fully apply—for the first time ever—those bright-line rules to mobile broadband.” The announcement marks the biggest change in Internet policy in more than a decade and signals a new phase for the FCC as it tries to ensure that Internet providers treat all Web traffic equally. The agency is rewriting the rules after an appeals court threw out its 2010 Open Internet order. Wheeler, a former cable and cellphone industry lobbyist, got off to a rocky start with his initial replacement proposal, which would have allowed ISPs to charge content companies for an online fast lane to consumers. While the chairman said the commission would not allow such arrangements if they hurt consumers or competition, his plan sparked a backlash, generating about four million public comments, many of them negative. After that flare-up, Wheeler began work on a “hybrid” plan that drew from different legal strategies. But Obama jolted the debate in November by forcefully calling for the FCC to regulate broadband as a utility. The agency extended its deliberations, with Wheeler, a Democrat and Obama nominee, clearly feeling the pressure from the White House. The chairman, in his op-ed Wednesday, alluded to his evolution on the issue, which eventually led him to propose the stronger set of rules. Under Wheeler’s new plan, the FCC would reclassify high-speed Internet as a utility under Title II of the Communications Act, the same way it does with telephone service. The move would broaden the agency’s authority to regulate Internet-service providers. But the chairman made clear the FCC will not seek to set broadband prices for consumers. It will avoid that by sidestepping parts of the law – a concept known in regulatory jargon as “forbearance.” The plan won praise from many Hill Democrats and public interest groups who’ve pushed Wheeler to take a tougher line. “He’s listening to the American people, setting aside the political tricks of the ISPs, and restoring the right foundation for the Open Internet and our country’s broadband future,” said Matt Wood, policy director for Free Press. Congressional Republicans, however, are seeking to thwart the FCC’s regulatory moves with their own net neutrality legislation. Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John Thune (R-S.D.) and House Energy & Commerce Committee leaders Fred Upton (R-Mich.) and Greg Walden (R-Ore.) are working on a bill that would prevent ISPs from blocking or degrading Web traffic – while avoiding utility-style rules and restricting the FCC’s ability to regulate broadband. The plan “is not about net neutrality — it is a power grab for the federal government by the chairman of a supposedly independent agency who finally succumbed to the bully tactics of political activists and the president himself,” Thune said in a statement. The major Internet-service providers have already signaled their opposition to the utility-style option, with AT&T threatening a legal challenge to any such move. Wheeler himself has acknowledged that lawsuits may be inevitable, predicting in November the “big dogs are gonna sue” no matter what the agency comes up with on net neutrality. Verizon, which filed the lawsuit that overturned the FCC’s earlier set of net neutrality rules, called the chairman’s proposal unnecessary and counterproductive, saying “the FCC can address any harmful behavior without taking this radical step” and warning that “heavy regulation of the Internet will create uncertainty and chill investment among the many players.” The extension of net neutrality rules to interconnection agreements won praise from Netflix, which has clashed with the major broadband providers over streaming slowdowns. Netflix has signed deals with Comcast, AT&T and Verizon to improve delivery of its content, but has done so grudgingly, saying the telecoms should be responsible for fixing network bottlenecks and calling on the FCC to get involved. The two Republican members of the FCC, Ajit Pai and Mike O’Rielly, are expected to oppose the chairman’s proposal. That means Wheeler must depend on his two fellow Democrats on the commission, Mignon Clyburn and Jessica Rosenworcel, to back his plan in order to advance it on a 3-2 party line vote.

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Homeland Security funding on the brink Top Republicans are increasingly unworried about missing the Department of Homeland Security’s funding deadline. The Feb. 27 deadline was supposed to mark the next stage in Congress’ fight on President Barack Obama’s immigration policies, but now, leading Republicans say the fallout would be limited if Congress fails to act. In private conversations and in meetings around the Capitol and on the House floor, top House GOP figures say most of DHS’s 280,000 employees will stay on the job even without a new funding bill because they are considered essential employees — though their paychecks would stop coming in the meantime. Story Continued Below That’s not the House Republican leadership’s goal — they passed their own bill this month. But that line of thinking — discussed privately by multiple lawmakers and aides — illustrates how the debate over Homeland Security funding is beginning to look like an awfully familiar crisis, filled with distrust, sniping, and the same kind of back and forth that has dominated GOP governance for the past few years. This isn’t how this immigration fight was supposed to unfold. When House Republican leaders decided to put DHS on a short funding leash in December, they were betting that even their unpredictable and restless rank and file would blink when it came to national security. With emboldened majorities on Capitol Hill, Republicans planned to put up a fight to gut President Barack Obama’s executive actions, but many of them vowed they would not allow the department’s funding to lapse at the end of February. The House has passed its bill, with language aimed at gutting Obama’s policies — language that won’t make it into the Senate’s version. Even as the Senate gears up to pass its bill, the path forward seems very murky. Senior sources in House Republican leadership are now saying they will not bring up a so-called “clean” DHS funding bill. They hope the Senate can insert some language to change part of Obama’s executive actions on immigration and are privately warning that a “clean bill will not fly in the House,” as one senior leadership aide put it. Several GOP aides said they were hoping the White House intervenes soon and accepts some changes to Obama’s immigration actions to avoid a showdown. And, illustrating the flux and uncertainty within the House Republican Conference, the border security bill that the House was slated to bring up this week could now be delayed until sometime in late February or March or later this year — a victim of the distrust that the some of the conservative rank and file feel toward leadership. That bill, penned by House Homeland Security Chairman Mike McCaul (R-Texas), was meant to quell conservative concerns about the border — but now, many Republicans view it as a back-door way to enact immigration reform and are rejecting attempts to bring it to the floor until well after DHS is funded. In other words, Republicans are rejecting the piecemeal immigration reform they once clamored for. “I don’t want to do the vote until after Feb. 27,” said Rep. Matt Salmon (R-Ariz.), who says he opposes the border bill. “I don’t want to be some bargaining chip on something that I believe needs to be dealt with by the Senate first.” Now, to quiet concerns from some corners that Republicans aren’t doing enough to challenge the White House, Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) is beginning to talk about suing the Obama administration over the president’s executive actions on immigration. Next week, the House is moving onto more comfortable ground: legislation dealing with regulatory flexibility and a measure to defund Obamacare. This isn’t what Republican control was supposed to look like. When Republicans were on the precipice of power, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said they would end the legislative cliffhangers that have come to dominate Washington. Instead, they’re heading into one. Of course, the debate isn’t over. The House has done its part on DHS funding, and the Senate still has to produce a bill of its own. But what the Senate will do — and whether the House can accept it — is in doubt. Senate Democrats released a letter Tuesday calling for a so-called “clean” Homeland Security bill, a united front that would strip Republicans of the votes they would need to advance a funding measure that includes attacks on Obama’s immigration policies. Not even the Republican leadership is entirely sure what the Senate will do. Some GOP sources said Tuesday that they expect Senate Republicans to release a funding bill that includes some modest change to immigration policy. One idea that’s been discussed is attaching language to beef up immigration enforcement and detention in local communities. Lessening the urgency, in some minds, of passing a Homeland Security funding bill is the fact that DHS’s operations wouldn’t necessarily shut down if funding expires after Feb. 27. In the October 2013 federal government shutdown, roughly 85 percent of DHS employees continued to work because their jobs were considered essential. However, their paychecks were withheld until the shutdown was over. “In other words, it’s not the end of the world if we get to that time because the national security functions will not stop — whether it’s border security or a lot of other issues,” Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.) said, though he stressed that Congress shouldn’t ignore that deadline. “Having said so, I think we should always aspire to try to get it done.” Blowing past the deadline would raise ire among national security hawks, who want DHS funding restored immediately, especially given the recent violence in Paris. The internal rifts that are surfacing over immigration have been building since the beginning inside the House Republican conference. Earlier this month, more than two dozen House Republicans defected from the rest of their party to oppose a measure that would kill a 2012 Obama administration initiative for young undocumented immigrants — which would effectively leave more than 600,000 so-called Dreamers open to deportation. The Republicans who theorize the House is moving forward on piecemeal immigration reform might be onto something. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) said in a brief interview Tuesday that his committee is “working on all the bills that we did last Congress,” which would include interior enforcement, E-Verify, a program for agriculture workers and a separate program for high-skilled workers. This mess has many Republican lawmakers shaking their heads, and more red-faced with anger. Republicans like Salmon think the Senate should “come up with creative ideas to do the job” if they cannot pass the House bill. And Rep. Jeff Denham (R-Calif.), a supporter of immigration reform, said bluntly, “We are not going to miss our deadline.” He called the situation “frustrating” and said it makes it “difficult to move on to the next issue when you can’t deal with the deadline in front of you.”

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Elizabeth Warren won't speak at Progressive Caucus retreat Sen. Elizabeth Warren is not expected to speak at the Congressional Progressive Caucus retreat in Philadelphia next month. A leading progressive voice in Congress, the Massachusetts senator was invited to keynote the issues retreat for the 70-person liberal caucus for House and Senate members. But a scheduling conflict will prevent Warren from attending, a caucus spokesperson said on Tuesday. Story Continued Below The progressive caucus’ retreat is scheduled for Feb. 5-7 and follows the House Democratic Caucus retreat, which is also in Philadelphia. Warren has repeatedly stressed that she will not mount a presidential bid in 2016, but a number of top progressives in the House have urged her to consider entering the race. Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), a co-chair of the progressive caucus, said during a a conference call with Democracy for America that he would “love” to see Warren challenge Hillary Clinton. “I would love to see Elizabeth Warren in this race. I think it would be fantastic. I think that it would help the quality of the debate and she may win,” Ellison said, according to MSNBC. “But even if she doesn’t, I think she’ll make Hillary Clinton a better candidate.”

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​DoJ heads to Ferguson with a sense of urgency and optimism Next week, Justice Department lawyers will head to Ferguson, Missouri, to begin discussions about how to reform the city's embattled police department. Earlier this month, the Justice Department issued a searing 100-page report detailing widespread racial bias within the Ferguson police force, and now the city will be asked to decide whether it wants to reform the existing police department or disband it altogether.Vanita Gupta was named acting head of the Civil Rights Division at the Justice Department in mid-October, and in the first on-camera interview she's granted since her appointment, she talked to CBS News about plans for Ferguson.Gupta, who came to the Civil Rights Division from the ACLU, feels a "great urgency" to get the reforms into place. "[O]nce we issue our findings, we really don't want to have a system where we know there are unconstitutional practices. We want to be able to reach an agreement to immediately stop them," she said. Gupta wants the city to have a significant stake in what change looks like. "The Justice Department can't come in and dictate everything. We need to hear from the city and community about what kind of police force they want in town." Already, the Justice Department's report, while it hasn't exactly dictated everything, has had an immediate impact. Its criticism of Ferguson law enforcement for racial profiling and of the municipal court system for using fines for minor offenses to generate $3 million in revenues has spurred personnel changes. Ferguson's city manager stepped down, as did municipal Judge Ronald Brockmeyer. And two police officers whose emails with racist jokes were part of the report have left the department.This next part of the process for Ferguson offers the city and community a chance to collaborate, but if the city and the federal government cannot agree on reforms, the Department of Justice can sue and, in that case, could end up forcing change on the city. But Ferguson seems to be embracing the necessary changes, so Gupta is feeling optimistic."We were communicating with the city throughout the course of our investigation, and they had already started to take corrective measures. There is much, much more work to be done, but I think that we know that there is a path to reaching an agreement and to be able to produce transformative change," she said.Ferguson, however, is only one part of a more widespread problem, and it remains to be seen whether changes undertaken there can catalyze change in surrounding counties that have been found to have similar discriminatory policies."[O]ur hope is going to be that those neighboring jurisdictions very close to Ferguson, engaging in similar practices, will take note of the reforms we put in place in Ferguson," said Gupta. She knows that reform, whether collaborative or court-enforced, will take time, as will rebuilding trust between the community and law enforcement. Gupta is heartened by what she's seen so far -- "concrete action with real commitment from the city, from the police department, from the community."Gupta believes that longer-term reform is the key to turning around the relationship between the community and law enforcement. "I think there is no question that can happen in Ferguson, but we are just beginning now to undertake the work that is going to take to rebuild the trust."

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House leaders may boot dissenters from whip team House Republican leadership’s crackdown against dissenters is continuing. Louisiana Rep. Steve Scalise, the No. 3 House Republican, is laying plans to boot lawmakers from the leadership’s elite vote-counting team if they oppose party-line procedural motions. That might sound like insignificant inside baseball, but it’s a critical development — and yet another sign that top Republicans are looking to ostracize troublemakers in the Capitol. Story Continued Below Procedural motions are crucial for the majority party. The rule vote, for example, is a party-line motion that allows the speaker to control the House floor by laying out the guidelines for legislative debate. If the House cannot pass a rule, the majority often must drop consideration of key legislation. In the worst-case scenario, control of the floor could shift to the minority. But Scalise is also is considering not allowing anyone who votes against the Republicans’ nominee for speaker to join the whip team. Republicans will still be permitted to vote against legislation they oppose, but if they are on the whip team they cannot vote against proceeding to debate. As of now, there is no formalized policy on snubbing leadership. Scalise began talking about the policy with senior lawmakers on the whip team this week in the Capitol. Scalise’s whip team is an important part of keeping the Capitol working. Members of the group have to arm-twist to help pass the leadership’s priorities, and also have a voice in the party’s strategy. Scalise’s allies say that this was always the informal policy, but the Louisiana Republican wants to strengthen it. “Part of being on the whip team is abiding by the rules of the club,” said one Republican staffer familiar with the meeting. The timing is especially interesting, because nine Republicans have formed the Freedom Caucus, a group whose members suggest they will vote as a bloc against some of leadership’s priorities. House Republicans have struggled, at times, to pass the rule. In 2014, the procedural motion that allowed a vote on the yearlong government funding bill narrowly passed. Moira Smith, Scalise’s spokesman, said her office doesn’t “talk about organizational issues within the whip team.” This isn’t the first crackdown this Congress. John Boehner removed two Republicans from the House Rules Committee who opposed his re-election as speaker. But punishing lawmakers for getting out of line cuts both ways. Boehner and his allies experienced blowback from the rank and file after he signaled that he was ready to retaliate.

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Ayotte charges Air Force probing talks with Hill The Air Force is investigating troops who have talked with members of Congress or their staff about the politically embattled A-10 attack jet, Sen. Kelly Ayotte said Wednesday. Ayotte told Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh, testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee, about what she called a “reverse investigation” by officials in the Air Combat Command after one of its top leaders reportedly told airmen they’d be committing “treason” if they talked with Congress about the A-10 Warthog. The command wants to find out who has been talking with congressional aides, Ayotte suggested. Story Continued Below The vice commander, Maj. Gen. James Post, reportedly told an audience of Air Force leaders earlier this month they’d be guilty of “treason” if they talked with Congress about the A-10 because service officials want to retire it. He also reportedly told an audience that he’d deny the remarks if asked about them. Someone in the room described the comments to an Air Force-centric blog, which led to news coverage in Arizona and elsewhere. Ayotte, whose husband was an A-10 pilot and has been an outspoken advocate for saving the jet, told Welsh on Wednesday that she found the story troubling. “It worries me about the climate and tone that is set when airmen and women are told they’d be committing ‘treason’ for communicating with us,” Ayotte told Welsh. “What I’m hearing is there’s actually an investigation going on in reverse as to who’s communicating with Congress. I hope that there will be no punishment for any kind of pursuit of people trying to communicate with Congress.” Welsh said he wasn’t aware of any “reverse investigation” and affirmed that troops have a legal right to communicate with Congress. “I know of nothing along those lines at all,” he said. “I would be astonished by that. I am not a part of that, [Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James] is not a part of that. I would not condone it.” Welsh said the Defense Department’s inspector general is conducting an investigation into Post’s comments and pledged that he and James would present its findings to Congress when they’re complete. For now, Welsh said there are no restrictions on what Air Force personnel may discuss with Congress. “I completely commit to lawful communication with Congress,” he said. “I support any airman’s right to communicate anything you would ask them.” The Air Force is expected to renew its request to Congress to retire its roughly 300 A-10s in the Pentagon’s budget submission due to Congress on Monday. Welsh and other officials say they appreciate the value of the A-10 in close air support, but argue that budget pressures mean the only way to get real savings is to get rid of entire fleets of aircraft, including their training pipelines and support infrastructure.

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House Democrats: 2016 will be all 'about the middle' House Democrats will hammer home the message of “middle-class economics” in hopes of reviving their fortunes in 2016. After three months of griping that their party’s midterm-election message was too complex and often too diluted, lawmakers who gathered here for a three-day Democratic retreat hope they have found the formula for reversing the losses they took in November. Story Continued Below We’re “absolutely unified on three essential messages going forward: It’s middle class, middle class, middle class,” said Rep. Steve Israel (D-N.Y.), who had just surveyed 90 Democratic members about what they want to see in 2016. “Everybody agreed that it has to be about the middle.” Israel, the new chairman of the House Democrats’ messaging arm, said another problem in 2014 was that news on Ebola, Ukraine and Islamic militants knocked domestic concerns from voters’ minds. “When we focus on middle-class values, we win,” Israel said. The New York Democrat added that Democrats will fare better in 2016 now that President Barack Obama is standing up as “our messenger-in-chief.” The president repeatedly invoked the phrase “middle-class economics” during last week’s State of the Union address. “He is our messenger-in-chief … and he needs to continue to be our messenger-in-chief,” Israel said. Obama used last week’s nationwide address to outline an economic message with a more populist strategy that focused on job creation, raising the minimum wage and “paycheck growth” — the theme of the Democrats’ retreat. Of course, much of the Middle East remains in turmoil, and there’s no way to keep unrest abroad from capturing the headlines again. But Israel argued that if Obama stays focused on the middle-class agenda, Democrats will be better positioned to punch through any international news. It’s an optimistic goal — Democrats would need to sweep 30 seats to regain the majority. But Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Ben Ray Luján, who outlined the party’s political strategy during the retreat, argued that the GOP is overextended going into 2016. According to a source in the room, the New Mexico Democrat told members that the DCCC has identified 26 House districts that Obama won in 2012 that are now occupied by a GOP lawmaker, and another 23 where Obama got at least 48 percent of the vote. But Maryland Rep. Steny Hoyer, the Democratic whip, expressed cautious optimism that the party would win back the House in 2016. “I think we can take back the House in 2016,” Hoyer said. “But if you were betting a whole lot money, would I tell you to bet a whole lot of money that we can take back the House in 2016? I wouldn’t.” In the survey results released Thursday, Democrats widely said they had lacked a unified message to cut through the noise of the midterms, in addition to failing to appeal to the middle class or capitalize on good news about the economy. The survey was designed to help Democratic leaders examine what went wrong during the midterms, in which the party ceded 13 seats to Republicans, sinking it further into the minority than Democrats had been in decades. Democrats hope that in 2016, demographics and the excitement of a potential Hillary Clinton presidential ticket will aid their chances. During a closed-door meeting Thursday, former Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean told lawmakers that during the midterm campaigns, “I listened to your policy discussion and my eyes glazed over.” “You can’t repeat them outside your rotary club,” Dean told the lawmakers. “Keep it simple. You don’t win on policy. You win on values.” Other speakers said during the breakout sessions that Democrats need to focus on growth, not redistribution of wealth, when talking to voters. The results from the survey are not shocking. Members have been griping for weeks that the party’s message, including the wider economic message from the White House, didn’t reach middle-class voters during a busy election cycle headlined by an unpopular Obama. “There is a sense, I believe, that many people in the middle class have that if you’re very rich the government will bail you out, and if you’re very poor that the government will help you out,” Israel said. In the survey, House Democrats highlighted five things that went wrong in 2014 with the party’s message, including complaints that lawmakers “didn’t talk enough about the middle class, jobs and economic opportunities,” the message was “too narrow, need[ed] broader ideas and a vision for the future,” and the party didn’t put enough emphasis on the “economic progress we’ve made.” Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) argued that with the economy on the mend, Democrats will be better situated to hawk their middle-class plans to voters. He said the message got muddled in 2014 in large part because of Senate candidates who wanted to distance themselves from Obama. These candidates wanted to “run their own state-based campaigns, trying to carve out their own message and in many cases distances themselves from the president’s economic record,” Van Hollen said. Obama, in a speech to the lawmakers Thursday night, is expected to expand on his State of the Union address to explain “how we can invest in his vision for middle-class economics by making paychecks go further, creating good jobs here in the United States, and preparing hardworking Americans to earn higher wages,” according to a White House official. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said at a news conference Wednesday that Democrats will spend the next months outlining how the party would grow paychecks and create security for middle-class voters if they were in the majority. Already, lawmakers like Van Hollen are introducing legislation focused on the middle class. “It’s not that the Democrats didn’t have a message, it’s that we had too many. The public didn’t see the clarity and the focus of the message,” Pelosi said. “It is going to be a presidential year, so we hope to put on the table what we see as the big contrast in the House of Representatives.” But the party’s unity could be tested if White House policies bump up against the priorities of the more liberal House. Already this week, Obama was forced to retreat from a proposal to tax 529 college savings accounts after Pelosi and Van Hollen aggressively protested the effort. The House Democrats ultimately won out, and the proposal has been scrapped from the budget due out Monday. On Thursday, Van Hollen said the 529 proposal was a “big distraction.” “Now that [Obama] has very clearly and unequivocally said it’s no longer part of the plan, it’s no longer part of the plan,” the Maryland Democrat said. “The good news is the president’s plan did more to help college students, but the 529 proposal was a big distraction from that.” The Democrats are also embroiled in a debate over trade. In his State of the Union address, Obama asked Congress to give him broad authority to negotiate trade deals with foreign governments. But many House Democrats are uncomfortable with the environmental and labor standards likely to be included in a trade deal with Pacific countries. Democratic leaders in the House have stressed they are seeking a “path to yes” from the administration.

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Term limits for committee posts struggle to find Democratic support Nearly two dozen House Democrats pushed back Tuesday against a movement to impose term limits for the party’s senior committee slots. “Member after member member after member got up to criticize” the idea when it came up Tuesday morning at a closed-door meeting of the Democratic Caucus Committee on Organization, Study and Review, said Rep. Jerry Nadler of New York, who opposes term limits. No members who support changing the Democrat’s longstanding seniority system spoke out, according to several sources in the meeting. Story Continued Below “I was wondering where the supporters were,” Nadler said. He said he opposes term limits for ranking members or chairmen because staying on a panel allows lawmakers to develop expertise on complex policy issues. The change would also make fundraising and loyalty to leadership more important, he argued, adding that lawmakers decided which panels to stay on based on the current system. The committee recently announced that it would hold a series of private sessions to examine the party’s governing rules. Chief among the issues is term limits, which has pitted junior members against longer-serving lawmakers and members of the Congressional Black Caucus and Congressional Hispanic Caucus. Also discussed Tuesday was how the Democratic caucus ranks the importance of certain committees. Reps. Mike Thompson of California, Carolyn Maloney of New York, Frank Pallone of New Jersey and G.K. Butterfield of North Carolina, who chairs the CBC, were among the members who attended. Several members said the panel should re-evaluate what constitutes an “exclusive committee” that handles the most important policy issues, according to a source in the room. Rep. Karen Bass, who chairs the Democrats’ governing committee, said the panel will hold several more meetings before making any recommendations. “We see this as a process that will last a bit,” the California Democrat said.

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Senators launching push to end Cuba travel ban A bipartisan group of eight senators is making a major push to abolish travel bans between Cuba and the United States. Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) and an equal number of Senate Democratic and Republican co-sponsors introduced legislation on Thursday that would end the travel restrictions for U.S. citizens and legal residents of Cuba. The bill would also end prohibitions on financial transactions associated with travel between the two nations. Story Continued Below The bill may face stiff headwinds in the Senate among Republicans, though Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas) did not dismiss it outright and said he was still “studying” the legislation. Flake said the most logical path to a vote was attaching the proposal to a spending bill later this year, and Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) predicted the farm lobby will put major muscle behind the bill given that it could help open a new market to U.S. produce. Though some of the bill’s sponsors would like to go further and eliminate the entire Cuban embargo, the Freedom to Travel to Cuba Act is viewed by backers as legislation that could garner broader support than simply knocking down all existing barriers between the U.S. and Cuba. “I would favor lifting the entire embargo, myself. There’s still a difference of opinion on the entire embargo. There is overwhelming support here, in Florida, all across the country … for lifting the travel ban,” Flake said. “This is something we think can move ahead.” In addition to Flake and Leahy, the bill is supported by GOP Sens. Jerry Moran of Kansas, John Boozman of Arkansas and Mike Enzi of Wyoming as well as Democratic Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, Tom Udall of New Mexico and Dick Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Democratic leader. A bipartisan companion bill from Reps. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) and Mark Sanford (R-S.C.) is expected next week, and Flake predicted a torrent of further supporters could be expected in the near future in both chambers. “It’s time for a new policy. A policy that is proven to work,” Durbin said. “I think we’re going to see dramatic change in Cuba if there’s more travel, exchange and business between our two countries.” But as soon as the bill was introduced, opposition in some GOP circles instantly hardened. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said there should be no reward for “hardcore communists” and warned that the Castro brothers’ regime could seize the opportunity to “export their brand of communism.” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) blasted the proposal and said the U.S. should not be giving Cuba “all this relief.” “Jeff is a good guy and he’s been consistent” on Cuba, Graham said of Flake. “And so have I.” Flakes’s response? “This is a prohibition on Americans, not Cubans. That’s why we’re going forward.” While President Barack Obama has announced normalization of some relations between the two countries, congressional action is needed to fully end barriers between the United States and Cuba. Many Senate Republicans, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and potential presidential contender Marco Rubio of Florida, are highly skeptical of relaxing travel and trade prohibitions with Cuba.

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House Dems want new message for 2016 The results from a formal survey of House Democrats are in — and lawmakers want a better political message in 2016 than the party had in November. Democrats widely believed they lacked a unified message to cut through the noise of the midterm elections, in addition to failing to appeal to the middle class or capitalize on good news about the economy, according to a copy of the survey’s results, were released Thursday. Story Continued Below Created by Rep. Steve Israel, the new chairman of the House Democrats’ messaging arm, the survey was designed to help Democratic leaders examine what went wrong during the midterms. The party ceded 13 seats to the House GOP, putting it further into the minority than Democrats had been in decades. Already, lawmakers at a House Democratic retreat in Philadelphia are hoping to turn away from the failures of 2014 to work toward 2016, when demographics and excitement from a potential Hillary Clinton presidential ticket could give Democrats a better chance of regaining seats. During a closed-door meeting Thursday on 2016, former Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean told lawmakers that their policies in November “glazed over” his eyes, according to sources in the room. “I listened to your policy discussion and my eyes glazed over,” Dean told the lawmakers. “You can’t repeat them outside your Rotary Club. Keep it simple. You don’t win on policy, you win on values.” And other speakers said during the breakout sessions that Democrats need to focus on growth, not redistribution, when talking to voters. The results from the survey are not shocking. Members have been griping for weeks that the party’s message, including the wider economic message from the White House, didn’t cut reach middle-class voters during a busy election cycle headlined by an unpopular President Barack Obama. In the survey, House Democrats highlighted five things that went wrong in 2014 with the party’s message, including that lawmakers “didn’t talk enough about the middle class, jobs and economic opportunities,” the message was “too narrow, need[ed] broader ideas and a vision for the future” and not enough emphasize was put on the “economic progress we’ve made.” For the future, the lawmakers want the party’s election-year messaging to focus on the middle class, jobs, education, infrastructure and economic growth — topics that Obama and Democratic leaders have repeatedly stressed in the past month. Obama, in a speech Thursday night to the lawmakers in Philadelphia, is expected to expand on his State of the Union address to explain “how we can invest in his vision for middle class economics by making paychecks go further, creating good jobs here in the United States, and preparing hardworking Americans to earn higher wages,” according to a White House official. The survey also asked lawmakers to rate issues like “housing costs,” “economic security,” “education” and nearly a dozen others based on how important those policies should be to the party’s overall political strategy. The clear winner? Job creation and middle-class economic security. Those two were named by the Democrats as “critical message prorit[ies].” Obamacare, student debt, energy and Medicare and Social Security were ranked “important.” Democrats also want to see a focus on infrastructure and immigration reform. Israel unveiled the results to the House Democrats during a closed-door meeting Thursday morning. Now, House Democrats need to craft a strategy to move past the midterms — they’ve set their hopes on 2016 for winning back a bulk of the seats they have lost since 2010. The Democratic leadership team gathered lawmakers here for an annual three-day issue retreat designed to bring the party together after three months of post-election shock. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said at a news conference Wednesday that Democrats will spend the next months outlining how the party would grow paychecks and create security for middle-class voters if they were in the majority. Already, lawmakers like Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) are introducing legislation focused on the middle class. “It’s not that the Democrats didn’t have a message, it’s that we had too many. The public didn’t see the clarity and the focus of the message,” Pelosi said. “It is going to be a presidential year so we hope to put on the table what we see as the big contrast in the House of Representatives.” Underscoring the party’s new unity push, two panels Thursday, featuring Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Ben Ray Luján of New Mexico and Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, are headlined “We are in this together” and “Charting a path forward: 2016 and beyond.”

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Backers of Iran sanctions struggle to build support in the Senate The push to impose new economic sanctions on Iran is facing an increasingly uphill battle toward a veto-proof majority. Sen. Mark Kirk picked up a prominent supporter Monday — No. 3 Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer — for a bill that would ratchet up sanctions if diplomatic talks on curbing Iran’s nuclear program fall through. Story Continued Below But rounding up other Democrats may be harder and Schumer’s support is contingent, sources said, on other Democrats coming on board with him, like Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.). Schumer said his party is still discussing the best timing for a vote on an Iran bill, after President Barack Obama forcefully warned last week that he will veto any sanctions legislation that lands on his desk during the nuclear talks. “I intend to co-sponsor it,” the New York Democrat said Monday night. “But we’re having a meeting among the Democrats and figuring out the best strategy.” Kirk (R-Ill.) said last week that he intended to release a bipartisan list of co-sponsors for his legislation as early as Monday night. But on Monday evening, Democrats were still being cagey about whether they will publicly defy the president. “We’re at the beginning of the process,” said Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.), a co-sponsor of sanctions legislation last year. “I’ve looked at it. We’ll keep looking at it.” Asked if his name will be on the bill’s co-sponsor list this time, Casey replied, “We don’t know yet.” Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), another previous backer of sanctions, is not expected to sign onto Kirk’s bill, according to a source familiar with the measure. Menendez also remains a wild card. He told New Jersey’s Star-Ledger he might put off supporting the legislation, which in 2013 was known informally around the Hill as “Kirk-Menendez.” The Senate Banking Committee is set to approve Kirk’s bill Thursday. But Kirk has been looking for seven Democrats to join him and six Republicans in defiance of the president’s Iran negotiations, hoping to send a bipartisan message to Obama rather than a party-line vote that has no chance of overcoming a veto. On the day Kirk had hoped to introduce his sanctions bill, 11 members of the Senate Democratic Caucus introduced a resolution that said they are prepared to vote on more sanctions, but only if talks fall apart. “For those who agree that the sanctions bill in the Banking Committee is detrimental, this resolution provides an option in support of diplomacy,” said Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who wrote the measure with Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.). For Kirk, finding Republican supporters hasn’t been a problem — even among those who support a separate approach proposed by Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) that would require Congress to approve or reject any deal with Iran. “I’m definitely on it,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said of Kirk’s bill. Graham is also working closely with Corker. Senate Republicans leader intend to give both measures a vote on the Senate floor in the near future, perhaps as early as February.

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Benghazi panel blows its cool It took 10 months but the House panel investigating the 2012 attacks in Benghazi got contentious on Tuesday. Little new information came from the two-hour-plus hearing, but members traded barbs over the scope and progress of the committee’s investigation. And each side accused the other of politicizing the terrorist attacks in Libya that left four Americans dead. Story Continued Below Democrats lambasted committee Chairman Trey Gowdy, accusing the South Carolina Republican of locking them out of interviews with witnesses. In return, Republicans questioned whether the five minority members were taking the investigation seriously, noting that Democrats have not requested interviews with State Department or CIA witnesses. The discord is unusual for the select committee. Gowdy and Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings, the panel’s top Democrat, have enjoyed a cordial relationship since the committee was created in May and often meet off the House floor to discuss the investigation. But that tone changed Tuesday. “We’re going to take this charge seriously, and I hope the minority will participate as well,” said Kansas Republican Rep. Mike Pompeo. He added that Democrats “act as if their job is to play defense, to stop us … not to participate.” Cummings contended that Democrats have tried to work with Gowdy to establish new rules for the committee but have been shut out. “We can no longer remain silent,” Cummings said, adding that many had worried that the panel would become a “repeat” of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, “where ridiculous allegations were made with no evidence, no evidence to back them up. We just want some rules.” Ostensibly, the hearing was supposed to focus on outstanding document requests, with testimony from Neal Higgins, the CIA’s director of congressional affairs, and Joel Rubin, deputy assistant secretary of state for legislative affairs. Both Higgins and Rubin pledged to respond speedily to the panel’s requests. Before the hearing, Cummings released three letters complaining about Gowdy’s handling of the committee, including a December letter signed by all five of the panel’s Democrats. The lawmakers said Republicans have interviewed at least five witnesses without a Democrat in attendance, including Ray Maxwell, a former State Department deputy who alleged he was told to scrub documents related to the attacks. “You have had different standards for Republicans and Democrats participating in this investigation, secret meetings with witnesses, and — perhaps most importantly — withheld or downplayed information when it undermines the allegations we are investigating,” Cummings wrote. Gowdy’s office dismissed the Democrats’ concerns in a statement late Monday as an attempt to politicize the investigation. “Chairman Gowdy will talk to Benghazi sources with or without the Democrats present just as they are welcome to talk to sources with or without Republicans present,” said Jamal Ware, communications director of the Select Committee on Benghazi. “No congressional select committee has ever had a requirement that sources meet with both sides at the same time, and the Benghazi Committee is no exception.” Gowdy stressed Tuesday that the committee has “had some success,” saying it received 15,000 pages of documents from the State Department that had never before been released to Congress. The department also turned over 25,000 pages that had previously been provided to the Oversight Committee, “but now with fewer redactions,” he said. And Republicans seized on statements from Democrats about the need for another committee to investigate Benghazi. Congress and the administration have completed nearly a dozen other probes into the 2012 attacks, and the House panel was designed to be a clearinghouse to collect and analyze information from the earlier probes. “To suggest that the chairman has been unfair is ridiculous,” Ohio Republican Rep. Jim Jordan said. “We’ve got to to pick up the pace and get to the truth.” When he was tapped to lead the probe, Gowdy repeatedly stressed that the bulk of the committee’s work would be done privately, as he questioned the effectiveness of public hearings on controversial topics. Cummings first wrote to Gowdy in November, with another letter sent earlier this month, but the private correspondence between the two lawmakers was first released Monday. In the letters, Cummings accuses Gowdy’s staff of barring Democrats from key interviews with witnesses and deemphasizing information that disproved some of the lingering conspiracy theories on Benghazi, including the allegation that the State Department purposefully destroyed documents to protect then-Secretary Hillary Clinton. Maxwell, according to Cummings’ letters, repeated the claims about State Department documents during interviews with Republican staff and offered up a second witness to corroborate his allegation. But that unnamed witness rebutted Maxwell’s story, Cummings wrote. Democrats were left out of both interviews, despite willingness by Maxwell and the second source to be interviewed by representatives from both parties, according to Cummings. “In some of our conversations in the past, you have suggested that whistleblowers might be willing to come forward to provide information only to you. That was simply not the case here,” Cummings wrote. “When my staff spoke with Mr. Maxwell and the additional witness he identified, both were willing to talk to Democrats, but your staff excluded them nonetheless.” The criticism is notable as Gowdy and Cummings have worked hard to be respectful of one another in public. Cummings gave Gowdy high praise late last year for running a thorough investigation, and Gowdy even help persuade Democrats to participate in the committee after taking the Maryland Democrat to dinner shortly after the committee was first announced. But that relationship has soured, with Democrats accusing Republicans of rejecting subpoena rules that would allow for a public vote if disagreements arise. “We have spent months trying to resolve these problems privately, but they’ve exhausted our patience and we can no longer remain silent,” said California Rep. Linda Sánchez. “This isn’t the fact-based or fair investigation that Gowdy promised it would be and that the American people deserve.” Democrats are also complaining that the investigation has devolved into a partisan fight reminiscent of the way Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) probed the terrorist attacks when he chaired the House Oversight Committee — an assertion Republican Rep. Peter Roskam rejected. “The straw man argument says this is the Oversight and Government Reform Committee,” Roskam said. “No, it is not. It’s a completely different committee … with a completely different chairman.” The committee’s five Democrats complained that despite a multimillion-dollar budget, the panel is moving slowly, with only a handful of public hearings. Staff for Gowdy said earlier this month that the committee has met with officials from the State and Justice departments on embassy security and document production.

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Dick Durbin: Senate Democrats will block House DHS bill The Senate’s second-ranking Democrat said Friday that his party will block a funding measure for the Department of Homeland Security set for a vote next week that guts President Barack Obama’s executive actions on immigration. Earlier Friday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) teed up a procedural vote on the funding bill, which the House passed earlier this month. But Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) confirmed that Senate Democrats, who have called for a funding bill free of immigration riders, will vote against advancing the measure. Story Continued Below “We support a clean appropriations bill, and we should do it sooner rather than later,” Durbin said on a conference call organized by America’s Voice, an immigration advocacy group. The procedural vote is set for 2:30 p.m. on Tuesday. Current DHS funding runs through Feb. 27. The Republican-led House cleared a package that would keep DHS funded through the end of the fiscal year but rolls back years of the Obama administration’s policies on immigration — including the latest actions announced in November that could shield nearly 5 million undocumented immigrants from being deported, while granting them work permits. The House legislation also would gut a 2012 administrative initiative that has already offered those same protections to some 600,000 immigrants who came to the United States illegally as children. “The House-passed bill we’ll consider would do two things: Fund the Department of Homeland Security and rein in executive overreach. That’s it,” McConnell said Friday morning. “It’s simple, and there’s no reason for Democrats to block it.” Congressional Democrats have protested the GOP’s efforts to kill Obama’s actions through must-pass funding. Durbin, a longtime advocate of legislation that would give a pathway to citizenship to so-called DREAMers, called the efforts to block deportation protections to them “mindless and cruel.” “We are united as a caucus, and we are going to work to stop this strategy that hurts young people,” Durbin said.

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Top Mitch McConnell aide leaving the Hill John Ashbrook, a top aide to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, is leaving Capitol Hill after more than 10 years. The staff director of the Senate Republican Communications Center and a key to the GOP’s messaging strategy, Ashbrook is expected to depart the GOP leader’s office in February. A fixture in the halls of the Capitol, Ashbrook is credited with helping launch the communications center in 2007, a centralized messaging hub that goes toe-to-toe on a daily basis with its Democratic counterpart, the Democratic Policy and Communications Committee. Story Continued Below “Ashbrook is an incredibly talented guy. He was instrumental to winning the majority and he’ll play a big role in our effort to build upon that success,” McConnell said of his longtime aide, who for several consecutive elections took leave from McConnell’s staff to work on the campaign trail. A replacement for Ashbrook is expected to be announced in the coming days, aides said. Josh Holmes, McConnell’s former chief of staff, said that Ashbrook helped boost the GOP communications bullpen past the “natural tension” between the messaging arm and the more well-established Senate Republican Conference, another key cog in the Capitol’s messaging wars. Ashbrook declined to disclose his next gig but is expected to continue to work in GOP political circles — and McConnell Land — after eight years in McConnell’s office and work on four successful GOP campaigns: Two McConnell reelect efforts and the Senate wins of Rand Paul of Kentucky and Jeff Flake of Arizona. McConnell’s current chief of staff Brian McGuire said Ashbrook’s skills are likely to “instantly endear him to everybody he meets” at his next gig. Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) gave Ashbrook his first job on Capitol Hill as his driver in 2004, when Portman was in the House. The two still talk frequently, a rarity on the Hill. “What can I say? He’s like the most honest, high-integrity guy in the Capitol. So I’m sorry to be losing him,” Portman said. “When he worked for me he had long hair, it came down like this in kind of a swoop. That’s how long ago it was.” Ashbrook’s departure from the Hill reflects that it’s a good time to be a well-connected Republican. The GOP controls both chambers of Congress for the first time since 2007 and several other longtime senior Republican aides are expected to announce new jobs off the Hill over the next few weeks.

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Obama to announce $240 million in new pledges for STEM education President Barack Obama is highlighting private-sector efforts to encourage more students from underrepresented groups to pursue education in science, technology, engineering and math. At the White House Science Fair on Monday, Obama will announce more than $240 million in pledges to boost the study of those fields, known as STEM. This year's fair is focused on diversity.Obama will say the new commitments have brought total financial and material support for these programs to $1 billion. The pledges the president is announcing include a $150 million philanthropic effort to encourage promising early-career scientists to stay on track and a $90 million campaign to expand STEM opportunities to underrepresented youth, such as minorities and girls. More than 100 colleges and universities have committed to training 20,000 engineers, and a coalition of CEOs has promised to expand high-quality STEM education programs to additional 1.5 million students this year. Obama launched "Educate to Innovate," his effort to encourage the study of science, technology, engineering and math, in 2009. More than 35 student teams will exhibit their projects at the White House Science Fair.

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Congress takes aim at new union election rules Congress on Thursday approved legislation to block new union election rules backed by labor groups and opposed by business organizations. The Republican-dominated House on Thursday voted 233 to 181 in approving a measure to ban rules issued in December by the National Labor Relations Board and slated to take effect April 14. The House move comes two weeks after the Senate also voted largely along party lines to kill the rules, which would allow what the GOP has dubbed "ambush elections."The news rules would let a representation election happen in less than two weeks after an official petition is filed. Currently, elections can happen no earlier than 25 days after filing, and typically take place far later. "Today, Congress voted to stop an unelected board of bureaucrats from trampling on the rights of America's workers and job creators," Minnesota Republican John Kline, chairman of the House Education and the Workforce Committee, said in a release. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka called the House vote "a direct attack on workers and their right to be heard in the workplace." The NLRB says the new rules are a much needed overhaul to union election procedures, and are intended to "remove unnecessary barriers to the fair and expeditious resolution of representation questions" by allowing for modern electronic communication instead of the paper filings of the past. "It is undeniable that modernizing and streamlining the representation-case process is far overdue," NLRB Chairman Mark Pearce said last month in statement defending the agency's rule. "Both businesses and workers deserve a process that is effective, fair, and free of unnecessary delays, which is exactly what this rule strives to accomplish."In going after the rule, the GOP used a rarely used tactic, employing the Congressional Review Act, or CRA, to keep Senate Democrats from blocking the measure. The CRA lets Congress formally disapprove of regulations with a simple majority, rather than the 60 votes normally required to hold off the threat of a filibuster. But the Republican efforts are largely symbolic, as the White House has vowed to reject the legislation in what would be the fourth veto of President Obama's presidency. The Senate, which would need 67 votes to override a presidential veto, voted 53-46 to pass the resolution. In January, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, National Retail Federation and three other groups filed suit in U.S. district court to block the NLRB's rules, arguing they would violate employers' free speech by limiting the time to communicate with workers about unionization. On Thursday, the business federation applauded the congressional action in a statement, reiterating its view that the rule reduced the opportunity for companies to communicate their views on unions.

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David Vitter opens investigation into Hill’s Obamacare implementation Sen. David Vitter is not backing off his yearslong quest to undermine Obamacare’s implementation on Capitol Hill, even as he runs for governor of Louisiana. As the Louisiana Republican preps for this year’s gubernatorial race, he’s using his new chairmanship of the Senate Small Business Committee to open up an investigation into what he calls a “Washington exemption” for the Affordable Care Act — the ability of some Capitol Hill aides to continue receiving federal contributions for their health care on Obamacare’s exchanges. Story Continued Below The conservative lawmaker is requesting unredacted documents to determine how the District of Columbia Health Benefits Exchange determined Congress would receive a federal taxpayer subsidy that is “unavailable to any other American under the Affordable Care Act.” “Someone within Congress knowingly falsified information in order for Congress to keep their Obamacare subsidy. We need to know who, immediately, so we can fix this injustice and eliminate the unfair practice,” Vitter wrote Tuesday in a letter to the House clerk, the Senate’s financial clerk and the D.C. Health Benefit Exchange Authority. He also questions why lawmakers and staffers have been directed to the District’s Small Business Exchange even though Congress is not a small business. “Allowing Congress — which employs nearly 16,000 individuals — to determine itself as a ‘small business’ doesn’t pass the common-sense test,” Vitter wrote. Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.), the committee’s ranking member, said in response to Vitter’s investigation that “congressional intent was clear that reasonable subsidies would be still be available” to Capitol Hill staffers. “Senator Vitter has made no secret of his agenda to do all he can to dismantle the Affordable Care Act and disrupt the ability of Congressional employees to receive health benefits from their employers,” Cardin said. Vitter has long been frustrated by Washington’s “exemption,” which he says unjustly allows the federal government to continue to pay for a portion of lawmakers’ and Capitol Hill staffers’ health insurance under Obamacare. He held up a bipartisan energy efficiency bill last year for weeks as he pressed for a vote to kill the contributions and filed amendments intended to do so on several bills. Those actions privately frustrated staffers in both parties who could see their insurance costs increase, but the move positioned him as anti-Washington to his constituents back home. The vast majority of large employers in the United States pay for a portion of their employees’ health care. Proponents of Obamacare say the vast majority of large employers in the country pay for a portion of their employees’ health care and that the law allows the federal government to continue to do the same.

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Graham: I've got what GOP needs in 2016 Blunt-spoken Lindsey Graham is a vocal supporter of the Iraq War, a deal-cutter on immigration and a backer of President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominees. And that’s the profile the Republican Party needs in its next presidential nominee, he says. Story Continued Below “My party is center right,” Graham told reporters in the Capitol on Thursday. “There’s an element of the left and the right that I don’t think reflects both parties.” He added: “For those people who believe we are not hard-ass enough on immigration — that we are losing the Hispanic vote because they think we’ve gone soft on immigration — really don’t understand what’s going on in America. A center-right candidacy can prevail in America.” Graham, 59, who won a third Senate term in November, made his comments Thursday after announcing the formation of an exploratory committee, called “Security through Strength,” to test the waters for a potential 2016 presidential bid. The committee will be run by David Wilkins, a former U.S. ambassador to Canada under George W. Bush, along with two GOP operatives, Christian Ferry and Scott Farmer. Graham said he would talk to GOP financiers and conduct polling to see if he has a viable path to win before making an official decision by April. A close ally of Sen. John McCain’s (R-Ariz.) and one who is not afraid to take arrows from the right, Graham is viewed as a long shot to win the GOP nomination. But with the most wide-open presidential field in years — as many as two dozen potential candidates are exploring bids — Graham believes there’s an opening for his blend of conservatism. Specifically, Graham thinks he can bill himself as a bipartisan problem-solver who can appeal to Hispanic voters. “We have a demographic problem,” Graham said. “And I represent a form of conservatism that is acceptable to the reddest of red states.” Asked about aspects of his record that some conservatives consider liabilities — such as voting to confirm Supreme Court justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor — Graham said he thinks qualified presidential nominees should be confirmed by the Senate, a custom he thinks has increasingly been ignored in these partisan times. He noted those votes weren’t a problem in 2014, when he crushed six little-known opponents to win his Senate primary. “How could a guy win in South Carolina by 41 points who voted for Sotomayor, Kagan, embraces [the notion that] climate change is real and immigration reform is necessary?” said Graham, who noted that he is “inclined to support” Obama’s attorney general pick, Loretta Lynch. “My party is center right. … I am conservative by any rational definition. Working with the other side when it makes sense is not inconsistent with being conservative. I will never concede to anyone that conservatism requires a hands-off approach to solving problems.” “Barack Obama ran as a centrist, he’s been in the left ditch,” Graham said. “To get America out of the left ditch, you don’t want to put the car in the right ditch.” McCain, who has been talking up Graham’s presidential prospects for weeks, said he would “absolutely” consider transferring his entire 2008 presidential campaign infrastructure to a potential Graham run. If Graham runs, McCain said, he would immediately endorse him. “He’s the dark horse. And you watch him. He’ll be a lot more formidable than anyone thinks at this moment,” McCain said. “There are many supporters of mine who are more than happy to examine his campaign.”

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Democrats filibuster DHS bill again Senate Democrats again blocked Republicans’ attempt Wednesday to bring up a funding bill for the Department of Homeland Security — filibustering the legislation over provisions that would unravel President Barack Obama’s executive actions on immigration. The vote was 53-47. Story Continued Below The Senate had reached the same outcome on a procedural vote on the same bill Tuesday, and the situation is expected to play out again this week — quite apropos in the days after Groundhog Day. Senate Republicans plan to force the minority to block the bill multiple times, and they slammed Democrats for refusing to let the chamber even take up the DHS funding measure so changes more to their liking could be considered. “They prevented the legislation from even being debated,” Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said earlier Wednesday of the Democrats. “Today’s Democrat Party seems willing to go to any extreme to protect the kind of executive overreach President Obama once described as ‘not how our democracy functions’ – even to block Homeland Security funding to get its way.” But Democrats say they won’t take up anything short of a clean funding bill free of immigration riders attacking Obama’s executive actions, insisting that a debate over immigration should not be tied to must-pass funding for DHS.

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Doubling down on 'middle-class' economics Which does the public care about more: Cutting spending? Or “middle-class economics”? Those are the battle lines for the next year, starting this week. In the budget he’s releasing Monday, President Barack Obama is betting that Americans prefer “middle-class economics” to reducing the federal deficit. Since short-term deficits are down, the logic goes, most Americans will be less worried about them — and more interested in middle-class tax breaks and more spending on new benefits like free community college. Story Continued Below He’s also sure that Americans hate the automatic budget cuts known as the “sequester” as much as he does, and will rally to his call to get rid of it — especially if they can have the middle-class goodies instead. Republicans in Congress, however, are betting that most of the public is still more worried about long-term spending problems — especially since the deficits will start rising again in a few years — and that they can beat back all the catchy middle-class economics talk with tried-and-true promises to cut spending and fight tax hikes. Obama’s $4 trillion budget would produce a $474 billion deficit for fiscal year 2016, rising to $639 billion in 2025. But it’s designed to keep annual deficits stable in relation to the nation’s economic output. The deficit would amount to about 2.5 percent of the Gross Domestic Product in 2016, and it would end up in the same place in 2025 even though the dollar amount is higher, according to a source familiar with the budget details. And the budget would reduce the long-term debt slightly compared to the economy: It would start at 75 percent of GDP in 2016 and ease down to 73.3 percent in 2025. Obama’s budget will provide the first detailed look at his proposals to help working spouses, parents with child care needs, and families with college costs — as well as a plan to use taxes on foreign earnings to help pay for the nation’s infrastructure needs. It will also spell out how he’d use $74 billion in extra spending to boost support for national priorities like manufacturing, defense and medical research. He’s been rolling it out piece by piece, just like he did with his State of the Union proposals a few weeks ago. The latest details emerged Sunday: a one-time 14 percent tax on foreign earnings, and a 19 percent tax on future corporate profits overseas, to help pay for $478 billion in infrastructure repairs over six years. In case you didn’t hear him talk about his new slogan enough in the State of the Union, the budget is where Obama will start shouting “MIDDLE CLASS ECONOMICS,” with a bullhorn. But will his side prevail? There’s certainly some risk for Obama, as he found when he got pounded by Republicans over his now-abandoned plan to get some of the money for his proposals by taxing “529” college savings plans. And he has to make sure he doesn’t turn off moderate swing voters by playing down deficits too much as he fires up the Democratic base. That doesn’t make it a good fight for Republicans to have, though. Some are warning that the GOP will have to respond by promoting its own middle-class proposals — like the ones outlined in a “reform conservative” book called “Room to Grow” — and not just talk about slashing spending. “The Republican Party institutionally has a problem with the middle class, and they need to deal with it,” said Pete Wehner, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and a leader of the “reform conservative” movement. “I don’t think they should jettison their concern for fiscal sanity. I just think they’ve got to broaden their message, their bandwidth, a lot.” White House officials are confident that Obama will have the upper hand. They say the new budget will still address the long-term fiscal problems — and even bring down the debt in the later years of the budget — because the math will still work out between the spending and the new tax revenues Obama’s proposals would raise. That’s an approach they say they’ve used in Obama’s past budgets, and they’ll do it again this year. Independent pollsters say there are no public surveys that test a head-to-head match-up between middle-class economics and deficit concerns, but the recent polls that have been taken suggest that neither party should feel too cocky. The public may be less concerned about the deficit than it was during the height of Obama’s budget battles with House Republicans, but it’s not as if Americans don’t care about it anymore. A Pew Research Center poll in January found that 64 percent of Americans say the budget deficit is a top national priority, down from 72 percent in 2013, when public concern over the deficit reached its peak. Yet Obama did well when he outlined his middle-class proposals in the State of the Union address. According to a CNN/ORC poll taken after the speech, 61 percent of the public thought his proposals to help middle-class Americans would be very or somewhat effective; just 37 percent thought they would be ineffective. That doesn’t mean everyone buys into the focus on the middle class, though. A Fox News poll released after the State of the Union found that 61 percent of Americans prefer to improve the economy for everyone, while just 35 percent want to target the middle class. White House officials insist Obama’s budget isn’t going to present middle-class economics and deficit concerns as an either/or battle. In fact, Obama is suggesting that he’ll find ways to pay for the higher spending so it doesn’t just create more deficits. “If Congress joins me, we can make sure that ending sequestration is fully paid for by cutting inefficient spending and closing tax loopholes,” Obama wrote in a Huffington Post op-ed. Still, Obama and his aides clearly have been shifting their spotlight to middle-class concerns, and they’re happy to spike the football on the declining short-term deficits, which are about to drop to their lowest level since 2007. Democrats say the easing of the deficits gives Obama an opening to argue that there’s no need to keep squeezing domestic spending. “The reason they’re so low is that we’ve been underinvesting in America’s priorities,” especially infrastructure, education and scientific research, said Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, the top Democrat on the House Budget Committee. “Shortchanging those investments is bad for the middle class.”

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House Republicans urge measles vaccination at hearing House Republicans allied themselves definitively on the side of public health at a hearing Tuesday, breaking from Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul’s claim that vaccines can cause mental disorders in children. “There is no credible evidence to support that claim,” Pennsylvania Rep. Tim Murphy said in his opening statement at the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee hearing, noting that “false rumors still exist.” Story Continued Below The hearing, although convened to discuss this year’s influenza vaccine, repeatedly addressed the major measles outbreak that has grown to 102 cases in 14 states. A panel of expert witnesses echoed Murphy’s declaration, responding immediately and strongly in the affirmative when asked whether parents should vaccinate their children. Anthony Fauci, who leads the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, called it “a slam dunk,” describing measles as a highly contagious disease and the shot to protect against it “one of the most highly effective vaccines against any virus.” The comments by Murphy were in stark contrast with remarks Monday by Paul, an eye doctor, that he’d heard “of many tragic cases of walking, talking normal children who wound up with profound mental disorders after vaccines.” Murphy, a Ph.D. child psychologist, noted that mercury is not used as a preservative in the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine — the source of initial concerns in the late 1990s about an autism link. The study identifying a connection has since been discredited as fraudulent research. Just as House Speaker John Boehner did at a morning news conference, when he said that “all children ought to be vaccinated,” other Republicans on the panel distanced themselves from Paul’s contention. Rep. Bill Flores of Texas said he was “baffled” by a relative’s refusal to get her children vaccinated. “I hope she’s listening” to the discussion, he said. Indiana Rep. Larry Bucshon, who’s also a physician, recommended immunization and volunteered that all of his children are vaccinated. And Texas Rep. Michael Burgess, another doctor, made an outright plea to parents. “Please have your children vaccinated,” urged Burgess, noting that he’d had the measles years ago — before protection was available — and that it was a painful disease. He said immunization is and should be state-level policy, but that a state mandate is no less important than a federal requirement. Murphy said he hoped the platform could also be used to educate the public about the overall importance of vaccines to public health. Several Democratic committee members are pressing its leadership for a hearing devoted specifically to the still-expanding measles outbreak. Both Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) and Rep Paul Tonko (D-N.Y.) criticized Paul’s comments without calling him out by name. Schakowsky said it was “disturbing” that a number of high-profile politicians have weighed in on the vaccine conversation “in a negative way.” And the comparison was made to the public’s fears and expectations when the polio vaccine was introduced in the 1950s — after decades of severe illness, paralysis or death for many Americans. One lawmaker asked if the government mandated that people get the vaccine. “You didn’t need to mandate polio vaccine,” replied Anne Schuchat of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. People were “lining up” to get it.

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John McCain: Benjamin Netanyahu should ‘speak to the American people’ Sen. John McCain said on Sunday the U.S. relationship with Israel has deteriorated and that ongoing talks with Iran over its development of nuclear weapons are not helping to ease built-up tensions. “They are convinced that these negotiations with Iran will lead to Iranian acquisition of a nuclear weapon, which will then nuclearize the entire Middle East,” the Arizona Republican said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” Story Continued Below Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is scheduled to address a joint session of Congress in March at the behest of House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), who bypassed the White House with the invitation. And the White House announced President Barack Obama will not meet with prime minister during that trip. McCain, who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee, said he believes Netanyahu should explain his case and that any action taken by the Obama administration to change sanctions against Iran should be treated as a treaty and submitted for congressional approval. “I believe it’s important that Prime Minister Netanyahu speak to the American people and, by the way, we need congressional ratification of any decision that is made,” McCain said.

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Republicans: Obama budget 'laughable' For congressional Republicans, President Barack Obama’s fiscal 2016 budget is “laughable.” It “shamelessly panders to the Democratic base.” And it’s nothing more than a “lousy Groundhog Day repeat.” GOP lawmakers pulled out all the rhetorical jabs as they responded Monday to Obama’s $4 trillion fiscal blueprint, which calls for boosting spending on government programs, doling out tax breaks for the middle class and ending the much-hated across-the-board budget cuts known as sequestration. Story Continued Below And the fact that Obama’s budget rolled out on Groundhog Day made the references to the 1993 Bill Murray film irresistible for congressional Republicans. “It may be Groundhog Day, but the American people can’t afford a repeat of the same old top-down policies of the past,” House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said. “Like the president’s previous budgets, this plan never balances — ever.” Rep. Scott Garrett (R-N.J.) piled on: “It’s fitting that President Obama released his budget on Groundhog Day because it’s a painful repeat of the same failed policies that he has presented to Congress for the past six years.” And Rep. Diane Black (R-Tenn.) called the budget “laughable.” In a joint statement, Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.) and Sen. Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.), the chairs of the budget committee in their respective chambers, said they will produce a budget that balances within a decade. “A proposal that never balances is not a serious plan for America’s fiscal future, especially when we have to borrow money just to afford the programs we already have,” the lawmakers said. And influential GOP senators the president will have to work with almost universally panned the budget document’s $4 trillion footprint, the tax policies that fund it and the lack of eventual balance between revenues and spending. “After six straight years of trying to have it all and losing control of both the House and Senate in the process, it’s time for the President to try something new: listening to the American people,” said Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn of Texas. Republicans want to eliminate loopholes and broadly lower rates, while Obama’s budget would add new taxes for high-income Americans and tax credits for people with low incomes. But the White House and Capitol Hill are clearly talking past each other on a key issue targeted for bipartisan collaboration. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) called Obama’s budget a “retread” of past proposals that died instantly on the Hill and concluded it was “partisan, not practical” — not a great reading for the prospects of a tax deal. And on infrastructure improvement, another bipartisan possibility over the next two years, Republicans shrugged at his idea of imposing a 14 percent tax on overseas corporate profits to shore up the country’s struggling transportation networks. The general idea has merit, but Obama’s tax rate is too high for Republicans. “My colleagues and I believe we can create a new innovative financing tool and have the resources to fund a six-year year highway bill at lower repatriation rates,” said Sen. Roy Blunt of Missouri. Instead, Obama and the GOP found common ground by not advocating for an increase in the gasoline tax, which has been stagnant since 1993. The instant flogging of Obama’s budget by Republicans was a sign Republicans aren’t ready to turn to helping middle-income families, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) concluded. “If the GOP takes this budget and sticks it in a drawer, they’ll be making it crystal clear that they’re more interested in helping special interests than middle class families,” he said. Ending up in a drawer might be understating things. Judging by the GOP reaction, the office shredder seems a safer bet. Quipped Sen. Dan Coats (R-Ind.): “President Obama likes to talk about his veto pen and with the release of this budget, we can only conclude that he writes with red ink.”

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Payments to farmers may exceed farm bill’s expectations Falling crop prices are raising cost projections for new farm programs even before producers have signed up this spring. The Congressional Budget Office weighed in this week with a revised baseline that shows annual payments to farmers could average $4.8 billion over the next decade — a nearly 50 percent increase over what CBO had predicted less than a year ago after passage of the 2014 farm bill. Story Continued Below Taxpayers will get some relief, because the same market changes that are driving up the cost of the commodity title of the farm bill will help to lessen the cost of the heavily subsidized crop insurance program. CBO’s new baseline shows a modest $200 million drop from its past projections for average yearly crop insurance costs, and some economists argue that this number understates the potential savings. As a rule, lower prices reduce the value of the crop to be insured and therefore the total premium needed to cover the liability. In the past six years, the projected base price for corn, which is set for revenue insurance each winter in advance of spring plantings, has proved a surprisingly good indicator of changes in total premiums. But CBO’s approach appears to be more rigid, as seen in its estimates for 2016. On one hand, it has lowered its prior projections for corn, wheat and soybean prices by 13 percent to 16 percent. But it then shows a higher premium of $8.7 billion for the total program — even as it also assumes that 9 million fewer acres will be covered. Until farmers have enrolled and the landscape is better defined, all those estimates are more a red flag than a final word. But the numbers are important in that they show the political risk undertaken by the new farm bill at a time of wholesale change in market prices. For most of two decades, the federal government distributed farm subsidies in the form of direct cash payments, which cost about $4.9 billion annually and went out the door regardless of whether a farmer had losses — or even planted a crop. The reforms Congress enacted last year were an attempt to meet producers’ real needs, but the cost estimates that the House and Senate Agriculture committees used at the time failed to keep up with the pace of price changes in commodity markets. The scale of these shifts is best illustrated by comparing prices from 2009 to 2013 with CBO’s new projections for the five-year life of the new farm bill: 2014 to 2018. Between the two periods, economists estimate that the average price of corn will drop by 44 percent; soybeans are projected to drop 35 percent and wheat 26 percent. As a result, the two commodity support programs enacted to substitute for direct payments have jumped in cost. The new “price-loss coverage” plan, which had seemed inexpensive when CBO was still assuming $4-per-bushel corn prices, will cost 67 percent more now that corn is being pegged in the $3.50-per-bushel range. In the case of the second big program, Agricultural Risk Coverage, the jump is less dramatic — about 26 percent. But that’s in part because CBO is still assuming that only about a third of farmers will enroll in this more complicated alternative. Indeed, the immediate payout under ARC is higher than what PLC offers in today’s market, especially for corn growers. If more producers sign up for ARC, the cost estimates will certainly change and could potentially get larger in the first years. As it stands now, CBO is projecting that the combined annual costs of ARC and PLC will average about $4.4 billion compared with CBO’s projection of $2.94 billion for the same two programs last April. That’s a nearly $1.5 billion increase in itself and largely explains the spike in total payments. Other, smaller subsidy programs, like marketing loans, round out the total at $4.8 billion, but ARC and PLC account for more than 90 percent of the annual payments projected by CBO. Farm bill advocates would answer that the $4.4 billion is still cheaper than the old system of direct payments. But lawmakers are increasingly concerned about a political backlash if large subsidies to big producers again become a political issue. For the next few years, at least, it is easy to envision corn growers under ARC getting double or triple what they received under the direct payment program. Peanut growers got $65 million in direct payments in 2014. By 2017, CBO projects that their payments could reach $209 million under PLC. Adding to this image problem is the fact that King Cotton could be back in the headlines given the increased costs projected for marketing loan benefits. The extension of this support program — which is much smaller than ARC or PLC — received far less attention in the farm bill debate because its costs are typically low at a time of higher prices. But the new CBO baseline projects that the annual cost could average about $260 million — more than twice what was estimated last April. And cotton alone reaps more than half of the total benefits. Predicting crop insurance costs is always complicated because of variables like crop yields and coverage levels. And the new farm bill ushered in several major new products, requiring more time before their impact — and full costs — can be calculated. But crop prices are the biggest driving force in setting premiums, and one of the intriguing aspects of the new farm bill is it essentially invests in two sets of price-driven policies, which can help counterbalance one another. In the past, direct payments went out regardless of crop prices even as the boom in corn drove up crop insurance costs. Now ARC and PLC are essentially countercyclical programs that go up and down with prices — and in the opposite direction from crop insurance premiums. Congress is still far away from finding the sweet spot that could promise more stability for the taxpayer. But the next few years will be a real test of how much crop insurance costs will come down as a market response to the same price collapse that is driving up commodity programs. To examine this more closely, POLITICO reviewed numbers over the past six years for corn, wheat and soybeans. Together, these constitute about 70 percent of the total premiums charged each year for crop insurance, and when prices fell across the board for these crops between 2013 and 2014, so did premiums for each. In many respects, corn is so powerful that it serves as almost a leading indicator on its own for the whole crop insurance program. For example, from 2008 to 2010, the base price for corn fell from $5.40 to $3.99 per bushel, a 26 percent drop. Total premiums for the crop insurance program fell 23 percent in the same period. In 2011, the base price for corn jumped back up to $6.01 bushel, a 51 percent increase. Premiums for the entire program followed with a 58 percent increase. The same pattern has pretty much continued as prices have since fallen. From 2011 to 2014, the base price for corn dropped by 23 percent to $4.62 per bushel. In the same window, the total premium for crop insurance fell 17 percent to $10 billion. These changes are important to the taxpayer on several levels. Lower premiums mean lower subsidies. And in CBO’s case, it affects how much money it assigns to underwriting gains for the private crop insurance companies that sell and manage the policies. CBO declined to comment for the record, but it appears to assume that farmers assign a fixed amount of their budgets to risk management: If costs go down, they simply buy higher levels of coverage or more expensive policies. This is a more static interpretation than the record shows. “History shows there is a close correlation between crop prices, as represented by corn, and the total crop insurance premium and premium subsidies,” said Keith Collins, a former chief economist for the Agriculture Department and a consultant now for the crop insurance industry. “So when prices drop, as over the past two years, premiums and subsidy costs fall.”

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John Boehner: House moving toward suit on Obama’s immigration steps House Speaker John Boehner’s leadership team is preparing a resolution that could authorize further legal action against the Obama administration over its moves on immigration, he told his colleagues Tuesday morning. The resolution, which Boehner discussed in a closed Republican meeting Tuesday, could authorize the House to take several different forms of legal action against the administration, but no final course of action has been decided. For example, the resolution could authorize the House to join a lawsuit that states have filed against President Barack Obama over the executive action. Story Continued Below “We are finalizing a plan to authorize litigation on this issue — one we believe gives us the best chance of success,” Boehner said in the meeting. Republicans have been nearly uniformly opposed to Obama’s decision to change the enforcement of immigration laws by executive authority, and Boehner (R-Ohio) has been trying to find a way to respond. Congress has funded the Department of Homeland Security only until late February, and House Republicans have tried to gut the executive actions through legislation that Obama will never sign. A solo lawsuit could increase tension between the administration and Congress. The House has already sued Obama over his changes to Obamacare. The House was slow to file that lawsuit and cycled through a few attorneys before finalizing its strategy.

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Senate approves Keystone, Obama veto looms The Senate voted Thursday to approve the Keystone XL pipeline on a 62-36 vote, setting up a clash with President Barack Obama, who has vowed to kill the bill with just his third veto in six years. The Keystone bill’s three-week gallop included votes on more than 40 amendments, but the bill still lacks the support in both the Senate and the House to override a presidential veto. Story Continued Below Yet the debate drew praise from Democrats and Republicans alike as a sign the Senate had left behind the gridlock that has stymied legislation for years, and it could now pick up its pace while giving the minority a chance to influence policymaking. But the debate failed to win over any lawmakers from the solid bloc of Democrats who were unwilling to undercut Obama and approve a pipeline that’s long been a top priority for the oil and gas industry. “Time and time again Republicans pledge their allegiance to foreign special interests above the American middle class,” New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, Democrats’ third-ranked leader, told reporters. Despite the intensity of the debate in Congress, Keystone is still largely where it began: a symbol to Republicans of the White House’s hostility to fossil fuels, and to Democrats as another effort by GOP to do the bidding of Big Oil. Senior Republicans have not yet agreed on whether the pipeline bill will head to the House for a second vote, thanks to changes the Senate made this month, or go to bicameral conference talks. House Speaker John Boehner praised Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell “for passing this bill in an open, inclusive, and bipartisan way,” and urged Obama to walk back a threat to veto “this common-sense bill that would strengthen our energy security.” The White House did not back down, reiterating on Thursday its intention to veto the Keystone bill. Overriding Obama would require four more Democratic votes in the Senate and dozens more in the House, where 28 Democrats joined the GOP in approving the pipeline bill earlier this month. Obama has not said whether he would approve the permit that would allow TransCanada to build the pipeline that would link Canada’s oil sands to refineries on the U.S. Gulf Coast. The White House has said it opposed the legislation in the Congress because it would remove the decision from the executive branch. Republicans already are discussing plans to attach the pipeline to upcoming measures that could prove difficult for Obama to reject, such as annual government spending bills. But the Keystone clock may already be working against them. The State Department has told other federal agencies to weigh in by Monday on its year-old finding that the $8 billion project is unlikely to have a significant environmental impact, an indication that the administration is in the final stages of its six-year Keystone review. A final recommendation from State on whether Keystone is in the national interest could come as soon as this month. Although there is no binding deadline for Obama to make the final decision on a border-crossing permit for the pipeline, he has repeatedly expressed a dim view of its economic benefits in recent months. TransCanada CEO Russ Girling praised today’s vote, which he noted was the 10th time the Senate had passed a measure to support the pipeline’s construction. “Every barrel of Canadian and American oil transported by Keystone XL replaces imports from overseas — and improves U.S. and North American energy independence,” he said in a statement. American Petroleum Institute CEO Jack Gerard warned that leaving the pipeline in limbo could have a significant impact on oil and gas transportation plans throughout the country. “The fact is that if all other infrastructure projects are delayed like Keystone XL, we are years away from approving anything that could create jobs and enhance our energy security,” Gerard said in a statement. Despite the Keystone bill’s poor prospects at becoming law, Senate Republicans welcomed the vote that gave their new majority its first legislative accomplishment and drew three new Democratic supporters — Sens. Michael Bennet (Colo.), Bob Casey (Pa.) and Tom Carper (Del.) — more fully behind their Keystone effort. In addition to that trio, six Democrats who have previously supported Keystone joined with every Republican to pass the Keystone bill. Democrats and environmentalists also saw bright spots in the vote: They prevented the GOP from peeling off new Keystone supporters in Obama’s party and opened up some cracks in the Republican’s rhetoric on climate change. “The only positive aspect of this debate has been that some amendments did put senators on the record on issues that truly matter — starting with climate change,” the Natural Resources Defense Council’s Canada project director, Danielle Droitsch, said in a statement on the Keystone vote. Tom Steyer, the billionaire environmentalist who poured more than $50 million into Democratic candidates’ campaigns during last year’s midterms, urged Obama to follow up EPA’s carbon regulations and his emissions pact with China by rejecting Keystone to “truly solidify America’s legacy as a global leader on climate.”

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Six-year-old filmmaker's trip to the White House Six-year-old Noah Gue has a question. "Are you paying attention?" Gue asks, as a camera pans over a frozen landscape.The 15 films featured at a festival hosted by the White House were made by students age 6-16 who were chosen from among some 1,500 entries on this year's theme of giving back."It's like the Sundance or Cannes of film festivals that are open to the public through a government website," Obama said. The young filmmakers were joined in the East Room turned movie theater by entertainment industry leaders, including Academy Award-winning actress Hillary Swank and Steve McQueen, director of the Oscar-winning "12 Years a Slave." "Today we are celebrating a 6 year old in Montana," President Obama said Friday. "He's missing teeth but he is also challenging us to see conservation through a child's eyes." In his movie, the award-winning Noah Gue explored the issue of climate change.Gue attended the screening with his parents -- a photographer and a firefighter -- whose families have called Montana home for generations."I realized that we have to take the boys now to see some of the things in Montana that will be gone but by the time they are adults," Amy Larson Gue, Noah's mother, said.Noah and his family said they were surprised when they received the call from the White House. "We submitted it with the hashtag," the filmmaker's proud father, Michael Gue, said. "We never expected anybody to watch it." Noah hopes his White House screening is just the beginning of his illustrious career, and he's already thinking about the subject of his next work: a film featuring "animals and plants and the rainforest."

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Labor chief addresses Democrats at boycotted hotel The president of America’s largest union addressed House Democrats on Wednesday on ways to grow the middle-class economy, but the location of his speech could cause a stir among local unions. Richard Trumka, the president of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations, gave a keynote address Wednesday evening to the Democratic lawmakers in the Society Hill Ballroom of the Sheraton hotel here — a hotel included on at least two local union boycott lists. Story Continued Below The speech was part of the Democrats’ “local and national perspectives on growing the economy and American paychecks” session of the annual three-day retreat. Trumka’s remarks were closed to the press and public, and the AFL-CIO did not respond to a request for comment. California Rep. Xavier Becerra, chairman of the Democratic Caucus, said during a brief interview Wednesday that the conference consulted with local unions before booking the hotel. “We went through the whole process with all the different labor folks in Philadelphia. We always make sure that when we come to a hotel that we’re not only welcome, but we’re also welcoming the folks that work [there],” he said. The Sheraton Society Hill has been boycotted by the Metropolitan Regional Council of Carpenters. Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter and Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf also addressed the House lawmakers.

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John Boehner: House had a 'right' to invite Benjamin Netanyahu House Speaker John Boehner dismissed widespread criticism about his invitation to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to come to Washington, saying Congress has a “right” to hear from foreign leaders. “The House of Representatives is a equal branch of the government, and we have a right to do it, and we did it,” the Ohio Republican said Tuesday morning after a closed meeting of House Republicans. “And I’m frankly proud of the fact the prime minister has accepted our invitation, and will be here on March 3 to talk to the members of Congress about the serious threat that Iran poses, and the serious threat of radical Islam.” Story Continued Below Boehner’s invitation has faced withering criticism from everyone from the Obama administration to pro-Israel groups. Netanyahu faces reelection in mid-March, and Boehner’s critics say the U.S. appears to be meddling in a foreign election. Netanyahu, who had originally been set to speak to Congress in mid-February, will also appear in March at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee policy conference in Washington.

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The importance of being Ernst Sen. Joni Ernst hasn’t been in office a month, but she’s already delivered the GOP response to the State of the Union. And now the Iowa Republican is looking to parlay her newfound celebrity into something more powerful: influence in the 2016 presidential campaign. Likely candidates are expected to attend a summer political event put on by Ernst that will showcase her sway at the national level. Weeks after Ernst won a hotly contested Senate race, her staff started planning the June 6 gathering that she aims to turn into an annual tradition akin to the steak fry that her Democratic predecessor, Tom Harkin, put on 37 times. Story Continued Below “It should be a can’t-miss event for presidential candidates who want to get to know Iowans better,” said Matt Strawn, a former chairman of the state GOP who helped Ernst during her campaign; he played her opponent, former Rep. Bruce Braley, in debate prep. The “Roast and Ride” will likely be held in central Iowa and is expected to be a family friendly event featuring motorcycle rides and a pork-heavy menu. Iowa already has its share of “cattle calls” for presidential candidates, including this past weekend’s gathering put on by Rep. Steve King and Citizens United. Major GOP donor Bruce Rastetter just announced he will sponsor his own agriculture-focused summit on March 7 and invite all the candidates. Steve Scheffler, a Republican National Committee member, is organizing the Iowa Faith & Freedom Coalition’s forum on April 25. Bob Vander Plaats’ evangelical group, the Family Leader, announced plans this month to host four regional meetings for socially conservative candidates before a statewide event in August. But none of those GOP players have the juice right now that the 44-year-old Ernst does. “I certainly would [attend] if I was one of those candidates,” Lt. Gov. Kim Reynolds, who is close with Ernst, said of the event Ernst is planning. In contrast to King, the firebrand congressman known nationally for his strident rhetoric about undocumented immigrants, Ernst doesn’t currently intend to endorse in the GOP primary. Instead, she sees herself as a facilitator — someone potential candidates will go through to meet the voters of her home state. Her profile — Iowa’s first female senator, who won in a swing state without bending on her ideology and boasts a military background — would guarantee prominence in either party. But it has been especially welcome for the GOP, which is trying to broaden its appeal among women. Potential presidential candidates have been seeking to rack up chits with Ernst for the better part of a year: Mitt Romney and Marco Rubio were early endorsers of her in her primary, and a host of other likely contenders campaigned with her as her Senate race got underway. Last week, following Ernst’s State of the Union response, Jeb Bush and Rand Paul were quick to call her a “friend” on social media. And over the weekend, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s team tweeted a picture of the governor with Ernst, touting what he called a “great visit.” Walker is planning to attend her event in June, a representative for the governor confirmed. His team recently hired one of Ernst’s top advisers, David Polyansky, to spearhead Walker’s Iowa efforts. Almost every speaker at King’s event over the weekend mentioned Ernst. There were lots of jokes, including from Walker, about Ernst’s commercial last year in which she talked about castrating pigs as a kid before promising to “make ‘em squeal” if she went to Washington. Ernst, for her part, spoke at King’s event about the importance of winning the presidency in 2016 and reelecting senior Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa). “I think we’re all aware that we must take back the White House,” Ernst said in her speech, which she delivered before flying to California for a Koch brothers-sponsored donors seminar. “If we expect to get through this gridlock and have signed into law the wonderful legislation we’re passing, we must have a Republican president.” She was not made available for an interview for this story. Jeff Kaufmann, chairman of the Iowa Republican Party, said even if she remains neutral, Ernst will be an asset to potential candidates in Iowa by simply taking pictures with them and offering advice. In part that’s due to her popularity at home, he said. But he also noted that Ernst, who is the first woman combat veteran in the U.S. Senate, “broke the glass ceiling.” And her service in Iraq gives her credibility when speaking about national security and terrorism. Kaufmann added that Ernst is committed to ensuring Iowa remains relevant in the GOP nominating process, next cycle and down the road. Ernst’s rise comes following two presidential cycles in which the eventual Republican nominee didn’t compete as hard in Iowa, a state dominated by deeply conservative Republicans. “The fact that so many people nationally know her, this absolutely puts Iowa in an even stronger position,” said Kaufmann, who said he spoke with Ernst on Saturday as well as earlier this month about 2016. A year ago, Ernst was not even considered the GOP front-runner to succeed Harkin. Some Republicans preferred Mark Jacobs, a former energy CEO, because of his ability to self-fund. “People wouldn’t even return her phone calls when she got started,” said Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad. Branstad said she caught fire in the crowded primary field because she outworked everyone else and also because “she could relate to Iowans.” Ernst will next be on the ballot in 2020, a presidential year with higher turnout than the most recent midterm elections. The state has a long history of keeping incumbents around for decades, but she still needs to prove herself after facing an onslaught of attack ads in 2014 that portrayed her as extreme on issues from abortion and education to entitlements. “We want Iowa to remain red,” Ernst said here at the King confab. “We’ve worked so hard to get here. We will not be a purple state. We will be a red state!”

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New Congress stumbles through its first month They’re battered, bruised and beaten down by their members — and it’s only the end of January. The first month of 2015 hasn’t been easy on any of Capitol Hill’s leaders, with casualties ranging from Harry Reid’s broken facial bones to the GOP’s circular firing squad on abortion, immigration and border security. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell beat back Democratic tactics on the Keystone XL pipeline, only to pass a bill that is highly unlikely to become law. House Speaker John Boehner faces rebellions from both moderates and the right, and members of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s shrunken caucus are complaining that the party’s messaging stinks. Story Continued Below Asked how he thinks the new Republican-led Congress is doing right now, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) grinned broadly and said, “Not as good as they thought.” “They’re just tied in knots,” Schumer said of the Republicans who had vowed to run the Capitol responsibly. “They’re learning that being in charge isn’t so easy and isn’t so much fun.” But matters aren’t much better for Democrats, whose House minority is the smallest it’s been since the 1940s. Even in the Senate, where Democrats have flexed their muscles to stymie the GOP’s agenda, they risk looking like the old just-say-no Republican minority that they spent years criticizing. And McConnell (R-Ky.) picked up the support of nine Democrats in passing the Keystone XL pipeline bill, showing how he will target centrist Democrats throughout the Congress and pit them against President Barack Obama. “Democrats are still trying to figure out: How do they slow us down and present obstacles without being blamed for being obstructionist?” Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas) said. Congressional leaders’ early troubles are all the more notable given how seasoned a group this is: Pelosi, Boehner, Reid and McConnell have now led their parties for an unbroken string of more than eight years, all of them serving as leaders in both the majority and minority. And yet Congress is set to end January with exactly one new law on the books: an extension of terrorism insurance for commercial buildings that would have passed in December if the Senate had been willing to stay later into the year. That tally will double in the next week when the Senate takes up a popular House-passed bill aimed at preventing veteran suicide. The most visible symbol of Congress’ brutal January is Reid, whose injuries occurred when an exercise band snapped in his bathroom on New Year’s Day, sending him barreling into cabinets. The accident happened soon after he had moved from his hometown of Searchlight, Nevada, to the suburbs of Las Vegas. Since then, Reid has undergone eye surgery and facial reconstruction and been left with partial blindness, though he’s expected to return to the Senate on Tuesday. Senate Democratic leaders have yet to hold their traditional weekly news conference in the Capitol in his absence, wary of setting off palace intrigue, and canceled their weekly caucus meeting on Tuesday. Reid also might need another surgery. Yet even working from his apartment in Washington’s Ritz-Carlton, Reid frustrated efforts by McConnell to swiftly approve the Keystone XL oil pipeline, a bill that was on the Senate floor all month as Democrats pushed a flood of amendments. The Senate finally passed the legislation Thursday after a successful Democratic filibuster on Monday, but it still needs to be reconciled with the House’s version before the bill can go to Obama — who has vowed to veto it. That process will take time. Across the Capitol, Boehner has had to pull two bills because of discord within his ranks: one restricting abortions after GOP women rose up in opposition, and a border security bill that was scuttled as a snowstorm barreled down on Washington. The speaker is facing a squeeze from both his party’s center and his right. Moderates don’t much want to vote for conservative bills, as two dozen of them showed when they voted against gutting Obama’s immigration actions. Conservatives, meanwhile, are starting to oppose bills they once supported. Right now, Boehner’s House Republican Conference can’t even agree if the Department of Homeland Security needs to be funded before its end-of-February deadline. The hardline DHS bill the House passed this month, with language blocking Obama’s immigration actions, is set to be rejected by the Senate’s mischievous Democratic minority next week. No one seems to know how Congress will make its first deadline of the year, let alone looming deadlines on Medicare’s “doc fix,” transportation funding and the debt ceiling. As for Pelosi, the California Democrat has finally lost an intraparty fight, her caucus is restive and some are hungering for new leadership. House Democrats are now regrouping at a retreat in Philadelphia, attempting to chart a steep hill back to power. In the gathering’s early moments, they released survey results in which their own members slammed the party’s midterm election messaging, saying they need a broader focus on jobs, economic growth and the middle class. The House has been shipping plenty of bills over to the Senate. But the legislation will take months for the deliberative upper chamber to process, so many of the Republicans’ early victories have instead been procedural: For example, McConnell has allowed votes on more than 30 amendments just in January, compared with the 15 amendment votes that Democrats had allowed in all of 2014. McConnell’s significant procedural milestone has already become an incredibly popular talking point among Republican senators — and it’s beneficial to plenty of Democrats as well. Take Gary Peters, the Senate’s lone freshman Democrat. The Michigan Democrat received a vote on one of his amendments Wednesday after less than a month as a senator. Former Sen. Mark Begich (D-Alaska) couldn’t get one in six years in Congress. “It’s certainly been an improvement from the House,” admitted Peters, a former House member. After a rocky first month, House Republicans say they’ll soon get back to legislative basics: passing spending bills and allowing the institution to snap back into some semblance of regular order. And the pent-up amendment demands in the Senate and the lack of coordination between the chambers’ majorities on the DHS bill will eventually come to an end, Republicans insist. House Republicans are slowly becoming accustomed to how long it takes the Senate to process a bill thanks to McConnell’s pledges to open up the floor. Senate Republicans say they will get in better sync with the House as their committees crank up. “At first they’re going to take a while, but I don’t think by the summer every bill will take a month,” said Sen. Roy Blunt of Missouri, a member of Senate GOP leadership and former House leader. But in February, Republicans are going to have to adjust to a new factor: Reid’s return to the Capitol. Aside from guiding the Keystone filibuster, the wily Democratic leader also has Democrats ready to block the House’s Homeland Security bill from even being debated on the Senate floor — so members of both parties are preparing for his arrival next week. “He is really chomping at the bit,” Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said.

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Marco Rubio uses subcommittee gavel to challenge Obama’s Cuba policy Marco Rubio wanted an answer: Would the United States limit its meetings with democracy activists as a condition for the Cuban government allowing an embassy in Havana? The new Cuban-American chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s Western Hemisphere panel, in his first hearing with a gavel, was determined Tuesday to get a commitment from the State Department’s Roberta Jacobson that this would not happen as the U.S. steps toward normalizing relations with Cuba. Story Continued Below The potential 2016 presidential hopeful asked Jacobson three times to respond to remarks this week from a Cuban official who said one condition for opening a full-fledged embassy would be an agreement to restrict the movement of U.S. diplomats. Could Jacobson state definitively that the U.S. would never limit its meetings with democracy activists as part of a deal? “We would not accept that condition,” Jacobson, the assistant secretary for Western Hemisphere affairs, said at first. “We could not accept not meeting with democracy activists and with the broadest swath of people possible,” she added. This was not good enough for Rubio on what he called a “simple” question. Yes or no? “I can’t imagine we would go to the next stage of our diplomatic relationship with an agreement not to meet democracy activists,” Jacobson said. The exchange ended as Rubio’s round of questioning came to a close, in a hearing packed as tight as a subway car with reporters and Congress-watchers. But the senator wasn’t done: He launched into another round of questions an hour later, then brought in democratic activists from Cuba as witnesses, including Rosa Maria Payá, the daughter of a dissident many believe was slain by the Cuban government. While Miriam Leiva, an independent journalist from Havana, backed President Barack Obama’s goal of ending the trade embargo, Payá was skeptical and urged the U.S. to focus as much on ordinary Cubans as it is on communicating with the Cuban government. “Don’t turn your backs on Cubans again,” she said. Rubio missed last week’s work in the Senate as he continued to test the waters for a presidential run. But the Florida Republican certainly made room on his schedule this week to capitalize on his new chairmanship perch as he mulls over a run for president, using his new status to directly take on Obama’s policies. Indeed, he took aim at the efforts of Obama and a bipartisan group of senators now pushing to eliminate all travel bans between Cuba and the United States. Drawing a direct link among the owner of Cuba’s largest hotel chain, the Cuban military and the Castro regime, Rubio wondered aloud: Wouldn’t we just be filling the coffers of a corrupt government by allowing Americans to travel there? “Isn’t it fair to say if tomorrow an American gets on an airplane and travels to Cuba,” Rubio asked, “in essence, every penny they are spending in those facilities are more likely than not to end up in the hands of the Cuban regime?” “I know of no example where we have successfully promoted democratic change somewhere by going after travel,” answered Tom Malinowski, the assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor. Asked by Rubio for an example of the current path on Cuba leading to democratic reforms in a repressed country, Malinowski responded: “When I look at Cuba today, it looks like my home country of Poland in the ’80s.” Rubio was unmoved. “So Poland is the example? We’ll examine that at a later date,” Rubio said flatly. Though he challenged his witnesses repeatedly, Rubio didn’t appear explicitly partisan in questioning Jacobson and Malinowski on when they knew about negotiations with Cuba, whether dissidents were consulted on the release of prisoners and where travel money would flow if Americans began visiting in larger numbers. He even helped Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), who breaks sharply with Rubio on Cuba, with her Spanish at one point. But even more notable was the criticism leveled at Obama’s Cuba policy by a member of the president’s own party. Sitting across the room from Rubio was a fiery Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), whose criticism of the Obama administration was perhaps even harsher than Rubio’s own jabs. Menendez compared Cuba repeatedly to China, a country with which the United States has established stronger business ties but still views as repressive on human rights. Menendez scolded the Obama administration for not securing more concessions from the Cuban government as a condition for opening the government. “They wanted exactly what you’ve given,” Menendez said of the Cuban government. “And you’ve elicited nothing, largely, in return.” Indeed, rather than staging a hearing that fell along traditional party lines, Rubio accentuated his own party’s fissures on foreign policy by making his first hearing center on Cuba. Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) rebutted Rubio’s line of questioning on travel, drawing out answers from officials about travel filling the pockets of ordinary Cubans. He then asked Malinowski whether there’s any other country to which the U.S. government restricts its own citizens from traveling. When the answer was “no,” Flake appeared satisfied. “If somebody’s going to restrict my travel, it should be a communist, not my own government,” Flake said with a grin. Though there was some intraparty turmoil between Flake and Rubio, it wasn’t presidential campaign-level friction. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who breaks sharply with Rubio both on Cuba and a larger view of foreign policy, isn’t a member of Rubio’s subcommittee.

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Israeli officials fail to quell Democratic revolt Israeli Ambassador Ron Dermer and Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein rushed to meetings on Capitol Hill on Wednesday trying to calm a furor created by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s planned speech to Congress next month and quell a Democratic revolt that has dozens threatening a boycott. It didn’t work. Story Continued Below If anything, Democrats finished the day more frustrated. According to a source in the room, one Jewish Democratic member of Congress even accused Dermer of being insincere when he claimed not to have anticipated the partisan uproar he’d ignite when he skirted protocol and went around the White House and scheduled the speech only with House Speaker John Boehner. White House press secretary Josh Earnest, meanwhile, dangled the possibility that the White House would have Vice President Joe Biden skip the speech in what the West Wing acknowledges would be a serious snub. The U.S. and Israeli alliance is rooted in deep defense, security, economic and investment ties, and all sides insisted the U.S. commitment to defend Israel is unaffected by the unseemly dispute of the last two weeks. And with Netanyahu on course to be reelected in March, he and President Barack Obama will need to find a way to talk again. But the ongoing dispute over the speech seemed likely to make that more difficult than ever. Biden has to date missed only one speech by a foreign leader at a joint session of Congress, Earnest said. The vice president really likes his ceremonial duties, he added, but might be busy on March 3, when Netanyahu is scheduled to deliver his warning to Congress about U.S. negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program. The Obama administration considers the talks an important diplomatic opening that could lead to the dismantling of Iran’s nuclear weapons program. Netanyahu believes Iran has no intention of holding to any deal and U.S. diplomats are being naive. The speech, which would also come just two weeks before Israeli elections, was widely interpreted as an attempt to rally opposition in Congress, which is considering legislation to try to block a deal. “The muddled manner in which this invitation to speak to Congress has been handled is striking,” said Edward Djerejian, a former ambassador to Israel and the founding director of Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy. “This is an unnecessary irritant in the basic U.S.-Israeli relationship and it couldn’t come at a more delicate time, where the Middle East region is in such turbulence and there’s so many challenges.” Dermer and Edelstein running around the Hill on Wednesday is “symptomatic of what’s happened as a result of the speaker’s invitation and the prime minister’s acceptance of this speech,” said Martin Indyk, a former ambassador to Israel under Bill Clinton If Dermer really wants to fix the problems created by the speech, goes the consensus among Democrats in Washington, he’ll need to do more than apologize: he and Netanyahu have to cancel or reschedule the speech. Otherwise, Wednesday won’t be the lowest point of the relationship. “It’s going to get worse, because Democrats, whether it’s Jewish Democratic congressmen, or Jewish voters for the Democratic Party — which is the majority of American Jewish voters … nobody wants to be put in the position of taking sides,” Indyk said. “Democrats who are supporters of Israel don’t want to have to choose between supporting Israel and supporting their president.” Earnest ducked answering whether Obama would ask Biden to attend the speech; an Oval Office meeting with the president has already been ruled out. Earnest acknowledged that a Biden snub might hurt Netanyahu in the Israeli elections March 17. “We’ll see,” Earnest said. “As we consider the vice president’s attendance, that’s one of the factors that will weigh on that decision.” Seven Jewish Democratic members of Congress who met Wednesday in Rep. Steve Israel’s (D-N.Y.) office — Reps. Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Ted Deutch of Florida, Jerry Nadler and Nita Lowey of New York, Sander Levin of Michigan and Jan Schakowsky of Illinois — lit into Dermer. The invitation, they said, was making them choose between Netanyahu and Obama, making support for Israel into a partisan issue that they never wanted it to be, and forcing some Democrats to consider a boycott of the speech. They suggested Netanyahu consider speaking to members of Congress privately, and not from the podium of the House. “There were a wide range of views that were discussed, but one thing we all agreed on emphatically is that Israel should never be used as a political football,” Israel told POLITICO. As that was happening, a new diplomatic rift was opening. The Israelis sent Edelstein, a member of Netanyahu’s Likud party, to meet with Boehner. Boehner’s office remembered to invite Pelosi’s rival, Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), but left House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) out. A spokesman for the Israeli embassy didn’t return a request for comment. Hoyer and House Foreign Relations Committee ranking member Eliot Engel, who’d also been invited, both pulled out when they realized Pelosi was being left out. “Had we been told that Rep. Pelosi wanted to attend, she certainly would have been welcome,” explained Boehner spokesman Michael Steel afterward. By then the Israeli embassy was scrambling. Pelosi got her own meeting with Edelstein added to the schedule for Wednesday afternoon. She brought along Hoyer and Engel, as well as Assistant Democratic Leader Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) and Intelligence Committee ranking member Adam Schiff (D-Calif.). Pelosi’s office told POLITICO Tuesday that she’ll go to Netanyahu’s speech if it happens. But Wednesday, she used the Edelstein meeting to tear into the Israelis directly. Pelosi “expressed her concern that casting a political apple of discord into the relationship is not the best way forward given the formidable challenges our two countries are facing together,” said Pelosi spokesman Drew Hammill. Dermer, meanwhile, scheduled another rushed meeting with Engel for Thursday. Nothing that happened Wednesday seems to have calmed the revolt that has dozens of Democrats considering skipping Netanyahu’s speech. Earnest said that the White House can see why they might. “Individual members of Congress will have to make their own decision, some of which I assume will be driven by their schedule and some of which will be driven by their own views about what has transpired over the last several weeks as it relates to this speech,” Earnest said. Asked whether the president believes the America-Israel relationship would be harmed by Democrats skipping the speech, Earnest ducked again. “The president believes that individual members of Congress will have to decide for themselves,” he said. Jake Sherman and John Bresnahan contributed to this report.

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Barack Obama’s 'have-it-all' budget President Barack Obama released a $4 trillion budget Monday designed to convince Americans that they can have it all: more tax breaks for the middle class, more spending on government programs, and just enough cuts and tax hikes to keep the nation’s deficits under control. To pay for it, Obama proposed raising a number of taxes on wealthy taxpayers or businesses — some of them already dismissed as nonstarters by the Republican Congress. They include fees on big banks and taxes on companies that do business overseas — plus spending cuts on health programs and other savings — to cover the costs of all the new initiatives. Story Continued Below Obama isn’t suggesting enough cuts or tax increases to eliminate deficits completely, not to mention the long-term debt. But he’ll make the case to Americans that bringing deficits down to “sustainable” levels — below 3 percent of the nation’s economic output — is good enough to keep the debt manageable, a senior administration official said. “We can afford to make these investments while remaining fiscally responsible,” Obama said Monday. “We’ve just got to be smarter about paying for our priorities.” Obama is using the budget to challenge Republicans on middle-class issues, as well as national security funding. He made his budget pitch during a visit to the Department of Homeland Security, where he warned Republicans that they’ll undermine the nation’s security and hurt the federal workers who work at those agencies — including the Border Patrol, airport screeners, law enforcement officials, the Coast Guard and the Secret Service — if they don’t send him a “clean” funding bill that doesn’t try to block his immigration executive actions. “Don’t jeopardize our national security over this disagreement,” Obama said. “These Americans aren’t just working to keep us safe – they have to take care of their own families. The notion that they would get caught up in a disagreement around policy that has nothing to do with them makes no sense.” Republicans wasted no time rejecting Obama’s budget. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell called it “another top-down, backward-looking document that caters to powerful political bosses on the Left and never balances—ever.” House Speaker John Boehner said it “would impose new taxes and more spending without a responsible plan to honestly address the big challenges facing our country.” And Senate Budget Committee Chairman Mike Enzi and House Budget Committee Chairman Tom Price, in a joint statement, declared that “a proposal that never balances is not a serious plan for America’s fiscal future.” The budget calls for $1.091 trillion in discretionary spending for fiscal year 2016, $74 billion above the “sequestration” spending caps that Obama wants to eliminate. The additional spending — $38 billion for defense, $37 billion for domestic programs — would produce a $474 billion deficit for next year. Obama said the sequestration cuts have been bad for economic growth and national security, and warned: “I’m not going to accept a budget that locks in sequestration going forward … I will not accept a budget that severs the vital link between our national security and our economic security.” Administration officials say Obama’s budget would produce $1.8 trillion in deficit reduction over the next 10 years, including $400 billion in health savings — mainly by delivering health care more efficiently, building on experiments that are already being tried under Obamacare — and $640 billion in net revenue from capital gains tax increases and other tax changes. That includes $95 billion in higher tobacco taxes over 10 years to pay for two initiatives: an extension of the Children’s Health Insurance Program — which ends this year if Congress doesn’t revive it — and Obama’s ongoing proposals to guarantee universal access to preschool. The proposal would nearly double taxes on cigarettes and small cigars to about $1.95 per pack from about $1.01 per pack, and index the tax for inflation. The budget also counts on savings from getting rid of waste, fraud and abuse — including $32 billion in savings from more frequent reviews of people who get Supplemental Security Income benefits, which are supposed to go to low-income people with disabilities. The goal is to replace “mindless sequestration cuts with smart reforms,” Office of Management and Budget director Shaun Donovan told reporters at a briefing. There’s $82 billion in mandatory spending over 10 years to help the families of 1.1 million children afford child care, as well as $1.5 billion in additional funding for Head Start. It also asks Congress to give states more than $2 billion to help them start paid family leave programs. And Obama wants a 5.5 percent increase in funding for research and development — a total of $146 billion over 10 years — including more money for the National Institutes of Health, scientific research at the Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation, and a Precision Medicine initiative that will try to develop more personalized approaches to medical treatments and cures. Obama’s budget is full of taxes and other requests that are likely to come to a screeching halt in a Republican Congress, though — including the higher capital gains tax rate, the tobacco taxes and the closing of what White House officials call the “trust fund loophole,” a provision that allows huge amounts of inherited capital gains to go untaxed. It also asks for $239 million to help the Environmental Protection Agency fight climate change, despite the fact that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and other Republicans have promised to block some of the agency’s biggest rules, including a proposed rule to limit carbon dioxide emissions. And there’s a 7.8 percent increase for the Department of Veterans Affairs, a request that will present a political dilemma for Republicans: Do they want to give more money to the scandal-plagued agency that’s still reeling from last year’s revelations of long waiting lists for veterans’ medical care? The White House is also counting on $160 billion in savings from comprehensive immigration reform — the same immigration reform proposals that stalled among Republicans last year and are even more dead now that Obama has infuriated the GOP by issuing executive actions to reduce deportations. Administration officials say it’s in the budget because Obama still supports it, and because the broader immigration legislation would save money by adding younger workers to the workforce, helping to balance out the costs of an aging population. It would also extend the life of the Social Security trust fund by providing more workers to pay taxes into the program. Donovan insisted that including immigration reform, along with the $400 billion in health savings, proves Obama is serious about cutting the costs of entitlements, despite the lack of major initiatives like raising the Medicare eligibility age or the “chained CPI” proposal Obama has floated in the past to change the formula for Social Security benefits. “I think we have a strong argument that the president has been focused from the beginning on the key drivers of the costs of our entitlements,” Donovan said. The Obama team believes it will win over the public with $277 billion in “middle-class and pro-work tax cuts” — including a tax credit for working spouses, a tripling of the maximum child-care tax credit to $3,000 and an expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit to include low-wage workers without children. Senior administration officials say the tax package will help 44 million families, with an average benefit of $600 per household. They argue that Republicans have previously endorsed ideas similar to some of those proposals. White House officials say their goal is to keep deficits stable relative to the gross domestic product and bring the long-term debt down slightly. The $474 billion deficit for next year would be about 2.5 percent of GDP, and it would end up in about the same place for 2025 even though the dollar amount would rise to $687 billion. The federal debt — the cumulative total of deficits that the government owes — would start at 75 percent of GDP in 2016 and ease down to 73.3 percent in 2025. The $400 billion in savings administration officials say they’ll get from mandatory health spending programs — mainly Medicare — are similar to the ones Obama proposed in last year’s budget. They'd cut spending mainly by reducing payments to doctors and other health care providers — going beyond the cuts already included in Obamacare — and by discouraging seniors from buying generous Medigap policies that don’t encourage them to be cost-conscious. There are other recycled proposals from past budgets that didn’t get anywhere in Congress even when Democrats controlled the Senate. Obama’s budget includes the “Buffett rule,” which would require people with incomes between $1 million and $2 million to pay at least 30 percent of their income in taxes. It would also save money by cutting crop insurance subsidies by $16 billion over 10 years, reviving a proposal from past budgets that never gets any traction in Congress. Obama’s team says it doesn’t matter if his proposals have stalled out before because his budget should be an expression of his priorities, not the outlines of a final deal with Congress. “The fact that they didn’t pass the first time doesn’t mean they’re not good ideas,” White House press secretary Josh Earnest. Besides, he said, any budget deal would have to be a compromise between a Republican Congress and a Democratic president, and “anything that emerges from those discussions on the budget will require an effort to find common ground.” Earnest wouldn’t say whether Obama would veto spending bills from Congress that don’t get rid of the sequestration cuts, but he said the threat of the next round of cuts “does have a negative impact on our ability to help the middle class, and it does have a negative impact on the ability of the men and women of our military to keep the country safe.” Even though most Republicans have already been blasting the basic framework of the budget — suggesting it’s full of tax increases and will never fly with their side — they haven’t ruled out all hope of dealing with Obama. House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Paul Ryan suggested Sunday that he’d like to find “common ground” on corporate tax reform. Democrats said the budget would give Republicans a serious political challenge. “If the GOP takes this budget and sticks it in a drawer, they’ll be making it crystal clear that they’re more interested in helping special interests than middle class families,” said Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York. And from early signs, Obama seems to have avoided angering disgruntled liberals with too many compromises on spending. “If we are serious about rebuilding the disappearing middle class, we need a budget which creates millions of decent-paying jobs, raises wages, makes college affordable and demands that the wealthiest people and most profitable corporations start paying their fair share of taxes,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders, the Vermont Independent who is the ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee. “In all these matters, the president’s budget begins to move us in the right direction.”

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Obama's proposals: From healthy to dead on arrival President Barack Obama’s budget may seem like a $4 trillion exercise in wishful thinking, given that the Republicans who control Congress have their own ideas for shaping the nation’s spending. But a deep dive into the document, proposed Monday, pulls up a smattering of proposals that could well earn bipartisan support — as well as others that are unlikely to be enacted but still have the power to shape debate. Story Continued Below Here’s a guide to several of the most intriguing proposals, from those with life in them to those that are dead on arrival. Tax reform Rating: Has a pulse Obama already had to beat an embarrassing retreat on one of his ideas — taxing 529 college savings accounts. But Republicans, led by Rep. Paul Ryan, have said repeatedly that they’d like to work across the aisle on tax reform.   Ryan has expressed particular interest in expanding the earned income tax credit. Obama is trying to do just that; he wants to expand the credit to workers without children and to noncustodial parents, which would benefit more than 13 million people.     Obama also wants to drop the top corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 28 percent. Republicans can definitely get on board with that. The catch? Obama wants to pair the cut with a new 19 percent minimum tax on global profits. And he’s seeking to impose a 14 percent tax on corporate profits stashed abroad. Those ideas will be hard to sell to the GOP, which revolted against a more modest repatriation tax proposed last year by one of its own, former Rep. Dave Camp. The president’s proposal for a higher capital gains tax, meanwhile, will go nowhere on the Hill. A deal is far from certain. But it is possible. Medical research Rating: Hale and hearty Disease doesn’t discriminate by political party. And lawmakers of all stripes seem poised to embrace one of the flashiest proposals in Obama’s budget: a $215 million Precision Medicine Initiative, which aims to harness the power of genetics research to accelerate the development of treatments and cures. Sen. Lamar Alexander, who chairs the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, attended the White House announcement of the initiative. Rep. Fred Upton, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, has also signaled his support. The initiative doesn’t cost a lot — not in the context of a $4 trillion budget — and advocates say the payoffs could be big, both for improving basic scientific knowledge and finding ways to personalize medical treatments for diseases such as cancer. Look for this proposal to survive and lead to a boost in appropriations for the National Institutes of Health. And while we’re talking health: The president may also find bipartisan support for his proposal to invest $100 million to combat abuse of prescription opioids and heroin. That’s a growing problem in both red and blue states — it leads to an estimated 20,000 deaths a year — and many lawmakers have heard an earful about the issue from state legislators and governors, as well as grieving parents. Among other things, the added funds would support distribution of naloxone, an opioid antidote increasingly carried by first responders. Bolstering manufacturing Rating: Alive and kicking Obama seeks to build on his National Network of Manufacturing Institutes by adding seven new sites to the nine already in the works. The president sees supporting the manufacturing industry as a key to economic recovery; he envisions the network as a catalyst for innovation, accelerating the development and adoption of new manufacturing techniques. Republicans have been skeptical, mostly because of the cost, but in the appropriations deal cut late last year, they did agree to fund the network through the fall of 2015. They may want to wait to see how the institutes perform before adding more, but this is clearly an issue with some bipartisan appeal. Obama also wants to expand opportunities for workers through a $200 million American Technical Training Fund. It would support programs that train workers for high-demand fields — and that give those workers plenty of hands-on practice with local employers in addition to classroom instruction. A similar program funded through last year drew a lot of support from (and spurred partnerships with) local Chambers of Commerce across the country. So it wouldn’t be surprising if business interests nudged Republicans to back it. Expanding preschool Rating: Critical condition On its face, this looks like a sure-fire winner: Both Republican and Democratic governors have moved aggressively in recent years to expand access to early child care, and it’s an issue with broad populist appeal. It’s also one of the rare initiatives backed by labor unions, law enforcement and business interests. But don’t get your hopes up too high. Congressional Republicans have historically been skeptical of using federal dollars to expand preschool access, viewing it as more of a local responsibility. They’ve firmly rejected Obama’s past attempts to pay for expansions through tax hikes. And many aren’t sold on the value of Head Start programs for low-income families. Plus, they’ve made clear that they’re dead set against raising tobacco taxes to pay for early childhood programs, as the president proposes. So it’s not clear Obama will be able to find support for his goal of tripling the Education Department’s Preschool Development Grants funding to $750 million. The grants currently help 18 states develop high-quality pre-K in needy communities; the president wants to reach at least 40 states in the coming year. Another big goal with uncertain prospects: adding $1 billion in new funding to Head Start, with a focus on expanding full-day, year-round programs. Obama also wants to triple the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit for families with children under 5 and make it available to families with incomes up to $120,000. The administration estimates his proposals would help cover child care costs for 6.7 million children. Even if these proposals aren’t enacted, expect them to spur debate on the Hill — and perhaps in the 2016 presidential campaign as well, especially since Hillary Clinton has been a big fan of expanding pre-K. Obama might have more luck with another education proposal: investing in building K-12 schools and boosting college access for Native American youths. Both parties have long sought reforms to the Bureau of Indian Education, and these initiatives could fit the bill. Addressing climate change Rating: Extremely critical condition Obama’s budget doubles down on his climate-change agenda — and most of it is dead on arrival. The president wants to make the first $500 million payment to the global Green Climate Fund, as a down payment on his pledge of $3 billion to help poor countries adapt to the effects of global warming. Republicans have already said no way. Obama also wants to launch a $4 billion Clean Power State Incentive Fund, which would be distributed to states that go beyond the minimum requirements of the Environmental Protection Agency’s greenhouse gas regulations. Given how vehemently Republicans have attacked those regulations, it’s a safe bet they’re going to oppose this fund. The president could, however, possibly win some Republican votes for a series of proposed investments aimed at boosting America’s ability to adapt to a changing climate. He wants to spend several hundred million dollars on initiatives such as protecting communities in the path of wildfires, assessing and addressing vulnerability to coastal flooding and boosting the National Flood Insurance Program’s risk mapping efforts. Those initiatives aren’t highly likely to be enacted. But they have a better chance than the president’s other environmental proposals. Bolstering national security Rating: In surgery The president has proposed additional funding for a lot of hardware, including a big ramp-up in spending on the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. The budget calls for funding 57 of the fighters for the next fiscal year, up from 38 this year. Other weapons programs in line for a boost: the long-range bomber program, the KC-46A tankers, the U-2 spy plane and assorted Army vehicles and helicopters. Congress is likely to go along happily with all that spending. The budget also includes hundreds of millions to refuel the USS George Washington aircraft carrier. The Pentagon didn’t request that funding last year, but Congress added it during the appropriations process nonetheless — and members will most likely approve it again this year. But other budget proposals are going to draw fire. Congress has time and again rejected administration efforts to close some military bases. Expect another big “no” this time around. And Congress is likely to push back hard against Air Force proposals to retire the A-10 Warthog attack plane and a Navy proposal to halt procurement of the Boeing EA-18G Growler. What’s more, Republicans are expected to resist Obama’s proposal to save money by increasing some health care fees for military insurance and slowing the growth of housing allowances. Congress did OK some modest cost savings last year but rejected others. Strengthening cybersecurity Rating: Still ambulatory This is another issue that’s become a national priority, even more so in recent months after the hacking of Sony Pictures reminded everyone of our vulnerabilities. Obama wants to boost the unclassified cybersecurity budget by $1 billion, or nearly 8 percent. A significant chunk would go to the Pentagon to staff up its Cyber Mission Force and continue construction of U.S. Cyber Command’s Joint Operations Center at Fort Meade, Maryland. It’s hard to see Congress pushing back on this spending. But there is a potential flash point: Some of the cybersecurity spending runs through the Department of Homeland Security. And Republicans are intent on crimping the DHS budget in order to cut off its ability to carry out Obama’s executive orders on immigration. So the boost in cyber funding could potentially get caught up in the broader DHS debate. Redesigning food safety Rating: Dead on arrival One of the most intriguing ideas in the budget has gotten very little press so far: Obama is proposing the creation of a single federal agency to oversee all food safety. Responsibility for food safety is currently scattered among about 20 federal agencies, with the bulk of duties falling to the Agriculture Department and the Food and Drug Administration. Obama’s budget argues that consolidating the functions would make oversight more efficient and effective. The proposal has been floated on the Hill before. Rep. Rosa DeLauro and Sen. Dick Durbin are its biggest champions; they introduced a bill to consolidate food safety oversight back in 1999 — and again in 2004, 2005, 2007 and just last week — but have never gotten it to a vote. Major industry and food safety advocacy groups are wary of the change, and the concept has never caught fire in Congress. So it’s likely dead on arrival. But the president’s unexpected use of the budget to support the idea could at least spark debate. Â

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Asia trade talks heat up as fast-track battle rages Talks have accelerated on what would be the biggest trade deal in world history thanks to a Republican Congress that wants to give President Barack Obama more power to negotiate the agreement and a group of Asian nations that are closer than ever to making concessions on consumer goods sold around the globe. Here at the Asia-Pacific trade talks, a mad scramble is underway among pharmaceutical giants, major clothing companies and big agricultural groups who are trying to influence the outcome of the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations, a proposed agreement stretching from Chile to Japan that would encompass 40 percent of global gross domestic product and about a third of world trade. Story Continued Below “There’s a real air of seriousness about concluding these talks and getting to the finish line, and everything I saw here this week reaffirms that the U.S. government is firmly committed to trying to get this done in the 30 to 60 days or whatever the time period is,” said Augustine Tantillo, president of the National Council of Textile Organizations, which lobbies on behalf of the U.S. textile industry. Tantillo and other lobbyists and interest groups were busy meeting with officials from Vietnam, New Zealand and the 10 other countries in the talks, which are taking place at the Sheraton New York Times Square Hotel. Trade officials could be spotted holding court at large circular tables as lobbyists and advocates pitched their positions on everything from apparel rules to access to medicines. Dozens of lobbyists and industry group leaders descended on the hotel this week to roam the halls in an attempt to push negotiators toward their positions on controversial areas like drug patents and agricultural protections, which are still unresolved after nearly five years of negotiations. At the same time, trade officials are taking notice of the new atmosphere in Washington. Obama is, for the first time, publicly calling for “trade promotion authority” legislation that will ease the passage of the agreement in Congress. “This is throwing talks into a higher gear as we enter the home stretch,” said Trevor Kincaid, a spokesman for the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative. “While Congress and the administration are preparing for the end game, so are the teams.” “We are making good progress in a number of areas and teams are checking remaining issues off the list,” Kincaid added. Pressure to complete a deal is growing. At some point next month, lawmakers are preparing to introduce the trade promotion bill, which has been buoyed by the GOP takeover of Congress last November that put Senate Republicans only a handful of votes away from a filibuster-proof majority of support for trade and widened the margin of trade-friendly Republicans in the House. The fast-track bill, as the legislation is also known, would expedite the passage of the Asia-Pacific deal in Congress by putting it to an up-or-down vote, limiting debate and preventing lawmakers from offering amendments to the agreement. Its passage is expected to give countries in the deal, which have a combined GDP more than two-thirds greater than that of the NAFTA nations, more confidence to negotiate without fear of Congress picking the agreement apart and reversing hard-won gains or concessions — a magical ingredient that will catalyze the talks, moving them into the endgame. “We’ve seen a great level of optimism by the United States since the midterm elections, and U.S. industry stakeholders have been promoting a highly positive spin about TPA,” said Yves Leduc, director of international trade for the Dairy Farmers of Canada. “I think there is recognition that 2015 is the window in which they are working,” he said. With the legislation imminent, the uncertain deadlines that have plagued the talks are giving way to a more concrete timeline for getting a deal done in the coming months. Trade ministers could meet as soon as March, when they would try to reach an “agreement in principle” representing what a final deal will look like, sources close to the negotiations said here this week. The shortened timeline is forcing action at the negotiating table, prompting the country officials and interest groups to tip their hands on their true bottom lines. Whatever the negotiators decide to include in the trade deal could have a ripple effect on entire industries, with the potential to offshore more U.S. textile jobs and impact the financial feasibility of drug research and development, to name two possibilities. Those and other interest groups say they are fighting for their lives and those for whom they advocate — in some cases literally — as in the case of strict new drug patent rules that could limit access to cheap generic medicines in the developing world. For Leduc, it’s now a matter of mounting a major defense. Canada protects his industry and others — poultry and eggs — through a so-called supply management system, which restricts imports and tightly controls production as a way of stabilizing those sectors — and they’re coming under fire in the 11th hour to open up their markets to more U.S. imports. The chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, Wisconsin Republican Paul Ryan, wielded a block of smoked Gouda from his home state while stressing the importance of prying open dairy access to the Canadian market during a trade hearing with U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman this week. U.S. negotiators were unsuccessful in gaining such access through the NAFTA. “Exports are becoming only more important in the entire U.S. dairy sector …” Ryan said. “I’m concerned that Japan is not doing nearly enough and that Canada is not even negotiating to remove significant tariff and nontariff barriers to U.S. dairy.” Other groups are rushing to make sure final concessions reflect their interests. “We’re still very much focused on the negotiators,” said Rohit Malpani, director of policy and advocacy at Doctors Without Borders. “We still think there is opportunity for other countries to really push back against what continues to be the worst trade agreement in terms of access to medicines that has ever been negotiated.” His organization has been making its position known in the skies above New York City, flying an aerial banner along the Hudson River that reads: “Doctors to Obama: Keep #TPP Away From Our Medicines.” The U.S. pharmaceutical industry is pushing for strong patent protections and long periods of data protection for cutting-edge biological drugs. Companies argue those protections are needed to create a financial incentive for recovering the massive costs involved in developing the medicines. It was a point that Froman alluded to in outlining both sides of the issue at Tuesday’s hearing. “We have 40 million Americans whose jobs are related to IP [intellectual property]-intensive industries,” Froman said. “And our goal is on one hand to promote innovation and creativity in this country, and also to ensure access to affordable medicines particularly in developing countries.” Public health advocates like Malpani, however, argue that much of what the industry is demanding would only extend patent monopolies in developing countries and cut off access to affordable generic versions. They weren’t pulling any punches this week when they brought in Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz to brief negotiators on what he argues is at stake in the agreement’s drug provisions. “Maybe not in your family, but in somebody else’s family somebody will die as a result of what you do or do not do in this agreement, or their lifestyle will be affected significantly,” he told room full of trade officials. U.S. textile industry officials were also out in force this week, pressing U.S. officials to stand firm on rules that would help preserve an industry that has been in dire straits for years. Vietnam, an apparel-making powerhouse, is pushing for a deal that would be boon to its massive export industry, which is second only to China’s in size. “We’re here this week delivering the same very clear and consistent message that an agreement has to be balanced,” Tantillo said. “It has to be good and not just for folks who do the final assembly such as apparel makers, it also has to balanced for folks who produce the inputs, the components, the yarns and fabrics.” Past trade deals have been careful to safeguard what’s left of the American textile industry, guided by vigilant members of Congress with strong textile constituencies. Washington is already standing firm behind a “yarn-forward” rule that would allow tariff reductions only for clothing sewn from fabric made in TPP countries. Right now, Vietnam gets much of its cloth from China, which is currently excluded from the deal. The domestic industry is also continuing to push for “reasonable” periods of time for phasing out tariffs on textile imports from Vietnam. “We believe the government is fully absorbing our input,” Tantillo said. But big apparel companies like Gap and Nike, which have major production in Vietnam, want the rules of origin to be more flexible, allowing tariff cuts on clothes and shoes made of fabric from China and other countries not currently in the agreement — and they’re starting to gain a voice in Congress from members whose districts or states are home to the companies’ headquarters or production facilities. “You’ve got members asking if the rules of origin are going to be flexible enough to do business,” said Steve Lamar, executive vice president of the American Apparel and Footwear Association. “That’s not a line of questioning you’ve seen in the past.”

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Loretta Lynch splits with Barack Obama on pot’s dangers Loretta Lynch made her first significant break from President Barack Obama on Wednesday on the issue of marijuana as the attorney general nominee disputed Obama’s view that the drug is no more dangerous than alcohol. Those answers came during questioning from Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), who read aloud Obama’s comments from an interview with The New Yorker during Lynch’s confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Story Continued Below “As has been well documented, I smoked pot as a kid, and I view it as a bad habit and a vice, not very different from the cigarettes that I smoked as a young person up through a big chunk of my adult life. I don’t think it is more dangerous than alcohol,” Obama told magazine editor David Remnick in the interview, published in January 2014. Lynch testified that she does not agree. “I certainly don’t hold that view and don’t agree with that view of marijuana,” she said. “I certainly think the president was speaking from his personal experience, personal opinion, neither of which I am able to share.” She added that she does not support legalizing the substance. “I can tell you that not only do I not support the legalization of marijuana, it is not the position of the Department of Justice currently to support the legalization,” Lynch said. “Nor will it be the position should I be confirmed as attorney general.”

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Obama orders 40 percent cut in government's greenhouse gases President Barack Obama will order the federal government on Thursday to cut its emissions of greenhouse gases by 40 percent, as the U.S. seeks to spur other nations to get serious about climate change. Obama's executive order will also direct the government to ramp up use of renewable energy sources to 30 percent of the federal government's consumption. The White House said U.S. taxpayers could save up to $18 billion in electricity costs by reducing greenhouse gases 40 percent over the next decade, compared to 2008 levels. "Certainly our hope is that we are laying forth template that other countries could also learn from and look at as well," said Brian Deese, a senior adviser to Obama. Major companies that sell to the federal government like GE, HP, Northrup Grumman and Honeywell will also announce voluntary commitments to cut their own emissions of the heat-trapping gases blamed for global warming, the White House said. IBM, for example, said it will cut its energy consumption 35 percent by 2020 and buy at least 20 percent of its power from renewable sources by that year.All told, the government pollution cuts along with industry contributions will have the effect of keeping 26 million metric tons of greenhouse gases out of the air by 2025, or the equivalent of what about 5.5 million cars would pump out through their tailpipes in an average year, the White House said. Yet it was unclear exactly how either the government or private companies planned to meet those targets. Aiming to call attention to the government's initiative, Obama on Thursday was to take to the roof of the Energy Department's headquarters, where the president was to tour an installation of solar panels. While at the Energy Department, Obama also planned to discuss the new emissions targets at a roundtable with federal suppliers that do more than $1 billion per year in business with the government. The U.S. government is responsible for only a small portion of the world's greenhouse gas emissions, but the Obama administration is hoping that taking aggressive steps at home will increase the political pressure on other countries to do the same. A major global climate treaty, in the works for years, is supposed to be finalized in December at a summit in Paris, but most countries have yet to announce what their national contributions to the pact will be. Earlier this month the European Union unveiled its contribution, vowing to cut greenhouse gas emissions at least 40 percent by 2030, compared to 1990. The U.S. has yet to announce its contribution to the treaty. But in a bid to build momentum last year, Obama set a U.S. goal to cut emissions up to 28 percent by 2025 - compared to 2005 levels - in a joint announcement with China that boosted hopes that an aggressive climate treaty may come to fruition. The president hasn't fully explained how he'll meet that goal, but his aides have suggested that unprecedented pollution limits he's imposing on power plants will get the U.S. much of the way there. Obama's executive order will direct the federal government to:

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Mississippi Rep. Alan Nunnelee moved to hospice Republican Rep. Alan Nunnelee has been moved to hospice care following a seven-month fight with cancer. Morgan Baldwin, a consultant for the Mississippi Republican, said in a statement that doctors found a new tumor in Nunnelee and that “no further medical treatment is possible.” Story Continued Below “After seven months of bravely fighting brain cancer and a stroke, Congressman Alan Nunnelee was informed last Friday that a new tumor has developed and no further medical treatment is possible,” Baldwin said. “On Monday of this week, Alan came home and is resting comfortably with family. The family continues to ask for your prayers and requests privacy out of respect for Congressman Nunnelee.” Nunnelee was diagnosed in May with cancers after doctors discovered a tumor in his brain. His condition worsened after he had a stroke during an operation to remove the first tumor. He briefly returned to Capitol Hill in a wheelchair following the November elections but has been receiving treatment for most of the past month that kept him from Congress. Nunnelee was elected in 2010 after defeating Rep. Travis Childers, a Democrat.

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Senate may take up Homeland Security funding bill next week The Senate could begin consideration of the House’s hardline Homeland Security funding as soon as next week. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said that after the Senate approves construction of the Keystone Pipeline, it will take up DHS funding, which expires on Feb. 27. Keystone has been bogged down in a dispute over amendments but Republicans said progress had been made on Tuesday. Story Continued Below The House sent the Senate a bill earlier this month that overrides President Barack Obama’s actions to shield millions of undocumented immigrants from deportation. It is not expected to pass the Senate due to widespread Democratic opposition and Democrats spent Tuesday pleading for Republicans to pass a clean bill with no policy riders. Republican leaders have not said what their backup plan is for when the House bill fails in the Senate.

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Lamar Alexander, Mike Lee introduce proposal to abolish SCOTUS filibusters Unbowed by opposition in both parties, two Republican senators on Wednesday moved forward with a plan to gut the filibuster for all nominations — including those for the Supreme Court. Sens. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee and Mike Lee of Utah introduced a Senate resolution to “establish by rule the Senate tradition of approving presidential nominations by a simple majority vote.” Senate Democrats gutted the filibuster on all presidential nominations except those to the Supreme Court in 2013 — an exemption Alexander and Lee seek to end. Story Continued Below They argue that a bare majority requirement for all nominees is in keeping with hundreds of years of Senate tradition, though the practice of filibustering and requiring 60 votes on nominees became increasingly popular over the past dozen years until Democrats killed the 60-vote requirement. “This rules change would establish by rule the Senate tradition of approving presidential nominations of Cabinet members and judges by a simple majority vote, which existed from the time Thomas Jefferson wrote the rules in 1789 until 2003, when Democrats began filibustering federal circuit court of appeals nominees,” they said in a joint statement on Wednesday. But they face an incredibly steep path to getting their resolution enshrined as the new rule of the chamber. Rather than the “nuclear option” used by Democrats that changed the rules with just a majority of votes, Lee and Alexander seek to get broad support from both parties, which would require 67 votes for approval of the changes on the Senate floor. Before making it to the floor for consideration by the full Senate, the proposal will first be considered at the Senate’s Rules Committee, where Chairman Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) will put it to committee vote, likely as early as next week, a Republican aide said. “We’ll have a markup and see what happens,” Blunt said in a recent interview. The proposal will likely face opposition from the panel’s liberal members over the Supreme Court provision. Democrats specifically made an exception to the Supreme Court in 2013 over worries that abolishing the filibuster on the nation’s highest court could allow a future Republican president to easily confirm conservative justices to the panel and potentially overturn Roe v. Wade. And plenty of Republicans also want to change the filibuster threshold back to 60 on nominations, arguing that it would be hypocritical not to after railing against Democrats’ gutting of the filibuster for more than a year. Given those partisan and intraparty divisions, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) predicted last week that Alexander and Lee’s proposal is unlikely to win the broad support it needs. If the GOP is unable to corral 67 votes for those filibuster reforms, the Senate rules will probably stay as Democrats left them: 51 votes require for confirmation on all nominees except for those to the Supreme Court, which will need 60. “Where we’re probably going to end up is with the status quo,” McConnell told USA Today.

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Boehner: House GOP has 'a couple of stumbles' in 2015 After a rough few weeks, Speaker John Boehner acknowledged Tuesday morning that House Republicans have had some “stumbles” at the beginning of the 114th Congress. They had to pull a bill last week to ban abortions after 20 weeks, and they are now having trouble lining up the votes for a border-security bill. Story Continued Below “We wanted to get off to a fast start this year and, as a result, taken bills that have passed in the past and put other bills together, in spite of the fact that committees in many cases have not had their organizational meetings,” Boehner (R-Ohio) said Tuesday morning. “And so, yeah, there have been a couple of stumbles, all in our effort to show the American people that we’re here to listen to their priorities.” GOP leaders have delayed a vote on a border-security bill authored by Rep. Mike McCaul (R-Texas), saying they have not had time to canvass the House Republican Conference for support. But some conservatives are worried that the border-security bill is a first step toward a larger rewrite of the nation’s immigration laws.

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Lynch to defend Obama on immigration Attorney general nominee Loretta Lynch plans to tell senators that she doesn’t believe President Barack Obama has blanket power to grant “amnesty” to undocumented immigrants, but she’ll argue that the president’s sweeping moves on the issue have stayed within the bounds of the Constitution. As her confirmation hearings begin Wednesday in the Senate Judiciary Committee, Lynch will aim for a balancing act with Republicans who hope to derail her nomination by seizing on her views about immigration and Obama’s use of executive power, according to a person involved in her preparations. Story Continued Below Lynch, 55, will not be drawn into “political back-and-forth on issues” such as immigration and will “calmly and dispassionately emphasize her record as an independent, career prosecutor,” the person said. While she will support Obama’s legal rationale for his actions on immigration, she will express caution about going too far, the source said — and she’ll contend that the president’s latest unilateral steps don’t amount to “amnesty.” She also will tell the panel that the Constitution will be her “lodestar” in determining the legality of the president’s actions, the source said. Lynch, a federal prosecutor who would be the first African-American woman to serve as attorney general, has been methodically preparing for her hearings since early December in closed-door sessions with senior administration officials. White House and Justice Department officials predict that committee Chairman Chuck Grassley of Iowa and other Republicans will focus most heavily on Obama’s immigration decisions. In November, shortly after Republicans won control of the Senate, Obama issued executive orders granting work permits and a three-year reprieve from deportation for nearly 5 million undocumented immigrants. The move infuriated Republicans while delighting immigration reform supporters, setting off a political and legal battle that continues to play out on Capitol Hill and across the country. As the current U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York in Brooklyn, Lynch will contend she had “no part” in the Obama administration’s formulation of the policy, although Lynch will note she has reviewed the memo from the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel that laid out its legal parameters. “[Lynch] has said that she believes that a unilateral attempt to grant outright amnesty would amount to an unlawful overreach, but that she understands the OLC memo to outline a reasonable, legal basis for the Department of Homeland Security’s removal priorities,” the source said. “She does not believe that the policy setting these priorities grants amnesty or provides automatic work permits.” Lynch has made similar statements in her private sessions with senators, and administration officials are prepared to make the case that it would be unfair for Republicans to block a qualified nominee on the basis of the president’s immigration policies. Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, offered a similar argument in a statement on Tuesday. “Ms. Lynch deserves to be judged on her own record,” he said. “I am confident that if we stay focused on Ms. Lynch’s impeccable qualifications and her reputation for fairness, she will be quickly confirmed by the Senate.” Whether such remarks will pass muster with most Republicans is an open question. “I’d be troubled that you could say the president has the authority to issue work permits” for undocumented immigrants, said Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), a senior member on the Judiciary panel and chief foe of loosening immigration laws. “At the end, attorney generals — it’s always been known — have to say ‘no’ sometimes. They have to walk to the White House and say: ‘Mr. President, this is too far. You can’t do this. This will weaken the rule of the law in the country.’ … I want to see if she will do that.” Likely presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz, who serves as a committee member, also indicated he’s looking for signs of independence from Obama’s agenda. “In order for the Senate to confirm Ms. Lynch or anyone else to be attorney general, we need an attorney general who will stop being a partisan attack dog and will instead get back to the traditions of upholding the Constitution and the law in a fair and impartial manner,” the Texas Republican said. Lynch, who is drafting her own opening statement in consultation with the administration, has quietly spent two to three days per week in Washington since Obama nominated her in November, attending issue briefings and “murder boards” with Justice Department and White House officials to prepare for her hearings, according to the source familiar with the preparations. By the time the hearings start, she will have met with more than half the Senate, including everyone on the Judiciary Committee. New York Democratic Sens. Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand will introduce Lynch on Wednesday, sources said. Despite Republican control of the Senate, the expectation in Washington is that Lynch’s confirmation is largely assured — unless she trips up in the hearings. Republicans, who loathe outgoing Attorney General Eric Holder, are eager to find a replacement for him. And nothing in Lynch’s background has yet to raise a red flag that could derail her nomination. In her testimony, Lynch plans to highlight her success as a prosecutor and her priorities for the Justice Department. Lynch, who attended Harvard for her undergraduate and law degrees, is in her second stint as a U.S. attorney, having previously held that position under President Bill Clinton. Lynch will emphasize that the department will focus on national security and cyber terrorism during her tenure. She will highlight her work on public corruption cases, including the indictment and conviction of a Democratic former New York state senator, Pedro Espada, on embezzlement charges. Lynch also will note that her office has handled more terrorism-related cases than any other U.S. attorney’s office, including several recent high-profile proceedings. The administration has been playing up all the endorsements Lynch has received, including from numerous law enforcement and legal groups. Former FBI Director Louis Freeh and New York City Police Commissioner William Bratton praised her Tuesday during a conference call to rally support for her nomination. “She’s just an extraordinary candidate,” said Freeh, who got to know Lynch during her first go-round as a U.S. attorney in Brooklyn during the late 1990s. “I’ve been in the law enforcement business for about 25 years, and I can’t think of a stronger candidate.” The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, a coalition of more than 200 national organizations, also released a letter Tuesday, calling on the Judiciary Committee to quickly approve Lynch’s nomination. Proponents point to her humble upbringing in the South at a time of difficult race relations, including the way white administrators at her high school made her split her valedictorian honors with a white male student. Relatives including her father, a retired Baptist preacher from North Carolina, will accompany Lynch at the hearing. Few would quibble with Lynch’s background as a prosecutor. But several Republicans say they’re skeptical she’d prevent Obama from picking and choosing which laws to enforce. Beyond immigration, Republicans are likely to push Lynch on how she views the enforcement of state marijuana laws, as well as the Bowe Bergdahl prisoner exchange and the administration’s failure to notify Congress about the swap. She plans to emphasize that an “appropriate balance” should exist between the executive and legislative branches. Meanwhile, the witnesses that Republicans have invited on the second day of the hearingssuggest they will spend much of that time bashing the Justice Department’s record under Holder. For instance, Republicans have asked former CBS News investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson to testify. Attkisson, now a contributor to The Heritage Foundation’s Daily Signal, has reported extensively on the Fast and Furious gun-walking scandal, a case that led the House to declare Holder in contempt. Attkisson also has suggested that administration officials gained access to her computer to search for information on her reporting on the 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya. Another Republican witness is expected to testify that the Justice Department has failed to conduct a thorough criminal probe into whether the Internal Revenue Service illegally denied nonprofit tax status to some conservative organizations.

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Barack Obama targets tax break for college football tickets President Barack Obama’s 2016 budget calls for ending a long-standing and sometimes mocked tax break for buying college football tickets. Under a 1988 law that’s still on the books, taxpayers are allowed to take a deduction for the charitable contributions colleges sometimes require as a prerequisite for buying pricey season football tickets. Story Continued Below The IRS once tried to end the break, though it was overridden by Congress, amid lobbying by universities. The administration estimates its plan would raise $2.5 billion.

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Waters' husband wanders too close for comfort Sidney Williams can’t seem to stay out of the congressional spotlight. The former NFL player and U.S. ambassador, who is married to Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), has been seen several times on and around the House floor since the beginning of the year, according to several reporters who were there. A doorkeeper told him Monday that he could not enter the speaker’s lobby. Story Continued Below Congressional spouses do not have floor privileges and are not allowed on the House floor, in the cloakrooms or in the speaker’s lobby. Williams served as an ambassador to the Bahamas during the Clinton administration. Waters spokesman Jermaine House said in a statement that Williams “has not walked onto the House Floor and has not been asked to leave.” “And regarding his alleged attempt to enter the Speaker’s lobby, Congresswoman Waters’ husband has mistakenly ventured into the lobby searching for the bathroom, at which point, he was directed to go a different way,” House said. “Nevertheless, that was no attempt to subvert any rules; it was merely a mistake that dozens of staffers and visitors commit for any myriad of innocuous reasons.” The bathroom off the speaker’s lobby is for lawmakers only and is not open to the public. This isn’t the first time Williams has gotten crosswise with Congress. Waters was under investigation for nearly three years over whether she used her position on the House Financial Services Committee to get officials to meet with OneUnited Bank and also help deliver $12 million in funds from the Troubled Asset Relief Program to the bank. Her husband had been a director at the bank and held hundreds of thousands of dollars of stock in the company, and several of the bank’s executives had cut campaign checks to her. In 2012, the House Ethics Committee cleared Waters of any wrongdoing after a hugely controversial probe.

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House may delay border security bill until mid-February The House might have to delay consideration of its border security bill until the middle of February, Republican leadership sources said Monday. The leadership’s original plan was to have House Homeland Security Chairman Mike McCaul’s (R-Texas) legislation on the floor this week. But the impending snow storm has left Congress with just two days in session, and GOP leaders fear they do not have enough time to canvass the House Republican Conference for support. Attendance might be light. Story Continued Below The legislation has also run into opposition from conservatives, many of whom argue that the legislation is a first step toward comprehensive immigration reform. Some House Republican insiders are beginning to wonder whether it is better to hold off on passing the border security bill until after the Senate passes its bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security. DHS funding runs out Feb. 27.

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Snow forces House to cancel Monday votes The House has canceled its vote series Monday evening due to the winter storm bearing down on the East Coast. This was already slated to be a short week in Washington. The House Democrats begin their legislative retreat Wednesday afternoon in Philadelphia. The chamber will now only be in session for two days. Story Continued Below The storm has also forced the House to put off consideration of a border security bill. The legislation was running into some opposition from conservatives, who thought it was a first step toward comprehensive immigration reform. Instead, the House will consider the LNG Permitting and Transparency Act, which relates to exports of liquefied natural gas.

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Democrats to Boehner: Postpone Netanyahu speech Three House Democrats are circulating a letter they plan to send to Speaker John Boehner, urging the top Republican to “postpone” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to Congress. Reps. Keith Ellison of Minnesota, Steve Cohen of Tennessee and Maxine Waters of California said Boehner’s invitation for Netanyahu to speak March 3 is “harmful for three reasons: it undermines the president’s foreign policy; it puts a close ally in the middle of a domestic political debate, and it elevates a candidate in a foreign election.” Story Continued Below “A visit from Israel’s Prime Minister would normally be an occasion for bipartisan cooperation and support,” the Democrats write. “Our relationship with Israel is too important to use as a pawn in political gamesmanship. We strongly urge you to postpone this invitation until Israelis have cast their ballots and our consideration of the current round of Iran-related legislation has concluded. When the Israeli Prime Minister visits us outside the specter of partisan politics, we will be delighted and honored to greet him or her on the Floor of the House.” Israelis go to the polls March 17. The letter accuses Boehner of launching “an attempt to promote new sanctions legislation against Iran that could undermine critical negotiations between the P5+1 and Iran.” “At the State of the Union President Obama made it clear that he will veto new Iran sanctions legislation,” they write. “The invitation to Prime Minister Netanyahu enlists a foreign leader to influence a Presidential policy initiative. We should be able to disagree on foreign policy within our American political system and without undermining the Presidency. Aside from being improper, this places Israel, a close and valued ally, in the middle of a policy debate between Congress and the White House. They add: “As members of Congress who support Israel, we share concern that it appears that you are using a foreign leader as a political tool against the president. We should not turn our diplomatic friendship into a partisan issue. Beyond threatening our diplomatic priorities, the timing of this invitation offers the Congressional platform to elevate a candidate in a foreign election.” Boehner has been unbending in his desire to have Netanyahu address the House in March. He said the House has the “right” to extend the invitation. “The House of Representatives is a equal branch of the government, and we have a right to do it, and we did it,” the Ohio Republican said Tuesday morning. “And I’m frankly proud of the fact the prime minister has accepted our invitation, and will be here on March 3 to talk to the members of Congress about the serious threat that Iran poses, and the serious threat of radical Islam.” Also Wednesday, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said during a press conference in at the Democrats’ issues retreat in Philadelphia that the invitation to Netanyahu is “inappropriate.” The California Democrat spoke via phone with the Israeli leader Wednesday afternoon. Pelosi said that the speech would impact the ongoing negotiations between the U.S. and Iran over Tehran’s nuclear faculties, which she characterized “deadly serious for our national security.” “Such a presentation could send a wrong message about giving diplomacy a chance,” Pelosi said. “I shared that with Mr. Netanyahu.”

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U.S. Attorney announces decision on charges in White House drone incident The U.S. Attorney will not be pursuing criminal charges against the man who lost control of a drone that landed on the White House grounds on January 26, according to a statement released by District of Columbia U.S. Attorney Ronald Machen, Jr. The Secret Service investigated the incident, and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has begun its own review to determine whether it will pursue any action.The U.S. attorney's statement on the matter said the Secret Service found that the drone operator, Shawn Usman, had borrowed a quadcopter drone from a friend and taken it to his apartment in downtown Washington. He was flying it outside his window, and at about 3:00 a.m., as described in the U.S. attorney's statement Wednesday, "[Usman] saw it ascend to an altitude of about 100 feet and head in a westerly direction. He tried to regain control over it, but to no avail. He called his friend, who was unable to advise him how to gain control over the drone."Usman lost sight of the drone but knew its battery was dying and went to sleep assuming it would land in the vicinity of the Mall. He woke up to the news that it had, in fact, crashed on the White House grounds and called the Secret Service to explain what had happened.Forensic analysis of the drone "determined that it was not operating under the direction of its controller when it crashed at the White House," according to the U.S. attorney's statement. Usman wasn't available for comment, but his attorney, James Garland, of Covington & Burling, said in a statement that Usman was "grateful" the U.S. attorney's office had decided not to pursue charges.Garland apologized to the president and his family on Usman's behalf, said that he was cooperating with the FAA's investigation."This entire incident, while unfortunate and understandably alarming, was totally inadvertent and completely unintentional," the statement went on to say.

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Reid returning to Senate next week Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid will return to the chamber next week, but he’ll probably need additional surgery to repair his badly injured eye, senators and aides said Thursday. The Nevada Democrat has been sidelined since a freakish New Year’s Day exercise accident left him temporarily blind in his right eye and with four broken ribs. Earlier this week, Reid endured a 3½-hour surgery at George Washington University Hospital to drain blood in the front of his right eye and to repair broken bones in his cheek, eyebrow and temple. Story Continued Below But because of swelling, surgeons were unable to access the back of his retina, something that will probably force them to perform another procedure at a later date, according to senators who have spoken to Reid. It’s still unclear if Reid will regain full sight in his right eye, though doctors have expressed optimism about the 75-year-old senator’s recovery so far. He has more appointments with his doctors Friday. “He’ll be back next week, and he’ll run his caucus as usual on Tuesday,” said Adam Jentleson, Reid’s spokesman, declining to comment further. Reid has been recovering this week at his condo in Washington and has made only a few public appearances since the accident, which occurred when a resistance band snapped during his exercise routine at his home in the Las Vegas suburbs. Nevertheless, Reid is expected to return to the Senate by the time of the weekly party lunches on Tuesday, aides said Thursday. Democrats canceled this past Tuesday’s lunch out of deference to Reid, senators said. In Reid’s absence, his leadership team — led by Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), head of the messaging operation — have been running the Democratic minority but keeping in frequent contact with the Nevada Democrat. Durbin said he spoke with Reid on Thursday morning. “He said, ‘I’m all swollen from the surgery,’” Durbin said, noting that Reid was closely monitoring developments in the Senate. Asked about a second surgery for Reid, Durbin added; “It really depends on whether his eye — the blood that’s accumulated behind his eye — dissipates. If it doesn’t, then they may have to go in and remove it. That’s possible.”

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POLITICO PRO Q&A: Rep. Mike Turner Rep. Mike Turner is positioning the House Armed Services panel he chairs to be the one that really gets after sequestration, examining its impacts from every angle. This year, the Ohio Republican hopes his Tactical Air and Land Forces Subcommittee will spend less time dickering over the details of plagued Defense Department programs and focus more on the capabilities needed for the military to meet its worldwide missions that will hopefully translate to smarter acquisition decisions. Story Continued Below Turner has presided over the subcommittee since 2013. Among some of his key issues: the fate of the Army’s heavy vehicle production capability and the tumultuous F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program. For several years, he has opposed the Army’s proposal to halt two General Dynamics Abrams tank production lines in Lima, Ohio, and York, Pennsylvania, and reopen them later when it needs new tanks. In a wide-ranging interview, Turner discussed with POLITICO his goals and ambitions ahead. Here are some edited excerpts: What are your top priorities this year? The top priority is ensuring that sequestration gets set aside. Our committee is going to try to do the ground work of painting the picture of what will happen if sequestration took place and documenting the effects of past sequestration. It’s just very essential that people understand what has happened, what is at stake. These are not Chicken Little-sky-is-falling predictions, these are actual real devastating, debilitating cuts that must be set aside. What are some examples you find most alarming? Really, all aspects of training were affected, which of course has a cascading effect for research, development and acquisition. Sequestration wasn’t an across-the-board or top-line cut, it was a strategic, foundational cut to defense, so the ability to deploy, to field new systems and win was impacted. We did not anticipate six months ago heavier operations in the Middle East against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, how is that affecting your approach? Well, that is the second goal. The second goal is taking the programs of the committee and aligning them with our new global threats and, in that, we don’t want to just look at what systems are in place and what are the future systems that are being planned. Our assessment is going to be what are our threats, how do we see them evolving and what do we need to match those. How does that then relate to what work we are doing and where are there gaps? How do you plan to get at that? First, we are doing a straight-up hearing on sequestration itself that will look prospectively and at past effects. Then, as we enter into debates of specific systems, we are looking at the mission that those systems respond to. For example, for the A-10 [Warthog] debate, we are asking the question of how do we do close air support, what are the strategies or the goals, what are the threats that we have that require close air support and how best to respond to it. Similarly, for surveillance, the Air Force has been in this contradictory position of arguing they want to retire the Global Hawk and the next year coming in and arguing that they want to retire the U-2 without any clear strategies or goals as to what their surveillance portfolio will look like. Defining that portfolio will help us define what the mix should be of the assets that we have. DoD has allowed the budget to drive their policy proposals and that has resulted in them arguing disingenuously for or against systems that perhaps they need. What we need is to bring some baseline back to the discussion that is not just monetary. What’s your next priority after that? My third area is bringing some sanity to the overall acquisition process. The Army has, unbelievably, argued that they don’t need tank funding, that they do need tank funding and leaving stranded or abandoned a very unique government-owned manufacturing facility that can only produce these types of heavy vehicles. Closing and reopening is an impossible task, but yet the Army has argued the irrational position of closure and reopening for several years in a row. Congress has saved [the Abrams tank production line] three years in a row, and it’s time for the Army to come forward and provide a sane proposal as to how they are going to sustain their heavy vehicle capability. Couple that with the Air Force arguing retiring competing systems ineffectively. There is not a clear strategy, and our goal is to take it back to the discussion of the mission and then the systems. What about the aviation restructure initiative? Do you think it’s a good idea? Is the commission Congress authorized to study it a good thing? We are going to have a specific hearing [on March 26] that is targeted just on that issue, and I think our goal is to provide the appropriate oversight. I think the Army is responding to some very critical needs but at the same time we want to make certain there aren’t mistakes being made. What other issues will you address? Certainly, we are going to do [a hearing] on the F-35 and the goal there is obviously to continue to provide oversight and accountability and contrast it with some real accomplishments of the program. Overlapping with the issue of F-35 is the need for 5th generation capability and, in part, that requires a look at what others are doing … China and Russia and what our adversaries are going to be fielding in the future and how we may or may not be denied access in air space. We continue to be concerned for the warfighter individually; weight, capability, protection and how the systems that they use for personal protection and warfighting affect their capability and health. What’s your take on some of the global challenges that we face. Do you think we need to put more forces, for instance, in Eastern Europe? Yes Do we need to have more robust training programs for the Iraqi Army and Syrian rebels? Yes. We need to have flexible forces that are highly capable to address even the unforeseen. We don’t know what we are going to see in 2015. If you look at Libya, you look at Yemen, either one of those countries could instantly become a greater threat to the Army. You have internal chaos and turmoil, but the moment that begins to affect outside their borders you are going to have a real situation that is going to require response. Syria and Iraq are not going to remain in stagnant position that they are in, they are going to continue to grow as a threat and become even more dangerous. With respect to Russia and Iran and ISIS, I think there is a fallacy within our foreign policy that we don’t listen to our adversaries. If they claim that they are our adversaries, I think they mean it. Should we adhere to troop withdrawal dates set in Afghanistan? End dates are never wise. Why would you tell your opponent when you are quitting, because all they have to do is wait. The metrics have to be are we safer?. Are situations becoming more stable? Should [the Overseas Contingency Operations account] go away eventually, or should there be a permanent but maybe smaller account? I think it’s an excellent tool of ensuring that contingency operations do not eat away at the base funding for the DoD. Some people criticize it as not being reflective of the true cost of defense. But it’s even more reflective of the true cost of defense because you have to have funding to be able to sustain your capability then there is an additional cost when it’s required to be used. Do you think the Asia Pacific pivot should still be a DoD focus given the turmoil in the Middle East? I think the Asia pivot is a great example of the Obama administration’s failures in foreign policy because it’s a policy by its name that angers everyone. If you are not in Asia, you feel like we are leaving. And if you are in Asia, you are questioning why we are coming. The reality is we have always been in the Pacific, and I think the capabilities that DoD sees for the future were a natural outgrowth of the direction we were going prior to the president’s pronouncement of a pivot.

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Democrats: Hillary Clinton willing to testify before Benghazi panel Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has agreed to testify before the House committee investigating the 2012 terrorist attacks in Benghazi — setting up what could be an explosive hearing for the likely 2016 presidential candidate. Rep. Elijah Cummings, the top Democrat on the panel, told reporters Tuesday that Clinton had informed him she was willing to testify as early as December 2014 before the panel. Cummings said he reached out to Clinton during the early days of the panel’s investigation in September at the request for committee Chairman Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.). Story Continued Below “She immediately said she would do that and she wanted to come in December and then she said, ‘Well, if you can’t have me in December I’ll come in January.’ She said … ‘I’ll do it, period,’” Cummings said. A spokeswoman for Gowdy said he was “not aware of any formal notice that she would [testify], just … Cummings’ statement at the press stakeout after the hearing.” Gowdy has long expressed an interest in hearing from Clinton, who ran the State Department when the 2012 attacks at the Benghazi compound occurred. The Democratic aide said Clinton “agreed to testify as early as this past December” but has not been officially called to testify. Any appearance from Clinton is sure to set off controversy. Conservatives have long pointed to the Benghazi attacks to argue that Clinton is not up to the job as commander-in-chief, and any remarks she made during the hearing would be sure to be used against her during a presidential run. Democrats have dismissed the Republican interest in Clinton as partisan politics meant to distract their party’s likely 2016 nominee. Gowdy reiterated on Tuesday that he would like to hear from Clinton but said the panel needed additional documents from the State Department before he would ask her to appear. The State Department has sent the Benghazi panel more than 40,000 documents — including 15,000 never previously sent to Congress — but Gowdy and House Republicans have dozens of standing requests. Clinton has previously testified before House and Senate panels investigating the Benghazi attacks, including a memorable exchange with Sen. Ron Johnson in 2013 over the White House’s response to the siege in the days after Sept. 11, 2012. “With all due respect, the fact is, we had four dead Americans. Was it because of a protest or because of guys out for a walk one night who decide to kill some Americans — what difference at this point does it make?” Clinton said. “It is our job to figure out what happened and do everything we can to prevent it from ever happening again, Senator.”

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Obama's immigration actions could overwhelm agency, witness tells Senate The agency charged with implementing the heart of President Barack Obama’s new immigration policies could face major logistical challenges dealing with millions of new applications for deferred deportations and work permits, a former administration official testified Wednesday. Luke Bellocchi, the former deputy ombudsman who oversaw U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee that it’s “hard to imagine” the agency could handle the surge in new applications created by Obama’s executive actions. Story Continued Below Bellocchi, who described a processing system based primarily on paper applications and postal mail, said the agency will probably have to divert resources from other immigration applications to process Obama’s actions – despite USCIS’s plans to hire 1,000 employees to handle the workload. “This is the problem with trying to push through so many applications all at once without having proper resources,” Bellocchi told the committee, which convened a hearing examining the implications of Obama’s unilateral moves. USCIS has been at the center of a congressional war over the sweeping actions Obama announced in November, which would block deportations for 5 million immigrants who are here illegally and give them legal work authorization. That tussle is playing out in the battle over funding for the Department of Homeland Security, which is due to run out Feb. 27. In a statement later Wednesday, USCIS said it has taken key steps to ensure it was ready to handle the new rush of applications expected later this year because of Obama’s executive actions. “In preparing for the workloads associated with the executive actions, USCIS has developed production and staffing models that allow agency leadership to assess the potential impacts on service delivery for existing workloads as well as the new workloads — all while maintaining the integrity and security of the immigration process,” the agency said in a statement. Congressional Republicans are demanding that no funds be used to carry out the actions Obama announced in 2014 – the first stages of which will begin taking applications Feb. 18. GOP lawmakers also want to gut a 2012 Obama administration program for young immigrants who came illegally as children, which effectively could leave more than 600,000 of the so-called Dreamers open to being deported. The Republican-led House passed a DHS funding bill with those provisions, but Senate Democrats blocked consideration of that measure on Tuesday and again on Wednesday, insisting that disputes over Obama’s actions be kept out of the funding debate. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is expected to bring up that same bill again multiple times this week — and Democrats are expected to continue to filibuster. The potential bureaucratic obstacles in implementing Obama’s actions have been a less-noticed storyline compared with the partisan food fight on Capitol Hill. But immigration advocates have been focused on trying to ensure the programs will be implemented smoothly, which will be a key measure of whether Obama’s actions succeed. Bellocchi, a Republican who used to work for the Senate Homeland panel, said USCIS has often diverted resources to handle so-called priority or high-profile applications, and will “probably” do so with Obama’s latest actions. In 2014, The New York Times reported that the 2012 initiative – called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals – caused delays for other immigration applications. For instance, a wait for a green card for a family member would typically be just five months or less, but after DACA was announced, the wait times stretched to 15 months and backlogged more than half a million applications. Still, another witness at Wednesday’s hearing disputed that USCIS would not be able to handle the millions in new applications. Bo Cooper, a former general counsel at USCIS’s predecessor, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, said he believed the agency was “well-equipped” to implement the actions — saying it would use DACA as a model. “The immigration agencies are built to have a capacity to scale,” Cooper said, arguing that because the agency is funded by application fees, it will have more money and resources as more applications come in.

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Keystone foes to dog Obama in Philly Environmental activists are planning a protest over the Keystone XL pipeline during President Barack Obama’s speech to House Democrats here on Thursday. A local chapter of the climate activist group 350.org has organized a rally during Obama’s speech at the Society Hill Sheraton, where the House Democratic caucus is meeting for its annual three-day retreat. Story Continued Below The activists will protest against the construction of the pipeline, a project that congressional Republicans hope to catapult to Obama’s desk by passing pro-Keystone legislation in the House and Senate. The Senate is expected to vote Thursday to end debate on its version of the Keystone bill. “Let’s tell President Obama to reject the Keystone XL pipeline once and for all,” 350 Philadelphia’s website says. “We will rally outside the meeting and tell him to say no to [the] pipeline and to demand renewable energy, energy efficiency, green jobs, and a just transition to a sustainable economy.” Obama is scheduled to give a keynote address to House Democrats on Thursday during a 6 p.m. dinner.

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Democrats learn to love the filibuster Senate Democrats are falling back in love with the filibuster. After eight years of complaining about obstructionism, the Senate’s new Democratic minority is embracing some of the same tools Republicans had wielded so skillfully to jam the legislative machinery. On Tuesday, Democrats used the filibuster to stop a bill that would fund the Department of Homeland Security — and roll back President Barack Obama’s immigration policies — dead in its tracks. Story Continued Below Democrats’ relationship with the filibuster had been on the rocks when they ran the Senate, a time when the GOP regularly used the procedural weapon to disrupt the majority’s agenda. Democrats responded by gutting the filibuster on nominations, making “Republican obstruction” a go-to explanation for the Senate’s gridlock and complaining bitterly when the GOP minority blocked debate from even opening on bills. Then came Tuesday’s 51-48 vote blocking the DHS bill. This was the first time a Democratic minority had blocked a bill from coming to the floor for debate since Aug. 3, 2006, when Democrats stifled legislation that would have raised the minimum wage and decreased the estate tax. Casual Senate watchers could be forgiven for thinking that Democrats and Republicans had simply exchanged talking points after the 2014 election. Now in the majority, Republicans are the ones accusing the minority of keeping the Senate from getting things done. “They’re refusing to debate a bill they’d like to change,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said of the Democrats. He added: “It’s rather an, honestly, absurd position. I’m glad I didn’t have to come out here and make that argument with you all, because I think it’s a pretty hard argument to make with a straight face.” McConnell, who had made countless procedural arguments against Democratic legislation during his stewardship of the minority, said Democrats instead should allow debate on the bill and offer amendments. More filibusters may come in a matter of days if Republicans follow through on their threats to make Democrats repeatedly reject the DHS-immigration proposal. It appears Democrats will block any attempt to bring a DHS funding bill with riders to the floor. Democrats have always supported keeping the filibuster for legislation, leaving it in place even when they gutted the 60-vote threshold on executive branch nominations in 2013. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) set out this year prepared to use the procedural tool to parry aside legislation that his caucus broadly opposed — and the DHS and its immigration policies fit the bill perfectly. “This funding bill for Homeland Security should not be held hostage for immigration,” said Sen. Patty Murray of Washington state, a Democratic leader. “We’re being straight up.” Use of the filibuster — which allows individual members to require 60 votes to begin and end debate — is something Democrats often criticized when they were in the majority just two months ago. In tandem with demanding votes on amendments, Republicans routinely used procedural tools to block legislation, elevating their use of the tactic to historic levels. “So often in the last Congress we were accused of not being ready to end the debate,” said Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.). “But we were seldom accused of not starting the debate.” In fact, the previous Congress’ Democratic Senate majority was incensed by the myriad occasions when Republicans blocked debate from starting on legislation. They were particularly offended when the GOP demanded amendments, then prevented debate from starting on the underlying bill, including with legislation on intelligence reform or pay equity. Bills can’t be amended if the floor debate can’t start. Even after Reid vowed to open the amendment process on the intelligence bill last December, the GOP stuffed it, prompting Reid to lash out at Republicans who “wouldn’t even let the Senate debate the legislation.” In April, when a pay equity bill failed to make it to the floor, Reid said he was “at a loss as to why anyone would decline to debate such an important issue.” Of Tuesday’s Democratic filibuster, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) fumed that “Democrats never blush. They always do whatever is convenient at the time.” But Democrats argued that their vote Tuesday is not equivalent to Republicans’ routine practice of halting legislation and stalling nominations over the past eight years. “We’ve been crystal clear from Day One that we will fight bills we oppose,” said Adam Jentleson, a spokesman for Reid. “The difference between Democrats and Republicans is that Democrats won’t filibuster every bill regardless of the merit. Republicans would’ve filibustered a motion to blow your nose.” Reid has called his minority “constructive” after Democrats allowed speedy votes on terrorism risk insurance legislation and veterans’ suicide prevention this year, following now-retired Sen. Tom Coburn’s (R-Okla.) successful blockade against both widely supported measures last year. But Democrats also made Republicans walk through procedural hoops on the Keystone XL oil pipeline, blocking Republicans from finishing the bill last week until Democrats received more amendment votes. Democrats view the DHS bill as a must-pass funding bill that’s combined with hard-line immigration policies. Why, they ask, would they agree to debate two issues that shouldn’t be mixed together? Asked if his caucus had ever considered allowing the Senate to debate the DHS bill, Reid responded: “If they want to debate immigration starting tomorrow, let’s do it tomorrow. But not at the express determination of the Republicans to hold hostage … the Homeland Security bill.” This logic did not sink in with GOP leaders. “How ’bout that? Go figure. It’s kind of an ironic twist of this whole thing that they won’t let us get on the bill,” said Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.). “I hope you guys will reprint all that stuff” Democrats said last Congress, he added. Reid and his caucus spent several days last week debating how to handle the DHS bill. They could allow the bill to come to the floor and then demand a vote on their own, “clean” funding amendment with no riders. But that would have given McConnell control over the DHS bill, and Democrats do not believe he intends to allow an opportunity to strip out the immigration language. Even voting to advance the bill to the floor could give the appearance of Democratic support for the immigration riders, particularly to those unfamiliar with the Senate’s procedural jujitsu. Late last week, Democrats arrived at their unanimous decision to block the House’s GOP bill and instead demand a vote on their separate, clean bill, which was introduced by Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.). Even the half-dozen Democrats who had publicly questioned Obama’s actions on immigration were on board. “I’m not going to play games on DHS funding,” said Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), a critic of the immigration action last year. “We just need a clean vote, straight up.” Senators and aides declined to speculate on how often Democrats are prepared to block legislation from even seeing the floor, beyond any iteration of a DHS bill with immigration riders. Legislation repealing the Affordable Care Act would probably meet the same fate, no matter how much Democrats want to debate health care. “We don’t want to have to use it,” Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said of the filibuster. Democratic leaders and rank-and-file senators roundly dismissed charges that Democrats are beginning to resemble the Republican minority they so reviled. They said their goal isn’t to mess with McConnell, but they will follow through on Reid’s pledge to block “crazy stuff.” Republicans “got together saying: ‘All things Obama we’re going to block and do all [we] can so he doesn’t win.’ We’re doing nothing like that,” said Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio). “We haven’t had a meeting saying: ‘How do we stop McConnell from getting anything done?’”

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Mitch McConnell, Rand Paul push legalizing hemp growth Forget legalizing pot: Two of the most powerful Republicans in the Senate believe there’s a much stronger chance to legalize growing hemp in the U.S., opening up an entirely new market for crops, health food, oil, shirts, towels and even dog toys. Kentucky’s Mitch McConnell, Rand Paul and Rep. Thomas Massie are pushing legislation in both chambers of Congress that would remove the less-potent member of the cannabis family from the federal list of controlled substances, allowing its return to America’s farmland after more than 40 years. Story Continued Below It’s a states’ rights and economic growth issue, the Republican lawmakers argue. Legalizing hemp would create jobs. “People used to downplay the number of jobs industrial hemp might create and say, ‘Well it’s a few thousand jobs and a couple million in commerce,’” Massie said. But all told, legalizing the crop has the potential to create 10 times as many jobs “as the Keystone XL pipeline will create 10 years from now.” Hemp legalization legislation has been considered in Congress since 2005, when then-Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) pushed the issue. But the current bills have champions in positions of power, including the Senate majority leader and a potential White House contender. They also have bipartisan support. The Industrial Hemp Farming Act, introduced by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) on Jan. 8 with McConnell, Paul and Oregon’s other Democratic senator, Jeff Merkley, as co-sponsors, now awaits action in the Judiciary Committee. The companion bill Massie introduced in the House on Jan. 26 is before the Energy and Commerce Committee and has 50 bipartisan co-sponsors. Given the focus on jobs and McConnell’s support, “there is a really good chance of passing [legalization legislation] this year,” Massie said. “[McConnell’s] promotion to majority leader … is important to this effort.” Not everyone from Kentucky is on board. Rep. Hal Rogers, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, agrees with the law enforcement community that legalizing hemp would be bad news, primarily because a field of hemp would be virtually indistinguishable from marijuana, which is illegal for recreational use in 46 states. Hemp and marijuana are both members of the cannabis family. While pot plants are bred for the buds and flowers, hemp is grown to be tall and thin with few branches or leaves to produce a lot of fiber, according to the North American Industrial Hemp Council. The main difference is the plants’ chemical makeup: Industrial hemp contains less than 0.3 percent tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, the mind-altering chemical marijuana contains in the 3 percent to 20 percent range. However, Bob Bushman, president of the National Narcotics Officers’ Associations Coalition, says there’s no way for a law enforcement officer to tell the difference, and that’s why his group opposes hemp legalization. Local law enforcement organizations are lobbying lawmakers in states where legalization is being considered to block the measures. “I can’t look at a plant and tell you that is marijuana or it’s hemp … that’s a scientific determination,” he said. “The confusion and potential commingling lends itself to an easier path for illegal marijuana growth across the country,” Rogers said. What’s more, he added, there appears little evidence to date that hemp will be an economic boon when the Department of Agriculture describes the hemp market as “small [and] thin.” But imported hemp products — because there’s no other way to get them in the United States — represented a $580 million market in 2013 with double-digit annual growth, according to Eric Steenstra, executive director of the Hemp Industry Association. All kinds of jobs, from positions in agriculture to manufacturing would be created in the United States if it were legalized here, he said. Hemp is already legal to produce in at least 30 countries, including Canada. If it becomes legal to cultivate in the U.S., production could reach 100,000 acres or more nationwide in the next decade, Steenstra predicted. That’s far less than the more than 80 million acres currently devoted to corn in the United States, the similar acreage taken up by soybeans or the 56 million acres planted with wheat. But in 40 years, hemp could become a crop of the same caliber, Steenstra said. Companies that sell hemp products in the United States are “pretty excited about their future,” said Jane Wilson, director of program development for the American Herbal Products Association. “It fits in well with the whole interest in natural products.” Fortunately for the champions of hemp, federal legalization would not come with any spending requirements for the government, so it wouldn’t need to go in front of Rogers’ committee to gain passage. But Rogers isn’t the only lawmaker supporters are having a difficult time persuading. Massie, now busy making the case for House leadership to get behind his bill, admits struggling more to win over members of his own party. “It’s harder to get a majority of Republicans to sign on to industrial hemp than it is to get Democrats,” Massie said. “There’s a stigma attached to it, and Republicans don’t want to be seen as weak on the war on drugs.” Hemp is a tough crop, well-suited for Kentucky’s climate and landscape, possibly even in the state’s mountainous eastern region, which lacks rich soil. And in a place where almost 20 percent of people live below the poverty line and employment opportunities in coal mining and tobacco are on the decline, the need for a robust new industry is critical. Kentucky was the largest producer of hemp prior to the Civil War, according to the state’s department of agriculture, growing more than 90 percent of the entire U.S. crop. But production declined in the 1900s as the government moved to tax the crop due to its close association with marijuana. Congress banned growing hemp because of larger concerns about cannabis through the Controlled Substances Act in the early 1970s. Paul said he was approached by a grass-roots organization about the issue during his 2010 run for Senate. “The thought was maybe we could take some of this [former tobacco] farmland and replace it and also take some of this land that is less productive,” like reclaimed mining land, and cultivate hemp, Paul said, and create jobs in the process. Paul pitched the hemp issue to James Comer, Kentucky’s new agriculture commissioner, soon after both took office. Comer said it checked a lot of boxes: It would help small farmers replace tobacco as a cash crop and had tea party backing. Comer, a 42-year-old cattle and timber farmer now running for governor, said he recognized the legalization of hemp “was a good issue for me.” He succeeded in leading the state to pass a bill in 2013, largely with the help of Paul, Massie, Democratic Rep. John Yarmuth and others, that required the agriculture department to set up a licensing program for farmers who want to grow industrial hemp. Now, Kentucky is one of about 20 states to have legalized the cultivation of the crop. A handful of others are expected to consider it during this legislative session, though without federal legalization, state laws are largely symbolic. Efforts to legalize hemp in Kentucky were still in flux in early 2013, when Paul showed up for a hearing in Frankfort wearing a hemp shirt he said he bought from Canada. “Basically we are exporting our profit to Canada” every time Kentuckians buy hemp clothes or food products, Paul told state lawmakers. “I see no reason we wouldn’t want to be a leader on this.” While McConnell has been quieter about legalizing hemp, the then-minority leader became more involved in early 2013. In a statement two years ago, he said that, after discussions with Paul and Comer, “I am convinced that allowing its production will be a positive development for Kentucky’s farm families and economy.” McConnell then went to work, scoring a provision in the 2014 Farm Bill that allows states to set up pilot programs to research the crop, carefully selecting members of the legislation’s conference committee he knew would support it. He also co-sponsored a hemp legalization bill with Wyden and Paul in early 2013 that never made it out of Judiciary. Al Cross, the director of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues at the University of Kentucky, however, believes McConnell really became a supporter of hemp legalization when he realized the position was popular among Kentuckians and it could help him going into the 2014 election. The six-term senator handily defeated his Republican primary foe, Matt Bevin, but the race against his Democratic challenger — Alison Lundergan Grimes — looked tight in the early going. “I think it was a way for McConnell to show some solidarity with Paul and give him a slightly different image,” Cross said. “McConnell has this image of being a very buttoned-up, business-oriented Republican who just sticks to the normal playbook. And going for industrial hemp, he was able to show that he’s able to think outside the box, change his stripes. And it’s probably not coincidental that he had a primary, his first real primary ever. “And he was challenged by a guy more from the libertarian side of things.” Massie excuses McConnell’s early silence, saying when you are the party leader, “you kind of have to balance the desires of your district and the needs of your district with the entire conference.”

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Romney's move makes life simpler for Hill Republicans Capitol Hill Republicans breathed a sigh of relief Friday upon learning that Mitt Romney had chosen to bow out of the 2016 presidential race. The congressional GOP almost uniformly says that Romney would be a great president now had he won in 2012, due to his managerial acumen and the fact that he isn’t President Barack Obama. And no one was dancing on his political grave: Even Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who said earlier this month that Romney had “had his shot”, had only nice things to say Friday about the former Massachusetts governor. Story Continued Below But Romney’s decision spares Republicans from an awkward choice among a failed 2012 nominee that they all supported, several up-and-coming governors and several of their congressional colleagues who are considering a run for president. And it marked the first major candidate making things a little simpler for Republicans as they begin seriously weighing where to place their political bets in 2016. “It’s very helpful that he made the decision early and he informed everybody that’s what he’s going to do,” said Sen. Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia. “I wasn’t that surprised.” Added Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama: “He probably made a good decision.” Privately, several aides went further than lawmakers themselves, cheering their party’s prospects with Romney out of the field and the possibility that the GOP’s nominee could be someone to turn the page. “Thank God,” said one staffer when informed of the Romney news. Most members of Congress weren’t even taking Romney’s flirtations with a third run that seriously. Several senators had no idea that he’d bowed out of 2016 until asked about his decision on Friday, and even Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), one of Romney’s biggest boosters on the Hill, hadn’t spoken with Romney recently. Given the bunker mentality that now defines most Republicans’ relationship with Obama, there is certainly pining on Capitol Hill for a President Romney. But they don’t have that same enthusiasm for a candidate Romney, save for maybe in Utah. “Bummer. Mitt would have been one of the best Presidents ever,” Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) tweeted on Friday after carrying Romney’s torch for weeks on the Hill. And Hatch would have been right there with Chaffetz if Romney went the other way on Friday. “I don’t think he’d lose this time,” Hatch said. “If he ran I’d endorse him because I think he’s as fine a man as I’ve ever met.” But on Friday, in a mostly empty Capitol, the main feeling was relief: Finally a moment of clarity in the chaotic brawl for the GOP nomination. “I respect his opinion and there’ll be somebody that steps up and does a good job,” said Sen. John Boozman of Arkansas, who paused to add: “I don’t know who that person is right now.”

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Harry Reid undergoes eye surgery, doctors 'optimistic' Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid successfully underwent a lengthy surgery on Monday to repair broken bones in his face suffered in a New Year’s Day exercise injury, according to his office. The Nevada Democrat was released from George Washington University Hospital on Monday afternoon following the surgery. Surgeons removed a blood clot and pooled blood in Reid’s right eye and mended several bones in Reid’s face, injuries that have caused Reid blindness in his right eye. Story Continued Below Adam Jentleson, a spokesman for Reid, said doctors are “optimistic” that Reid will regain sight in his right eye, though “there is no definitive verdict yet.” The surgery took more than three hours and Reid was anesthetized during the procedure. The Democratic leader plans to work from his Washington home for rest of the week as the Senate considers a contentious bill to approve the Keystone XL pipeline. He returned to the Senate briefly last week for meetings and a Thursday press conference, but has mostly worked from home since an exercise band snapped during a Jan. 1 workout in Nevada and sent Reid tumbling into cabinets, breaking ribs and bones in his face. “Senator Reid will recuperate from his residence this week and continue to monitor the Senate floor closely through meetings and phone calls with his fellow senators, the White House and staff,” Jentleson said. Reid’s office said the senator spent Monday afternoon monitoring the whip count for a vote to break a filibuster on Keystone after Democrats began complaining that their amendments were being limited from consideration. Other Democrats also conveyed the news. “Out of surgery at home, doing good,” said Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) of Reid’s condition as she headed to a Democratic leadership meeting. She and Sens. Dick Durbin of Illinois and Chuck Schumer of New York have running the caucus since Reid’s injury.

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The FCC chair's Internet pivot Tom Wheeler was feeling the heat. It was August and the head of the Federal Communications Commission was sitting on the deck of his family’s vacation home on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. Sweat dripped onto the paperwork before him. For months, the tall, bespectacled Wheeler had been consumed by an arcane but important debate over how to regulate the companies that provide access to the Internet. Story Continued Below Wheeler, a former lobbyist for the cable and cellphone industries, had taken over the agency without any burning desire to rewrite the rules already in place, but a federal court decision had thrown the issue in his lap. Now, as he fumbled toward a solution, an array of liberal groups that had long wanted a much stronger federal hand complained that Wheeler might be too cozy with his former bosses to act forcefully on behalf of consumers. Perspiring on his vacation that wasn’t really a vacation, Wheeler was coming — quietly — to the conclusion that he was going to have to turn on the industries that launched his career in Washington. On Thursday, Wheeler is expected to present to the commission a set of rules that would treat broadband providers like utilities, effectively denying them the right to charge companies a premium for faster access to consumers and holding them accountable for any attempt to secretly impede the flow of data. When the commission finally approves them — a vote is scheduled for late February — it will mark the most significant rewrite of the rules of the road for the Internet in more than a dozen years and affect the competitive playing field for generations to come. Wheeler did not speak officially for this report. But interviews with FCC officials, industry executives and representatives of public interest groups reveal the origins of his dramatic pivot on this issue: an intense and relatively brief grass-roots lobbying campaign that targeted two people — him and President Barack Obama. “We [knew] that Tom Wheeler was going to make the decision on this,” said Craig Aaron, president and CEO of Free Press, a liberal public interest group. “He was the guy with the most influence over the details, and the question becomes who has the most influence over him, and that is President Obama.” • • • When he nominated Wheeler for the FCC job, Obama called him “the Bo Jackson of telecom.” Wheeler had earned the nickname for his experience as a veteran lobbyist but also as a venture capitalist in the industry. But Wheeler saw himself as more than just a double-threat. He made it clear to Obama, whom he had campaigned hard for in 2008, that he wanted a shot at leading an agency that had earned a reputation for inaction. Wheeler’s tenure was barely two months old, however, when a federal appeals court in D.C. issued a decision in January 2014 that would force the FCC to revisit an issue that had been percolating largely outside the public’s view for more than a decade. The decision overturned a set of rules written in 2010 that attempted to prevent Internet service providers from blocking or degrading content that flows over the Internet. While the court ruled that the commission has the power to regulate the Internet, it told the FCC that it could not impose rules that treat a broadband company like a utility unless it defined them as a “common carrier” — a term of art that has a long history of preventing discrimination in everything from railroads to telephone companies. Wheeler initially attempted to write new rules that avoided the common carrier distinction. Wary of sparking opposition from huge companies like Verizon and Comcast, Wheeler’s original proposal gave broadband providers the right to strike pay-for-play deals for faster access to consumers, as long as such agreements were “commercially reasonable.” Wheeler saw that reasonableness test as a high bar — a filter that would still ban the kinds of practices that net neutrality advocates were most worried about. But many — liberals, tech activists and Silicon Valley companies among them — saw things quite differently. Free Press called Wheeler’s proposal “an insult.” Tech companies from Google to Kickstarter called the rules “a grave threat” to the Web. Wheeler found little public support from his fellow Democrats. When the chairman met with members of the House telecommunications subcommittee over Chinese food at Hunan Dynasty, just blocks from the Capitol, they implored him to give himself more flexibility. Give a nod to reclassifying broadband like a utility in your preliminary proposal, they urged him. In seeking public comment, Wheeler included questions about whether the agency should regulate broadband that way. But his initial proposal, which left the door open to so-called Internet fast lanes, remained his preferred option. Then John Oliver unleashed the dogs of wonk comedy war. • • • It was a Sunday night in June when Oliver devoted 13 minutes of his show on HBO to explaining an issue that had already prompted protesters to camp outside the FCC offices (a first in the annals of the agency). He lampooned Wheeler’s past as a cable industry leader and suggested that his pro-industry rules were the broadband equivalent of “a dingo guarding a baby.” The clip went viral (it has been viewed on YouTube almost 8 million times). Free Press rented a Jumbotron and at one point put it across the street from the FCC’s headquarters on 12th Street. The screen played testimonials on net neutrality and Oliver’s takedown. A broad coalition of progressive groups — including Public Knowledge, Consumers Union, the New America Foundation’s Open Technology Institute, Demand Progress, Fight for the Future, Engine Advocacy, CREDO Action and the National Hispanic Media Coalition — capitalized on the sudden burst of attention to mobilize opposition. Emails by the hundreds of thousands began to hit the FCC’s inbox. Wheeler, meanwhile, hit the road in an attempt to turn the tide. He visited with tech companies and venture capitalists in Silicon Valley and New York, where he was told his rules would give broadband companies too much control over the success of fledgling tech firms. “It was pretty clear that he kind of had his mind made up and wasn’t really on our side,” Paul Sieminski, general counsel at Automattic, which runs the popular WordPress.com platform, said of one of Wheeler’s meetings in California. Wheeler was adamant that treating broadband companies like classic utilities would create political problems and would hamstring him as he wrestled with future policy issues involving the telecom industry. But the barrage of public comment, most of which was insistent on regulating broadband companies as strictly as possible, did not abate. By mid-July, the FCC had received so many missives the website sputtered. By August, as he sweated through his working vacation, Wheeler was contemplating a hybrid proposal that he hoped would satisfy both sides. By September, a record number of comments had come in, surpassing the outrage after the 2004 Super Bowl, when Janet Jackson gave the halftime audience too much of a show. Eventually about 4 million comments flooded into the FCC. In October, Wheeler’s hybrid proposal leaked out. In essence he wanted to impose the utility rules on only part of the Internet ecosystem — a suggestion first floated by Mozilla, maker of the Firefox Web browser. But on a Friday afternoon, 50 lawyers from civil society groups and tech companies came to a consensus that they could not back Wheeler’s plan. By trying to please both sides, Wheeler succeeded in pleasing neither. Turned out the man who hired him wasn’t wild about it either. • • • Monday, Nov. 10, didn’t start out well for Wheeler. Protesters from one of the more radical pro-net neutrality groups had blocked the driveway of his home in Georgetown. That same day, the president released a statement and video in which he came out squarely in favor of regulating the broadband companies like utilities. Obama had always been a proponent of net neutrality (Open Internet planks had been nailed into the Democrats’ platform in 2008 and 2012, after all), but he had never uttered the words Title II, the federal rule that gives the FCC direct authority over telecommunications services. Wheeler, who had a week’s worth of meetings scheduled at which he had intended to sell his hybrid plan, was knocked on his heels. At a meeting with public interest advocates and representatives from the likes of Tumblr, Etsy and Google, Wheeler appeared frazzled but professional, attendees said. At one point he told a meeting of wireless executives that there was no sunlight between him and the president on the issue. By the end of the week, it was clear to attendees that he was turning away from his hybrid plan. In the weeks since, Wheeler’s evolution to utility-style regulation has solidified. The telecom industry’s claim that Title II rules would hamper investment in new networks took a hit when Verizon’s CFO said in December that the move would “not influence the way we invest.” Verizon backed off that statement, but Sprint largely agreed when it said it would invest in wireless data networks regardless of how the FCC regulated the industry. But it was clear Obama’s comments had been a major force in shaping the FCC rules — a fact Wheeler couldn’t help but joke about at the Federal Communications Bar Association’s swanky, year-end dinner. “I would like to thank the Mozilla Foundation for the first draft of my remarks tonight,” the chairman said, “and President Obama for his edits.”

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How to decide when to announce you're running for president With Texas Sen. Ted Cruz formally announcing his bid for the White House Monday, the 2016 contest is now underway, and the declarations will roll out over the next few months, some sooner, some later. The question of when to announce may be related to what these soon-to-be candidates do for their day jobs.Cruz is the first of a group of four Republican senators - the others are Florida's Marco Rubio, Kentucky's Rand Paul and South Carolina's Lindsey Graham - who are considering running for president. If Paul runs, he said he'll announce his candidacy on April 7, and it other senators could soon follow suit.The timing is convenient for the sitting senators, who will be on congressional recess, from Mar. 30 to Apr. 10. Paul's planned date of Apr. 7 affords him the ability to plan a multi-state tour without worrying about missing work when Congress is in session. The break also coincides with the fundraising quarter that begins Apr. 1. Announcing their presidential campaigns close to the start of the quarter gives them nearly a full quarter of fundraising - time to get out early and boost numbers and support. "There's no question about it: Putting up strong first quarter fundraising numbers behind an announcement can show a lot of strength and a solid foundation for forward momentum," GOP strategist Ron Bonjean told CBS News. "The most important issue...is the drive for cash, and how can [candidates] leverage their fundraising the best? It is so early most voters are not going to be paying attention almost two years away from an election, but they need to raise money."But they're also already operating at a disadvantage compared to the potential candidates who do not hold federal office. Senators, as federal officeholders, are limited by campaign finance laws. Before they declare, they can raise $5,000 per donor for their leadership PACs, and they aren't allowed to raise unlimited money for super PACs. So, for instance, at this moment, if Sen. Rand Paul and former Governor Jeb Bush are at a party talking to a donor, Paul can hit up the donor for $5,000 for his leadership PAC, while Jeb Bush -- as long as he is not a formal candidate -- can ask for $5 million for his super PAC.Once senators declare, they can solicit can solicit individual contributions of up to $2,700 per person per election cycle (the primary and general elections are considered separate) to their campaign committees. Iffederal candidates or officeholders are raising money for super PACsworking on their behalf, they cannot legally ask for more than the federal contribution limits, and they can't raise any money from corporate or labor sources. For Cruz, there was an extra imperative to getting in early. "If he didn't do it now he could be left behind in the dust," Bonjean said. "Sen. Ted Cruz is trying to lock up the evangelical vote and get ahead of the other Republicans" like former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee. Another GOP strategist, John Feehery added, "It's never a bad thing to be first either because you get all that notoriety." The ones who follow "won't get nearly as much notoriety as Cruz did." Without the natural breaks of the congressional calendar, governors are more attuned to what's happening in their home states, as they consider the timing of their entrance onto the presidential stage. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker has said he'd like to wrap up the ongoing legislative session and budget battles in his state before he finalizes his announcement plans, so he's looking at some time in June. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who is also pondering a bid, is no longer totally enveloped in the fallout from the closure of certain lanes on the George Washington Bridge from 2013. But he's not entirely in the clear either: the state legislature has not yet wrapped up its investigation, nor have federal prosecutors who appear to be taking a deeper look at his gubernatorial and campaign offices. "He's probably trying to figure out if he's weathered all the storms," Feehery said. "I think he needs to kind of get more positive news going his way." Although governors have limits on how much they can raise for their state campaigns, they have more flexibility to raise money for their federal super PACs or political groups like 527s than the senators do. As long as they are not running for president and claim to not even be considering it, they can solicit mostly unlimited donations and corporate money. From that perspective, waiting can have its benefit. But Bonjean cautions that's not always the best strategy, saying that waiting can be "dangerous." "We're in this new environment where we haven't been before and there is a race for money," he said. Other governors who have toyed with a presidential bid, like Indiana's Mike Pence and Ohio's John Kasich, might want to hurry up and make a decision. Those out of office, people like former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, Santorum and others, have a good deal more flexibility and are more sensitive to the political landscape for their timing. According to Bonjean, candidates could decide to formally enter the race when another would-be or actual candidate makes a mistake, they feel a lull in the action, or have the sense that voters are looking for an alternative. They could also be looking for missteps by incumbent president or the presumed nominee on the other side of the aisle. "There are all kinds of reasons why candidates may decide to wait this out a little bit more because it is pretty early," he said. And for a candidate like Bush with impressive fundraising prowess, there's actually incentive to wait as long as possible to get into the race.The would-be candidates who are not in office can spend the months beforehand asking donors to contribute far more to the coffers of their super PACs - millions of dollars. Bush dipped a toe in the race early by announcing that he was considering a presidential bid. It was a way to scare off other Republicans who might create stiff competition and to start locking down the donors from whom he can now raise vast sums of money in the weeks or months before he tells the Federal Election Commission (FEC) he is officially running for president. The former governor is testing the campaign finance rules in a way that no other presidential candidate has. Even though Bush has given nearly every indication that he is running for president, the fact that he has not formally declared means he can continue raising unlimited mounts of money for his super PAC, Right to Rise, he can keep coordinating with his super PAC. Once Bush decides to declare he's running for president, he can no longer directly control his super PAC or directly raise money for it. At that point, he would transfer it to someone else. At that point, he will also then be be subject to the election rules governing the other declared candidates. Lawrence Noble, senior counsel at the Campaign Legal Center and a former FEC general counsel, also noted that by delaying a formal candidacy, candidates like Bush and Clinton can hold off on giving the public more specific information about their financial information until they are ready to tackle all questions - something senators and governors are already doing. "If you're not a federal office holder," Noble said, "then the longer you hold off announcing, the longer you're holding off filing a financial disclosure report."For candidates like Bush or former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the financial disclosures could raise questions they are not yet ready to tackle. Bush's strategy could backfire, though. One possibility Noble raised is that declared candidates have the moral high ground to raise questions about Bush's pre-presidential fundraising operation."You may see them turn on somebody like Jeb Bush," Noble said. The calculus for Clinton is a little bit different. While Republicans race to distinguish themselves amid what's likely to become a crowded primary field, she has the only name in the Democratic bullpen, at this point, that registers more than a blip in early primary polls.Clinton may eventually have to face a credible competitor for the Democratic nomination - former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley, former Virginia Sen. Jim Webb, and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders are making noises about running. But right now, Clinton has virtually frozen the field, cornering the Democratic Party's fundraising apparatus and enlisting top-flight campaign talent to prepare for a bid.That means Clinton has more flexibility than most in deciding when to make her bid official. She's expected to raise gobs of money no matter when she declares, she doesn't have a day job that requires her more immediate attention, and she doesn't have a crowded field of competitors driving her to get an early start on courting voters.The factors weighing most heavily on Clinton's timing, therefore, are not logistical, but political. By delaying her official announcement, Clinton can keep herself out of the intense fray of a campaign for that much longer. When she declares, the thinking goes, she'll immediately be thrown into the daily news cycle, pressed for responses on every issue du jour and elevating herself as a target for GOP attacks. If she waits, she can let the Republicans spend their time attacking each other. On the other hand, as the recent fracas surrounding her use of a private email server as secretary of state has demonstrated, Clinton can't avoid the circus even if she tries. By making her bid official, some believe, Clinton could exert a greater degree of control over the narrative, proactively shaping her coverage with campaign appearances and platform statements instead of being forced into a reactive posture every time some new story rocks her boat.Declaring earlier might also help Clinton prevent any of her Democratic challengers from gathering steam. Those rivals "are now starting to get elevated a little bit," said Bonjean. "It would be wiser for Hillary to launch sooner rather than later because this state of limbo is creating fatigue among the left.""The longer she stays quiet, the more likely it is that her progressive critics will grow louder, arguing that Clinton's expecting a royal coronation, rather than a Democratic nomination contest," added Lara Brown, a professor of political management at George Washington University, in a piece for U.S. News and World Report. While Clinton's team is keeping any final decision on timing under wraps, she's expected to clearly signal her intent to run sometime in April. Other candidates who don't get the press attention of Bush or Clinton may need to jump in the race earlier for a publicity bump. Plus, there are precious few talented political operatives left in Iowa and New Hampshire that haven't been snapped up by campaigns in waiting."When different candidates are putting together their infrastructure, many of them are recruiting staffers and setting up offices across the states before they announce," Bonjean said. "That's a good idea, get your network started before you launch so you don't have to be rushing to catch up."

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Ted Cruz offers rare praise of an Obama Sen. Ted Cruz offered rare praise Wednesday for a current occupant of the White House, as he complimented first lady Michelle Obama for not covering her head while visiting Saudi Arabia this week. “Kudos to @FLOTUS for standing up for women & refusing to wear Sharia-mandated head-scarf in Saudi Arabia,” the Texas Republican tweeted. “Nicely done.” Saudi Arabia has a strict dress code for women, who are instructed to wear black robes and head coverings at all times in public, though visitors to the country are not required to abide by the dress code. Story Continued Below On Tuesday, the first lady’s uncovered head sparked backlash on Twitter in Saudi Arabia. Users started a hashtag that translates to “#Michelle_Obama_Immodest” or “#Michelle_Obama_NotVeiled” to chastise the first lady for being disrespectful to Saudi traditions.

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Barack Obama: DHS impasse could mean 'end of a paycheck' for thousands President Barack Obama hammered congressional Republicans again Monday for insisting on gutting his executive actions on immigration alongside a must-pass appropriations bill for the Department of Homeland Security — warning that a funding lapse would cut off paychecks for tens of thousands of critical government employees. It was similar to the message Obama delivered to House Democrats last week in Philadelphia, where the president seized on a quote from a POLITICO article in which a Republican lawmaker had said it’s not the “end of the world” if Congress fails to fund DHS by the Feb. 27 deadline. But this time, after a fact-checker dinged his Philadelphia speech, Obama didn’t imply that Republicans don’t care if Homeland Security stops “functioning.” Story Continued Below A funding lapse would still mean that paychecks will cease for tens of thousands of DHS workers, Obama said in a speech Monday at the department’s headquarters in northwest Washington. “Well, I guess literally that’s true – it may not be the end of the world,” Obama said Monday. “But until they pass a funding bill, it is the end of a paycheck for tens of thousands of front-line workers who will continue to … have to work without getting paid.” The president noted that more than 40,000 border patrol and customs agents, 50,000 Transportation Security Administration airport screeners, 13,000 immigration officers and 40,000 Coast Guard employees — all of them considered essential employees — would have to work but not get paid once the deadline passes. “These Americans aren’t just working to keep us safe, they have to take care of their own families,” he said. “The notion that they would get caught up in a disagreement around policy that has nothing to do with them makes no sense.” Obama added that a funding lapse would prevent the department from starting new agency initiatives “in the event that a new threat emerges.” Federal grants to state and local law enforcement would also stop, he said. “The men and women of America’s homeland security apparatus do important work to protect us,” he said. “And Republicans and Democrats in Congress should not be playing politics with that.” Last week’s POLITICO story reported that some top Republicans are increasingly unworried about missing the funding deadline, noting that DHS’s essential employees would stay on the job even if their paychecks are held up. In the October 2013 shutdown, about 85 percent of DHS workers still showed up to work. “In other words, it’s not the end of the world if we get to that time because the national security functions will not stop — whether it’s border security or a lot of other issues,” Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.) said last week, though he stressed that Congress shouldn’t ignore the deadline. In his speech Thursday at the House Democrats’ retreat, Obama said: “I disagree with any Republican who says letting funding for the Department of Homeland Security lapse is ‘not the end of the world.’ … What do you mean, it’s not the end of the world? That’s all you’ve been talking about. And now, suddenly, because you want to make a political point, you think that we can afford to have the Department of Homeland Security not functioning — because of political games in Washington?” FactCheck.Org said Friday that Obama had taken Diaz-Balart’s remarks out of context. “Diaz-Balart was clearly making the point that Homeland Security would continue functioning, even if the funding deadline is missed,” the nonpartisan organization wrote. The White House said Monday that Obama wasn’t shifting the focus of his criticism. It pointed to comments last week from press secretary Josh Earnest that accused Republicans of “threatening to say, ‘We’re going to withhold paychecks from the people who are on the front lines keeping America safe.’” “I’m not sure what you could do to more undermine the relationship between political leaders and law enforcement than to threaten to withhold their paychecks even while they’re doing their job,” Earnest said last week. “That’s not the proper way to show their support for them.“ The Republican-controlled Senate will take a procedural vote Tuesday on the House-passed DHS funding measure – which aims to undo years of Obama’s immigration policies. But the bill is expected to face unanimous Democratic opposition and will fail to advance.

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'I will be Loretta Lynch' President Barack Obama’s attorney general nominee came to Capitol Hill with one overriding message Wednesday: “I will be Loretta Lynch.” Translation: She won’t be Eric Holder — not the attorney general who has angered Republicans during a six-year contentious relationship in which lawmakers called for his resignation and the House held him in contempt. Story Continued Below But Senate Republicans repeatedly used Lynch’s nearly eight-hour confirmation hearing to invoke the controversies of Holder’s tenure, even as she pledge a fresh start with Congress, promised to maintain her independence from the White House and repeatedly declined to be pulled into drawn-out debates about issues like immigration, gay marriage and alleged targeting of conservative groups by the Internal Revenue Service. Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas) — asking her in jest, “You’re not Eric Holder, are you?” — told Lynch that the outgoing attorney general’s six-year record at the Justice Department was weighing heavily on lawmakers’ minds. He asked her: How will senators know you will not be another Holder? “If confirmed as attorney general, I will be myself. I will be Loretta Lynch,” the veteran federal prosecutor responded. “And I would refer you to my record as United States attorney on two occasions as well as a practicing lawyer to see the independence that I have always brought to every particular matter.” Lynch, who would be the first black female attorney general, turned in a polished performance free of any serious stumbles. But some GOP senators were visibly frustrated that Lynch continually refused to weigh in on the substance of Obama’s recent moves on immigration — beyond her view that Obama had acted within the Constitution and that the administration’s legal rationale for its actions was “reasonable.” “I don’t see any reason to doubt the reasonableness of those views,” Lynch told the Senate Judiciary Committee, while stressing that she was not involved in the decisions behind the actions. She also defended prosecutorial discretion and said law enforcement officials should be able to set priorities for using their limited resources when carrying out immigration enforcement. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), one of the most persistent critics of the administration’s immigration policies, was clearly not satisfied with Lynch’s responses on Obama’s latest executive action, telling her: “That’s why I have difficulty with your nomination.” “Now you’re here defending it, and I believe it’s indefensible, so I’m worried,” Sessions said. “I just want to tell you, that’s a big problem.” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) — after trying to get Lynch to expand on issues involving national security, immigration and the IRS — showed similarly displeasure. “Try as I might, there has been nothing I have been able to ask you that has yielded any answer suggesting any limitations whatsoever on the authority of the president,” Cruz told Lynch. “That does not augur well for this committee’s assessment of your willingness to stand up to the president when the Constitution and the laws so require.” Lynch found some signals of support from GOP corners, however. Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), after finishing his round of questions, told her, “Should you be confirmed, I look forward to working with you.” And Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) said to her, “I’m impressed with your qualifications, and I hope I can support your nomination.” The committee is not expected to vote on Lynch for at least a few more weeks, as the panel hops through procedural hoops involved with any nomination. She would need at least two Republican votes on the 20-member panel. But immigration wasn’t a complete slam-dunk issue for Lynch, despite her weeks of preparation for the hearing and the widespread expectation that it would be one of the prime sticking points for Republican lawmakers. As she waded into questions about immigration, Lynch muddled some of the nuances of the law that apply to employers. During an exchange with Sessions, she referred repeatedly to employers taking account of a worker’s “citizenship,” seeming to bless the practice. “We have in place at this point in time a legal framework that requests — requires employers to both provide information about citizenship, as well as not hire individuals without citizenship,” Lynch said. In fact, businesses cannot limit their hiring to U.S. citizens, and a Justice Department office that Lynch would oversee seeks out cases in which employers unlawfully deny employment to legal immigrants. At another point, Lynch seemed to indicate that everyone in the United States has a “right” to work in the United States, regardless of their immigration status. Later, she walked back those answers, telling the committee under questioning from Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) that an immigrant who’s here illegally cannot work, unless he or she has prior government approval. Congressional Republicans enraged at Obama’s actions had prepared to make Lynch’s confirmation battle a broader war over the administration’s immigration policies. Democrats argued that Obama’s actions should not play a role in whether Lynch is confirmed, and that she should be judged on her own merits. “Now, they can sue [Obama] and let the courts decide,” Schumer said, referring to Republicans. “The confirmation of America’s highest law enforcement official is not the time nor place to vent frustration.” Though immigration was a dominant issue early in the hearings, the Brooklyn-based federal prosecutor touched on other key issues in her opening remarks: terrorism, cyber-crimes, human trafficking and relations between law enforcement and minority communities. And she addressed a litany of other issues the senators threw at her: lethal use of drones, gay marriage, criminal justice reforms, gun rights and financial crimes. She emphasized her record on terrorism as a federal prosecutor in New York, noting that her office has tried more terrorism cases than any other U.S. attorney’s office since the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, including plots against the city’s transportation systems and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. When Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) asked her to comment on waterboarding, Lynch said that “waterboarding is torture … and thus illegal.” In response to a question from Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Lynch indicated that she backed the death penalty, calling it an “effective” punishment. On the matter of controversial surveillance programs led by the National Security Agency, Lynch said she believed they were “certainly constitutional and effective.” She declined to weigh in on the merits of an August 2013 decision by the Justice Department not to challenge state laws that allow some uses of marijuana, stressing that it “certainly would be my policy … to continue to enforcing marijuana laws” on the federal level. She also broke with Obama on opinions about marijuana, disputing a year-old comment to The New Yorker in which the president said the drug was no more harmful than alcohol. And in response to questions from Sen. David Perdue (R-Ga.), Lynch indicated that she supports sending some terrorism cases to military commissions under certain conditions, telling the committee that she would use “all the tools in our arsenal” as attorney general, including the military commission process. “When terrorists threaten Americans here or abroad, they will face American justice,” Lynch said. Lynch’s nomination comes at a time of tense relations between minority communities and law enforcement officials — stemming in part from the deaths of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Eric Garner of Staten Island, New York, both black men who were killed by white police officers last year. Grand juries declined to return indictments in both cases. In her opening remarks, Lynch said strengthening relationships between law enforcement and the public will be a key priority for her as attorney general, promising to “draw all voices into this important discussion.” She praised law enforcement officers “who risk their lives every day in the protection of the communities we all serve.” “I have served with them. I have learned from them. I am a better prosecutor because of them,” Lynch told senators. “Few things have pained me more than the recent reports of tension and division between law enforcement and the communities we serve.” In the 1990s, Lynch helped secure convictions of New York City police officers who brutally assaulted Haitian immigrant Abner Louima, and as the current U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, her office is leading the investigation into the Garner case. Republicans raised other controversies under the Justice Department’s portfolio as the GOP majority began taking up the first major Obama administration nominee to face confirmation under its control of the Senate. In his opening statement, committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) raised issues such as the botched “gun-walking” operation Fast and Furious, alleged targeting of conservative groups by the IRS and his view that the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel’s legal opinions should be regularly made public. “I don’t expect Ms. Lynch and I will agree on every issue,” Grassley said. “But I, for one, need to be persuaded she will be an independent attorney general, and I have no reason to believe — at this point — that she won’t be.” Much of her opening remarks, Lynch’s first chance to publicly introduce herself to Congress, took a personal tone. Lynch, the daughter of a Baptist minister and a retired English teacher, talked about how her parents fought against segregation and instilled in her the values of education, hard work and sacrifice. Lynch was accompanied by her husband, Stephen Hargrove, her father, Lorenzo, and her brother Leonzo. Her other brother, former Navy SEAL Lorenzo Lynch Jr., died in 2009, and the attorney general nominee had his Navy SEAL trident with her on the witness table. Dozens of members of her sorority, Delta Sigma Theta, were there in support of Lynch, decked out in their traditional red. She recalled how in the early 1960s, her father would open up his Greensboro, North Carolina, church to civil rights activists and stand alongside them as he carried Lynch, as a little girl, on his shoulders. “As I come before you today in this historic chamber, I still stand on my father’s shoulders, as well as on the shoulders of all those who have gone before me and who dreamed of making the promise of America a reality for all and worked to achieve that goal,” Lynch said. “I believe in the promise of America because I have lived the promise of America.” Lynch was not an unfamiliar face to the committee. She had already met with all 20 members privately, and one of its Democratic members — Schumer — introduced Lynch at her confirmation hearing along with Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.). She got a largely warm reception during the morning first round of hearings from both Republicans and Democrats, with one senior member — Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) — telling Lynch that of the six attorney general nominations she has sat through in her tenure, Lynch’s opening statement was “the best.” “I am confident that if we stay focused on Ms. Lynch’s impeccable qualifications and fierce independence, she will be quickly confirmed by the Senate,” said Leahy, the committee’s former chairman. “Ms. Lynch deserves a fair, thoughtful, and respectful confirmation process.”

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GOP lawmakers confront Jim DeMint over ratings Long-simmering tensions between The Heritage Foundation, its sister political arm and House Republicans erupted Tuesday during a weekly meeting of conservatives, as GOP lawmakers confronted the nonprofit group’s leader behind closed doors. Several Republican lawmakers unleashed on Heritage Foundation President Jim DeMint — a former South Carolina senator — griping mostly about Heritage Action’s legislative scorecard. The Heritage Foundation and Heritage Action are related groups, but the latter advocates for policy and has a scorecard that judges lawmakers’ voting records on Capitol Hill. Story Continued Below The heated exchange came just one day before conservative Republicans headed to the Salamander Resort and Spa in Virginia for a retreat hosted by The Heritage Foundation. The confrontation, which was described by several participants, came during a meeting of the Republican Study Committee, a conservative caucus led by Texas Rep. Bill Flores. Several lawmakers confronted DeMint, who leads the nonprofit Heritage Foundation. Georgia Rep. Austin Scott questioned how the conservative Heritage Action scores legislation. “I think Paul Ryan’s ideas go a long way toward moving the country in the right direction, and are certainty conservative and consistent with most conservative fundamental beliefs,” Scott said in an interview with POLITICO, describing his comments in the closed meeting. “If you score Paul Ryan at a 66, none of us can live up to your standards. If you set an unachievable standard, it hurts our goals.” Heritage Action actually scores Ryan as voting with the group 58 percent of the time. Scott also told POLITICO: “Coming from the farm, my granddad would say there are some people who want to prove a point and others who want to make a difference. I feel like Heritage sometimes is trying to prove a point while conservatives in the House are trying to make a difference.” Texas Rep. Mike Conaway, chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, pressed DeMint on the separation between the foundation and its political arm, Heritage Action. Conaway said he doesn’t believe there is a clear separation between the organizations, according to multiple sources who were in the meeting. Republicans applauded Conaway after he was done speaking. A Conaway spokesman said, “RSC meetings provide members the opportunity to discuss the issues before Congress with one another, as well as with outside groups in a closed-door setting. Without this arrangement, members would not have the same freedom to voice their concerns.” Reps. Robert Pittenger and Virginia Foxx of North Carolina and Tom McClintock of California also addressed DeMint. McClintock’s office says he defended Heritage from the attacks. DeMint responded that there was a clear separation between Heritage and Heritage Action. He also said he looks forward to working together in the future, according to sources in the meeting. Dan Holler, a spokesman for Heritage Action, said, “We work closely with the chairman. In fact, he was at Heritage this morning for the launch of the Index of Economic Freedom.” Wesley Denton, a spokesman for The Heritage Foundation, said Flores invited DeMint to discuss “Heritage’s conservative policy agenda Opportunity for All, Favoritism to None.” “This was a follow-up to the recent policy summit hosted by Heritage Action, which featured over 20 members of Congress and highlighted reform bills on issues of education, energy, welfare and health care,” Denton said. It is just the latest fight between conservative lawmakers and Heritage over the past year. Several Republicans were upset over Heritage’s maneuvering on the farm bill. Heritage first urged lawmakers to vote against the legislation. After it failed, Heritage continued to oppose the legislation even after House Republicans stripped out the food stamps and other provisions it found objectionable. The RSC has been in a bit of turmoil of late, as nine members have started their own conservative caucus separate from the RSC.

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