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Senator pressing HHS for answers on ObamaCare ad spending

A Senate committee is looking into the millions of taxpayer dollars being spent on ads to promote ObamaCare enrollment.
FoxNews.com has confirmed the Health and Human Services budget for “paid media” is about $35 million for the current enrollment period – focusing on the 38 states using HealthCare.gov.
But Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, raised concerns that agency ad spending is becoming a “black box” that is difficult to track. Citing a study that also showed the total federal government budget for ads and PR was nearly $1 billion in fiscal 2013, Hatch recently fired off a letter to the acting head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) asking for a full accounting of agency ad spending.
“Increased transparency on government spending on advertising will improve accountability and help ensure that the taxes from hardworking Americans are not squandered and wasted on ineffective or misguided government programs,” he wrote to Acting Administrator Andrew M. Slavitt.
Politico first reported that HHS was spending the $35 million to run ads in English and Spanish to encourage people to sign up. Hatch cited the report in sending the letter to Slavitt.
An HHS spokesman declined to provide details to FoxNews.com beyond confirming that CMS planned to spend $35 million on paid media advertisements. The department is also using email and social media, and is partnering with 30 women’s organizations to target women, but it remains unclear whether those efforts are included in the HHS advertising budget.
The spokesman said in an email that they “have gotten smarter about how we reach people but we need to get even smarter, and the lessons we learn from testing will continue to pay dividends on enrolling the uninsured for years to come.”
Hatch’s committee set a Nov. 25 deadline for information on the spending. The push to promote the health care exchanges comes after HHS estimated 10 million people would enroll in ObamaCare by the end of 2016, a far lower number than the original prediction that enrollment would reach 21 million by the end of 2016. This comes as America’s largest insurer, UnitedHealth Group, suggested Thursday it might consider dropping out of the exchanges in 2017, citing flagging enrollment and high costs.
It is difficult to accurately ascertain how much the federal government spends annually on advertising and messaging campaigns because no government-wide definition of advertising exists, and there is no central authority with oversight responsibility over media contracts.
According to a June 2014 Congressional Research Service (CRS) report, the Obama administration spent a minimum of $4.4 billion on outside advertising contracts between fiscal 2009 and fiscal 2013, a figure that did not include in-house expenditures.
HHS was second only to the Department of Defense, spending $197.4 million on advertising in fiscal 2013, CRS reported.
Hatch’s letter is not the first time ObamaCare promotions have raised concern.
In 2012, reports that HHS was spending $20 million on a campaign to promote ObamaCare drew similar scrutiny and demands for details from Congress.
In 2010, the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported the Obama administration spent nearly $20 million on a Medicare brochure that contained “instances in which HHS presented abbreviated information and a positive view of Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) that is not universally shared.”
GAO concluded that “nothing in the brochure constitutes communications that are purely partisan, self-aggrandizing, or covert.”
Another HHS agency has drawn the attention of the Senate Budget Committee after The Washington Post reported the public relations firm Edelman was hired to “refine their agency messaging” with reporters.
“Agency spending on advertising, public relations and media relations is largely a black box,” committee Chairman Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., wrote in an October letter to Office of Management and Budget Director Shaun Donovan seeking details about the firm’s contract with HHS’ Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA).
In its fiscal 2016 budget, SAMSHA asked for $16 million for “public awareness and support.”
Noting the Obama administration consistently asks for Congress to raise the debt limit, Enzi said any “unnecessary media relations spending is a cost that the nation simply cannot afford.”
A committee spokesman said OMB missed its deadline, but noted they are working to provide the requested materials.

Carson says refugee screening must 'determine the mad dogs'

MOBILE, Ala. –  Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson said Thursday that blocking potential terrorists posing as Syrian refugees from entering the U.S. is akin to handling a rabid dog.
At campaign stops in Alabama, Carson said halting Syrian resettlement in the U.S. doesn't mean America lacks compassion.
"If there's a rabid dog running around in your neighborhood, you're probably not going to assume something good about that dog," Carson told reporters at one stop. "It doesn't mean you hate all dogs, but you're putting your intellect into motion."
Carson said that to "protect my children," he would "call the humane society and hopefully they can come take this dog away and create a safe environment once again."
He continued: "By the same token, we have to have in place screening mechanisms that allow us to determine who the mad dogs are, quite frankly. Who are the people who want to come in here and hurt us and want to destroy us?"
He later repeated the comparison at a rally at the University of South Alabama, while telling hundreds of supporters that reporters had misrepresented his earlier remarks. "This is the kind of thing that they do," he said, drawing laughs and applause.
Carson is among the GOP hopefuls who have called for closing the nation's borders to Syrian refugees in the wake of the shooting and bombing attacks in Paris that killed 129 people and wounded hundreds more.
The Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the carnage, stoking fears of future attacks across Europe and in the U.S.
The retired neurosurgeon, who is near the top of many national and early state preference polls, said he's been in touch with House GOP leaders about their efforts to establish new hurdles for Syrian and Iraqi refugees trying to enter the U.S.
Dozens of Democrats joined majority Republicans in the House to pass the measure on Thursday. It would require the FBI to conduct background checks on people coming to the U.S. from those countries. The heads of the FBI and Homeland Security Department and the director of national intelligence would have to certify to Congress that each refugee "is not a threat to the security of the United States."
Asked whether he would sign it, Carson said he hasn't reviewed the details. "If, in fact, it does satisfy basic needs for safety, of course," Carson said.
The Council on American-Islamic relations condemned Carson's dog comparisons at the same time it blasted another GOP hopeful, Donald Trump, for declining to rule out setting up a U.S. government database and special identification cards for Muslims in America.
"Such extremist rhetoric is unbecoming of anyone who seeks our nation's highest office and must be strongly repudiated by leaders from across the political spectrum," said Robert McCaw's, CAIR's government affairs manager.
In Mobile, Carson said, "Islam itself is not necessarily our adversary." But he said Americans are justified in seeing threats from Muslim refugees and the U.S. shouldn't "completely change who we are as Americans just so we can look like good people."
He continued: "We have an American culture, and we have things that we base our values and principles on. I, for one, am not willing to give all those things away just so I can be politically correct."
Separately, Carson said Thursday that Islamic State militants are more organized and sophisticated than the al-Qaida terrorists who carried out the 9/11 attacks.
Those attacks, he said, "really didn't require a great deal of sophistication because we weren't really paying attention."
He added, "You didn't have to be that great. You had to be able to fly a couple of planes. You're going to have to be a lot more sophisticated than that now."
Carson's spoke a few days after some people in and around his campaign offered public concerns about his command of foreign policy. The chief critic, former CIA agent Duane Clarridge, told The New York Times that Carson struggles with Middle Eastern affairs.
He "not an adviser," Carson said, adding that Armstrong Williams, his longtime business manager, also "has nothing to do with my campaign."
Williams spoke to the Times, the Associated Press and other media about Carson's need to improve as a candidate. Carson described Williams as an independent operator who "speaks for himself."
But, Carson acknowledged, Williams as recently as this week helped the candidate edit a foreign policy op-ed the campaign sent to The Washington Post.

NBC executive says she didn’t mean to offend Latino lawmakers: ‘Yo hablo español’

If Latino lawmakers thought they were going to walk out of a meeting with NBC executives feeling assured that the media company was turning a new leaf following protests over Donald Trump's appearance on "Saturday Night Live," they were sorely mistaken.
Things turned tense almost immediately when NBC News President Deborah Turness began talking about undocumented immigrants and referred to them as "illegals" – a term that is not only considered offensive to many Latinos but one that has also fallen out of favor in many parts of the country.
According to a story by Politico, Turness was telling Hispanic members of the House about NBC's integration with their Spanish-language network, Telemundo, which included a story about Pope Francis' visit to the U.S. and his meeting with a young girl who was afraid her parents would be deported because they're "illegals."
"I'm going to stop you right there. We use the term undocumented immigrants," California Democratic, Rep. Juan Vargas (D-Calif.) told Turness, who apologized for the remark.
Later, she tried to assure the lawmakers that the network understood the community and its concerns.
"We love the Hispanic community,” she said. “Yo hablo español."
The meeting was already expected to be tense given the strong backlash from Latino leaders and activist groups after the announcement that Trump would host SNL.
The furor against Trump began in June when he announced his Republican candidacy for president and described some Mexicans who are in the United States illegally as criminals and rapists.
Hours before his appearance on the show's earlier in November, dozens of protesters marched from Trump Tower to NBC's studio in Rockefeller Plaza, carrying signs and chanting in both English and Spanish. In Spanish, they chanted: "The people united shall never be defeated." Signs called the show racist.
Trump's comments last summer did spur NBC to sever its Miss Universe ties with him while declaring he would never return to his "Apprentice" role. But leading up to his appearance, NBC did not respond to accusations that it had reversed itself because they invited him to host the show.
The meeting between Latino leaders and NBC was expected to ease the animosity that the network has generated from the Trump fiasco, but Turness appeared to do more harm than good with her comments during the sit-down.
Lawmakers left irate at Turness and her fellow NBC executives.
The NBC officials gathered at the meeting also told the lawmakers that they could not discuss Trump's SNL appearance because they represented the news side of NBC, prompting the lawmakers to question why the network didn't make more of an effort to include someone from the entertainment side.
"There was a lot of frustration in the room," said California Democratic Rep. Tony Cárdenas (D-Calif.). "You know that (Trump is) an issue on all of our minds and as soon as you start talking about it, you say none of the executives for the entertainment (division) are here. It was a cop out. It was disingenuous."
The meeting "was about them sitting down with the Hispanic caucus for the sake of saying they met with us," Cárdenas added. "Like that is progress."
While little progress was made toward resolving the anger over Trump's "SNL" appearance, NBC News did make some steps to toward promoting diversity in the newsroom – including adding more Hispanic correspondents to "NBC Nightly News." The company also said Jose Diaz-Balart, an MSNBC and Telemundo host, will officially become a rotating anchor on the Saturday edition of "Nightly News" and will be a regular contributor to "Meet the Press."
Yet, the lawmakers did not leave satisfied.
"Members left more offended and more upset then when they walked in there. There was major 'Hispandering,'" said a Democratic staffer. "There is definitely hurt there."

France PM says Paris attacks ringleader used migrant crisis to get into country

France’s Prime Minister Manuel Valls said Friday some of the Paris attackers, including the mastermind Abdelhamid Abaaoud, exploited the Syrian refugee crisis to slip into the country unnoticed.
Abaaoud, the ringleader behind last Friday’s bombings and shootings in the French capital that killed 129 people, was able to get into Europe undeterred, according to French authorities. The 28-year-old had also been linked to several plots around France including a thwarted attack by a gunman on a high-speed train in August.
French officials confirmed Thursday Abaaoud was killed in an anti-terror raid Wednesday in a suburb north of Paris. He was identified from skin samples after the Saint-Denis apartment raid.
Abaaoud had claimed he successfully moved back and forth from Europe to Syria coordinating terror attacks, and narrowly escaped a January police raid in the Belgian city of Verviers. “Allah blinded their vision and I was able to leave... despite being chased after by so many intelligence agencies," he told the ISIS magazine Dabiq.
Two counterterrorism officials told Fox News on Thursday that Abaaoud is comparable to Mohammed Atta – the “tactical guy” who identified and pulled together the operatives.
Police say they launched Wednesday's operation after receiving information from tapped phone calls, surveillance and tipoffs suggesting that Abaaoud was holed up in the apartment. Investigators said it was still unclear how he died. Eight other people were arrested.
French authorities did not know he was in Europe before the massacre, France's interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve said Thursday. He demanded Europe do everything in its power to "vanquish terrorism."
Valls said some of the Paris attackers had taken advantage of the massive influx of migrants into Europe fleeing war in the Middle East.
"These individuals took advantage of the refugee crisis ... of the chaos, perhaps, for some of them to slip in" to France, he told French TV. "Others were in Belgium already. And others, I must remind you, were in France."
Valls also warned that the passport-free Schengen zone is a risk of Europe fails to “take responsibility” over border controls, according to Sky News. European Union ministers are expected to meet in Brussels where they are expected to tighten border security in each of the 26-member nations.
Hasna Aitboulahcen, described as Abaaoud’s cousin, was also killed in the anti-terror raid Wednesday when she activated a suicide belt and blew herself up.
Police now turn their attention to two other suspects who are believed to have participated in the attacks. Police have identified one of them as Salah Abdeslam, who grew up in the same Belgian district as Abaaoud, the Brussels suburb of Molenbeek.
There was no indication Abdeslam escaped to neighboring Spain or tried to do so, Spanish Interior Miniister Jorge Fernandez Diaz said. He told Antena 3 television that security officials from several countries were called together in Paris to discuss the possibility that Abdeslam might try to cross into a country bordering France.
Spanish police say French authorities sent a bulletin to officers across Europe asking them to watch out for a Citroen Xsara car that could be carrying Abdeslam.
Abaaoud's death may provide some relief not only for Europeans, but also for his own family. “We are praying that Abdelhamid really is dead,” his sister, Yasmina, said last year, The New York Times reported. At the time, there was word he died fighting for ISIS, but it eventually emerged that he escaped Syria for Europe.
His own father, Omar, said the jihadi "dishonored" his family, the Times added.