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India's new prime minister Modi attends White House dinner despite fast

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi kicked off a two-day visit with President Obama Monday with a private dinner but there was a slight issue: the new leader of the world's largest democracy couldn't eat.
Modi was fasting to honor the Hindu goddess Durga and was only permitted to consume water or lemon-flavored water. The White House previously said Modi's dietary needs would be accommodated, but offered no details as to what was served at the dinner.
Obama and Modi broke the ice amid widespread concerns that U.S.-Indian ties have frayed in recent years. Joining them in the Blue Room was Vice President Biden, who also attended a State Department lunch with Modi and Secretary of State John Kerry on Tuesday.
Obama's courtship of Modi, who is on his first official visit to the U.S. since being elected in May, will continue Tuesday. The leaders will have a meeting in the Oval Office, marking a rare second day of attention from Obama.
During their talks, Obama and Modi will focus on economic growth and cooperation on security, clean energy, climate change and other issues, the White House said. They will also address regional concerns, including Afghanistan, where the U.S. is wrapping up its 13-year military involvement, and Syria and Iraq, where the U.S. is ramping up its military engagement as Obama builds an international coalition to target Islamic State militants operating in the both countries.
Obama visited India in 2010 and held up the U.S.-India relationship as the "defining partnership" of the 21st century. But the relationship has been lukewarm at best.
While military cooperation and U.S. defense sales have grown, the economic relationship has been rockier, with Washington frustrated by India's failure to open its economy to more foreign investment and address complaints over intellectual property violations.
A landmark civil nuclear agreement exists between the two countries, but Indian liability legislation has kept U.S. companies from capitalizing on the deal. Further fraying relations was the arrest and strip search last year in New York of an Indian diplomat on visa fraud charges.
A major aspect of this week's visit is the chance for Obama and Modi to begin building rapport, administration officials said. Obama was among the first Western leaders to telephone Modi with congratulations after his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party swept into power after May's landslide vote.
The visit also is a victory lap of sorts for Modi, a former tea seller who was once shunned by the U.S.
When Modi requested a visa to visit the United States nearly a decade ago, Washington said no. That rejection came three years after religious riots killed more than 1,000 Muslims in the state of Gujarat, where Modi was the top elected official.
"He's gone in just a matter of a few months from persona non grata to person of honor to be received warmly in the Oval Office," said Milan Vaishnav, who studies South Asia at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a Washington think tank.
Another potential wrinkle in Modi's visit: A human rights group is offering $10,000 to anyone who can serve Modi with a summons issued by a federal court in New York to respond to a lawsuit the group filed accusing him of serious abuses. The lawsuit is on behalf of two unnamed survivors of the violence.
Modi has denied involvement in the violence and India's Supreme Court has said there was no case to bring against him. As a head of state, Modi has immunity from lawsuits in U.S. courts. And White House officials said they doubted the issue would cloud the visit.
"Whether it's security and counterterrorism or strengthening the economy or a host of other regional issues, there is a broad framework where India and the U.S. work closely together to advance our shared interests," said White House spokesman Josh Earnest.

Tax breaks worth billions set to expire unless Congress acts

Time is running out for Congress to extend more than 50 tax breaks worth nearly $85 billion, including popular ones for college expenses and energy-efficient appliances. 
Democrats and Republicans have shown a willingness to extend the tax breaks -- including some that expired in 2013. But the midterm elections largely have brought to a standstill votes on such major issues as taxes and immigration and even military action against the Islamic State. 
Among the expiring breaks is a benefit enjoyed in the seven states that do not have an income tax. Taxpayers in those states have been allowed by Congress for years to deduct state and local sales tax instead. According to the Dallas Morning News, more than 2 million filers in Texas -- one such state with no income tax -- used the deduction in 2012, for an average benefit of $1,906. 
But if Congress doesn't extend it, the deduction goes away. 
This spring, the Senate Finance Committee passed a bill to extend through 2015 nine tax credits, deductions or exemptions that expired in 2013 -- and 26 more that will expire at the end of year.
The legislation has widespread bipartisan support, but Republicans kept it from getting a final vote when denied the opportunity to have their amendments considered.
“I support the tax extenders legislation. I want to see it passed,” Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch, the top Republican on the finance committee, said afterward. “I don’t want to speak for anyone else, but I suspect that the majority of Senate Republicans feel the same way.” 
It remains to be seen whether lawmakers would be more amenable to extending at least some of the breaks after the election, and before a new Congress is sworn in. A Senate staffer told FoxNews.com on Monday the fate of the bill during the lame-duck session rests on the shoulders of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. 
In the Republican-controlled House, the Ways and Means Committee has voted in favor of extending 14 of the 50-plus tax breaks, making 12 of them permanent.
But nothing appears headed for a full floor vote yet, in large part because the so-called “breaks” result in less revenue for the Treasury Department and an increase to the deficit -- like the projected $84.1 billion the Senate bill would add if passed in full. 
A House staffer said Monday a vote that in effect increases the deficit would be especially difficult in that chamber because every member is up for re-election, and especially hard for Republicans running as hardline fiscal conservatives.
The chamber’s Joint Committee on Taxation has identified 79 expired or expiring federal tax provisions from 2013 to 2023.  
Beyond the ones for college tuition and energy efficiency, the list includes the popular deductions for expenses for school teachers, mass transit, mortgage-insurance premiums and for the use of alternative fuels and the vehicles that run on them.
Congress has talked for years about comprehensive tax reform, essentially by implementing a major overhaul to simplify the U.S. tax code. But such a task is complicated and politically perilous. 
In March, House Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp, R-Mich., produced a sweeping tax-reform plan that would create just two tax brackets and lower the corporate tax rate by 25 percent without increasing the deficit, a plan lawmakers call “revenue neutral.”
However, the plan went nowhere with Republican leaders in part because it covered the lost tax revenue by capping or eliminating tax credits and deductions.
House Speaker John Boehner, when asked about the details of the Camp plan at the time, responded in part by saying “blah, blah, blah.”
Still, supporters of tax reform hope the desire to make changes is being stoked by the recent debate over U.S. corporations establishing overseas headquarters to avoid taxes. The Treasury Department imposed new regulations earlier this month to make it harder for corporations to pull off the so-called “inversions.”

House committee to scrutinize Secret Service after White House breach details revealed

Secret Service Director Julia Pierson will face questions about how an armed intruder jumped the White House fence and made it as far as the East Room when she testifies before a House committee Tuesday. 
Sources told Fox News Monday that 42-year-old Omar Gonzalez, overpowered a Secret Service officer in the Sept. 19 incident before a struggle and "wrestling" inside the executive mansion ensued. Gonzalez was eventually tackled by a counter-assault agent in the East Room after he reached the doorway to the Green Room, a parlor overlooking the South Lawn. 
The revelation came on the eve of a scheduled House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing that will address the breach, as well as lawmakers' "concerns" about the Secret Service's security protocols. 
Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, who chairs a House subcommittee on national security oversight, also confirmed to CNN that whistleblowers had informed his panel of the breach.
A series of what one source called "catastrophic" security failures apparently allowed the intruder to get deep into the White House. 
The Secret Service did not follow basic protocols during the incident to protect the White House, the president and the first family and the agency still does not know why, a source intimately familiar with details of the investigation told Fox News. 
For example, the Secret Service didn't lock down certain areas of the property and did not elevate the threat level at the White House so that other uniformed officers and agents would know what was happening, which is a standard response.
“This was a catastrophic failure when the President was NOT there. What if the president WAS there?” the source, a longtime Secret Service insider, added. "It turns out that basic functions in place to avoid this were never initiated."
Additionally, an alarm box near the front entrance of the White House that is designed to alert guards to an intruder had been muted at what officers believed was a request of the usher's office, an official told The Washington Post.
An officer posted inside the front door also appeared to be delayed in learning that Gonzalez was about to burst through, according to the Post. Officers are trained to immediately lock the front door once an intruder is spotted on the grounds.
A Secret Service Uniformed Division officer then “misreported” how far the intruder got into the White House to management in order to downplay the impact of the initial failure. 
The officer in question told management that the intruder “never got through the vestibule” of the North Portico, which turned out to be false, the source said.
Secret Service spokeswoman Nicole Mainor told Fox News that the agency would not comment on the revelations, citing the ongoing investigation.
The Secret Service has been having high-level meetings to address the breach, the latest in a series of embarrassing scandals for the agency since a 2012 prostitution scandal erupted during a presidential visit to Colombia.
The Post reported over the weekend that the Secret Service did not immediately respond to shots fired at the White House in 2011, amid what the agency describes as uncertainty about where the shots originated. Four days later, it was discovered that at least one of the shots broke the glass of a window on the third level of the mansion, the Secret Service said.
At the time of the 2011 breach, the president and first lady Michelle Obama were away, but their daughters were in Washington — one home and the other due to return that night.
Oscar R. Ortega-Hernandez of Idaho has been sentenced to 25 years in prison for the 2011 incident.
"The president and the first lady, like all parents, are concerned about the safety of their children, but the president and first lady also have confidence in the men and women of the Secret Service to do a very important job, which is to protect the first family, to protect the White House, but also protect the ability of tourists and members of the public to conduct their business or even tour the White House," White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Monday.
After the most recent breach, Pierson ordered a review of the incident and possible changes to security measures at and around the White House. She briefed the president on Thursday.
"The president is interested in the review that they are conducting, and I would anticipate that he'll review whatever it is they — whatever reforms and recommendations they settle upon," Earnest said of the Secret Service's internal review.
Secret Service officers who spotted Gonzalez scaling the fence quickly assessed that he didn't have any weapons in his hands and wasn't wearing clothing that could conceal substantial quantities of explosives, a primary reason agents did not fire their weapons, according to a U.S. official briefed on the investigation.
Gonzalez was on the Secret Service radar as early as July when state troopers arrested him during a traffic stop in southwest Virginia. State troopers there said Gonzalez had an illegal sawed-off shotgun and a map of Washington tucked inside a Bible with a circle around the White House, other monuments and campgrounds. The troopers seized a stash of other weapons and ammunition found during a search of Gonzalez's car after his arrest.
The Secret Service interviewed Gonzalez in July, but had nothing with which to hold him. Gonzalez was released on bail. Then, on Aug. 25, Gonzalez was stopped and questioned again while he was walking along the south fence of the White House. He had a hatchet, but no firearms. His car was searched, but he was not arrested.
"There's a misperception out there that we have some broad detention powers," Ed Donovan, a Secret Service spokesman, said. The Secret Service, like other law enforcement agencies, must have evidence of criminal behavior in order to file charges against someone. "Just because we have a concern about someone doesn't mean we can interview or arrest them or put them in a mental health facility," Donovan said.