In midst of measles outbreak, Obama tells parents to get their kids vaccinated

WASHINGTON –  In the midst of a measles outbreak, President Obama is telling parents to get their kids vaccinated.
Obama says those who don't get their shots can pose a risk to infants and other people who can't get vaccinated.
The president spoke in an interview with NBC Sunday. The interview is airing Monday on The Today Show but the network released excerpts in advance.
More than 100 cases of the measles have been reported in the U.S. since last month. Many cases have been traced directly or indirectly to Disneyland in Southern California.
Obama says measles outbreaks are preventable. He says he understands that some families are concerned about vaccinations, but the science on them is "pretty indisputable."
Obama says a major success of civilization is the ability to prevent diseases that have been devastating in the past.

Walker, eyeing 2016 White House bid, says he's open to sending US troops to fight ISIS

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, a potential 2016 Republican presidential candidate, said Sunday he is open to sending U.S. troops to the Middle East to defeat Islamic State fighters -- a bold foreign policy statement in contrast with the Obama administration’s position.
Walker told ABC’s “This Week” that he wouldn’t rule out sending troops, as Islamic State appears to grow and strengthen despite U.S.-led efforts to destroy the radical Islamic group.
“I wouldn't rule out anything,” Walker said. “When you have the lives of Americans at stake ... we have to be prepared to do things that don't allow those measures, those attacks, those abuses to come to our shores."
In a wide-ranging interview in which Walker also made a case for a potential 2016 run, he suggested an Islamic State attack on U.S. soil is "a matter of when .. not if."
And he suggested that the administration, which has U.S. troops helping to train government-backed forces in Iraq, is not doing enough.
Secretary of State John Kerry and other top U.S. officials said last week that coalition forces have launched 2,000 airstrikes in Iraq and Syria that have killed Islamic State leaders and thousands of its fighters. However, Walker suggested the U.S. must do more.
“We must take the fight to ISIS and other radical Islamic groups,” he told ABC.
The administration is reluctant to send troops to the Middle East to fight the militant group, considering the move would be unpopular among Americans, after recent U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Walker leads all potential GOP candidates, according to a Bloomberg Politics/ Des Moines Register Iowa Poll released this weekend. He has 15 percent of the vote, with Kentucky GOP Sen. Rand Paul in second with 14 percent, following Walker's rousing speech last weekend at the Iowa Freedom Summit.
“You can make all of the speeches you want,” Walker also told ABC. “But people want new, fresh leadership.”
He also suggested that he or perhaps Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, another potential 2016 Republican presidential candidate, could beat presumptive Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton because they each are a “name for the future.”
He suggested the Clinton name is now synonymous with 20th century ideas and Washington, top-down government.
"Former Secretary of State Clinton embodies all the things that we think of Washington," Walker said. "She lives here, she's worked here, she's been part of the Washington structure for years, not just as a Democrat, but across the spectrum."
Walker has won three elections in the past four years, but Wisconsin has not voted for a Republican president in the past three decades.
On the issue of immigration, Walker said Sunday he opposed “amnesty” for people who have entered the U.S. illegally, but appeared to suggest that deporting the millions now in this country is not a practical solution.
Walker was in Washington this weekend meeting with potential campaign aides and donors. And last week, he announced the formation of a political nonprofit group ahead of a potential White House bid.

In new budget, Obama proposing 14 percent tax on overseas profits to fund infrastructure projects

President Obama will on Monday give Congress his $4 trillion spending plan for fiscal 2016 that includes a request for billions of dollars in much-needed public works projects -- an idea that has bipartisan support but little backing for the proposed tax increases to fund such efforts.
Obama will propose a six-year, $478 billion public-works program for highway, bridge and transit upgrades, with half of it to be financed with a one-time, 14 percent tax on U.S. companies’ overseas profits.
The tax would be due immediately. Under current law, those profits are subject only to federal taxes if they are returned, or repatriated, to the U.S., where they face a top rate of 35 percent. Many companies avoid U.S. taxes on those earnings by simply leaving them overseas.
The tax is part of a broader administration plan to cut corporate tax breaks and increase taxes on the country’s highest wage-earners to pay for projects to help the middle class.
Members of the GOP-controlled Congress and other fiscal conservatives have dismissed the overall plan since elements of it were announced several weeks ago -- part of a White House strategy to win support prior to the president's State of the Union address, in which more details were released, and a campaign-style tour in several states ahead of Monday’s release.
Wisconsin GOP Rep. Paul Ryan, the new chairman of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee, told NBC's "Meet the Press,” as he has said in recent weeks, that he was willing to work with the administration to see if both sides can “find common ground on certain aspects of tax reform."
However, he disapproved on the president’s budget plan.
"What I think the president is trying to do here is to, again, exploit envy economics," Ryan said. "This top-down redistribution doesn't work."
Obama's budget proposal for the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1 will offer an array of spending programs and tax increases that Republicans now running Congress have already dismissed as nonstarters.
White House officials were not authorized, by name, to discuss the budget, but described the proposal to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity.
The proposal improves on an idea that the administration has pushed since the summer of 2013. The administration's budget last year proposed a smaller four-year bridge-and-highway fund. While it paid for it by taxing accumulated foreign earnings, it did not specify a formula.
This time, the budget will call for the one-time tax on the up to $2 trillion in estimated U.S. corporate earnings that have accumulated overseas. That would generate about $238 billion, by White House calculations. The remaining $240 billion would come from the federal Highway Trust Fund, which is financed with a gasoline tax.
The former chairman of the House Ways and Means, now-retired Rep. Dave Camp, R-Mich., proposed a similar idea last year with a lower mandatory tax, but the plan did not make headway in Congress.
At issue is how to get companies to bring back some of their foreign earnings to invest in the United States. The current 35 percent top tax rate for corporations in the United States, the highest among major economies, serves as a disincentive and many U.S. companies with overseas holdings simply keep their foreign earnings abroad and avoid the U.S. tax.
Under Obama's plan, the top corporate tax rate for company profits earned in the U.S. would drop to 28 percent. While past foreign profits would be taxed immediately at the 14 percent rate, going forward new foreign profits would be taxed immediately at 19 percent, with companies getting a credit for foreign taxes paid.
Most U.S. companies and Republican lawmakers prefer a "territorial" tax system employed by most developed countries, in which companies are taxed only on income earned within a country's borders. That difference could be a major hurdle to a broad overhaul of corporate taxes.
Sens. Rand Paul, R-Ky., and Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., have proposed paying for highway and bridge fixes by letting companies voluntarily pay taxes on foreign earnings at a one-time low rate of 6.5 percent. The White House opposes such voluntary "tax holidays," however, and critics say that without broader tax fixes, such holidays simply encourage companies to park their foreign profits overseas.
Other lawmakers have proposed boosting the Highway Trust Fund with a higher gasoline tax, an idea considered more palatable now that gas prices are low. However, the president is opposed to that idea.
The Obama plan proposes a 75 percent increase in funding for projects such as light rail and other public transportation systems. It also would nearly double spending on grants for local road, rail, transit and port projects. Since 2009, Congress has approved more than $4.1 billion for the competitive grants; the budget asks for $7.5 billion over six years.
Obama is releasing his budget as the federal deficit drops and his poll numbers inch higher. Though Republicans will march ahead on their own, they ultimately must come to terms with the president, who wields a veto pen and has threatened to use it.
Obama is proposing to ease painful, automatic cuts to the Pentagon and domestic agencies with a 7 percent increase in annual appropriations. He wants a $38 billion increase for the Pentagon that Republicans probably also will want to match. But his demand for a nearly equal amount for domestic programs sets up a showdown that may not be resolved until late in the year.
Another centerpiece of the president's tax proposal is an increase in the capital gains rate on couples making more than $500,000 per year. Obama wants to require estates to pay capital gains taxes on securities at the time they are inherited. He also wants to impose a fee on the roughly 100 U.S. financial companies with assets of more than $50 billion.
Obama would take the $320 billion that those tax increases would generate over 10 years and funnel them into middle-class tax breaks, expanded child care and a free community college program.
Altogether, the White House calculates that Obama's tax increases and spending cuts would cut the deficit by about $1.8 trillion over the next decade, according to people briefed on the basics of the plan. For 2016, the Obama budget promises a $474 billion deficit, about equal to this year. The deficit would remain less than $500 billion through 2018, but would rise to $687 billion by 2025 -- though such deficits would remain manageable when measured against the size of the economy.

Pipsqueak Cartoon

Veto, filibuster threats ahead of vote next week to fund Homeland Security, roll back executive actions

The GOP-led Senate is expected to vote next week on legislation that keeps the Department of Homeland Security fully operational through February, but parts of the bill that attempt to reverse President Obama’s immigration policy set up a major showdown with Democrats.
The expected political battle started before Republicans took control of the upper chamber, when the parties agreed on a temporary spending bill that essentially funded the entire federal government through the fiscal year, with the exception of the homeland security department.
It was a defiant move by the GOP-led House, in response to Obama’s recent executive actions on illegal immigration, which Democrats accepted as part of the larger budget deal and that also included significant compromises on both sides.
The House has already passed the bill, which will keep the department fully operational past Feb. 27.
But passage in the Senate will be more difficult, with Democrats vowing strong opposition and Republicans unlikely to not get the 60 votes needed to overcome the Democrats’ filibuster.
Obama and fellow party members also have urged Republicans to pass a funding bill for the agency “clean” of any language attempting to roll back the executive actions. And the president has also threatened to veto such legislation.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has indicated the first vote on the House bill will be Tuesday. But whether the Kentucky Republican allows amendments, like he did with the Keystone XL Pipeline legislation, remains unclear. 
‘It’s a debate that will challenge our colleagues on the other side with a simple proposition: Do they think presidents of either party should have the power to simply ignore laws that they don’t like?” McConnell, R-Ky., said on the Senate floor.
“Will our Democratic colleagues work with us to defend key democratic ideals like separation of powers and the rule of law? … The House bill does two things -- funds the Department of Homeland Security and reigns in executive overreach. That’s it. It’s that simple.” 
The House-passed bill provides $39.7 billion to finance the department through the rest of the budget year for counterterrorism, cybersecurity and other priorities at a time when attacks in Paris and elsewhere are fresh in the public's mind. Unaffected by the measure is additional money the agency receives from fees.
As passed in the House, the legislation would also reverse Obama's decision last fall to provide temporary deportation relief and work permits to an estimated 4 million immigrants in the country illegally, mostly people who have children who are citizens or legal permanent residents.
The bill also would eliminate a 2012 directive that has granted work permits and stays of deportation to more than 600,000 immigrants who arrived illegally in the U.S. under the age of 16.
The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the measure would increase the federal deficit by $7.5 billion over a decade.

GOP House to vote next week to repeal ObamaCare, after attacking law piece by piece

The Republican-led House is set to begin February with a vote to repeal ObamaCare, making clear that trying to dismantle the health-care law remains a top priority.
The scheduled vote next week was announced in a new memo from House Majority Leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy to fellow GOP House members in which he said the effort to repeal the legislation will give them an opportunity to tell voters that health care decisions “should be made by patients and their doctors, not by Washington.”
The California lawmaker also stated that members should remind Americans that the country needs solutions that reduce costs and give them access to “21st Century cures and treatments” -- an often repeated message at congressional Republicans’ policy retreat earlier this month.
“First, we will consider (a bill) to protect individuals from government-imposed cost increases and reduced access to care and coverage by repealing ObamaCare,” McCarthy said in the memo obtain Thursday by Fox News.
GOP House and Senate leaders emerged from the retreat saying they intend to fix problems associated with ObamaCare but with no clear plan on whether they would focus on a full repeal or just change parts.
The House has already voted this year to redefine full-time work under the law -- an attempt to keep businesses from hiring part-time workers to avoid having to offer insurance.
And chamber leaders also want to repeal the law’s tax on medical-device makers, which they say is hurting businesses and has bipartisan support.
Last week, leaders of the now GOP-controlled Senate introduced legislation to eliminate the law’s so-called employer mandate, arguing that companies with 50 or more workers should not be required to pay for employee health insurance.
However, President Obama has made clear he will veto any legislation that he thinks scales back access to health care that his law now provides to millions of previously uninsured Americans.
The president and fellow Democrats have also been critical about Republicans’ repeated attempts to repeal the law without party leaders presenting a viable alternative.
The repeal vote next week will be the first for newly elected members to show where they stand on the issue.
McCarthy, in his memo, instructed relevant House committees to “develop our patient-centered health care reforms."
Congressional Republicans have acknowledged that a Supreme Court case on ObamaCare tax subsidies for customers will impact their strategy.
If the subsidies are rules unconstitutional, the law could unravel on its own, say some observers. The ruling is expected by June. 

New video purportedly shows beheading of Japanese journalist by ISIS

Japan reacted with shock and anger Sunday after an online video was released that appeared to show Islamic State executing Japanese journalist Kenji Goto -- the apparent end to a frantic past couple of days in which officials tried negotiating to save Goto’s life.
The video, called "A Message to the Government of Japan," featured a militant who looked and sounded like a militant with a British accent who has taken part in other beheading videos by the Islamic State group. 
Goto, kneeling in an orange prison jumpsuit, said nothing in the roughly one-minute-long video.
"Abe," the militant says in the video, referring to the Japanese prime minister, "because of your reckless decision to take part in an unwinnable war, this knife will not only slaughter Kenji, but will also carry on and cause carnage wherever your people are found. So let the nightmare for Japan begin."
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe expressed outrage at the video that was released on militant websites.
"I feel indignation over this immoral and heinous act of terrorism," Abe told reporters after convening an emergency Cabinet meeting.
"When I think of the grief of his family, I am left without words," he said. "The government has been doing its utmost in responding to win his release, and we are filled with deep regrets."
He vowed that Japan will not give in to terrorism and will continue to provide humanitarian aid to countries fighting the Islamic State extremists.
The country was mourning a man who according to friends and family braved hardship and peril to convey through his work the plight of refugees, children and other victims of war and poverty.
"Kenji has died, and my heart is broken. Facing such a tragic death, I'm just speechless," Goto's mother Junko Ishido told reporters.
"I was hoping Keji might be able to come home," said Goto's brother, Junichi Goto. "I was hoping he would return and thank everyone for his rescue, but that's impossible, and I'm bitterly disappointed."
Ishido earlier told NHK TV her son's death showed he was a kind, gentle man, trying to save another hostage. That hostage, Haruna Yukawa, was shown as purportedly killed in an earlier video.
The White House released a statement late Saturday condemning what it called q "heinous murder."
"Our thoughts are with Mr. Goto’s family and loved ones, and we stand today in solidarity with Prime Minister Abe and the Japanese people in denouncing this barbaric act," the statement said. 
The White House’s National Security Council issued a statement minutes after the release of the video stating intelligence officials are, as with similar recent videos, trying to verify its authenticity.
The hostage drama began last week after Islamic State threatened to kill Goto and fellow Japanese hostage Haruna Yukawa in 72 hours unless Japan paid $200 million.
A purported militant message released Jan. 24 claimed Yukawa had been killed.
The militants later demanded the release of Sajida al-Rishawi, who is on death row in Jordan for her role in a 2005 al Qaeda attack on hotels in Amman that killed 60 people.
Within hours, the militant group said it instead wanted al-Rishawi, 44, released in exchange for the life of hostage Lt. Muath al-Kaseasbeh, a Jordanian fighter pilot.
Late Friday, after the deadline for a deal had passed, Japan's deputy foreign minister, Yasuhide Nakayama, said that efforts to free Goto were "in a state of deadlock."
The 26-year-old al Kaseasbeh's plane went down in December over an Islamic State-controlled area of northeastern Syria.
He is the first foreign pilot to be captured by the group since a U.S.-led military coalition began carrying out airstrikes against the extremists in September. Jordan is part of the coalition.
Kaseasbeh's family said late Friday there has been no word about the 26-year-old pilot’s fate.
Goto was captured in October, after he traveled to Syria to try to win the release of Yukawa.
Jordan and Japan are reportedly conducting indirect negotiations with the militants through Iraqi tribal leaders.

Confirmation hearings set to begin for Carter as next defense secretary amid daunting global challenges

Senate hearings on whether to confirm Ashton Carter as President Obama’s pick to be the new defense secretary are set to begin next week, amid widespread, military-related challenges around the globe.
The hearings are scheduled to begin Wednesday in the Senate Armed Services Committee. If confirmed, Carter would replace Secretary Chuck Hagel, who announced in December 2014 that he would resign from the post when a replacement is confirmed.
Carter faces an array of challenges, with the unexpected problems emerging as among the most challenging.
U.S. troops are now back in Iraq, after the U.S. ended the war on terrorism in the Middle East country in 2011, this time trying to help the local militia defeat The Islamic State.
The violent extremist group has recently flourished in Iraq and has taken control of parts of the country.
In addition, the recent outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus in West Africa has required the unexpected and urgent deployment of U.S. troops.
Even predictable challenges, such as pursuing and killing terrorists in the Middle East and Afghanistan, can be harder than they seemed on the outside, even for an experienced national security practitioner like Carter.
The 60-year-old Carter is a seasoned but relatively obscure Washington national security expert. He was the country’s deputy defense secretary from October 2011 to December 2013, a role that is essential the agency’s chief operating officer.
If confirmed by the Senate, Carter would be Obama's fourth Pentagon chief in his roughly six-year administration.
The president nominated Carter in early December, just eight days after Hagel abruptly resigned under White House pressure, after less than two years on the job.
Carter also has extensive experience in the national security arena. Before he served as deputy defense secretary from October 2011 to December 2013 he was the Pentagon's technology and weapons-buying chief for more than two years.
During the administration of President Bill Clinton he was assistant secretary of defense for international security policy. Before that he was director of the Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School.
He has bachelor's degrees in physics and medieval history from Yale University and received his doctorate in theoretical physics from Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar. He has served on the advisory boards of MIT's Lincoln Laboratories and the Draper Laboratory. He has extensive knowledge of the inner workings of the U.S. nuclear arsenal.
In national security circles Carter is closely associated with a concept he and former Secretary of Defense William Perry championed in the 1990s. They called it "preventive defense." Its basic premise is that in the aftermath of the Cold War the U.S. could forestall major new security threats by using defense diplomacy — forging and strengthening security partnerships with China, Russia and others.
Carter's view of U.S. defense priorities appears to fit well with the Obama agenda, including better minding of defense alliances and partnerships in Asia and the Pacific, as well as more attention on cyber-defense and countering the spread of weapons of mass destruction.