Senate passes budget and debt deal, sends measure to Obama

In a rare late-night session, the Senate gave final approval to an ambitious budget and debt deal early Friday, sending it to President Barack Obama to sign.
The final vote on passage was 64-35, as Democrats joined forces with Republican defense hawks over the objections of GOP presidential candidates Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, and Marco Rubio, all of whom voted against the deal. The bill is aimed at averting a debt default, avoiding a partial government shutdown and setting spending priorities for the next two years.
Earlier in Friday's session, the Senate voted 63-35 to end debate on the measure. The vote to approve the bill was taken just after 3 a.m. EDT.
Obama negotiated the accord with Republican and Democratic leaders who were intent on steering Congress away from the brinkmanship and shutdown threats that have haunted lawmakers for years. Former Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, felt a particular urgency days before leaving Congress, while lawmakers looked ahead to presidential and congressional elections next year.
Opposition was strong in the Senate, with Paul and Cruz both leaving the campaign trail to criticize the deal as excessive Washington spending.
In an hour-long speech that delayed the start of the final vote, Paul said Congress is "bad with money." He railed against increases in defense dollars supported by Republicans and domestic programs supported by Democrats.

More on this...

• Cruz on debate performance, mainstream media, budget deal

• Sen. Tim Scott on why he will vote against the budget deal

"These are the two parties getting together in an unholy alliance and spending us into oblivion," Paul said.
Meanwhile, Cruz said the Republican majorities had given Obama a "diamond-encrusted, glow-in-the-dark Amex card" for government spending.
"It's a pretty nifty card," Cruz said. "You don't have to pay for it, you get to spend it and it's somebody else's problem."
The Democratic National Committee slammed Cruz, Paul and Rubio for their opposition to the deal, with chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz saying, "There is nothing presidential about failing to pay your bills and jeopardizing our standing in the world economy. It is completely unbelievable that these reckless politicians think they deserve a promotion to the presidency."
The agreement would raise the government debt ceiling until March 2017, removing the threat of an unprecedented national default Nov. 3. At the same time, it would set the budget of the government through the 2016 and 2017 fiscal years and ease spending caps by providing $80 billion more for military and domestic programs, paid for with a hodgepodge of spending cuts and revenue increases touching areas from tax compliance to spectrum auctions.
The deal would also avert a looming shortfall in the Social Security disability trust fund that threatened to slash benefits, and head off an unprecedented increase in Medicare premiums for outpatient care for about 15 million beneficiaries.
The promise of more money for the military ensured support from defense hawks like Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., chairman of the Armed Services Committee, while additional funds for domestic programs pleased Democrats.
Obama and allies like House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., were big winners in the talks, but GOP leaders cleared away political land mines confronting the party on the eve of 2016 campaigns to win back the White House and maintain its grip on the Senate.
The measure leaves a clean slate for new Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., as he begins his leadership of the House.
Obama had repeatedly said he would not negotiate budget concessions in exchange for increasing the debt limit, though he did agree to package the debt and budget provisions.
"I am as frustrated by the refusal of this administration to even engage on this (debt limit) issue," said Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch, R-Utah. "However, the president's refusal to be reasonable and do his job when it comes to our debt is no excuse for Congress failing to do its job and prevent a default."
The budget relief would lift caps on the appropriated spending passed by Congress each year by $50 billion in 2016 and $30 billion in 2017, evenly divided between defense and domestic. Another $16 billion or so would come each year in the form of inflated war spending, evenly split between the Defense and State departments.
The Appropriations committees will still have to write legislation to reflect the spending and Congress faces a Dec. 11 deadline to approve such a bill.
The cuts include curbs on Medicare payments for outpatient services provided by certain hospitals and an extension of a 2-percentage-point cut in Medicare payments to doctors through the end of a 10-year budget. There's also a drawdown from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, and savings reaped from a Justice Department fund for crime victims that involves assets seized from criminals.

Taxpayer-backed solar plant actually a carbon polluter

Even as the Obama administration announces another $120 million in grants to boost solar energy, new reports indicate a centerpiece of the administration's green-energy effort is actually a carbon polluter. 
Located in Southern California's Mojave Desert, the $2.2 billion Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System benefited from a $1.6 billion Energy Department loan guarantee, and a $539 million Treasury Department stimulus grant to help pay off the loan.
Yet it is producing carbon emissions at nearly twice the amount that compels power plants and companies to participate in the state's cap-and-trade program.
That's because the plant relies on natural gas as a supplementary fuel.
According to the Riverside Press-Enterprise, the plant burned enough natural gas in 2014 to emit 46,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide. But Ivanpah, while in the cap-and-trade program, is still considered a renewable energy source because it technically produces most its energy from solar.
Built by BrightSource Energy Inc. and operated by NRG Energy, the Ivanpah project has been mired in controversy from the start.
Taxpayer advocates object to the federal support. Environmentalists say it would hurt the endangered desert tortoise and lament that 3,500 birds were "fried" by the heat produced by the plant in its first year.
But the natural gas factor raises the fundamental question of whether this plant -- and others -- are undercutting their own green energy gains by emitting carbon pollution in the process, while not producing anywhere near the level of electricity of a regular power plant.
"This is a prime example of when good intentions go bad," said H. Sterling Burnett, a research fellow at the Heartland Institute.
Solar and wind power plants typically require some form of supplemental fuel, to deal with weather changes.
Natural gas, used at several California operations, can be used during the evenings to help protect against overnight freezing and temperature changes that can hurt equipment.
Yet while natural gas is not as environmentally damaging as coal or oil, it is a fossil fuel generally not considered "green."
Ivanpah's original license allowed it to use millions of cubic feet of natural gas with the understanding the total would not exceed 5 percent of the energy the project gets from sunlight.
BrightSource originally estimated the plant's main auxiliary boilers would use the gas for an average of an hour per day.
But in March 2014, they petitioned the California Energy Commission for permission to increase that to roughly 4.5 hours per day. In the petition, they cited a need to protect equipment and "maximize solar electricity generation."
The company defended the plant operations.  
"Less than 5 percent of electricity generated is attributed to natural gas, which ... qualifies 100 percent of the plant generation as renewable," NRG spokesman David Knox wrote in an email.
Michael Ward, information officer for the California Energy Commission which provided the emissions data, confirmed that Ivanpah indeed falls below the 5 percent mark.
But the 5 percent figure does not tell the whole story -- as California does not account for emissions produced when a power plant is not generating electricity, according to Ward.
So the actual percentage of natural gas use could well be higher.
"If it were any other energy industry besides solar, the plant never would not have been built," said David Lamfrom, director of California desert and national wildlife programs at the National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA).
Lamfrom said that "political pressure pushed this project through without proper input from the taxpayers and without them being adequately informed of exactly what kind of project this was."
He said officials "generated enough momentum to make this project happen in order to meet the [deadlines for] the stimulus funding."
According to Lamfrom, designers also erred in placing Ivanpah between the tallest mountains in the Mojave where there is significant cloud cover and dust which would interfere with the sunlight.
Burnett noted that low sunlight only increases the use of natural gas: "You can make solar power as cheap as you want. If the sun is not shining, or it is cloudy or rainy, it will require natural gas to ramp up [the plant] quickly when solar power goes offline. They say it is green, but that assumes that there is a power source without any environmental impact."

CNBC moderators get bipartisan drubbing for debate performance

Analysts across the political spectrum may be at odds over who won the third Republican presidential debate, but they seem to agree on one thing: the CNBC moderators had a very bad night. 
The negative reaction to the debate questions and other factors has become a story unto itself, almost overshadowing the actual policy debates that broke out in between the candidate-moderator rancor Wednesday night.
The Republican candidates and observers complained the questions were demeaning, silly, and designed to provoke confrontation rather than genuine policy discussion. Others took aim at the debate format, and wondered about  the moderators’ professionalism.
On several sites aggregating Twitter reaction, the moderators were declared the losers, “hands down.”
The Washington Post declared it “CNBC’s really bad debate night.”
“The moderators had a worse night than the New York Mets … this was a trainwreck,” Fox News' Howard Kurtz charged Thursday, referring to Game 2 of the World Series, and calling the debate questions “condescending, snide, hostile and borderline insulting.”

More on this...

• Kurtz: CNBC debate moderators were a 'trainwreck'

• RNC: Future GOP debates to be reevaluated in light of bias

• John Kasich calls out GOP competitors for being unrealistic

While it might not have hurt CNBC during the broadcast -- the network touted 14 million viewers the following day, a network record -- it got a drubbing from candidates and party leaders during and after the prime-time event.
"While I was proud of our candidates and the way they handled tonight’s debate, the performance by the CNBC moderators was extremely disappointing and did a disservice to their network, our candidates, and voters,” RNC Chairman Reince Priebus said in a statement, calling the questioning “deeply unfortunate.”
CNBC’s John Harwood was blasted for asking Donald Trump whether he was running a "comic book" campaign, and asking Mike Huckabee if he thought Trump had “the moral authority” to be president -- a question Trump called "nasty." Moderator Carl Quintanilla later called Marco Rubio a “young man in a hurry” in reference to his age and his experience in the Senate.
Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor, told Fox News Thursday morning that “it was very frustrating to be on stage.” He faulted the moderators for not sticking to the issues and promises to divvy time equally. “They lost control of the debate,” he said.
At varying times, the audience booed the moderators, giving the candidates space to draw together for the attack against what they said was their common enemy: the liberal media.
The criticism took off after Texas Sen. Ted Cruz was asked whether his opposition to raising the debt ceiling indicates he may not be the “the kind of problem-solver American voters want.” Cruz unloaded on the moderators, blasting them for asking questions like, “Donald Trump, are you a comic-book villain? Ben Carson, can you do math? John Kasich, will you insult two people over here? Marco Rubio, why don’t you resign? Jeb Bush, why have your numbers fallen?” After the cheers for Cruz died down he suggested the moderators were Democrats.
“Nobody watching at home believes that any of the moderators has any intention of voting in a Republican primary,” he charged. Cruz used the debate to send out a fundraising letter to supporters afterward, “declaring war on the liberal media,” and went on to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars overnight. As for the focus groups following the debate, the candidates who took on the media and the moderators directly -- namely Cruz, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie -- seemed to benefit the most.
“It was brutal takedown, and CNBC’s smarmy moderators had it coming. Cruz is far from the first conservative to rail against liberal media bias, but he did it about as effectively as it can be done in 30 seconds,” said the Boston Globe’s Jeff Jacoby. “The clip of that moment will go viral.”
Even some in the entertainment world, like comedian Patton Oswalt, began agreeing with Cruz and others on stage by the end, in spite of their fundamental dislike for the GOP candidates.
Not everyone thought the moderators went too far. Some analysts argued the questions were par for the course for the debates. And Ohio Gov. John Kasich said he “thought they did a good job,” saying he was “very appreciative of how they did their job.” He felt he had time to speak and that it “wasn't a circus."
When asked over Twitter by The Blaze about the widespread criticism, Harwood said simply, "it comes with the job."

CBS Cartoon

CNBC moderators repeatedly booed as candidates Trump, others bash ‘nasty’ questions

The CNBC debate started late and lame, and then the punches started flying.
Several candidates had very strong outings, but I must say, some of the moderators’ questions came off as downright snide, bordering on insults. One question after another was just loaded, worded to denigrate the candidates.
No wonder Ted Cruz got a big cheer from the Boulder audience when he attacked the questioners and called the debate a case study in mainstream media bias.
I’m in favor of tough and provocative questions. The Fox moderators asked tough questions. CNN’s Anderson Cooper asked tough questions. The CNBC moderators sounded condescending.
This surprised me. The network has good journalists. I thought if anything the focus on the economy might slide into dullness. But its team played into the hands of those who think the media are unfair to Republicans.
It got so bad that “Mad Money” madman Jim Cramer and Tea Party inspiration Rick Santelli sounded restrained by comparison.
After a throwaway query about biggest weaknesses, John Harwood, who also writes for the New York Times, asked Donald Trump if he wasn’t running a “comic-book version” of a campaign. Trump pivoted away from the “not very nice” question, but Harwood hammered him again: His tax plan, according to experts, had as much chance of working as The Donald flying away from the podium.
Carl Quintanilla was dismissive toward Marco Rubio by calling him a “young man in a hurry.” This was part of a long question about why he was missing many Senate votes, that ended with a preachy tone why he didn’t wait in line for his turn to run for president. Really?
Rubio punched back by saying the GOP establishment wanted him to wait, and denouncing Florida’s Sun-Sentinel (which called on him to vote more or resign) for liberal bias, since the paper hadn’t made a similar call when Democrat Bob Graham ran in 2004.
The exchange provided Jeb Bush with his one big moment in the debate, a chance to smack his fellow Floridian for supposedly not showing up for work. But Rubio effectively responded by saying someone must have convinced the former governor he had to attack Rubio.
Becky Quick asked Carly Fiorina a negative question about getting fired at Hewlett-Packard, which is fair, but rather than breaking new ground, she simply asked why the stock had plunged during her tenure. Fiorina said the Nasdaq had dropped 80 percent.
Quintanilla actually got booed during a series of questions to Ben Carson about his connection to a controversial medical supplement maker. When the doctor said the firm had put his picture on its home page without his permission, Quintanilla shot back: “Does that not speak to your vetting process or judgment in any way?” The audience unloaded.
Quick seemed befuddled when Trump challenged the premise of her question on immigration.
“Where did I read this and come up with this?” she asked.
“I don’t know, you people write this stuff,” Trump replied.
Quick wound up apologizing, but many minutes later, she found the quote (calling Rubio the personal senator of Mark Zuckerberg) that Trump had disputed.
Anyone can make a mistake, but how do you not have the backup research at hand?
The crowd also booed Harwood when he invited Mike Huckabee to slam Trump by asking whether The Donald has the “moral authority” to unite the country. Huckabee deflected it with a joke, and Trump accused Harwood of “such a nasty question.”
As the Colorado night wore on, the debate’s focus often seemed to shift from the economy to the press. When Trump was railing against Super PACs, Rubio declared that the Democrats have a Super PAC called the mainstream media. He cited the positive reports of Hillary Clinton’s House Benghazi testimony (which some conservative commentators and even GOP candidates did say was a good day for her).
And Cruz may have overreached in comparing CNBC’s questions to those asked at the Democratic debate, since that event was handled by CNN.
Rubio may have had the most breakout moments, some of them sprinkled with humor. Cruz, Fiorina, Kasich and Chris Christie had a few. Bush failed to make his mark. Trump and Carson did nothing to hurt themselves.
But my takeaway is that the candidates were the most effective and impassioned when they bashed the media—and that CNBC gave them plenty of ammunition.
Click for more Media Buzz.

Watchdog: Federal security force has more cars than officers, wastes millions

The security force that protects federal buildings has more SUVs than officers, according to a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) watchdog, which found $2.5 million wasted each year due to mismanagement of its vehicle fleet. 
The Federal Protective Service (FPS) had 101 more law enforcement vehicles than officers last year, and spent taxpayer funding to upgrade its SUVs with bike racks, the new audit released by the Office of Inspector General found.
"FPS is not managing its fleet effectively," the OIG said. "FPS did not properly justify that its current fleet is necessary to carry out its operational mission."
"Specifically, FPS did not justify the need for: more vehicles than officers; administrative vehicles; larger sport utility vehicles; home-to-work miles in one region; and discretionary equipment added to vehicles," they said.
The FPS has a fleet of 1,169 vehicles, the vast majority of which are SUVs. The fleet cost $10.7 million to lease last year.
"In [fiscal year] FY 2014, FPS had 101 more law enforcement vehicles than full-time equivalent law enforcement positions," the audit found.
The OIG noted that the agency does have a need for spare vehicles when an officer's vehicle breaks down, but questioned the large number of excessive vehicles in the fleet. The FPS could save $1,071,500 each year if it got rid of its spare vehicles.

US special forces reportedly in covert combat for months against ISIS

U.S. special operations forces reportedly have carried out several covert combat missions against ISIS over the past year, contrary to the Pentagon's insistence that operations like last week's raid of an ISIS-held prison in northern Iraq was a "unique" circumstance.
Bloomberg View reported that a special operations task force staffs an operations center in the northern Iraqi city of Irbil to support such missions. The report, which cited U.S. and Kurdish officials, claimed that the task force has worked in recent months to identify and locate senior leaders of ISIS. Members of the group also participated in last week's raid, during which Army Master Sgt. Joshua L. Wheeler was killed. Wheeler became the first American to die in combat since the launch of anti-ISIS operations last year.
At a Pentagon briefing in Baghdad Tuesday, spokesman Col. Peter Warren answered a question about whether U.S. forces in Iraq were in combat against ISIS in no uncertain terms.
"We're in combat," Warren said. "I thought I made that pretty clear ... That is why we all carry guns. That's why we all get combat patches when we leave here, that's why we all receive [an] immediate danger badge. So, of course we're in combat."
Last week, Cook said the raid on the ISIS prison in the town of Hawija was "consistent with our counter-ISIL effort to train, advise and assist Iraqi forces", using a different acronym for the terror group. He also said the rescue was a "unique" circumstance, but declined to say that it was the only time U.S. forces have engaged in a form of ground combat in Iraq. Instead, he noted that U.S. troops are "allowed to defend themselves, and also defend partner forces, and to protect against the loss of innocent life."
Cook's previous comments had kept with a general avoidance on the part of administration officials to admit that U.S. troops were in combat. However, on Friday, Defense Secretary Ash Carter said while discussing the raid, "This is combat, things are complicated."

More on this...

• Is WH taking responsibility for US casualty in ISIS raid?

• Pentagon reveals aggressive shift in ISIS strategy

In addition to the death of Master Sgt. Wheeler, The Daily Beast reported earlier this week that five service members had been wounded in action since the start of operations in Iraq last year. However, the Pentagon has refused to disclose how and when they were injured. The Washington Post reported in March that one of the wounded service members was hit in the face by bullet fragments while coming under enemy fire.
Bloomberg View reported that in addition to the special operations task force, the operations center also contains so-called Joint Terminal Attack Controllers, who work with U.S. allies and the Iraqis to coordinate combat flights against ISIS over Iraq. A third group, from the Marine Special Operations Command, is in charge of training Kurdish counter-terrorism forces.
On Tuesday, Carter testified on Capitol Hill that that the military plans a "higher and heavier rate of strikes" against ISIS targets. Separately, a senior U.S. official confirmed to Fox News that President Obama is considering proposals to move U.S. troops closer to the front lines in the fight.
On Wednesday, retired Gen. John Allen told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that as the U.S. continues to build up its military options in Syrian, European nations might consider combat operations to battle extremists.
Allen said the U.S. military recently began asking its European allies to join it at Incirlik Air Base in Turkey where the U.S. is being allowed to launch fighter aircraft and surveillance missions in Syria.
"I expect that as time goes on, and as more opportunity becomes available to us, we may well see our European partners become more kinetically involved in Syria," Allen said.
"There may be opportunities in the south as well as in the north where our European coalition partners could in fact play an important role, and I'm thinking special operations," Allen said, adding that additional details could only be provided in a classified setting.

'Extremely disappointing': RNC head slams CNBC debate moderators

Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus had harsh words for the CNBC moderators of Wednesday night's GOP debate, calling their performance "extremely disappointing."
"While I was proud of our candidates and the way they handled tonight’s debate, the performance by the CNBC moderators ... did a disservice to their network, our candidates, and voters," Priebus said in a statement. "Our diverse field of talented and exceptionally qualified candidates did their best to share ideas for how to reinvigorate the economy and put Americans back to work despite deeply unfortunate questioning from CNBC."
Priebus restated his criticism on Twitter.


Priebus was not the only Republican to take issue with moderators John Harwood, Carl Quintanilla and Becky Quick, as several candidates expressed frustration with the questions posed to them.
"The questions that have been asked so far in this debate illustrate why the American people don't trust the media," Texas Sen. Ted Cruz said early on.
"This is not a cage match," he added. "How about talking about the substantive issues the people care about?"
Others complained the moderators' questions were hostile and based on inaccurate premises.
"That's not true," retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson objected to one moderator's depiction of his tax plans. "When we put all the facts down, you'll be able to see that it's not true, it works out very well."
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie took issue with one moderator's interruption. "Do you want me to answer or do you want to answer?" he said. "Because, I've got to tell you the truth, even in New Jersey what you're doing is called rude."
In his closing statement Donald Trump chastised the network for trying to extend the debate past the two-hour mark, which he and Carson had teamed up to stop.
"In about two minutes I renegotiated it down to two hours so we could get the hell out of here," he bragged.
Trump, who had predicted the debate would be "unfair" hours before it started, told CNBC after he walked offstage that he felt the Republicans had been treated far differently than the Democrats during their first faceoff earlier this month.
"If you looked at Hillary's deal a couple of weeks ago, the questions were much softer, much easier, much nicer. It was like a giant lovefest," he said. "That did not take place over here. This was pretty tough."
Bush campaign manager Danny Diaz confirmed that he had expressed displeasure to a CNBC producer about the debate.
NBC spokesman Brian Steel responded with a one-sentence statement: "People who want to be president of the United States should be able to answer tough questions."