Your daily briefing for all the top news in Energy, Technology, Finance, and Politics.
Energy
Repeal of U.S. oil export ban would lower gas prices, studies show
WASHINGTON TIMES
Patrice Hill
Ms. Murkowski’s argument is likely to get backing soon from an authoritative source: The Energy Information Administration is due to publish a definitive report on the subject, and is expected to largely agree with private assessments that the prices for gasoline, diesel and jet fuel would go down or be little changed by a resumption of U.S. crude exports.
Will GOP put climate science back on trial?
THE HILL
Timothy Cama
Senate Republicans appear likely to use their majority status in the next Congress to attack the argument behind climate change in an attempt to undercut environmental policies. But some GOP strategists wonder whether such an offensive might backfire.
Urgency grows for Obama’s regs agenda
THE HILL
Lydia Wheeler
Time is fast running out on President Obama’s regulatory agenda and proponents of stronger health and safety protections are pressing the administration to redouble efforts to cement a host of new rules before it is too late. With a unified Republican Congress soon to be to be sworn in, public interest groups expect the president’s last two years in office to be fraught with conflict as the administration tries to secure its legacy.
Playing Politics With Tar Sands Oil
NEW YORK TIMES
Editorial
The White House has hinted, though not flatly promised, that Mr. Obama will veto any bill that passes. He should. This decision is his to make, not Congress’s, and the State Department review process that will inform that decision is not yet complete. Our hope is that when the time comes he will say no. But in any case, he should not be rushed by lawmakers more worried about their own political futures than the country’s long-term well-being.
Durbin: Obama is expected to veto Keystone
WASHINGTON POST
Katie Zezima
Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said Sunday that the fate of the Keystone XL pipeline may rest on one or two votes in the Senate. Speaking on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Durbin said President Obama will probably veto the vote if it passes. But whether it does hinges on the smallest of margins.
GOP victory: Game over for the climate?
WASHINGTON POST
Editorial
Americans deserve leaders who will govern with clear eyes about a range of potential hazards, particularly those over which humans have direct control. Whether out of cynicism, callousness or ignorance, Republicans over the past decade have instead indulged and encouraged shortsighted naysayers and climate conspiracists in the face of grave climate forecasts. If they continue with this nonsense, they will risk disqualifying themselves with voters who expect rationality from their elected representatives.
Technology
What a Tangled Web Obama Weaves
WALL STREET JOURNAL
L. Gordon Crovitz
Al Gore didn’t invent the Internet, but Bill Clinton deserves credit for the most important Internet policy: a bipartisan consensus reached during his administration in the mid-1990s to keep the Internet free of regulation. The Web would be permissionless, so that innovators could start sites and other digital offerings without waiting for regulatory approval.
Obama punts on net neutrality
USA TODAY
Michael Wolff
President Obama’s decision to advocate the reclassification of Internet broadband services as a utility under Title II of the Telecommunications Act — that is, making broadband subject to all the laws that regulate telephone service — seems particularly Obama-like: squirrelly and lofty at the same time. It’s squirrelly because it will never happen. Even the FCC’s chairman, Obama appointee Tom Wheeler, under whose authority the policy falls, seemed to acknowledge the president’s unhelpfulness by coolly noting the difficult legal thresholds further regulation and a change in status might face.
Obama’s plan to regulate the Internet would do more harm than good
WASHINGTON POST
Michael Mandel
Putting the Federal Communications Commission in charge of regulating broadband rates and micromanaging Web services, as the president proposes, would slow innovation and raise costs. It would be bad news for the economy. It would also be a serious misstep for the Democratic Party, marking a retreat from market-based, pro-competition policies pioneered by President Bill Clinton in the 1990s.
How Obama’s net neutrality comments undid weeks of FCC work
WASHINGTON POST
Brian Fung
But all of that was thrown off-track as soon as Obama called for “bright-line rules” backed up by the FCC’s most aggressive powers. Now a number of companies who were close to signing onto the “hybrid” plan proposed by Wheeler are in a holding pattern. Demand for a less-compromising stance has increased. And pressure is building on Wheeler and the FCC to decide what it should do.
F.C.C. Asks AT&T for Details on Plans to Halt Fiber Expansion
NEW YORK TIMES
Edward Wyatt
When Randall L. Stephenson, AT&T‘s chairman and chief executive, said this week that the company would halt some of its plans for fiber-optic expansion until federal regulators decided on a net neutrality policy, at least one important party was listening: the Federal Communications Commission. On Friday, the F.C.C. sent a letter to AT&T asking for details and documentation of what fiber projects would be halted.
Why the F.C.C. Should Heed President Obama on Internet Regulation
NEW YORK TIMES
Editorial
Even if broadband is reclassified as a telecommunications service, no one is talking about having federal regulators approve consumer rates or requiring companies to lease their networks to competitors. What Mr. Obama wants is an Internet where service providers handle all content sent and received by consumers equally. His approach takes into account what has happened in the past decade, and it levels the playing field for businesses and protects consumer choice.
Net Neutrality Rules
NEW YORK TIMES
Joe Nocera
Net neutrality is demonstrably a good thing, and it needs to be enshrined in law, not just done in good faith as it is now. The real problem is with the law itself: It was never meant to regulate broadband. Title II is too blunt an instrument, while section 706 doesn’t give the F.C.C. enough authority. That’s why the agency has seemed to be dancing on the head of a pin as it tries to come up with net neutrality rules that will pass muster. Of course, there is another way to accomplish net neutrality. Congress could pass a law that allowed the F.C.C. to write net neutrality rules — but went no further. Yeah, right. Better keep dancing, Chairman Wheeler.
U.S. CTO on net neutrality critics: ‘Are you supposed to argue with physics?’
WASHINGTON POST
Nancy Scola
Megan Smith: I also thought it was interesting that the conversation becomes a political debate, because we’re in D.C., so it becomes, okay, here’s this one group that has this opinion and another group that has that opinion. But then there are all these engineers who have an architecture [of the Internet they work with], and it’s like, “Are you supposed to argue with physics?”
F.C.C. Chief Aims to Bolster Internet for Schools
NEW YORK TIMES
Edward Wyatt
With a goal of fiber-optic lines reaching to every school and a Wi-Fi connection in every classroom, Tom Wheeler, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, is expected on Monday to propose a 62 percent increase in the amount of money the agency spends annually to wire schools and libraries with high-speed Internet connections.
Why Data Centers Collect Big Tax Breaks
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Shira Ovide and Mark Peters
Officials say data centers broaden their tax base, create well-paying technical and construction jobs and confer bragging rights that states hope will lure companies with bigger hiring plans. They also contribute to the local economy without stressing infrastructure such as roads and sewage plants. It remains an open question whether the cost of these facilities in tax breaks and services works out in their favor.
Finance
GOP leaders set sights on tax reform but fret over newly combative Obama
WASHINGTON POST
Lori Montgomery
Obama has been promising to cut the nation’s corporate tax rate, the highest in the world, for nearly three years. And with a rash of companies moving abroad to escape U.S. taxes, many Republicans see action on that issue as critical to both the economy and their political fortunes in 2016, when more than 20 GOP senators will be up for reelection. However, lawmakers say that instead of engaging with Republicans, Obama has provoked them on a range of issues, most explosively his threat to unilaterally halt deportations of millions of undocumented immigrants.
A Challenge to FTC Methods
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Brent Kendall
Republican control of Congress in 2015 could boost GOP efforts to make the Federal Trade Commission operate more like the Justice Department when it comes to antitrust enforcement, amid complaints that the FTC’s system is more cumbersome to business. The FTC and the Justice Department share powers to challenge problematic mergers and anticompetitive business conduct, but they don’t always follow the same processes. This design has been in place for a century but has frustrated business groups and company lawyers who say their clients face a more challenging road if the FTC is the agency that lands an investigation.
Obama Looks to Jump-Start Export Push
WALL STREET JOURNAL
William Mauldin
The Obama administration will fall well short of its goal of doubling exports in five years. But it is hoping to secure a longer-run victory on the trade front with sweeping new agreements in the next two years.
Too big to jail: why the government is quick to fine but slow to prosecute big corporations
VOX
Danielle Kurtzleben
Ever since the financial crisis, many Americans and politicians have been calling for more aggressive prosecutions of Wall Street banks and executives (to little avail). It’s not just banks, though — in his new book, Too Big to Jail, University of Virginia Law professor Brandon Garrett explains that even while fines for corporations across all industries have risen, the government has still often gone easy on big firms that have done wrong. Vox spoke to Garrett about his new book.
Sales tax tips Japan back into recession
FINANCIAL TIMES (Subscribe)
Ben McLannahan
Japan’s economy tipped into a technical recession following a jump in consumption taxes in April, making it a near-certainty that prime minister Shinzo Abe will delay another increase while appealing for a fresh mandate via a snap election.
Politics
Obama’s New Path Faces Collision Course
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Carol E. Lee
But some of his overseas victories are likely to stir political antipathy at home. The historic climate-change deal with China, in which the U.S. and China both committed to future carbon reductions, could stoke Republican ire. Democrats, meanwhile, are likely to be uncomfortable with the aggressive trade agenda Mr. Obama outlined.
Executive order on immigration would ignite a political firestorm
WASHINGTON POST
Chris Cillizza
Reports are rampant that President Obama will sign an executive order as soon as this week that will allow up to 5 million undocumented immigrants to avoid deportation. Signing such an order would have explosive political consequences — it would not only reshape the near-term fights in Congress but also have a potentially profound effect on the two parties’ national coalitions heading into the 2016 election and beyond.
The Missing Immigration Memo
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Editorial
We support more liberal immigration but not Mr. Obama’s means of doing it on his own whim because he’s tired of working with Congress. His first obligation is to follow the law, which begins by asking the opinion of the government’s own lawyers.
5 things Congress should do by year’s end
USA TODAY
Editorial
But the lame duck doesn’t have to be a flop. A similar session in 2010, which also came after a Republican election rout, was one of the most fruitful ever. Among other achievements, lawmakers ratified a nuclear arms treaty and ended the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy affecting gays in the military. Similar accomplishments are possible now, and both sides have incentives.
Obama: We didn’t mislead on health care
POLITICO
Josh Gerstein
“The fact that an adviser who was never on our staff expressed an opinion that I completely disagree with in terms of the voters is not a reflection on the actual process that was run,” Obama declared at a press conference here, speaking for the first time about the comments by MIT economist Jonathan Gruber. When the president was asked whether he had intentionally misled the public in order to get the law passed, he replied: “No. I did not.”
Why we can’t (or won’t) govern
WASHINGTON POST
Robert Samuelson
We can’t — or won’t — govern because our politics is less interested in governing. The ideas and plans from the left and the right have, as their initial purpose, the winning of support among their political bases. The practicality and broad appeal of these proposals (that is, their usefulness as governing blueprints) are secondary concerns. So the distance between the two parties increases while the prospect for legitimate compromises diminishes. Whether the midterm elections alter this is unsettled. The odds seem long.
The GOP’s numbers problem
POLITICO
Steven Shepard
“I still believe we have a polling problem in the Republican Party, and I think the work still needs to be done … to set standards that all of the polling firms have to follow,” said [Mike] Shields. But the success of the data and modeling team gives Shields and other Republicans hope. “We do not believe that voter scores are a replacement for telephone-survey data,” he said, but quickly added: “I think they can both make one another better.” Another Republican strategist with extensive knowledge of the party’s internal 2014 polling was blunter: “I believe there were some pollsters that were holding their data back because of what happened in ’12. I think they were covering their ass.”
