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Energy
Where Will You Be When the Lights Go Out?
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Kevin Cramer
Pushback against the Obama administration’s complex Clean Power Plan—which would reduce carbon emissions from power plants by 30% in 2030 from 2005 levels—has mostly focused on its staggering cost. NERA Economic Consulting, for instance, estimates the plan will increase the nationwide average price of electricity 12% to 17% over 15 years. But a pair of recent reports present an even more ominous picture. Not only will electricity cost more, Americans might not be able to get it when they most need it.
EPA may miss deadline on climate rule
POLITICO
Erica Martinson
The Obama administration is on the verge of missing its January deadline for finishing a landmark regulation in the president’s climate agenda — a delay that supporters insist doesn’t imperil the effort, but which comes just as a hostile GOP is about to take control of the Senate. The EPA has a Jan. 8 legal deadline to finish the regulation, aimed at throttling carbon pollution from future power plants, but people closely following the rule think the agency could miss that date by months. Among other omens, EPA hasn’t yet submitted the rule to the White House Office of Management and Budget for review, a process that normally takes 30 to 90 days.
Republicans Use Spending Bill to Pursue Environmental Goals
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Amy Harder
The bill to fund the government next year would hinder Mr. Obama’s efforts to limit investments by U.S. agencies in overseas coal-fired power plants. It would block the Interior Department for a year from listing the sage grouse, a bird whose habitat spans several Western states, as an endangered species. The bill also would require the Transportation Department to issue a final rule regulating trains carrying oil and other flammable material sooner than the agency had planned.
Lawmakers frustrated at EPA over ethanol mandate delay
THE HILL
Timothy Cama
The Wednesday hearing in the House Oversight Committee’s subpanel on energy came weeks after the EPA announced that it wouldn’t make a 2014 ethanol blending requirement for fuel refiners until next year. The few representatives present at the hearing ripped into Janet McCabe, the EPA’s acting administrator for air and radiation. Rep. James Lankford (R-Okla.) pointed to the 2007 law creating the mandate for ethanol and the rest of the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), which said that each year’s volume requirements for gasoline and diesel refiners must be completed by the EPA by Nov. 30 of the prior year. “We’re now more than a year past that deadline. We’ve waited and we’ve waited to move past proposal to final,” said Lankford, chairman of the subcommittee.
How Green Is Barack Obama?
POLITICO
As United Nations delegates meet in Lima this month to draft an international greenhouse gas-reducing agreement, Politico Magazine invited leading thinkers to consider the long-term effects of Barack Obama’s climate agenda. Of the environmental measures he has undertaken as president, we asked, which program or rule or deal matters most, and will have the biggest impact for future generations? Here’s what they told us.
Technology
Net neutrality decision pending — but battle lines drawn
POLITICOPRO (Subscribe)
Alex Byers and Brooks Boliek
The FCC hasn’t announced its net neutrality rules yet. But the major players think they know what’s coming. Telecom giants and advocacy groups are actively preparing for the agency to adopt tougher rules that regulate broadband service like a utility to ensure all Web traffic is treated equally.
Tech equipment companies say don’t reclassify web
THE HILL
Mario Trujillo
Sixty technology equipment companies sent a letter Wednesday to the Federal Communications Commission urging it not to reclassify broadband Internet as a utility. The letter, signed by companies like IBM, Intel and Cisco, asserts the reclassification would stunt broadband investment and further buildout.
Your Internet access will be tax-free for another year (at least)
WASHINGTON POST
Hayley Tsukayama
For all the complaints we make about an ineffective Congress, Internet users who want to save a little bit of cash should be happy with the U.S. government today. As part of the massive spending bill passed last night — the “Cromnibus” as Washington has christened it — Congress elected to extend a moratorium on taxes for Internet sales and services.
How cheap does the Internet have to be to get everyone online?
WASHINGTON POST
Brian Fung
In a survey of 15,000 Americans who don’t have broadband, nearly two-thirds of respondents said they wouldn’t consider signing up for the service at any price. This reflects what we already know: That people who aren’t connected largely aren’t interested in being connected and don’t see how it would be relevant to their lives. But the remaining third of the sample leads the researchers to this promising conclusion: The data indicates that up to 10 million households in the U.S. for which broadband is available might be willing to subscribe if a subscription discount is offered.
Wider Broadband Helps Growth, But Not Like Battling Some Illnesses
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Alistair Barr
The Copenhagen Consensus Center, a non-profit group that asks teams of economists to study global development initiatives, found that expanding wired broadband networks to reach 30% of the world’s people by 2030, up from 10% now, would generate $21 of economic benefit for every $1 spent.
Ghost of Antipiracy Bill SOPA Haunts New Copyright Push
NATIONAL JOURNAL
Brendan Sasso
Now, for the first time since SOPA crashed and burned in early 2012, the House Judiciary Committee is preparing to work on a major update of copyright law. As lawmakers cautiously return to the issue of copyright protection, the SOPA protest looms large in their minds.
Obama’s pick to head the Patent Office has Congress’s support. She just doesn’t have its approval.
WASHINGTON POST
Nancy Scola
“I think everybody in the room today, including the nominees ” – [Michelle] Lee was being considered alongside Danny Marti, President Obama’s pick to be the U.S. Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator — “understand that there isn’t enough time for these nominations to be confirmed before we adjourn,” said Grassley, who will take over as Chairman of the Judiciary Committee when Republicans claim control of the Senate in late January. The good news for both Lee and Daniel Marti is that no one on the committee objected to their nominations on substance. And both their nominations have been backed by otherwise fractious industry groups.
The FAA won’t make up its mind on drone rules until 2017 — at the earliest
WASHINGTON POST
Brian Fung
“The consensus of opinion is the integration of unmanned systems will likely slip from the mandated deadline until 2017 or even later,” said Gerald Dillingham, the GAO’s director of civil aviation. Lawmakers pounced on the confession, with some, such as Rep. Tom Massie (R-Ky.), complaining that the process is moving at a “geological time scale.”
Finance
Warren leads liberal Democrats’ rebellion over provisions in $1 trillion spending bill
WASHINGTON POST
Lori Montgomery and Sean Sullivan
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), a popular figure on the left, led the insurrection with a speech on the Senate floor, calling the $1.01 trillion spending bill “the worst of government for the rich and powerful.” Warren urged House Democrats to withhold their support from the measure in a vote scheduled for Thursday. But the fear of shutting down federal agencies for the second time in just over a year appeared to weigh more heavily on Democratic leaders than liberal outrage.
MoveOn.org officially launches million-dollar ‘Run Warren Run’ 2016 campaign
WASHINGTON TIMES
David Sherfinski
The political action arm for MoveOn.org officially kicked off a campaign Wednesday to try to convince Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts to run for president in 2016 after more than 80 percent of members voted to move forward with the campaign.
House Approves 6-Year Federal Terrorism Insurance Extension
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Michael R. Crittenden
The U.S. House on Wednesday voted 417-7 to approve a six-year extension of the federal terrorism insurance program that included changes to the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial law. … Lawmakers included in the bill a provision to prohibit financial regulators from imposing margin and other requirements on farmers, ranchers and nonfinancial firms that use derivatives transactions to hedge business risks. Supporters say the language merely clarifies the intent of the Dodd-Frank law. Critics have warned some firms could use the exemption to create risky derivatives trading businesses.
Appeals Court Deals a Setback to U.S. Crackdown on Insider Trading
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Ben Protess and Matthew Goldstein
The convictions had racked up in recent years, 85 people all told, as Manhattan prosecutors swept through Wall Street with what they described as clear-cut evidence of insider trading. But on Wednesday, a federal appeals court upended the government’s campaign. And in the process, the court rewrote the insider trading playbook, imposing the greatest limits on prosecutors in a generation.
An Outside the Law Prosecutor
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Editorial
There’s no appeals court for Mr. Ganek’s ruined business or the 80 or so employees who lost their jobs due to Mr. Bharara’s grandstanding. But at least the Second Circuit rebuke can serve as a proxy against a prosecutors who misused his power.
Wall Street regulator ups cybersecurity oversight
THE HILL
Cory Bennett
New York state’s top banking regulator warned financial firms Wednesday it will be stepping up its oversight of their cybersecurity. Benjamin Lawsky, director of the New York Department of Financial Services, sent a three-page letter to the financial sector explaining a new review procedure. The supervisor will now include more cybersecurity questions as part of each institution’s information technology examination.
Politics
The taming of Ted Cruz
WASHINGTON POST
Dana Milbank
But something extraordinary happened in response to Cruz’s hyperventilation: absolutely nothing. The House went ahead with its show vote last week, and all indications are that a bill funding Obama’s immigration policy will sail through the House with bipartisan support on Thursday and then face similarly smooth Senate passage. House Speaker John Boehner boasted on Wednesday that he was “proud” that the House acted “without a threat of a government shutdown.” This time, Cruz didn’t frighten fellow conservatives.
Torture Report Puts Presidential Hopefuls in Quiet Mode
NEW YORK TIMES
Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Michael Barbaro
Most of the possible presidential candidates have not plunged into Washington’s debate over the Senate Intelligence Committee’s withering report on the Central Intelligence Agency’s brutal interrogation tactics — and some are ducking questions entirely, illustrating the delicate politics of national security.
The Power of the Purse
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Editorial
The omnibus bill has plenty of barnacles, and its rush-to-a-vote is a disgrace, but Republicans are using it to make more policy progress than they have in four years. Next year they can make even more, if they understand that their spending power is formidable but not unlimited.
The good and the bad in Congress’s gargantuan spending bill
WASHINGTON POST
Editorial
That Congress has averted major chaos, however, does not imply that chaos of a more minor kind no longer reigns on Capitol Hill. The gargantuan bill includes a host of provisions, both budgetary and policymaking, that could only have made it through amid last-minute horse-trading on sweeping, must-pass legislation.
Mammoth spending bill poised for passage
POLITICO
Jake Sherman and John Bresnahan
Top aides and lawmakers on the GOP whip team privately say they believe between 150 and 175 Republicans will support the $1.1 trillion, nine-month government funding bill. And senior House Democrats predict that some of their members will help make up for the Republican defections to get the bill across the finish line.
Party fundraising provision, crafted in secret, could shift money flow in politics
WASHINGTON POST
Matea Gold and Tom Hamburger
A massive expansion of party fundraising slipped into a congressional budget deal this week would fundamentally alter how money flows into political campaigns, providing parties with new muscle to try to wrest power back from independent groups. The provision — one of the most significant changes to the campaign finance system since the landmark McCain-Feingold measure — was written behind closed doors with no public debate. Instead, it surfaced at the last minute in the final pages of a 1,603-page spending bill, which Congress is rushing to pass to keep government operations from shutting down.
Republicans seek to cripple IRS
POLITICO
Rachael Bade
Confused taxpayers, jammed help lines and tax cheaters running rampant — the IRS for months has warned that drastic budget cuts will disable an already troubled agency. Republicans aren’t buying it. Instead, they’re biding their time until they seize control of both chambers next year, giving them majorities to financially gut the most hated government agencies and new leverage to get agencies to do what they want.
