Are you following us on Twitter? Get the latest from @InsideSourcesDC.
Energy
US reassures world on climate goals
FINANCIAL TIMES (Subscribe)
Barney Jopson
The White House is reassuring the rest of the world that the US can meet the ambitious goals it agreed with China to curb climate change without the help of Congress, a senior official has said. John Podesta, a senior adviser to President Barack Obama, said on Wednesday that the US could use the executive powers of the presidency to achieve its goal of emitting 26-28 per cent less greenhouse gas in 2025 than it did in 2005.
Ambition Meets Wariness as U.N. Climate Change Talks Begin in Lima
WALL STREET JOURNAL
William Mauldin
Those talks have begun this week in Lima, Peru, and will continue on a higher level next week. But officials and experts say there is little evidence most other developing economies will follow China’s lead. The talks are supposed to produce an agreement in Paris next year. “The risk is a revolt by the South against the North, saying that, ‘You caused this problem and now we’re going to pay the price,’ ” said Paul Bledsoe, a former U.S. official and climate expert at the German Marshall Fund, a U.S.-based think tank.
Oil Trains Hide in Plain Sight
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Russell Gold
Finding the locations of oil-filled trains remains difficult, even in states that don’t consider the information top secret. There are no federal or state rules requiring public notice despite several fiery accidents involving oil trains, including one in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, that killed 47 people.
Technology
A telecom regulator accuses Netflix of trying to create its own ‘fast lanes’
WASHINGTON POST
Brian Fung
Netflix is trying to gain an unfair advantage over its competitors by setting up “fast lanes” for its content, according to a Republican regulator at the Federal Communications Commission. In a letter Tuesday, FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai said a Netflix program designed to smooth out video playback enables Netflix to “run the equivalent of a 100-yard dash while its competitors’ videos would have to run a marathon.”
Telecoms bet on congressional rookies
POLITICOPRO (Subscribe)
Tony Romm
AT&T, Comcast and Verizon are cultivating plenty of new friends on Capitol Hill, developing early relationships with freshman members who could prove crucial in coming battles over net neutrality and communications laws.
Last-Ditch Push to Pass Marketplace Fairness Act in House Falls Short
ROLL CALL
Emma Dumain
Despite Speaker John A. Boehner’s insistence in October that he would not bring the so-called Marketplace Fairness Act up for a vote in the 113th Congress, advocates still huddled in the Ohio Republican’s office Wednesday afternoon to make their case. Ultimately, they weren’t able to win him over.
Will Silicon Valley Abandon Its Fight to Help Poor Immigrants?
NATIONAL JOURNAL
Brendan Sasso
Now, with Republicans about to take control of the Senate, comprehensive immigration reform is dead for the foreseeable future. Republicans are, however, signaling they may pass piecemeal legislation that helps U.S. businesses—so long as it doesn’t give a path to citizenship to the millions of undocumented immigrants in the country. Now Silicon Valley companies will have to make a decision: Will they push for legislation that advances their interests even if it leaves poor immigrants behind?
Britain and the ‘Google Tax’
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Editorial
Any effort to tax corporate profits in this way will probably founder on EU rules that currently govern business taxation within the single market—another reminder that, every now and then, Brussels lives up to its founding principles and stands in the way of bad national policy. Still, the Google Tax’s marquee placement in Mr. Osborne’s speech sends a bad signal to companies and investors, and is a reminder of why so many Britons are disappointed in the Cameron government.
British Government Proposes a ‘Google Tax’
NEW YORK TIMES
Mark Scott and Stephen Castle
George Osborne, the British chancellor of the Exchequer, said multinational companies that use these complicated tax structures to move profits from their British operations to jurisdictions like Ireland and Luxembourg, where companies pay less corporate tax, should pay more of their share. “That’s not fair to other British firms. It’s not fair to the British people, either. Today we’re putting a stop to it,” Mr. Osborne said on Wednesday. He added that the clampdown would raise roughly $1.6 billion over the next five years in extra tax revenue for the British government. “My message is consistent and clear: low taxes, but taxes that will be paid.”
French Official Campaigns to Make ‘Right to be Forgotten’ Global
NEW YORK TIMES
Mark Scott
And on Wednesday, Isabelle Falque-Pierrotin, who heads the French data protection authority and has campaigned heavily for expanding the ruling, defended European efforts to force search engines to apply the ruling to search results outside of Europe. Currently, Google, which controls about 80 percent of Europe’s search market, removes links only from its local domains, like Google.fr in France and Google.de in Germany, while other domains, like Google.com, are not affected. That allows individuals — both in European and farther afield — to sidestep Europe’s privacy rules as long as they use a non-European search domain.
Private-sector computer networks are becoming increasingly vulnerable to destructive cyberattacks
WASHINGTON POST
Editorial
Networks in the United States remain vulnerable to intrusion, disruption, theft, espionage and attacks that could produce physical damage, all weaknesses that cry out for a more aggressive defense than has been mounted so far. Although the U.S. military is standing up a major cyber effort, both offensive and defensive, private-sector networks in the nation are overly exposed. These networks are the backbone of the economy, health care, education, transportation, energy and countless other critical functions. In the future, attacks are certain to be aimed at them with potentially dire consequences. Warnings about this have been issued for several years, with insufficient effect.
Finance
Paul Ryan’s plan: Broad vision and small steps
POLITICO
Brian Faler and Jennifer Haberkorn
In an interview with POLITICO on Wednesday, the Wisconsin Republican said he’s going to use his new perch in the House to pursue what he calls “phase one” of tax reform — focusing only on the business Tax Code — while understanding that he’s not going to get it all while President Barack Obama is in office.
Obama says he willing to defy Democrats on his support of Trans-Pacific Partnership
WASHINGTON POST
David Nakamura
President Obama signaled Wednesday that, at least on international trade, he is willing to defy his fellow Democrats and his own liberal base to pursue a partnership with Republicans. Trade represents one of Obama’s best chances for a legacy-building achievement in the final two years of his presidency, but he acknowledged that it is an idea he still has to sell to many of his traditional allies. Speaking at a gathering of business leaders, Obama offered his strongest public defense of his administration’s pursuit of a major 12-nation trade deal in the Asia Pacific, known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), that has been opposed by Democrats, labor unions and environmental groups.
CFPB Official Speaks Loudly on Student Loans
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Annamaria Andriotis and Alan Zibel
WASHINGTON— Rohit Chopra, the nation’s student-loan watchdog, delivers his message to lenders through blog posts, letters and public reports. And that isn’t sitting well with the industry. … “There’s more tension between banks and those in the CFPB’s student-lending division than in all other areas of the CFPB combined,” said Richard Hunt, president of the Consumer Bankers Association, a trade group that has many private student-loan firms as members.
Q and A. With Charles Evans of the Fed: Low Inflation Is the Primary Concern
NEW YORK TIMES
Binyamin Appelbaum
Charles Evans, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, is nervous about inflation. His worry, however, is not the old Fed fear that prices are rising too quickly, but the new Fed fear that prices are not rising fast enough. Mr. Evans said in an interview Tuesday that he now saw the sluggish pace of inflation as the primary reason the Fed should keep short-term interest rates near zero, a view shared by a growing number of Fed officials.
Politics
Four Republicans who worry Hillary Clinton
THE HILL
Amie Parnes
Hillary Clinton allies are focusing on four potential Republican challengers for the White House: Jeb Bush, Rand Paul, Chris Christie and Scott Walker.
Republicans shout down Ted Cruz
POLITICO
Burgess Everett
Republican senators panned Ted Cruz and his conservative colleagues’ Wednesday as they picked up traction on their push to derail the House GOP’s plan to keep the government funded. The high-profile Texas conservative made a splash on Wednesday in announcing his opposition to House leaders’ plans to pass an omnibus spending bill to keep the government funded through September, revisit Department of Homeland Security funding early next year and pass a proposal disapproving of Obama’s immigration policy — which the Democrat-controlled Senate will not take up.
Taking Obama’s Immigration Bait
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Editorial
You know what’s coming: A handful of Republicans are calling this a cowardly abdication. “Congress must respond to the President’s unlawful action by funding the government but not funding illegal amnesty,” says Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions. “This is a perfectly sound and routine application of congressional authority. In fact, the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service reports that last year’s omnibus spending bill included 16 such funding restrictions on fee-based programs.” He’s right that it’s routine—when a bill passes the Senate and is signed by the President. But Senate Democrats will kill any bill that defunds Mr. Obama’s order. What happens then? That’s the question we never seem to get an answer to. A budget stalemate means a government shutdown after Dec. 11. As far as we can tell, Mr. Sessions believes that if Republicans hold firm during a shutdown, the public will eventually side with the GOP, Senate Democrats will roll over, and the President will surrender. Does this sound remotely plausible?
President Obama’s unilateral action on immigration has no precedent
WASHINGTON POST
Editorial
Republicans’ failure to address immigration also does not justify Mr. Obama’s massive unilateral act. Unlike Mr. Bush in 1990, whose much more modest order was in step with legislation recently and subsequently enacted by Congress, Mr. Obama’s move flies in the face of congressional intent — no matter how indefensible that intent looks.
States sue Obama administration on immigration
REUTERS
Jon Herskovitz
A coalition of 17 U.S. states sued the Obama administration on Wednesday saying it acted illegally by issuing an executive order to ease the threat of deportation for millions of immigrants who are in the country without the proper documents. The case being led by Texas and filed at the Federal Court in the Southern District of Texas said the executive order announced by Obama last month violated constitutional limits on presidential powers.
The money majority
POLITICO
Kenneth P. Vogel
Before he even takes the reins as Senate majority leader, McConnell and his allies are quietly trying to engineer a bold plan that would enable party leaders to rely more on major contributions to independent groups while also removing restrictions on the ability of the National Republican Senatorial Committee and other party committees to interact with candidates. The outside cash would be raised by a pair of linked groups — a super PAC and 501(c)4 non-profit — that could accept unlimited cash to boost key GOP Senate candidates, according to sources familiar with the plan. The inside cash would flow to the NRSC, which could operate more freely under an election law change McConnell began pushing this week.
After Republican wins, right to work bills on the agenda
WASHINGTON POST
Reid Wilson
Republicans in at least five states — Wisconsin, New Mexico, New Hampshire, Ohio and Missouri — have introduced or plan to introduce versions of the [Right to Work] law in legislative sessions that will begin in January. Legislators in Colorado, Kentucky, Montana and Pennsylvania are all likely to push similar laws, though union-friendly Democratic governors in each state will act as firewalls.
More Cost of Health Care Shifts to Consumers
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Stephanie Armour
Americans increasingly have to dig into their own pockets to pay for medical care, a shift that is helping to curb the growth in health spending by employers and the government. The trend is being accelerated by the Affordable Care Act because many private plans sold by the law’s health exchanges come with hefty out-of-pocket costs, which prompt some people to delay or put off seeking care.
