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Energy
Senate blocks measure to build Keystone XL pipeline; discussions will continue
WASHINGTON POST
Sean Sullivan
Senate Democrats stalled the Republican-led push to construct the Keystone XL pipeline on Monday, dealing the first significant blow to the new GOP majority less than three weeks after it was sworn in. The outcome handed at least a temporary victory to some Democrats and environmentalists who staunchly oppose construction of the pipeline. But Monday’s vote was more a speed bump than a roadblock; both parties are expected to continue hashing out their differences on the bill.
White House to Propose Allowing Oil Drilling off Atlantic Coast
NEW YORK TIMES
Coral Davenport
The Obama administration on Tuesday will announce a proposal to open up coastal waters from Virginia to Georgia for oil and gas drilling, according to a person briefed on the plan. … In opening up the Atlantic Coast for drilling while closing areas off Alaska, Mr. Obama is deploying a strategy that he has frequently used in forging environmental policy — giving both the oil industry and environmentalists a win and a loss.
Obama’s Trans-Alaska Oil Assault
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Editorial
The ANWR land grab is another classic of executive overreach. Congress in 1980 passed the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, a grand compromise that put vast tracts under protection, in return for a clause declaring “no more” wilderness designations in Alaska unless approved by Congress. Yet the Interior Department plans to use the President’s recommendation of a new ANWR wilderness designation as a license to lock up the land. The decision also ignores the environmental protection that is possible in light of new drilling technology. Most of the refuge is already protected as wilderness, yet Mr. Obama’s order includes the 0.01% of barren, coastal wasteland that was up for drilling discussion. Innovations like directional drilling would allow the industry to tap those vast reserves with minimal surface impact.
President Obama Protects a Valued Wilderness
NEW YORK TIMES
Editorial
From the perspective of the nation’s energy needs, Mr. Obama’s timing was just right. Estimates of the oil under the coastal plain have varied wildly over the years, but while extracting the oil never seemed worth the devastation it would cause, it seems less so now that major new oil deposits have been discovered in the lower 48 states and consumption is dwindling along with America’s reliance on imports.
Plan to Protect Refuge Has Alaskans Offended and Fearful Over Money
NEW YORK TIMES
Kirk Johnson
That President Obama blindsided the governor and angered Alaska’s congressional delegation on Sunday with a proposal to ban energy exploration on 12 million acres of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to be designated as wilderness proves that Alaska simply does not matter to Washington, some residents said.
Oil-rich Saudis find new help in struggle to delay action on climate change: Cheap gas
WASHINGTON POST
Joby Warrick
Lower oil prices already have spurred demand for gas-guzzling SUVs and prompted a spike in miles driven by American consumers, new government figures show. Whether intentionally or not, the continued slump in prices could hurt sales of low-emission vehicles in Western countries and cool enthusiasm for renewable energy in the developing world — objectives that Saudi officials have long pursued through other means, analysts say.
Where’s the oil price outrage?
USA TODAY
Editorial
Conspiracy theories abound because people think there is a price that fuel “should” be. Consumers want it to be low enough to fill up their gas tanks without a lot of pain. Producers think it should be high enough for them to profitably drill more wells. In reality, both have to live with the brutal rationality of markets.
Saudis target U.S. oil boom
USA TODAY
Chris Faulkner
This crash in oil prices isn’t about supply and demand. It’s about OPEC, and by OPEC, I mean specifically the Saudis, doing their level best to bring a halt to America’s shale oil boom, and with it, much of the American economy.
Technology
Government-run Internet service could set off flurry of lawsuits
THE HILL
Julian Hattem
Regulators will likely run into a host of lawsuits if they make an expected move to override state laws limiting local governments from building out their own broadband Internet services, state legislators and officials predicted on Monday. “Short-term, I can see a lot of litigation over this municipal broadband, a lot of taxpayer dollars wasted litigating this municipal broadband,” Brad Ramsay, the general counsel for the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners, told reporters.
How the cable industry is trying to reshape the economics of the Internet
WASHINGTON POST
Brian Fung
As it waits for the regulatory shoe of net neutrality to drop next month, the cable industry is going on the offensive. Lobbyists are taking preemptive aim at other Internet rules that might come down from the government soon. And meanwhile, Cablevision has become the first cable company to act in a wider battle over the future of phone calls. If the industry gets its way, it’ll enjoy tremendous advantages when it comes to the economics of the Internet.
Tech mounts pre-emptive strike on taxes
THE HILL
Bernie Becker
The Tax Innovation Equality Coalition, or TIE, a group that counts both technology and pharmaceutical titans among its members, released a report Monday that seeks to protect the tax treatment of patents, copyrights and other intangible properties. Matthew Slaughter of Dartmouth, the report’s author, argued that wringing more taxes out of the most innovative companies in the U.S. would be counterproductive in the long run, noting that President Obama just insisted that he and Congress can do more to produce more better-paying U.S. jobs.
Durbin, Schock criticize online sales tax ‘loophole’
THE HILL
Julian Hattem
Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Rep. Aaron Schok (R-Ill.) wrote an op-ed in the Spring, Ill., State Journal-Register on Monday deriding a “loophole” that prevents people from paying sales tax at many online stores, which they say gives them a price advantage over brick-and-mortar shops. “[I]t needlessly is putting people out of business in Illinois and across the country,” they wrote.
Finance
Federal budget shows short-term rebound, long-term deficits
WASHINGTON TIMES
Stephen Dinan
The U.S. economy will rebound strongly over the next two years then settle into a more normal economic cycle with steady but slow growth, albeit significantly less than in the 1980s and 1990s, the Congressional Budget Office said Monday. The strong short-term growth will help keep federal budget deficits level through 2018 before they turn south and exceed the $1 trillion mark within a decade, the budget analysts said in their latest budget and economic outlook, which will govern Congress’ decisions for the next year.
Behind Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s Treasury takedown
POLITICO
Ben White
Elizabeth Warren, sometimes disregarded by the White House as a largely irrelevant nuisance, could no longer be ignored. Bolstered by grass roots groups eager for any anti-Wall Street crusade and a vibrant progressive media that hung on her every word, Warren succeeded in knocking out Weiss’ nomination.
White House defends affordable housing funds
THE HILL
Kevin Cirilli
President Obama’s top housing finance regulator will defend the administration’s decision to re-finance affordable housing trust funds that Republicans say put taxpayers at risk. Mel Watt, director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), will testify before the House Financial Services Committee that he’s put “prudent safeguards” in place to protect the taxpayers, according to his submitted testimony, obtained first by The Hill.
In Push for Change, Finra Is Opposed by the Wall St. Firms It Regulates
NEW YORK TIMES
Susan Antilla
Wall Street has pulled out all the stops in opposing a plan by its own self-regulator to require brokers to share extensive information about their clients’ accounts. The proposal by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, or Finra, is “a troubling and serious threat to investors’ civil liberties and constitutional rights,” Carrie L. Chelko, chief counsel of the Philadelphia financial firm Lincoln Financial Network, wrote in one of hundreds of letters to the agency criticizing the plan.
Investment Riches Built on Subprime Auto Loans to Poor
NEW YORK TIMES
Michael Corkery and Jessica Silver-Greenberg
Across the country, there is a booming business in lending to the working poor — those Americans with impaired credit who need cars to get to work. But this market is as much about Wall Street’s perpetual demand for high returns as it is about used cars. An influx of investor money is making more loans possible, but all that money may also be enabling excessive risk-taking that could have repercussions throughout the financial system, analysts and regulators caution.
Politics
The Kochs put a price on 2016: $889 million
POLITICO
Kenneth P. Vogel
The Koch brothers’ operation intends to spend $889 million in the run-up to the 2016 elections — a historic sum that in many ways would mark Charles and David Koch and their fellow conservative megadonors as more powerful than the official Republican Party. The figure, which more than doubles the amount spent by the Republican National Committee during the last presidential election cycle, prompted cheers from some in the GOP who are looking for all the help they can get headed into a potentially tough 2016 election landscape.
Is Iowa turning into a no-win situation for establishment Republicans in 2016?
WASHINGTON POST
Chris Cillizza
Skipping states in this political-media world is simply unworkable. Former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani’s decision in 2008 not only to skip Iowa but also, inexplicably, to take a pass on New Hampshire ensured that by the time the race got to Florida — his “must win” state — he was already irrelevant. Ditto Huntsman in 2012. He couldn’t capture enough media attention outside of Iowa to make his chances in New Hampshire anything but slim. And yet, as this past weekend’s 2016 cattle call hosted by conservative Rep. Steve King showed, winning Iowa — or even running well there — may require candidates to take positions that are, at best, problematic for them if they wind up being the party’s nominee.
Inside Hillary Clinton’s 2016 plan
POLITICO
Mike Allen
Not only is she running, but we have a very good idea of what her campaign will look like. Hillary Clinton is in the final stages of planning a presidential campaign that will most likely be launched in early April and has made decisions on most top posts, according to numerous Democrats in close contact with the Clintons and their aides.
U.S. Spies on Millions of Cars
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Devlin Barrett
The Justice Department has been building a national database to track in real time the movement of vehicles around the U.S., a secret domestic intelligence-gathering program that scans and stores hundreds of millions of records about motorists, according to current and former officials and government documents. The primary goal of the license-plate tracking program, run by the Drug Enforcement Administration, is to seize cars, cash and other assets to combat drug trafficking, according to one government document. But the database’s use has expanded to hunt for vehicles associated with numerous other potential crimes, from kidnappings to killings to rape suspects, say people familiar with the matter.
Obamacare 2.0: the White House’s radical new plan to change how doctors get paid
VOX
Sarah Kliff
The White House is making its biggest bet yet on the future of health care — and it has nothing to do with getting more people health insurance. The Obama administration announced Monday a sweeping new plan that will directly affect thousands of hospitals and doctors across the country. The federal government now plans to pay Medicare doctors more if they help patients get healthier — and less if their patients just stay sick. This would be done by tying 85 percent of all Medicare payments to outcomes by the end of 2016 — rising to 90 percent by 2018.
Teachers Take Union Dues to Supreme Court
US NEWS & WORLD REPORT
Allie Bidwell
A group of public schoolteachers on Monday petitioned the Supreme Court to hear a challenge to laws allowing teachers unions to require dues from nonmembers who disagree with union positions and policies. A decision in the teachers’ favor could change how public employee unions operate nationwide. The lawsuit, first filed in April 2013, takes aim at the 300,000-member California Teachers Association and the affiliated National Education Association. The plaintiffs – 10 California teachers and the Christian Educators Association International – claim California’s “agency shop” law is unconstitutional and violates teachers’ First Amendment rights by forcing them to pay union dues regardless of whether they support or are a member of the union. Twenty-six states currently have such laws in place.
