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Energy
Obama’s Budget Goes All-In on Climate Change
NATIONAL JOURNAL
Jason Plautz
Obama’s overall climate plan funding is spread across multiple agencies, with separate proposals for mitigation, energy development, flooding adaptation, agricultural adaptation, and protection of public lands.

Energy-Pinching Americans Pose Threat to Power Grid
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Rebecca Smith
The long-term future of the nation’s electric grid is under threat from an unlikely source—energy-conserving Americans. That is the fear of some utility experts who say that as Americans use less power, electric companies won’t have the revenue needed to maintain sprawling networks of high-voltage lines and generating plants.

President Obama flinches from an easy decision on the gas tax
WASHINGTON POST
Editorial
Remember the “hard decisions ” Mr. Obama once promised not to kick down the road? This one hardly even qualifies. With oil prices so low, a modest tax hike would hardly be noticed by consumers; a number of Republicans have gone on record in favor of it; and the president will, as he has noted, never have to run for office again. Yet even this apparently remains too hard.

Federal fracking rules due out soon
THE HILL
Timothy Cama
Rules for hydraulic fracturing on federal land will be made final within weeks, Interior Secretary Sally Jewell said. … As proposed in 2013, the standards would mandate that fracking companies disclose the chemicals they use and take certain steps to ensure that fluids do not reach groundwater and are properly discarded. The oil and gas industry says the rules are unnecessary, and environmentalists say they don’t go far enough.

Landrieu calls Obama’s offshore drilling plan a ‘gross injustice to Gulf Coast states’
FUEL FIX
Jennifer Dlouhy
The Obama administration’s plan to divert some offshore oil and gas revenue away from Gulf Coast states threatens efforts to protect Louisiana wetlands, said former Sen. Mary Landrieu on Monday. At issue is an Interior Department budget proposal to change the way offshore oil and gas revenue is shared with Gulf States. Although details were limited Monday, the plan would involve siphoning off some of the dollars set to flow to Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas and sending them to “to programs that provide broad natural resource, watershed and conservation benefits to the nation.”

Slump in Oil Prices Brings Pressure, and Investment Opportunity
NEW YORK TIMES
Michael Corkery and Peter Eavis
American history is littered with oil busts that created big winners and losers. Now, as the cracks appear in the latest energy boom, the forces of failure and opportunity are stirring again.

Energizing an energy policy
WASHINGTON TIMES
Ed Feulner
There are other ways to improve our energy policy, but they boil down to one thing: letting the market work with minimal interference from Washington. As the price at the pump has been proving, we all stand to win when we decide — not bureaucrats.

Technology
In Net Neutrality Push, F.C.C. Is Expected to Propose Regulating Internet Service as a Utility
NEW YORK TIMES
Steve Lohr
But Tom Wheeler, the F.C.C. chairman, will advocate a light-touch approach to Title II, they say, shunning the more intrusive aspects of utility-style regulation, like meddling in pricing decisions. He may also suggest putting wireless data services under Title II and adding regulations for companies that manage the backbone of the Internet. The proposal is expected to be submitted to the agency’s commissioners by Thursday. Although the F.C.C. is not expected to release a copy of the plan this week, the contents are almost certain to leak out. A vote on the proposal by the full commission is scheduled for Feb. 26.

FCC denies GOP request for early release of web rules
THE HILL
Mario Trujillo
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler on Monday formally denied a request from congressional Republicans to release the text of those net neutrality rules when they are circulated among the commissioners later this week. Releasing the draft rules early “runs contrary” to past FCC procedure under Democratic and Republican leadership, Wheeler asserted.

Obama budget’s tech focus: Broadband, spectrum, IT support
POLITICOPRO (Subscribe)
Tony Romm
President Barack Obama’s 2016 budget would commit new federal dollars to boosting rural broadband, modernizing government and freeing up new wireless spectrum. Many of the goals, laid out in the blueprint unveiled Monday, correspond with the administration’s long-held desire to spur economic growth through improved connectivity and streamline Washington with the help of new technology. But a number of the ideas require support from Congress, which has balked at some of the same proposals from the president’s past budgets.

FCC may try to pre-empt state laws on broadband
USA TODAY
Mike Snider
The Federal Communications Commission may seek to supersede state laws that prohibit municipal broadband systems. FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler plans to propose that the agency pre-empt state laws in North Carolina and Tennessee that restrict communities from providing broadband service. The commission is likely to vote on the issue at its Feb. 26 meeting.

President Tweaks the Rules on Data Collection
NEW YORK TIMES
David E. Sanger
A year after President Obama ordered modest changes in how the nation’s intelligence agencies collect and hold data on Americans and foreigners, the administration will announce new rules requiring intelligence analysts to delete private information they may incidentally collect about Americans that has no intelligence purpose, and to delete similar information about foreigners within five years.

DISH role in airwaves auction sparks FCC spat
POLITICOPRO (Subscribe)
Brooks Boliek
Satellite TV giant DISH bid about $13 billion in the auction, but it used a pair of partnerships with smaller companies to claim about $3 billion in credits, lowering its actual bill to around $10 billion. Smaller businesses and companies new to the wireless business can become “designated entities” to claim the credits as a way to compete with large carriers for a slice of the airwaves.

Finance
Firms Back Tax Reform—Just Not Obama’s
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Vipal Monga and Joann S. Lublin
American companies are happy to see President Barack Obama get the ball rolling on corporate tax reform. They just don’t like where it’s going. The president has proposed letting companies bring back the approximately $2 trillion of profits now held at overseas subsidiaries at a tax rate of 14%. His proposal would then tax their ongoing foreign earnings at a minimum of 19%—a discount to the 35% standard corporate rate, but still higher than zero.

Budget sharpens focus on regulating Wall Street
THE HILL
Peter Schroeder
The president’s fiscal 2016 budget request includes his highest-ever funding requests for a pair of financial regulators. And he wants to help cover those costs and others in his budget by imposing a new fee on the nation’s largest financial institutions that is also aimed at curbing risky activity. The president’s budget calls for $1.7 billion to fund the Securities and Exchange Commission, and $322 million for the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Those increases would be boosts of 15 percent and 29 percent, respectively.

Small Banks Score Gains in Lifting Regulation
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Victoria McGrane and Ryan Tracy
Small banks are scoring big victories in their efforts to relax postcrisis rules by delivering a consistent message to lawmakers and policy makers: We’re not Wall Street. Since the 2010 Dodd-Frank law ushered in a spate of new regulations, community bankers have fanned out across Washington to emphasize the differences between small “Main Street” banks focused on local lending and Wall Street firms they say are fixated on transaction volume. In conversations with lawmakers, small bankers argue many of the rules intended to address problems at the big banks are weighing heavily on community banks, impeding their ability to grow, make a profit and lend.

Court Sets Up a Hurdle, Not a Barrier, for Insider Trading Cases
NEW YORK TIMES
Peter J. Henning
It is interesting to see how a few words in a judicial opinion can mean so much. One sentence in the recent appeals court decision in United States v. Newman that overturned the convictions of two hedge fund traders has caused the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission to cry foul and ask for its removal, contending the statement will imperil the government’s efforts to crack down on insider trading.

How the Justice Department, S&P Came to Terms
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Timothy W. Martin and Andrew Grossman
A record settlement expected Tuesday between the Justice Department and Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services came together over two days in mid-January when the two sides agreed to move past a feud triggered by a surprise downgrade of U.S. debt, according to people familiar with the talks.

Politics
Closing Education Gap Will Lift Economy, a Study Finds
NEW YORK TIMES
Patricia Cohen
Study after study has shown a yawning educational achievement gap between the poorest and wealthiest children in America. But what does this gap costs in terms of lost economic growth and tax revenue? That’s what researchers at the Washington Center for Equitable Growth set out to discover in a new study that concluded the United States could ultimately enrich everybody by improving educational performance for the typical student.

Barack Obama’s ‘have-it-all’ budget
POLITICO
David Nather
President Barack Obama released a $4 trillion budget Monday designed to convince Americans that they can have it all: more tax breaks for the middle class, more spending on government programs, and just enough cuts and tax hikes to keep the nation’s deficits under control. To pay for it, Obama proposed raising a number of taxes on wealthy taxpayers or businesses — some of them already dismissed as nonstarters by the Republican Congress. They include fees on big banks and taxes on companies that do business overseas — plus spending cuts on health programs and other savings — to cover the costs of all the new initiatives.

Obama’s not entitled to ignore the deficit
USA TODAY
Editorial
But more important is what the spending plan would not do. It wouldn’t deal with the government’s long-term financial woes, driven largely by the soaring costs of benefit programs. Sure, the president’s projected deficits for the next few years would dip below $500 billion, after topping $1 trillion during his first four years. But with 10,000 Baby Boomers turning 65 each day, it’s delusional to view deficit control as mission accomplished. The Congressional Budget Office, which projects further out than the White House, predicts annual deficits back over $1 trillion in 10 years.

President’s plan helps families
USA TODAY
Sen. Bernie Sanders
And at a time when senior poverty is increasing, we must expand, not cut, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid benefits. As most Americans know, billionaire campaign contributors and corporate lobbyists exercise enormous influence in Washington, which is why the rich get richer while almost everyone else gets poorer. Enough is enough! Let’s join together and fight for a budget that helps working families, and not just the top 1%.

Obama Unchained
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Editorial
These trends explain why deficits are lower for now but start to widen after 2018 despite Mr. Obama’s tax increases and economic growth projections of 2.6% on average for the next five years. The Congressional Budget Office predicts 2.4% growth, which means even less revenue. Oh, and even with lower deficits, debt held by the public will be 75% of GDP this year, the highest level since 1950, and up from only 39.3% as recently as 2008. Mr. Obama’s previous budgets at least pretended to care about these long-term fiscal problems, so in that sense this effort is more honest. Republicans can block Mr. Obama’s revival of tax and spend politics, but they still need his signature to arrest America’s coming fiscal crackup. On the evidence of this budget, they’re unlikely to get even the back of his hand.

Taxes Unlimited
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Editorial
President Obama’s budget is remarkable in many ways (see above), but no more than in its obsession with higher taxes. The guy won’t give up. He’s the Terminator of tax collection, and not in a good way. Two years ago the President used his leverage from expiring tax-cut provisions to impose the largest tax increase in U.S. history. But already he’s back for more, proposing no less than another $1.44 trillion tax increase over a decade starting in 2016.

Measles Proves Delicate Issue to G.O.P. Field
NEW YORK TIMES
Jeremy W. Peters and Richard Pérez-Peña
Gov. Chris Christie’s trade mission to London was suddenly overshadowed on Monday after he was quoted as saying that parents “need to have some measure of choice” about vaccinating their children against measles. The New Jersey governor, who is trying to establish his credibility among conservatives as he weighs a run for the Republican nomination in 2016, later tried to temper his response. His office released a statement clarifying that “with a disease like measles there is no question kids should be vaccinated.” Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, a physician, was less equivocal, telling the conservative radio host Laura Ingraham on Monday that parents should absolutely have a say in whether to vaccinate their children for measles.

The GOP Elite Puts Its Foot Down
POLITICO
Bill Scher
Shots have been fired. The GOP herd is beginning to be culled. In less than a week, the establishment hounded Mitt Romney out, and the conservative movement wrote Sarah Palin out. The message from Republican insiders is clear: We cannot let our primary become another clown show.

Jeb Bush and the Power of Positive Thinking
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Gerald F. Seib
In talking privately to his supporters and advisers, and in his own limited public remarks so far, Mr. Bush has made it clear that he wants his campaign to be distinguished by a positive and optimistic tone, which he thinks will contrast favorably with most of political discourse in recent years and with most of Washington debate these days.