WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Congress and the White House could raise the debt limit for a few months while they seek a comprehensive, long-term budget deal, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said on Sunday.
The Obama administration has warned it will run out of money to pay the nation's bills if Congress does not raise the $14.3 trillion debt limit by August 2 -- a prospect that could push the country back into recession and upend global financial markets.
Congressional Republicans, particularly in the House of Representatives, have balked at raising the debt ceiling unless it is accompanied by significant spending cuts.
McConnell said on Sunday the ceiling could be raised enough to last a few months so that negotiations can continue on a larger deal that would include changes to so-called entitlement programs like Medicare.
"The president and the vice president, everybody knows you have to tackle entitlement reform," McConnell said on CBS's "Face the Nation."
"If we can't do that, then we'll probably end up with a very short-term proposal over, you know, a few months. And we'll be back having the same discussion again in the fall," McConnell said.
Vice President Joe Biden is leading negotiations with congressional Democrats and Republicans who are trying to agree on how to narrow huge budget deficits and raise the debt limit so the United States can avoid defaulting on its financial obligations and keep borrowing money to pay its bills.
Biden and top Democratic and Republican lawmakers aim to reduce the country's stubborn budget deficits by $4 trillion over the next 10 years in order to give lawmakers the political cover to raise the debt ceiling.
The Biden-led group remains deadlocked over two areas that could provide the biggest budget savings.
Republicans say they will not back any tax increases, while Democrats say they will not reduce health benefits for retirees under the Medicare program. The cost of that program is projected to nearly double over the next 10 years.
Showing posts with label YAHOO NEWS. Show all posts
Showing posts with label YAHOO NEWS. Show all posts
Monday, June 20, 2011
Monday, June 13, 2011
NRC chief in hot seat for scrapping work on dump
In the two years that Gregory Jaczko has led the nation's independent nuclear agency, his actions to delay, hide and kill work on a disputed dump for high-level radioactive waste have been called "bizarre," `'unorthodox" and "illegal."
These harsh critiques haven't come just from politicians who have strong views in favor of the Yucca Mountain waste site in Nevada. They've come from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's own scientists and a former agency chairman.
An inspector general's report released last week exposed the internal strife under Jaczko. The internal watchdog said he intimidated staff members who disagreed with him and withheld information from members of the commission to gain their support.
The tactics disclosed in the investigative report are just the latest in a saga unfolding since President Barack Obama put the former aide to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, the Nevada Democrat who is Yucca's leading opponent, at the helm of the agency in May 2009. Less than a year after Jaczko was named chairman, the Energy Department sought to pull back its application to construct the dump.
Since then, Jaczko has made a series of decisions that have aided the administration's goal of shutting down Yucca Mountain. His purported reasons for doing so have come under attack by Congress, his fellow commissioners and in-house experts as being contrary to the 1982 law that requires the NRC to review the government's plans for an underground repository in Nevada for the country's spent nuclear fuel.
Emails and documents gathered by investigators on three House committees and reviewed by The Associated Press, along with interviews with NRC staff members, paint an even more damning portrait of the NRC leader. They also raise questions about whether the agency's independence and scientific integrity have been compromised to advance a political agenda.
"He was put there to stop Yucca Mountain, and that is what he is doing," said former NRC chairman and commissioner Dale E. Klein. Klein was appointed chairman in 2006 by President George W. Bush and left in March 2010.
The revelations come after the Japanese nuclear crisis exposed the risks associated with storing spent fuel in pools at a nuclear plant and after reports showing that $15 billion has been spent on Yucca Mountain even though it may never open.
"These actions not only violated the president's own highly promoted principles and directives on scientific integrity, transparency, and openness, but they have increased taxpayer liabilities ..., left nuclear waste sitting at reactor sites across the country with no plan for disposal and ultimately threatened the long-term potential of nuclear power," said Rep. Ralph Hall, R-Texas. Hall is chairman of the House science committee, one of three panels conducting investigations.
Rep. John Shimkus, R-Ill., put it more bluntly: "Science, existing law, and the need for long-term nuclear waste storage seem to be missing from this discussion," he said.
Both Jaczko and Obama have pledged to let public policy be shaped by science over politics. But last October, the NRC chief instructed his staff to stop work on one of the most critical questions surrounding Yucca Mountain: whether the stored radioactive waste would spoil groundwater in 10,000 years and would expose people to unsafe amounts of radiation for a million years.
After fighting Jaczko for its release, congressional aides who reviewed a draft of the analysis say it showed that NRC experts determined Yucca was safe. While Jaczko had not seen the document, his decision to halt the review meant the staff's conclusions were stripped from the report.
Klein, the former NRC chairman, told the AP in an interview that "the decision on safety is the independent regulator's job. They have not been given the opportunity to make the determination."
Jaczko says his actions are consistent with commission policy, and he has never expressed any personal views on the Yucca Mountain project.
In an AP interview, Jaczko declined to answer detailed questions but said all his actions were aimed at nuclear safety. The inspector general's report issued Friday found he had not broken the law.
Reid, his former boss, said in a statement that House Republicans should move on and help find "real solutions for safely managing nuclear waste." "Yucca Mountain is dead," he added.
But that report did not examine another decision Jaczko made related to Yucca: a decision to delay a vote on whether the Energy Department could withdraw its application for the project. Nearly a year after a separate nuclear licensing board ruled the application couldn't be withdrawn, the commission has yet to weigh in, even though a majority of commissioners have submitted their positions in writing.
Jaczko rejected the notion that politics is involved in the year-long delay. "Is the decision-making process taking a long time?" Jaczko said in the interview. "Yes. Is that unusual? Not entirely."
These two decisions have caused longtime staff members to become suspicious of Jaczko's motives. Before Jaczko shut down their efforts, agency experts were on track to deliver two of the safety reviews ahead of schedule. But in a memo issued June 11, 2010, Jaczko told the staff not to issue them early, a move that had employees asking if he had crossed a line. Four months later he shut down the work altogether.
Four of the most senior experts working on Yucca objected to Jaczko's move, saying it was a policy matter the full five-member commission needed to consider. Two commissioners agreed, but when one of them filed a motion to reverse Jaczko's decision, two other commissioners declined to participate. The two commissioners who declined to participate later told the inspector general that Jaczko did not fully disclose that his plans would terminate the work.
When commissioner William Magwood, a Democrat, confronted Jaczko about misleading him, the inspector general reported that Jaczko's reply was: "You should have asked."
Senior scientists with the high-level waste division also objected to a memo drafted by Christine Haney, a top NRC manager, on Feb. 4 providing the commission with an update on their work to close down the review. The memo, they argued, failed to mention that Jaczko was behind the decision to shut down the scientific evaluation.
"Every time I tried to find a different way to say chairman directed or the commission directed, I was told I could not say that," said Janet Kotra, a senior project manager who has been with the NRC for 27 years and worked full time on Yucca Mountain since 1993. "I could not include a declarative sentence that the chairman directed staff to terminate the review." She called it "a most unorthodox process."
Kotra's boss, King Stablein, supported her objection in correspondence to Haney and attached to the final memo. "Staff has struggled on a daily basis to figure out how to cope with this bizarre situation in a manner which would enable staff to maintain its integrity," he wrote on Feb. 3, 2011.
Haney, through a spokesman, declined to comment on the matter, and referred to her written response to staffers. It said that the chairman's decision fell outside the purpose of the memo and that the closure was "well vetted" by the commission.
Senior NRC officials played down the dispute over the memo in an interview with the AP, saying Jaczko has never shied away from his role in terminating the licensing review. The officials also said the objections of the staff were shared with the full commission.
Other staffers put their opinions in even stronger terms.
In an email dated Oct. 18, 2010, and marked "not for public disclosure", Daniel Graser, a data administrator for the board reviewing the Yucca application asked a board member and chief counsel for clarification on what he could do if he perceived that an action was illegal. "If we believe that a senior official is violating a federal law, what obligation do we have to report that, and, who do we report it to?" he asked.
Rep. Mike Simpson, R-Idaho, chairman of a House spending panel that oversees the NRC's budget, has called for Jackzo to step down and said his actions have damaged the NRC's reputation.
"It's supposed to be an apolitical organization that bases its decisions on science and facts and those kinds of things, and it has been that for many years," Simpson said. "Jaczko has allowed politics to enter the picture, and with many members of Congress, the credibility of the NRC has gone downhill."
These harsh critiques haven't come just from politicians who have strong views in favor of the Yucca Mountain waste site in Nevada. They've come from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's own scientists and a former agency chairman.
An inspector general's report released last week exposed the internal strife under Jaczko. The internal watchdog said he intimidated staff members who disagreed with him and withheld information from members of the commission to gain their support.
The tactics disclosed in the investigative report are just the latest in a saga unfolding since President Barack Obama put the former aide to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, the Nevada Democrat who is Yucca's leading opponent, at the helm of the agency in May 2009. Less than a year after Jaczko was named chairman, the Energy Department sought to pull back its application to construct the dump.
Since then, Jaczko has made a series of decisions that have aided the administration's goal of shutting down Yucca Mountain. His purported reasons for doing so have come under attack by Congress, his fellow commissioners and in-house experts as being contrary to the 1982 law that requires the NRC to review the government's plans for an underground repository in Nevada for the country's spent nuclear fuel.
Emails and documents gathered by investigators on three House committees and reviewed by The Associated Press, along with interviews with NRC staff members, paint an even more damning portrait of the NRC leader. They also raise questions about whether the agency's independence and scientific integrity have been compromised to advance a political agenda.
"He was put there to stop Yucca Mountain, and that is what he is doing," said former NRC chairman and commissioner Dale E. Klein. Klein was appointed chairman in 2006 by President George W. Bush and left in March 2010.
The revelations come after the Japanese nuclear crisis exposed the risks associated with storing spent fuel in pools at a nuclear plant and after reports showing that $15 billion has been spent on Yucca Mountain even though it may never open.
"These actions not only violated the president's own highly promoted principles and directives on scientific integrity, transparency, and openness, but they have increased taxpayer liabilities ..., left nuclear waste sitting at reactor sites across the country with no plan for disposal and ultimately threatened the long-term potential of nuclear power," said Rep. Ralph Hall, R-Texas. Hall is chairman of the House science committee, one of three panels conducting investigations.
Rep. John Shimkus, R-Ill., put it more bluntly: "Science, existing law, and the need for long-term nuclear waste storage seem to be missing from this discussion," he said.
Both Jaczko and Obama have pledged to let public policy be shaped by science over politics. But last October, the NRC chief instructed his staff to stop work on one of the most critical questions surrounding Yucca Mountain: whether the stored radioactive waste would spoil groundwater in 10,000 years and would expose people to unsafe amounts of radiation for a million years.
After fighting Jaczko for its release, congressional aides who reviewed a draft of the analysis say it showed that NRC experts determined Yucca was safe. While Jaczko had not seen the document, his decision to halt the review meant the staff's conclusions were stripped from the report.
Klein, the former NRC chairman, told the AP in an interview that "the decision on safety is the independent regulator's job. They have not been given the opportunity to make the determination."
Jaczko says his actions are consistent with commission policy, and he has never expressed any personal views on the Yucca Mountain project.
In an AP interview, Jaczko declined to answer detailed questions but said all his actions were aimed at nuclear safety. The inspector general's report issued Friday found he had not broken the law.
Reid, his former boss, said in a statement that House Republicans should move on and help find "real solutions for safely managing nuclear waste." "Yucca Mountain is dead," he added.
But that report did not examine another decision Jaczko made related to Yucca: a decision to delay a vote on whether the Energy Department could withdraw its application for the project. Nearly a year after a separate nuclear licensing board ruled the application couldn't be withdrawn, the commission has yet to weigh in, even though a majority of commissioners have submitted their positions in writing.
Jaczko rejected the notion that politics is involved in the year-long delay. "Is the decision-making process taking a long time?" Jaczko said in the interview. "Yes. Is that unusual? Not entirely."
These two decisions have caused longtime staff members to become suspicious of Jaczko's motives. Before Jaczko shut down their efforts, agency experts were on track to deliver two of the safety reviews ahead of schedule. But in a memo issued June 11, 2010, Jaczko told the staff not to issue them early, a move that had employees asking if he had crossed a line. Four months later he shut down the work altogether.
Four of the most senior experts working on Yucca objected to Jaczko's move, saying it was a policy matter the full five-member commission needed to consider. Two commissioners agreed, but when one of them filed a motion to reverse Jaczko's decision, two other commissioners declined to participate. The two commissioners who declined to participate later told the inspector general that Jaczko did not fully disclose that his plans would terminate the work.
When commissioner William Magwood, a Democrat, confronted Jaczko about misleading him, the inspector general reported that Jaczko's reply was: "You should have asked."
Senior scientists with the high-level waste division also objected to a memo drafted by Christine Haney, a top NRC manager, on Feb. 4 providing the commission with an update on their work to close down the review. The memo, they argued, failed to mention that Jaczko was behind the decision to shut down the scientific evaluation.
"Every time I tried to find a different way to say chairman directed or the commission directed, I was told I could not say that," said Janet Kotra, a senior project manager who has been with the NRC for 27 years and worked full time on Yucca Mountain since 1993. "I could not include a declarative sentence that the chairman directed staff to terminate the review." She called it "a most unorthodox process."
Kotra's boss, King Stablein, supported her objection in correspondence to Haney and attached to the final memo. "Staff has struggled on a daily basis to figure out how to cope with this bizarre situation in a manner which would enable staff to maintain its integrity," he wrote on Feb. 3, 2011.
Haney, through a spokesman, declined to comment on the matter, and referred to her written response to staffers. It said that the chairman's decision fell outside the purpose of the memo and that the closure was "well vetted" by the commission.
Senior NRC officials played down the dispute over the memo in an interview with the AP, saying Jaczko has never shied away from his role in terminating the licensing review. The officials also said the objections of the staff were shared with the full commission.
Other staffers put their opinions in even stronger terms.
In an email dated Oct. 18, 2010, and marked "not for public disclosure", Daniel Graser, a data administrator for the board reviewing the Yucca application asked a board member and chief counsel for clarification on what he could do if he perceived that an action was illegal. "If we believe that a senior official is violating a federal law, what obligation do we have to report that, and, who do we report it to?" he asked.
Rep. Mike Simpson, R-Idaho, chairman of a House spending panel that oversees the NRC's budget, has called for Jackzo to step down and said his actions have damaged the NRC's reputation.
"It's supposed to be an apolitical organization that bases its decisions on science and facts and those kinds of things, and it has been that for many years," Simpson said. "Jaczko has allowed politics to enter the picture, and with many members of Congress, the credibility of the NRC has gone downhill."
Thursday, June 9, 2011
OPEC leaves output on hold, causing oil price jump
unexpectedly left its production levels unchanged Wednesday, causing oil prices to jump, as senior officials said their meeting ended in disarray — a stunning admission for an organization that places a premium on consensus decision making.
OPEC officials said that because of a policy deadlock, the group will maintain present output ceilings with the option of meeting within the next three months to consider a hike.
"We are unable to reach consensus to ... raise our production," OPEC Secretary General Abdullah Al-Badri told reporters, in comments reflecting unusual tensions in the 12-nation Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries.
Saudi oil minister Ali Naimi called it "one of the worst meetings, we've ever had," while analysts covering OPEC for more than 20 years said they could not remember any other time that the normally closed group had admitted to such divisions in its ranks.
Some even saw the abortive meeting as a harbinger of demise for the organization, which produces more than a third of the world's petroleum.
"OPEC is ... on the point of break-up," said Marc Ostwald of Monument Securities. "A broader perspective is that the post World War II world order is fracturing in a spectacular fashion, be it the EU/Eurozone, the World Bank/IMF, (or) OPEC."
Other experts were less outspoken but agreed Wednesday's outcome would weaken the image of OPEC as a major regulator of oil markets.
"I think there were some tensions," said Jason Schenker, president of Prestige Economics. "But everyone has to do business and countries have different views on what the future of demand looks like."
The news caught markets by surprise, sending oil prices sharply higher. Benchmark crude for July delivery was up $1.25 to $100.34 per barrel in morning trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange after trading lower ahead of the OPEC meeting.
Saudi Arabia and other influential Gulf nations had pushed to increase production ceilings to calm markets and ease concerns that crude was overpriced for consumer nations struggling with their economies. Those opposed were led by Iran, the second-strongest producer within the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries.
Oil minister Rafael Ramirez of Venezuela_ like Iran, a price hawk — said there was a "very tight" discussion in OPEC, in comments to his nation's state media. Any production increase "could cause a collapse of our price," he added.
While the Saudis and the Iranians are frequently at loggerheads over pricing, past meetings normally fell in behind Saudi Arabia, which produces the lion's share of OPEC output. But this time, the Saudi-Iranian rivalry combined with major political and economic uncertainties to lead to deadlock.
Among the biggest worries is that unrest in Libya and Yemen could destabilize larger oil-producing nations in the region. The two countries normally produce less than 4 percent of the world's oil needs, and Saudi Arabia and others have boosted output to make up for much of the shortfall.
But while the Saudis have served notice that they are ready to further increase supplies to help compensate for the loss of the daily 1.6 million barrels normally brought to the market by Libya, other OPEC nations — already pumping close to capacity — cannot contribute much. This appeared to have fueled the strong opposition to an output ceiling hike.
Global economic weakness is also worrying producers and consumers.
Poor housing and employment reports from the United States added to the gloom spread by Europe's attempts to bail out governments and Japan's post-Fukushima slump. At its present price of around $100 a barrel, benchmark crude may be too expensive for nations struggling to make ends meet, worsening the economic picture and leading to less oil demand.
But with sputtering economies using less energy, raising output to lower prices also risks flooding the market, leading to a surplus that could drive prices below $80 a barrel. That benchmark, which is preferred by the Saudis and other moderate OPEC members, is considered too low by price hawks Iran and Venezuela.
Tuesday's sober assessment of the U.S. economy from Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke added to concerns, especially as the central banker failed to indicate that more monetary stimulus was likely.
"Despite all their efforts, the Saudis were not able to convince Iran and other countries to increase production," said Ehsan Ul-Haq, an analyst with KBC Energy Economics. " It means there is a huge disagreement — but it also means that it gives the Saudis free space to do what they like."
Going into the meeting, some OPEC nations had signaled that the ministers could opt to raise the output ceiling to actual production levels of around 26 million barrels a day. Add to that the daily 2.7 million barrels produced by Iraq, which is not bound by quotas, and OPEC would have been bringing more than 29 million barrels a day to the market.
The 11 OPEC members are already exceeding their current production quotas. Their output is an estimated 26.15 million barrels daily — about 1.3 million barrels above the daily overall OPEC production target of 24.85 million barrels a day agreed two years ago.
OPEC officials said that because of a policy deadlock, the group will maintain present output ceilings with the option of meeting within the next three months to consider a hike.
"We are unable to reach consensus to ... raise our production," OPEC Secretary General Abdullah Al-Badri told reporters, in comments reflecting unusual tensions in the 12-nation Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries.
Saudi oil minister Ali Naimi called it "one of the worst meetings, we've ever had," while analysts covering OPEC for more than 20 years said they could not remember any other time that the normally closed group had admitted to such divisions in its ranks.
Some even saw the abortive meeting as a harbinger of demise for the organization, which produces more than a third of the world's petroleum.
"OPEC is ... on the point of break-up," said Marc Ostwald of Monument Securities. "A broader perspective is that the post World War II world order is fracturing in a spectacular fashion, be it the EU/Eurozone, the World Bank/IMF, (or) OPEC."
Other experts were less outspoken but agreed Wednesday's outcome would weaken the image of OPEC as a major regulator of oil markets.
"I think there were some tensions," said Jason Schenker, president of Prestige Economics. "But everyone has to do business and countries have different views on what the future of demand looks like."
The news caught markets by surprise, sending oil prices sharply higher. Benchmark crude for July delivery was up $1.25 to $100.34 per barrel in morning trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange after trading lower ahead of the OPEC meeting.
Saudi Arabia and other influential Gulf nations had pushed to increase production ceilings to calm markets and ease concerns that crude was overpriced for consumer nations struggling with their economies. Those opposed were led by Iran, the second-strongest producer within the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries.
Oil minister Rafael Ramirez of Venezuela_ like Iran, a price hawk — said there was a "very tight" discussion in OPEC, in comments to his nation's state media. Any production increase "could cause a collapse of our price," he added.
While the Saudis and the Iranians are frequently at loggerheads over pricing, past meetings normally fell in behind Saudi Arabia, which produces the lion's share of OPEC output. But this time, the Saudi-Iranian rivalry combined with major political and economic uncertainties to lead to deadlock.
Among the biggest worries is that unrest in Libya and Yemen could destabilize larger oil-producing nations in the region. The two countries normally produce less than 4 percent of the world's oil needs, and Saudi Arabia and others have boosted output to make up for much of the shortfall.
But while the Saudis have served notice that they are ready to further increase supplies to help compensate for the loss of the daily 1.6 million barrels normally brought to the market by Libya, other OPEC nations — already pumping close to capacity — cannot contribute much. This appeared to have fueled the strong opposition to an output ceiling hike.
Global economic weakness is also worrying producers and consumers.
Poor housing and employment reports from the United States added to the gloom spread by Europe's attempts to bail out governments and Japan's post-Fukushima slump. At its present price of around $100 a barrel, benchmark crude may be too expensive for nations struggling to make ends meet, worsening the economic picture and leading to less oil demand.
But with sputtering economies using less energy, raising output to lower prices also risks flooding the market, leading to a surplus that could drive prices below $80 a barrel. That benchmark, which is preferred by the Saudis and other moderate OPEC members, is considered too low by price hawks Iran and Venezuela.
Tuesday's sober assessment of the U.S. economy from Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke added to concerns, especially as the central banker failed to indicate that more monetary stimulus was likely.
"Despite all their efforts, the Saudis were not able to convince Iran and other countries to increase production," said Ehsan Ul-Haq, an analyst with KBC Energy Economics. " It means there is a huge disagreement — but it also means that it gives the Saudis free space to do what they like."
Going into the meeting, some OPEC nations had signaled that the ministers could opt to raise the output ceiling to actual production levels of around 26 million barrels a day. Add to that the daily 2.7 million barrels produced by Iraq, which is not bound by quotas, and OPEC would have been bringing more than 29 million barrels a day to the market.
The 11 OPEC members are already exceeding their current production quotas. Their output is an estimated 26.15 million barrels daily — about 1.3 million barrels above the daily overall OPEC production target of 24.85 million barrels a day agreed two years ago.
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