Sen. Schumer Reintroduces Media Shield Law

Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images(WASHINGTON) -- Faced with blowback after it was revealed this week that the Department of Justice had secretly obtained Associated Press phone records, the White House and Senate Democrats are reviving legislation to protect journalists.

Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., on Wednesday reintroduced the media shield bill, The Free Flow of Information Act of 2013, which would aim to protect journalists from having to reveal information, including source identities, as well as establish a legal framework for determining the “limited circumstances” when this information could be subject to compelled disclosure in court.

“The White House has been in contact with Sen. Schumer, and we are glad to see that that legislation will be reintroduced, because he believes strongly that we need to provide the protections to the media that this legislation would do,” White House Press Secretary Jay Carney told reporters Wednesday. “The president believes that the balance that we need to achieve needs to allow the maximum amount of freedom for the media to pursue investigative journalism that’s possible. And the media shield law that he supports, or bill that he supports, would go a long way towards achieving that.”

It was unclear, bill sponsors admitted, whether the bill would have changed the outcome in the AP phone records case.

Attorney General Eric Holder expressed support for such a law at a hearing of the full House Judicial Committee Wednesday afternoon after being asked about the Department of Justice’s authority to prosecute reporters for publishing classified information.

“With regard to the potential prosecution of the press for the disclosure of material, that is not something that I’ve ever been involved in, heard of or would think would be a wise policy,” Holder said in response to a question from Rep. Hank Johnson, D-Ga. “In fact, my view is quite the opposite....There should be a shield law with regard to the press’ ability to gather information and to disseminate it. The focus should be on those people who break their oaths and put the American people at risk, not reporters who gather this information.”

The bill does not provide an absolute privilege for journalists. Prosecutors would have to convince a judge that the information at issue would “prevent or mitigate an act of terrorism or harm to national security.”

“This kind of law would balance national security needs against the public’s right to the free flow of information. At minimum, our bill would have ensured a fairer, more deliberate process in this case,” Schumer said.

This bill was last considered by the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2009 but stalled in the full Senate.

The Reporters’ Committee for Freedom of the Press is hopeful this latest attempt to pass a shield law will be successful.  But the group is concerned that the Schumer bill’s exception for national security is overly broad.

“If you say ‘any national security threat, as defined by the administration,’ they’re going to overuse it,” said the committee’s legal defense director, Gregg Leslie.  ”We know that for the same reasons they overreached in this case.”

Copyright 2013 ABC News Radio

Rep. Steve King Passes on Iowa Senate Seat

OFFICE OF REP. STEVE KING(WASHINGTON) -- Rep. Steve King of Iowa, an outspoken conservative firebrand, will not seek the Republican nomination for his state’s open Senate seat, ABC News has learned.

“I will not run for Senate in 2014,” King said in a tweet Friday evening. “A Senate race takes me out of urgent battles in Congress that can’t wait until 2015. Many thanks to all.”

The prospect of King’s candidacy to fill the seat of retiring Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, worried the Republican establishment in Washington. He was singled out by American Crossroads, the leading GOP outside advocacy group, as a candidate who would struggle to win a general election.

King pledged to ignore the criticism, but Republican aides said it became clear in recent weeks that fundraising would be a steep challenge, given his outspoken views on a variety of issues, particularly immigration.

Harkin is retiring after three decades in Washington.

The decision by King opened the door to other Republican candidates, but also suggested Rep. Bruce Braley, a Democrat, had the upper hand – for now, at least.

Copyright 2013 ABC News Radio

Senate Will Vote Wednesday on Gun Control Legislation

iStockPhoto/Thinkstock(WASHINGTON) -- The day of reckoning is Wednesday for the embattled Manchin-Toomey background check provision and a myriad of other gun amendments, including a ban on assault weapons and high-capacity clips.

The outcome will determine the fate of the biggest gun control legislation the Senate will vote on in two decades.

A 4 p.m. vote on the Manchin-Toomey amendment will kick off the votes.

The amendment, proposed this past week as a bipartisan compromise from Sen. Joe Manchin, a Democrat from West Virginia, and Sen. Pat Toomey, a Republican from Pennsylvania, always faced an uphill climb to pass in the Senate.

But the first real signs of trouble came Monday when a vote on the amendment was delayed from being formally scheduled when it was clear that the votes were not yet there for it to pass. By Tuesday, momentum seemed to slip away bit by bit when a few senators key to the outcome of the vote, including Sen. Dean Heller, R-Nev., Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D., and Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., announced that they could not vote for the bill.

The amendment will need 60 votes to pass.  And as of Tuesday night, the votes are not there yet.

When Manchin was asked by ABC News if he had 60 votes locked down, he said: “We need more than we have.”

Sen. Mark Kirk of Illinois, one of the Republican supporters for expanding background checks, said he was still working to win over some Republican senators. When asked if his side had enough votes to pass the amendment, he said: “We are not ready for a vote.”

The vote will be razor thin – so thin that neither side was sounding confident.

There are three Republican senators and four Democratic senators believed to still be undecided — John McCain, R-Ariz., Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H., Mary Landrieu, D-La., Mark Begich D-Alaska, Heidi Heitkamp, D-N.D., and Mark Pryor, D-Ark.

Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., was seen as a wild card because, although he supports the amendment, he has been ill and home in New Jersey.  Aides said Lautenberg “hopes” to get back for the vote Wednesday.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., sounded a bit resigned Tuesday when he defended the bill’s momentum while, in the same breath, admitting that the votes may not be there. Regardless, he said, gun control supporters have the “wind at our back.”

President Obama made calls to the few undecided senators Tuesday, ABC News’ Jonathan Karl reported. A White House official said there still was a path to 60 votes but conceded it is “a narrow path.”

Yet the situation remained fluid, Republican and Democratic aides told ABC News, and either outcome was possible when the voting was to begin at 4 p.m. on Wednesday.

Following the Manchin-Toomey amendment vote, the Senate will vote on at least eight other gun amendments, all of which matter to the debate. They included voting up or down on an assault weapons ban, the issue of concealed carry, a high-capacity clip ban and mental health provisions.

Copyright 2013 ABC News Radio

SNL Spoofs Senate's Work On Gun Control

iStockphoto/Thinkstock(NEW YORK) -- Days after the Senate cleared a significant hurdle in the debate on new gun measures, Saturday Night Live took aim at the Senate’s work on gun control in its cold open sketch last night, spoofing the Senate’s cloture vote on guns and the Manchin-Toomey background check deal reached this week.

"This week The Senate voted 68 to 31 to begin debating the idea of discussing gun control," the President Obama character, who is played by Jay Pharaoh, said of the Senate’s cloture vote Thursday. "Let me say that again. They've agreed to think about talking about gun control."

Obama then called on Sens. Joe Manchin, D-W.V., played by Jason Sudeikis, and Pat Toomey, R-Penn., portrayed by Bill Hader, to join him on stage to tout the background check deal they brokered this week.

"These men risked everything for this bill," he said. "I mean, Senator Manchin represents West Virginia and he's proposing gun reform? He's gonna lose his job. And Senator Toomey, this man is a Republican who is willing to make just the slightest compromise on gun control? He's going to lose his job too."

"If our bill passes, no individual can purchase a handgun from a private dealer without being asked, 'Are you a good person?' as well as the follow-up question, 'Seriously, are you?'" the Toomey character said.

"Is this bill what we wanted? No," the Manchin character said. "Is it what the NRA wanted? No.  But does it at least help in some small way? No. Probably not."

Copyright 2013 ABC News Radio

Senate To Pull All-Night Friday ‘Vote-A-Rama’

iStockphoto/Thinkstock(WASHINGTON) -- The Senate is doing something a little out of character for a Friday in Congress:  they’re pulling an all-nighter.

A “vote-a-rama” is underway Friday night and senators will be voting on a myriad of back-to-back amendments to the budget bill in a marathon session which could take the Senate well past midnight into the wee hours of Saturday morning.

Friday night’s vote-a-rama  has the potential to break some records.

Since 1977, the most votes in a single vote-a-rama was 44 in 2008. Over 400 amendments have been filed for this vote-a-rama so far.

None of these amendments, even the ones that pass, are in much danger of becoming law. The House and the Senate will vote on separate budgets and the president isn’t required to sign a final version.

But senators are still put on the record and these votes have a tendency to find their way into campaign commercials. The Democrats who control the Senate have avoided moving forward with a budget in recent years. But they had to do it this year because House Republicans were able to tie senators’ paychecks to their ability to pass a budget.

All of that means you get amendments like this:  Democrats forced a vote on the Rep. Ryan’s House Budget. None of the Democrats support it, but now they’ll have Senate Republicans on record as either supporting the budget pathway or not.  That puts Republicans in a pickle since they want to be supportive of an effort to balance the budget in ten years – as Ryan’s budget does. But they also don’t want to vote for changing Medicare – his budget does that too – unless they absolutely have to.

Republican Sen. Hatch brought up a motion to repeal the medical device tax in the health care bill. Democrats don’t really want to gut the mechanisms that finance Obamacare. But they don’t really like the medical device tax either.

Tough votes like these would usually be blocked by party leaders. But not on this Friday night during the budget debate.

It is the Senate equivalent of the Wild West. In a vote-a-rama, amendments don’t have to be filed in order to be voted on. So there is no real way of knowing which of the 400 senators have bothered to file will actually receive votes until they do.  So we won’t know until later whether this vote-a-rama is one for the records books.

Any senator can offer an amendment simply by standing and seeking recognition on the floor – for example Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., has filed 51 amendments by himself alone.

A vote-a-rama ends when there is no senator on the floor seeking a vote on an amendment.

To be sure, most of the amendments that the Senate will vote on Friday night have nothing to do with the budget, the base bill. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said on the floor Friday morning that he hopes senators will keep the number of votes in the normal range of 25-30.

The vote-a-rama started at 3:50 pm.

And besides working well into a Friday night, there is something else that the Senate is doing that they haven’t done in awhile – vote on a budget. This will be the first time a formal budget will be voted on in the Senate for four years.

Copyright 2013 ABC News Radio

Senate Passes Stopgap Bill to Fund Government

iStockphoto/Thinkstock(WASHINGTON) -- The Senate did its part Wednesday to stave off a government shutdown by passing a continuing resolution in order to keep the government funded.

The continuing resolution, known in Washington shorthand as the CR, is a stopgap appropriations measure. Congress is up against a March 27 deadline to keep the government funded through September, the end of the fiscal year.

The bill passed with a vote of 73-26 and now heads over to the House of Representatives for final passage.

Important to note, especially in context of Senate Democrats’ stripping out the assault-weapons ban within their gun legislation this week, is that the CR’s base bill includes making four longstanding gun protections permanent.

Also included in the Senate’s updated CR are many amendments that help alleviate the impact of budget cuts resulting from the so-called sequester. One bipartisan amendment passed today will shift money in the budget to avoid furloughs of food-safety inspectors because of the sequester.

Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., had an amendment that aimed to force the White House to reopen White House tours. The amendment would redirect $6 million in funds toward preserving visitor services and maintenance activities at national parks such as the White House and Yellowstone.

The amendment failed and Democrats argued that it would not have helped reopen White House tours, anyway.

Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., said today, “Those tours are governed by the Secret Service budget, which is not part of this amendment. So that would not be affected.”

The Senate bill keeps the same spending levels as the House bill, setting the top-line overall rate of spending at $982 billion, down from $1.043 trillion the previous fiscal year, but adds three appropriations measures: for homeland security and commerce; agriculture; and justice and science funds.

Since the bill was tweaked by the Senate, it now must be passed again by the House of Representatives.

Speaker of the House John Boehner, R-Ohio, has said that so far it does not look as though the Senate’s changes to the CR will cause much of an uproar in the House of Representatives, meaning the bill as produced by the Senate could be easily and swiftly passed to President Obama for his final signature.

“I’ll wait and see what the Senate produces once it comes off the floor,” Boehner said last week of the Senate’s bill. “So far, so good.”

Copyright 2013 ABC News Radio

Democrats Present Their Budget Plan Wednesday

iStockPhoto/Thinkstock(WASHINGTON) -- The proposal being unveiled by Senate Democrats on Wednesday to balance the nation's books will be markedly different from what Republican Congressman Paul Ryan presented on Tuesday in that it offers both significant spending cuts and tax revenue increases.

Specifically, Washington Democrat Patty Murray, chair of the Senate Budget Committee, will propose $1 trillion in tax hikes through 2013 that would largely be paid for by closing tax breaks and loopholes enjoyed by wealthy Americans and corporations.

Murray says there will be an equal amount in spending reductions affecting a wide swath of programs, including entitlements, although the annual deficit of over $1 trillion would be shrunk rather than completely eradicated.

The measure gets its first vote in the committee on Thursday, with all 10 Democrats expected to approve the bill and all eight Republicans certain to vote against it.  It also marks the first budget offered by Senate Democrats since 2009.

Ryan's latest budget would cut $4.6 trillion in spending by 2023 and decrease net spending from $46 trillion to only $41 trillion over the next decade.  There would be no new taxes.

As promised, Ryan also wants to repeal the president’s healthcare law, simplify the tax code into two brackets and cut federal pensions.

Copyright 2013 ABC News Radio

Senator Carl Levin, Michigan Democrat, Won’t Seek Another Term

Roll Call/Getty Images(WASHINGTON) -- Democratic Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, the Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman, announced Thursday evening that he will not run for reelection in 2014.

Levin, 78, said the decision for him was “extremely difficult,” but he decided with his wife that he could do a better job as a senator without campaigning.

“We decided that I can best serve my state and nation by concentrating in the next two years on the challenging issues before us that I am in a position to help address,” Levin said. “In other words, by doing my job without the distraction of campaigning for reelection.”

Levin, the senior Senator from Michigan, was first elected into the Senate in 1978.

Copyright 2013 ABC News Radio

Senate Expected to Vote on Hagel Secretary of Defense Nomination

Junko Kimura/Getty Images(WASHINGTON) -- After a battle lasting nearly two months, characterized by tough interrogation and a partisan divide, lawmakers are expected to confirm President Obama's nomination of Chuck Hagel as the next secretary of defense Tuesday afternoon.

The Senate returns on Tuesday after a week off from debating Hagel's merit.  Republicans blocked a cloture vote to confirm Hagel on Valentine's Day, pushing the decision back until after their President's Day recess.

Democrats framed that rejection as a filibuster, while Republicans said they needed another week to discuss the candidate's record.

"This is a very controversial nominee, there is a desire to not end debate now," Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said on Feb. 14.  "We feel like come back next week, after the break, unless there is some bombshell I'd be ready to move on to vote."

Ten days later, GOP Sens. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma and John McCain of Arizona predicted the Senate will go through with a vote on Tuesday.  The nomination is likely to pass but with many "no" votes from the GOP.

A group of 15 Republicans sent a letter to Obama last week asking him to withdraw Hagel's nomination.  Coburn, one of the senators who signed that letter, said the fight among lawmakers over Hagel's qualifications would weaken him should he become secretary.

"I like Chuck Hagel as an individual, but the fact is, in modern times, we haven't had one defense secretary that's had more than three votes against him," Coburn said on Fox News Sunday this past weekend.  "And you're going to have 40 votes against him, or 35 votes.  And that sends a signal to our allies as well as our foes that he does not have broad support in the U.S. Congress, which limits his ability to carry out his job."

McCain did not sign the letter.

"I do not believe that Chuck Hagel, who is a friend of mine, is qualified to be secretary of defense, but I do believe that elections have consequences -- unfortunately," McCain told CNN's Candy Crowley last Sunday on State of the Union, explaining why he chose not to sign.  "And the president of the United States was reelected."

Obama announced his support for Hagel two weeks before the kick-off of his second term.

Hagel is a former GOP senator from Nebraska and Purple-Heart-decorated Vietnam veteran.  If confirmed, he would be the first former enlisted member of the Armed Forces to serve as secretary of defense.  But he has been an unpopular pick from the start, with groups claiming he was anti-Israel and anti-gay rights.

Outgoing Defense Secretary Leon Panetta will not be in Washington, D.C., to attend Hagel’s confirmation hearing.  Pentagon spokesman George Little said on Monday that Panetta, who is at home in California, will watch it on C-SPAN.

Copyright 2013 ABC News Radio

Senate Democrats Protect Corporate Jet Loophole

iStockphoto/Thinkstock

By Jonathan Karl

(WASHINGTON) -- Listening to the White House, you’d think the key to averting the across-the-board spending cuts (the dreaded “sequester”) set to take place on March 1 is closing the tax break for owners of private jets.

Here was White House Press Secretary Jay Carney last week: “How do you explain to a senior that we’re doing this, asking you to sacrifice, but we’re not saying that corporate jet owners should lose their special tax incentive?”

On Wednesday, Carney summed up the Republican position this way: “We’d rather see our national security undermined than corporate jet owners, God forbid, give up their tax break.”

And President Obama in an interview Wednesday with KAKE-TV in Wichita: “What we don’t want to do is give somebody who’s buying a corporate jet an extra tax break.”

Carney has brought up the corporate jet tax break at every single briefing this week.

Listening to these White House statements, one might think that the Democratic plan to avert the spending cuts would close that loophole for private jets.

But the Senate Democratic plan – which has been endorsed by the White House and is, in fact, the only Democratic plan actively under consideration currently – doesn’t touch corporate jets.

ABC News asked Carney if the White House is upset that the Senate Democrats’ plan protects corporate jets.  His answer:

“Our position – in the president’s plan that has been available for ages but Republicans and some reporters pretend doesn’t exist – is that the corporate jet loophole should be eliminated. We’d be fine if it were eliminated as part of the revenue component of a sequester buy-down or as part of broader tax reform in a bigger balanced deficit reduction deal -- either way.  And either way, Republicans oppose it, and would rather see sequester hit than ask corporate jet owners to give up their special tax break. How is that not true?”

Even if the Senate plan did end the tax break for private jets, it wouldn’t make much of a difference. The tax break – which allows the owners of private jets to depreciate their airplanes over five years instead of the standard seven years for commercial airplanes – would raise less than $300 million a year. That’s a tiny fraction of the $85 billion in across-the-board cuts scheduled to go into effect this year.

But – even so – the Senate Democratic plan allows that tax break to continue – unchanged.

The White House also frequently mentions tax breaks for oil and gas companies. The Democratic plan does eliminate some of those, but even that doesn’t add up to much: Just $2 billion in the Senate Democratic plan.

Copyright 2013 ABC News Radio