FACTBOX-Jobs, health care top U.S. Congress agenda

With voter anxiety over the economy remaining high, Democrats hope to bring down the 10 percent unemployment rate before the November congressional election. The House of Representatives passed a $155 billion bill last month that aims to stimulate the job market through infrastructure projects and helping states pay the salaries of public employees.

In the Senate, Democrats Byron Dorgan and Dick Durbin have been paring back 121 job-related proposals into a package they are expected to unveil in coming weeks. Their proposal is likely to differ substantially from the House version, with provisions that boost small businesses and renewable energy efforts, aides said.



The Senate might not pass a jobs bill until March, which would have to be reconciled with the House version before President Barack Obama could sign it into law.



HEALTHCARE



Democrats are seeking to iron out differences between sweeping bills passed by the Senate and House to revamp the $2.5 trillion U.S. healthcare system, Obama's top domestic priority. Polls show a public backlash against the plan. But Democrats say they expect polls to be more supportive once they strike a deal that Obama can sign into law.



FINANCIAL REGULATION



Financial regulation reform, another top Obama priority, will dominate debate in the Senate Banking Committee in coming weeks, with a bill likely to emerge as early as next month.



The House approved a measure in December that cracks down on big banks, hedge funds, executive pay and the derivatives market, while setting up new government bodies to deal with financial risks to economic stability.



Republicans and banking lobbyists want to block or weaken a bill, offered by Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd, that in some ways is tougher than the House bill.



Dodd's recent decision to retire at the end of the year has complicated the measure's outlook.



CLIMATE CHANGE



Senator John Kerry is trying to break a deadlock over climate-control legislation that he and his fellow Democrats want to put to a vote during the first half of the year. Obama says climate control is another of his priorities, and he led negotiations last month in Copenhagen at an international summit on the topic. But with the November election, it's unclear whether enough senators will be willing to vote for a bill that could end up raising energy and other consumer prices during hard economic times.



DEBT LIMIT AND DEFICIT CONTROL



Lawmakers raised the country's debt limit to $12.4 trillion in December, but they will have to hike it further when the Treasury Department reaches that limit in coming weeks.



Democratic leaders have said they want to raise the limit by at least $1.8 trillion so they won't have to revisit the issue before the election.



The Senate plans a vote to increase the debt limit on Wednesday and could lessen the pain by coupling it with action on two measures that backers say could bring spending under control.



One proposal would create a commission that would give lawmakers political cover to back spending cuts, tax hikes or other measures to reduce the deficit.



The other, known as "paygo," would require new spending to be offset with tax hikes or spending cuts elsewhere, although there could be a wide range of exceptions.



Both measures face substantial hurdles, but lawmakers are in talks with the White House to hammer out a compromise. One possible outcome: a tougher paygo law, combined with a budget commission set up by the White House.



AFGHANISTAN



Lawmakers are awaiting a request from Obama for money to pay for his decision to send 30,000 more U.S. troops to Afghanistan. The administration is expected to ask Congress for $33 billion for the troop increase announced by Obama in December.



Congress appears certain to approve funding, but it will be a tough vote for many. Democrats are divided over Obama's decision. Republicans largely back it and are expected to provide the needed votes to clear the funds.



IRAN



Democrats and Republicans are eager to give Obama more tools to sanction Iran for refusing to stop its nuclear work.



Before senators went home for the holidays, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said he wanted to hold a vote after the break on a bill that directs the president to sanction companies that supply gasoline to Iran. A similar measure already has passed the House.



But it is unclear whether the Senate will go ahead with its vote because the administration has grown cool to broad-based sanctions. It is looking instead at focused sanctions against Iran's leadership

Source:reuters.com/a

Obama Meets With Security Team

The Obama administration has suspended transfers of Yemeni detainees held at the military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to their home country, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said Tuesday.

Mr. Gibbs said dozens of Guantanamo Bay detainees once believed to be bound for Yemen will instead be sent to a prison in Thomson, Ill., once the all-but-empty prison is purchased and refurbished by the federal government.

"Any additional transfers to Yemen would not be a good idea," Mr. Gibbs said.

The decision marked another after effect of the failed plot to bomb a Northwest Airlines jet on Christmas Day.

About 45 of the more than 90 Yemeni detainees remaining at Guantanamo qualify for repatriation, U.S. officials say. If they were nationals of another country they would be sent home, officials say, but instead could end up being held at the Thomson, Ill., prison that Obama administration officials are preparing to house some Guantanamo detainees.

Mr. Obama is expected to announce new security measures after meetings Tuesday afternoon with his cabinet, national security team and members of Congress, following the failed Christmas Day bombing attempt. But White House officials said they don't expect prominent officials to lose their jobs, nor is the president expected to announce any dramatic reorganization of transportation security.

Mr. Obama is expected to speak at 4 p.m. EST. Mr. Obama had ordered two reviews after the botched attack—on screening for airline passengers and on the U.S. terror watch-list system.

The Obama administration said Monday it transferred dozens of names from a broad terrorism database to watch lists that are more closely monitored in an effort to plug security holes revealed by the bombing attempt.

Mr. Obama met Monday with White House counterterrorism chief John Brennan, National Security Adviser James Jones and Deputy National Security Adviser Tom Donilon ahead of the broader security team meeting Tuesday.

At that meeting, White House officials said, Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Robert Mueller is expected to detail the investigation into how Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was able to allegedly smuggle explosives onto a Northwest Airlines flight, despite warnings about him and numerous signs a terrorism plot was in the works.

Attorney General Eric Holder will detail plans to prosecute Mr. Abdulmutallab in federal court, and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano will discuss detection capabilities that are being reviewed and bolstered. Mr. Brennan will lay out initial findings of a security review, and more than a half-dozen agency heads, from the Department of Energy to the Central Intelligence Agency, will present their internal reviews as well as changes they are implementing in the wake of the Christmas Day plot.

Mr. Obama has attributed the plot to the al Qaeda affiliate in Yemen, which also has claimed credit for sending Mr. Abdulmutallab on his alleged mission.

White House spokesman Bill Burton said counterterrorism officials have examined "thousands upon thousands" of names from the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment list, to which Mr. Abdulmutallab was added in November. Dozens of names were shifted to the Transportation Security Administration's no-fly list, or to the Secondary Security Screening Selection list, also known as the selectee list.

The Christmas Day bombing attempt and recriminations that followed have set in motion policy responses with global reverberations. Security forces in Yemen, following consultations with U.S. officials, killed two alleged al Qaeda militants Monday in a village outside the capital of San'a.

The U.S. embassy reopened Tuesday, after a two-day closure, citing "successful counterterrorism operations" conducted by the government of Yemen the day before. The British embassy, which also closed Sunday, resumed operations except for its consular and visa sections. Other Western embassies maintained heightened security Tuesday.

Intelligence, defense and law-enforcement agencies forwarded reports to the White House Monday night on their assessments of what Mr. Obama called "systemic" failures that allowed the bombing plot to proceed. The White House is expected to lay out a set of policy responses this week.

The earliest word about Mr. Abdulmutallab, much of which was piecemeal and unspecific, appears to have come via intercepts made by the National Security Agency, U.S. officials said. The agency is monitoring suspected extremists in Yemen, including radical U.S.-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who had contact with Mr. Abdulmutallab and with the suspect in the Fort Hood, Texas, shooting spree in November.

Some NSA intercepts date to late summer of 2009 when "chatter" suggested extremist groups in Yemen were preparing an attack employing a Nigerian. Officials said the information wasn't specific and that only in hindsight was its importance known.

Later, U.S. embassy consular officials and a CIA official met in Nigeria with the bombing suspect's father, who relayed concerns about Mr. Abdulmutallab's possible radicalization. The State Department says it made a report that was added to Mr. Abdulmutallab's file for future use in case he applied for a new visa.

The CIA official in Nigeria prepared a report and forwarded it to Washington, where Mr. Abdulmutallab was added to the nation's broadest terrorism database. The information, however, wasn't disseminated to other parts of the U.S. counterterrorism network.

Much of the data flowing into U.S. security agencies is supposed to be pulled together at the National Counterterrorism Center, which falls under the director of national intelligence. The counterterrorism center has said the CIA lacked specific information that would have allowed it to put Mr. Adbulmutallab on a no-fly list.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton Monday defended the State Department's handling of the case. Based on the information that she has now, Ms. Clinton said, the department "fully complied with the requirements set forth in the interagency process" about what should be done when information is provided about a threat. But, she said, "We are not satisfied. We are conducting an internal review."

Source:wsj.com/

U.S., U.K. Close Yemen Embassies; Brown Cites ‘Failing State’

Jan. 4 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. and U.K. closed their embassies in Yemen, citing threats of attacks, as officials voiced concern over al-Qaeda’s presence in what British Prime Minister Gordon Brown called a “failing state.”

White House counterterrorism chief John Brennan said intelligence indicated that al-Qaeda plans attacks in Sana’a, the capital, “possibly against our embassy, possibly against U.S. personnel.” Shutting the embassy “was the prudent thing to do,” Brennan said yesterday on ABC’s “This Week” program.

The U.K. and U.S. are offering more security aid for Yemen, an impoverished Arabian Peninsula nation which is emerging as a base for al-Qaeda attacks as the terrorist group comes under pressure in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

U.K. Prime Minister Brown, who called Yemen a “failing state” in an interview with the British Broadcasting Corp. yesterday, will convene a Jan. 28 aid conference on Yemen in London at which the U.K. will seek to enlist support from oil- rich Gulf nations.

The Yemen branch of al-Qaeda claimed responsibility for the Dec. 25 attack, in which Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was charged with trying to blow up a Northwest Airlines flight with 278 passengers.

The failed attack prompted the U.S. Transportation Security Administration to issue new rules yesterday calling for “enhanced screening” of U.S.-bound air travelers who have passed through “countries of interest,” as well as requiring random checks on other international flights.



Other Attacks Feared



Brennan, President Barack Obama’s assistant for homeland security and counterterrorism, said there are “probably several hundred” al-Qaeda members in Yemen and the U.S. worries they may be training other operatives for attacks in the U.S. and elsewhere similar to the one attempted by Abdulmutallab.

“We’re not going to take any chances with the lives of our diplomats and others” at the American embassy, Brennan said on “Fox News Sunday,” one of four Sunday news shows on which he appeared.

Asked if American troops might be sent to Yemen, Brennan said: “We’re not talking about that at this point at all.”

“The Yemeni government has demonstrated their willingness to take the fight to al-Qaeda,” Brennan said. “They’re willing to accept our support. We’re providing them everything that they’ve asked for.”

The embassy closures came a day after the top U.S. general in the region, David Petraeus, paid an unannounced visit to Yemen and pledged more assistance in combating terrorism.



Doubling U.S. Aid



Petraeus, in talks Jan. 2 in Sana’a with President Ali Abdullah Saleh, reaffirmed the U.S. commitment to support anti- terrorism efforts in Yemen, the Yemeni presidency said in a statement on its Web site. Petraeus told reporters in Baghdad on Jan. 1 that the U.S. in fiscal 2010 will almost double last year’s $70 million in security aid for Yemen.

“The Yemeni president and parliament take this threat very seriously,” Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in the Middle East and Central Asia, said in Baghdad. “And that is of enormous significance, especially in a country facing such challenges.”

The London conference should concentrate on Yemen’s $11 billion development needs as well as anti-terrorism assistance, Deputy Minister for Planning and International Cooperation Hisham Sharaf said by phone from Sana’a yesterday.

A November 2006 donors’ conference in London led to pledges of $5.7 billion in aid for Yemen, almost half from Gulf nations, of which only $415 million has been received, Sharaf said.

“What is needed is a long-term aid strategy,” said Mustafa Alani, a regional security expert from the Dubai-based Gulf Research Center. “It would be wrong to focus only on security and counterterrorism.”



Other Challenges



Yemen is also struggling to subdue both an insurgency by northern Shiite Muslim rebels that has drawn in neighboring Saudi Arabia, a key U.S. ally, and a secessionist movement in the south. It is the poorest Arab nation and the government expects oil reserves that fund 70 percent of the budget to run out over the next decade.

Obama and Brown agreed to fund a police unit in Yemen to target terrorism and will support coast guard operations in the Arabian Peninsula nation, according to an e-mailed statement from the two governments yesterday.

Yemen said Dec. 24 it had foiled an al-Qaeda attack on the U.K. embassy a week earlier modeled on a twin suicide car bombing on the U.S. embassy in September 2008 that killed 17 people, including seven security guards and seven attackers.



Al-Qaeda Base



Yemen has become an increasingly important base for al- Qaeda, Yemeni Foreign Minister Abu Bakr al-Qirbi said on Dec. 29.

Abdulmutallab, a 23-year-old, spent about three months in Yemen before leaving the country in early December. He told U.S. investigators that in Yemen he received training and the bomb- making materials he used in his attempt to blow up the airliner.

Brennan said U.S. intelligence agencies had “snippets” of information that were recognized “in hindsight” to be related to the failed attack. There was a “failure to integrate and piece together those bits of information,” he said.

The top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Kit Bond of Missouri, said the U.S. national security system failed.

“With all of the leads dangling out there, somebody screwed up by not reporting it,” said Bond. In addition, the airport screening “was a disaster,” he said.

The Intelligence Committee, one of several congressional panels planning investigations of the incident, will hold a hearing Jan. 21. Bond, appearing yesterday on Fox, said there are no grounds at this point to fire Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair or Leon Panetta, head of the Central Intelligence Agency.



Other Criticism



Other Republicans criticized the Democratic Obama administration’s anti-terrorism efforts.

“What we had in this case was a failure to act on a very credible report from the terrorist’s father that should, at the very least, have caused the State Department to revoke his visa,” Senator Susan Collins, a Maine Republican, said on “This Week.” Abdulmutallab’s father warned officials at the U.S. embassy in Nigeria that he was worried about his son’s extremist views, U.S. authorities said.

“Why wasn’t this individual’s visa revoked once we had such a credible report that he posed a threat?” Collins said.

She said it is “unacceptable” that there is no screening system in place to detect the explosive used in the Christmas Day incident, even eight years after would-be shoe-bomber Richard Reid used “the exact same explosive.”



Enemy Combatant



Senator Jim DeMint, a South Carolina Republican, said the U.S. “probably lost valuable information” by not viewing the attempted airline bombing as an act of war and the suspect as an enemy combatant.

“If we had treated this Christmas Day bomber as a terrorist, he would have immediately been interrogated military- style, rather than given the rights of an American and lawyers,” DeMint said on CNN.

Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri, also appearing on CNN, said it is “unfair and, frankly, political to take pot shots at the president as we respond to this failure in our systems that we’ve got to get fixed.”




--With assistance from Khaled Abdullah in Sana’a, Clementine Fletcher and Scott Hamilton in London, and Todd Shields in Washington. Editors: Bill Schmick, Ann Hughey.

Source:businessweek.com/