A� The Daily Reflector, Sunday, November 20, 2011

washington

Budget woes could hurt defense A breakdown in high-stakes budget

talks in Congress could threaten plans for a missile defense shield in Europe.

Negotiators have shown little sign they will be able to meet this week’s deadline for reducing the deficit by $1.2 trillion. If they fail to agree, a new law mandates cuts throughout the federal government, in-cluding a big slice of the defense budget.

While it is not known what military spending would be cut, an expensive pro-gram aimed primarily at defending Europe is unlikely to be spared.

The U.S. sees the missile defense system, aimed at countering a threat from Iran, as part of its contribution to the NATO mili-tary alliance. With the United States com-plaining it makes a disproportionately large contribution to NATO, missile defense could be especially vulnerable to budget-cutters.

richmond, va.

Sex offenders left in prison limboHundreds of Virginia sex offenders

who already served their prison sen-tences are held behind bars for months — and some for years — while waiting to see if they’ll be sent to a psychiatric cen-ter indefinitely for treatment.

Judges acting on the requests of both prosecutors and defense attorneys routine-ly shrug off the legal deadline for making that decision, leaving the inmates in limbo well beyond their designated punishment and without access to the kind of treat-ment the state says they may need.

Attorneys and authorities blame the delays on court backlogs and note that in some cases, they benefit the inmates.

A review found that just one out of six cases gets decided by the deadline, which the law says should be extended only for “good cause.”

san francisco

Pepper spray video starts probeThe University of California, Davis,

has launched an investigation in the wake of video showing an officer using pepper spray on a group of protesters who appear to be sitting passively on the ground with their arms interlocked.

Calling the video “chilling,” UC Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi said on Satur-day she is forming a task force made up of faculty, students and staff to review the events surrounding the protests a day ear-lier. Katehi made the announcement in a message to the campus.

In the video, the officer displays a bottle before spraying its contents on the seated protesters in a sweeping motion.

Police have said protesters were warned repeatedly beforehand that force would be used if they didn’t move.

From Associated Press reports

the associated press

a police officer uses pepper spray as he walks down a line of occupy demonstrators sitting on the ground at the University of california on Friday.

NatioN

Supercommittee, Congress to face economic choicesBy andrew taylorthe associated press

WASHINGTON — If the deficit-cutting super-committee fails, Congress will face a crummy choice. Lawmakers can allow pay-roll tax cuts and jobless aid for millions to expire or they extend them and increase the nation’s $15 trillion debt by at least $160 billion.

President Barack Obama and Democrats on the deficit panel want to use the committee’s product to carry their jobs agenda. That includes cutting in half the 6.2 percent Social Security payroll tax and extending jobless benefits for people who have been unemployed for more than six months.

Also caught up in what promises to be a chaotic

legislative dash for the exits next month is the need to pass legislation to prevent an almost 30 percent cut

in Medicare payments to doctors. Several popular business tax breaks and relief from the alternative

minimum tax also expire at year’s end.

A debt plan from the supercommittee, it was hoped, would have served as a sturdy, filibuster-proof vehicle to tow all of these expiring provisions into law. But if the panel fails, as appears likely with Wednesday’s deadline nearing, a dysfunctional Congress will have to sort it all out.

There’s no guarantee it all can get done, especially giv-en the effect of those mea-sures on the spiraling debt.

Instead of cutting the deficit with a tough, bipar-tisan budget deal, Congress could pivot to spending enormous sums on expir-ing big-ticket policies.

If lawmakers rebel against the cost, as is pos-sible, they would bear re-sponsibility for allowing

policies such as the payroll tax cut, enacted a year ago to help prop up the econo-my, to lapse.

Last year’s extensions of jobless benefits and first-ever cut in the payroll tax were accomplished with borrowed money.

The 2 percent payroll tax cut expiring in December gave 121 million families a tax cut averaging $934 last year at a total cost of about $120 billion, according to the Tax Policy Center.

Obama wants to cut the payroll tax by another per-centage point for workers at a total cost of $179 billion and reduce the employer share of the tax in half as well for most companies, which carries a $69 billion price tag.

“The notion of imposing a new payroll tax on people after Jan. 1 in the midst of

this recession on working families is totally counter-productive,” said Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate.

Letting extended jobless assistance expire would mean that more than 6 mil-lion people would lose ben-efits averaging $296 a week next year, with 1.8 million cut off within a month.

Economist say those job-less benefits — up to 99 weeks of them in high un-employment states — are among the most effective way to stimulate the econ-omy because unemployed people generally spend the money right away.

“We will have to address those issues,” Durbin said.

Extending benefits to the long-term unem-ployed would cost almost $50 billion under Obama’s plan.

the associated press

sen. John Kerry, member of the Joint select committee on deficit reduction, often called the supercommittee, speaks to reporters following a closed-door meeting.

Republicans seek Iowa conservatives’ nodMost of the

Republican presidential candidates, with the exception of Mitt Romney, set their sights on early-voting Iowa for a discussion on issues such as religious faith, marriage and abortion.

thomas BeaUmontthe associated press

DES MOINES, Iowa — Most of the Republican presidential candidates, with the notable exception

■ of Mitt Romney, set their sights on early-voting Iowa for a discussion on the role of religious faith in public life, along with hot-button social issues such as mar-riage and abortion.

The setting was a fo-rum Saturday night host-ed by a new evangelical group trying to leave its mark on the campaign in a state where influential social conservatives have struggled to rally behind an alternative to Rom-ney.

While the former Mas-sachusetts governor has stayed near the top of na-

tional polls, some Republi-can activists have misgiv-ings about his record on cultural issues.

Romney’s six more so-cially conservative chal-lenges actively are com-peting in Iowa to emerge as the preferred candidate among Christian conser-vatives with just six weeks to go until the Jan. 3 cau-cuses.

“People are getting close to decision time,” former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum said at a campaign stop in Des Moines.

“I think you’re going to

see some coalescing in the next couple of weeks,” San-torum said.

Jobs, the economy and the deficit are voter pri-orities in Iowa and nation-ally, but it was a focus on social issues that drew the 2012 hopefuls to the event sponsored by The Family Leader, an organization started last by a former Republican candidate for governor, Bob Vander Plaats.

Scheduled to join Santo-rum were Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann, busi-nessman Herman Cain, former U.S. House Speaker

Newt Gingrich, Texas Rep. Ron Paul and Texas Gov. Rick Perry.

Romney declined the invitation and was cam-paigning in New Hamp-shire.

He is not competing ag-gressively for the social conservative vote in Iowa as he did in the 2008 presi-dential race.

His leaner Iowa cam-paign is focused more on holding supporters from his second-place finish four years ago and appeal-ing to economic conserva-tives.

But Romney also has

avoided multicandidate events in early-vot-ing states, even one this month in Iowa by the National Association of Manufacturers and co-hosted by Gov. Terry Branstad, a pro-business Republican.

Former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman also planned to skip the event.

He, too, has a mixed re-cord on social issues, has avoided campaigning in Iowa.

Huntsman is focusing his early-state campaign on New Hampshire, home of the leadoff primary.

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