The Oklahoma tornadoes that killed at least 24 people Monday have restarted the debate in Washington over emergency spending and whether it should be offset by cuts elsewhere in the  federal budget. 

It’s an ongoing battle for dollars that most recently flared in the wake of Hurricane Sandy last fall and resulted in a highly public and angry spat between New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and his fellow Republicans in Congress (including both senators from Oklahoma), who opposed some of the funding in the Sandy disaster-aid bill. 

On Tuesday, President Barack Obama declared a disaster in Oklahoma, making people in five counties eligible for federal aid such as temporary housing and low-cost loans to pay for uninsured property damage. He pledged federal support for “as long as it takes.”

Some of the aid will flow from the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Disaster Relief Fund, but it is not yet clear whether Congress will decide that an emergency spending bill is needed to refill that fund's account. 

At a press briefing Tuesday, House Speaker John Boehner repeatedly said, "We'll work with the administration on making sure that they have the resources they need to help the people of Oklahoma." He sidestepped reporters' questions on whether spending cuts would be made to offset an emergency spending bill and why House Republicans from Oklahoma had voted against funding after Hurricane Sandy.

Within hours of the town of Moore, Okla., being slammed by the tornado Monday, some Twitter commentators were criticizing Oklahoma Sens. Tom Coburn and Jim Inhofe, both Republicans, for voting last January against a $50.5 billion bill to provide funding for Northeastern states hit by Sandy in October.

Coburn was on his way to Oklahoma on Tuesday but his spokesman John Hart said, “We don't know if an emergency aid package will even be necessary. We do know that FEMA has $11.6 billion in its Disaster Relief Fund as of this morning. We don't know if that will be enough.”

He added that “officials won't be able to do a detailed damage assessment until rescue and recovery operations are complete. We don't know when that will occur.”

And Hart noted that “If an additional emergency aid package is necessary Dr. Coburn will not change his longstanding position on offsets. Since the Oklahoma City bombing, Dr. Coburn has argued that supplemental bills should be paid for by reducing spending on less vital priorities.”

Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo. told reporters Tuesday, “The problem I had, and others may have had, with (the) Sandy (emergency spending

bill) was that it was, ‘OK, here’s a number. We think it’ll probably be that much.’ Nobody should be flying over Moore, Okla., today in a helicopter and coming back here and saying ‘We flew over and we think it’s going to cost X billion dollars and let’s just appropriate that amount of money.’ Nothing says this has to be done all at once and the best way to respond to these (catastrophic events) is to always be responding to what you know to be the need, rather than what you think the need might be.”

Blunt said that after the 2011 Joplin tornado in his state, Congress sent disaster aid in “about four different appropriations processes, one of which was just the normal appropriations bill with some targeted CDBG (Community Development Block Grant) money…. but it was in the regular appropriations bill under the (spending) limit.”

Last January, Coburn voted for, and Inhofe against, an amendment to the Sandy bill offered last January by Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, that would have offset the new Sandy outlays by reducing discretionary spending (including defense) by 0.5 percent over the next nine years. The Senate defeated Lee’s amendment, 62 to 35.

And last December, Coburn joined Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., in criticizing the Senate’s original $60.4 billion version of the Sandy relief bill for its inclusion of unrelated funds such as $150 million for restoration of fisheries in Alaska, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Maine.

Rep. Cory Gardner, R-Colo. and other Colorado members proposed adding $125 million for watershed protection and flood mitigation projects, including about $20 million for areas in Colorado burned by last summer’s wildfires.

Their argument was that the emergency spending bill should not be limited to areas hit by Sandy. And in the past emergency spending bills designed to deal with one disaster have tended to become vehicles for a variety of other disaster outlays and other spending.

Hurricane Katrina hit Louisiana on Aug. 29, 2005. But after the original Katrina emergency spending bill in 2005, Congress subsequently passed more Katrina funding in a bills in 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2010 – all as part of other disaster-relief legislation which addressed events from Midwest flooding to California wildfires.

Coburn and McCain said last December, “As Congress considers the $60.4 billion Hurricane Sandy supplemental spending bill this week, it is critical that we ensure taxpayer dollars go to help those impacted by this devastating storm and not to wasteful spending projects.”

The quarrel over the added funding for projects unrelated to Sandy helped to delay the emergency spending bill – leading to Christie denouncing Boehner for not allowing a vote on the bill on New Year’s Eve.

Ultimately both the House and the Senate did pass an emergency spending bill – but only after many condemnations of House Republicans by Democrats and by some Northern Republicans who said emergency funds should not be offset by cuts elsewhere in the budget.

Even though most annual spending which doesn’t go to entitlement programs such as Medicaid is subject to the discretionary spending limits, or sequester, in the Budget Control Act, that law does allow for adjustments in the spending caps in certain cases including when Congress considers emergency spending.

This story was originally published on Tue May 21, 2013 2:19 PM EDT

The outgoing head of the IRS disputed Republicans’ suspicions that the tax-collecting agency’s targeting of conservatives was motivated by partisanship at the first congressional hearing on the scandal.

Steven Miller, the acting commissioner of the IRS who submitted his resignation from that role earlier this week, appeared on Friday to face lawmakers’ pointed questions about the revelations that IRS officials had inappropriately singled out conservative groups for extra scrutiny.

But he and J. Russell George, the IRS inspector general whose report unearthed the controversy that has dominated Washington this week, testified that there was no evidence of political motivations among IRS employees who targeted conservative advocacy groups applying for nonprofit status. They instead blamed incompetence.

“I do not believe that partisanship motivated the practices of the people described in the IG report,” Miller said. “I think that what happened here was that foolish mistakes were made by people who were trying to be efficient in their work.”

GOP lawmakers also repeatedly sought to ferret out any information as to whether Miller had talked with White House officials about the targeting of conservatives, or – more ominously – had shared confidential tax information with the administration. (The implication of that line of questioning involved last year’s presidential election, when Republican nominee Mitt Romney’s own tax practices became an issue in the election.)

To that end, George testified that he told the Treasury Department's general counsel and deputy secretary Neal Wolin of the investigation before the 2012 election.

In the week following the first revelations of the inspector general report, conservatives have seized upon the scandal to ding President Barack Obama, demanding criminal prosecutions of IRS officials, and accusing the president (as Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., did Thursday) of a “culture of intimidation.” GOP members of the committee spent much of the hearing trying to advance that narrative

But Miller repeatedly – and, at times, tersely – disputed speculation that IRS officials were deliberately targeting ideological opponents of the Obama administration, and denied that he had misled Congress in previous testimony about the IRS’s actions. When asked sharply by Committee Chairman Dave Camp, R-Mich., how he would characterize his previous, inaccurate testimony to Congress, Miller shot back: "I always answer questions truthfully, Mr. Camp."

Miller, the ousted acting commissioner of the IRS, was the primary object of lawmakers’ scrutiny at Friday’s hearing, particularly Republicans who expressed incredulity and outrage at the IRS fiasco.

“Is this still America?” asked Rep. Kevin Brady, R-Texas, who said the IRS controversy were evidence of a government “drunk on power.”

Republicans came to the hearing armed with plenty of outrage and examples of Tea Party groups from their home districts running into red tape in their nonprofit applications, which they used to pummel Miller throughout the hearing. The outgoing commissioner parried their attacks by responding that he was not permitted to comment on specific cases.

Democrats spent the bulk of the committee’s hearing, though, warning their GOP colleagues against cultivating evidence of a scandal where there is none. Rep. Sander Levin, D-Mich., asked both Miller and George, the inspector general, whether they had unearthed any evidence of political motivation in IRS officials’ scrutiny of conservatives.

They replied identically: “We did not, sir.”

Those answers scarcely satisfied Republicans, who have sensed a major opportunity – combined with simultaneous controversies this week involving the Obama administration’s handling of last year’s terror attack in Benghazi, and the Department of Justice’s seizure of Associated Press journalists’ phone records – to play offense against the White House.

For their part, Democrats have largely tried to match Republicans in their outrage at the IRS controversy, led by the president himself. Obama said this week that he was “angry” at the IRS for its actions, and asked for Miller’s resignation. Obama named Daniel Werfel, who currently serves as controller of the Office of Management and Budget, as the new acting IRS commissioner on Thursday.

Jason Reed / Reuters

Outgoing acting IRS Commissioner Steven Miller listens at a House Ways and Means Committee hearing on the Internal Revenue Service targeting conservative groups on Capitol Hill, May 17, 2013.

The president has said he didn’t learn about the actions taken by the IRS to target conservative and Tea Party groups until details of the inspector general report leaked to the media last Friday.

But while the controversy will likely spur plenty of future hearings into the IRS wrongdoing, Friday’s testimony – for now – could help limit the political fallout to the IRS itself.

“As acting commissioner I want to apologize on behalf of the IRS for the mistakes that we made and the poor service that we provided,” Miller said in his opening statement. He said later in the hearing that he should ultimately be held accountable for IRS employees’ missteps, but denied that meant he was personally involved in directing political targeting.

Related stories:

Obama names acting IRS chief, denies knowledge of IRS report

This story was originally published on Fri May 17, 2013 7:43 AM EDT

Amid controversies over a Justice Department subpoena of Associated Press phone records and the Internal Revenue Service’s scrutiny of conservative groups, Attorney General Eric Holder told the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday that he doubted it would be “wise policy” to prosecute news media organizations for publishing classified information in the national security leaks case.

In a hearing that stretched well over four hours, Holder indicated that leakers inside the Obama administration, and not reporters, were the people his department was trying to find.

Holder said, "The focus should be on those people who break their oaths and put the American people at risk, not reporters who gather this information."

On the criminal probe into IRS scrutiny of conservative groups who’d applied for nonprofit status, he vowed a far-reaching national investigation which would not be limited to the Cincinnati IRS office that examines groups’ applications for nonprofit status.  

“The facts will take us wherever they take us,” he pledged to Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas.  

About an hour after Holder finished his testimony, President Barack Obama announced at the White House that Steve Miller, the acting IRS Commissioner, would resign at the request of Treasury Secretary Jack Lew.

Obama pledged to work “hand in hand with Congress to get this thing fixed” and to “do everything in my power to make sure nothing like this happens again.”

The controversies over the IRS and the AP subpoenas threaten to become the most serious political crises of the Obama presidency.

The marathon hearing with Holder brought both Democratic and Republican members together in accord that the IRS scrutiny of conservative groups was alarming and that the broad scope of the Justice Department subpoena of Associated Press phone records threatened First Amendment rights.

But Holder repeatedly told members he could not shed much light on either controversy because he has recused himself from the leaks probe and because the criminal investigation of the IRS which he ordered last Friday has only just begun.

When House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., asked why it was necessary for the Justice Department to subpoena AP phone records if the AP was willing to cooperate with the investigation, Holder said, “I just don’t know…I don’t have the factual basis to answer.”

Holder said in a press conference Tuesday that decisions in the leak investigation were being made by Deputy Attorney General James Cole and that he, not Holder, “would have been the one who ultimately had to authorize the subpoena that went to the AP.”

Brendan Smialowski / AFP - Getty Images

Attorney General Eric H. Holder testifies during a hearing of the House Judiciary Committee on Capitol Hill May 15, 2013 in Washington, DC.

Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., told Holder, “I think we’re going to have to talk to him (Cole) about this,” and Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., and Goodlatte both called for Cole to come before the committee as a witness.

But Holder cautioned later in the hearing that Cole would be very constrained in what he could tell members of Congress about an ongoing investigation.

Sensenbrenner also used his time to berate Obama administration officials for not taking responsibility for what he saw as errors or misguided policies. He urged Holder, Cole and other Justice Department officials to go to the Truman library in Missouri and learn from the famous sign the former president had on his desk, which said “the buck stops here.”

In his grilling of Holder, Republican Rep. Spencer Bachus of Alabama seemed skeptical about how, why and when Holder had recused himself in the national security leaks probe and why Holder had not put the recusal in writing and dated it. Lofgren also seemed skeptical about whether Holder acted in line with federal regulations in recusing himself.

But Holder explained that he had recused himself since he was one of a small number of top officials who’d had access to the national security secrets that had been leaked to the news media.

The House Ways and Means Committee has scheduled a hearing Friday to examine the IRS scrutiny of conservative groups.

The witnesses will be Miller and J. Russell George, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration. George issued a report Tuesday which was highly critical of how the IRS scrutinized applications for nonprofit status.

But the IRS officials directly involved in the scrutiny of political groups are not slated to appear at Friday’s hearing.

In a letter to Obama on Wednesday, all 45 Republican senators said, “We demand that your Administration comply with all requests related to Congressional inquiries without any delay, including making available all IRS employees involved in designing and implementing these [sic] prohibited political screening, so that the public has a full accounting of these actions.”

Related stories:

•  Attorney General Holder faces questions on Capitol Hill
• Boehner on IRS controversy: 'Who's going to jail?'
• After AP leak, White House pushes for media-shield law 
• Obama message gets sidetracked

This story was originally published on Wed May 15, 2013 5:29 PM EDT

As the White House faces a trio of burgeoning controversies that have put the administration and agencies throughout Washington on the defensive, Attorney General General Eric Holder reiterated before a House panel Wednesday that he was not involved in the Justice Department's decision to seize two months of phone records from Associated Press journalists as a part of a leak probe.

LIVESTREAM: House Judiciary Committee hearing

The Justice Department has also opened an investigation into revelations that the Internal Revenue Service targeted conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status for additional scrutiny. In testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, Holder said that prosecutors are looking at several different statutes in the investigation of those actions. 

He said those potential violations could include an IRS statute that requires employees to do their jobs without favoritism, civil rights laws, the Hatch Act that restricts a federal employee's political activities, or the law against making false statements to investigators.

“The facts will take us wherever they take us,” he added, promising a nationwide investigation. 

Asked about the leak probe, Holder confirmed that Deputy Attorney General James Cole authorized the subpoenas on AP reporters' phone records after Holder recused himself from the matter.

Brendan Smialowski / AFP - Getty Images

Attorney General Eric Holder is sworn in during a hearing of the House Judiciary Committee on Capitol Hill May 15, 2013 in Washington, DC.

Holder first announced Tuesday that he had recused himself from the AP leak probe because he had previously been questioned by the FBI about the intelligence breach.

He added Wednesday that he also turned over his own phone records as a part of that questioning. 

He told the committee that he recused himself because he was one of the “relatively limited number of people” who had first-hand knowledge of the leaked information – and also because he had more regular communication with reporters than Cole.

“I was a possessor of the information that was ultimately leaked,” he added. “And the question then is, who of those people who possessed that information – which was a relatively limited number of people  within the Justice Department – who of those people actually spoke in an inappropriate way to the Associated Press,” he added.

In response to questions, he said that he did not know the date of his recusal for certain and that there was not a written record of it.  He also said that the White House would not have been informed of the recusal. 

Holder has been widely criticized by Republicans for DOJ's handling of the matter, scrutiny Holder noted at the beginning of his remarks.

"The head of the [Republican National Committee] called for my resignation in spite of the fact that I was not the person who was involved in that decision," he said.

The routine Justice Department oversight hearing became a hot ticket after two scandals – the DOJ probe and the revelations about the IRS – erupted since the end of last week. The Obama administration also continues to be dogged by lingering questions over its administration’s response to the Sept. 11, 2012 attack on a diplomatic outpost in Benghazi.

In opening remarks he was set to deliver before the House Judiciary Committee, Holder says the Justice Department “has taken critical steps to prevent and combat violent crime, to confront national security threats, to ensure the civil rights of everyone in this country, and to safeguard the most vulnerable members of our society.”

NBC's Pete Williams contributed to this report. 

This story was originally published on Wed May 15, 2013 1:07 PM EDT

With controversies growing over a Justice Department subpoena of Associated Press phone records and the Internal Revenue Service’s scrutiny of conservative groups, Attorney General Eric Holder was preparing to face the House Judiciary Committee in an oversight hearing Wednesday.

The hearing comes a day after Holder told reporters that he’d ordered an investigation to see if there were criminal violations in the IRS examination of conservative advocacy groups that had sought nonprofit status.  An inspector general’s report released Tuesday blamed poor management at the IRS for the scrutiny of Tea Party and other conservative groups and said the agency has been slow to correct the problems.

The attorney general also said he’d recused himself last year from any involvement in the Justice Department’s investigation of national security leaks. Holder said he took the step to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest.

Holder will certainly field questions on both the phone records seizures and the IRS investigation but there are no mentions of either in prepared opening remarks he’s expected to deliver to the committee. 

Jonathan Ernst / Reuters

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder appears at a news conference at the Justice Department in Washington, May 14, 2013.

The Associated Press reported Monday that phone records of its reporters and editors had been subpoenaed and seized in that probe.

Holder said in a press conference Tuesday that decisions in the leak investigation were being made by Deputy Attorney General James Cole and “the deputy attorney general would have been the one who ultimately had to authorize the subpoena that went to the AP.”

Cole wrote to the AP on Tuesday that seeking phone records from media organizations “is undertaken only after all other reasonable alternative investigative steps have been taken.” He said that the Justice Department sought the AP phone records only after a comprehensive investigation which included conducting over 550 interviews and reviewing tens of thousands of documents.

Holder said Tuesday that it “certainly not the policy of this administration” to target reporters. What has been done in the leaks investigation was, he said, “not as a result of a policy to get the press.”

Previewing Wednesday’s hearing, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., indicated that the panel will question Holder on a wide range of topics, including the subpoena of AP phone records and the IRS vetting of conservative groups.

“Any abridgement of the First Amendment is very concerning, especially reports that the IRS targeted conservative groups for unwarranted scrutiny during an election year,” Goodlatte said. “Members of the committee will also ask pointed questions about the Justice Department’s decision to obtain two months’ worth of telephone records of reporters and editors for The Associated Press. Congress and the American people expect answers and accountability.”

The Virginia Republican also said that in the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombings, the committee will want Holder to address how the Obama administration can better share information among federal agencies “so that we can better detect and deter future homegrown terrorist attacks.”

But the leaks investigation seems likely to be a dominant topic of the hearing.

Holder told reporters Tuesday, “This was a very, very serious leak. I’ve been a prosecutor since 1976 – and I have to say that this is among, if not the most serious, in the top two or three most serious leaks that I’ve ever seen. It put the American people at risk – and that is not hyperbole.”

The leaks probe was undertaken at a time of deep congressional concern that Obama administration officials, including CIA chief John Brennan when he served as President Obama’s counterterrorism advisor at the White House, were providing news organizations with selective bits of secret information.

The top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, voted against confirming Brennan as CIA chief in March because he said Brennan had not been candid in discussing his own role in leaking.

Chambliss said he was “deeply disturbed” by Brennan's responses to the Senate committee regarding leaks of classified information, especially the disclosure relating to the al Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula underwear bomb plot in May of 2012.

This story was originally published on Wed May 15, 2013 9:22 AM EDT

In a day of congressional testimony that once again found the Obama administration under fire, a trio of whistleblowers expressed frustration toward the government’s response to the Sept. 11, 2012 assault against a U.S. diplomatic outpost in Benghazi, Libya, and its subsequent investigation into that incident.

The diplomatic officials appeared on Wednesday before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee to describe a hasty and chaotic response to the attack, which left four Americans – including U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens – dead.

The witnesses said that the government was poorly prepared to weather the attack and was hesitant to respond, also contending that a subsequent review of the incident ordered by the State Department came up woefully short.

The testimony included new details from Gregory Hicks, a career foreign service officer who served as the deputy chief of mission in Libya at the time of the attacks.

He painstakingly recounted frenetic efforts to communicate between besieged individuals in Benghazi, and the governments of Libya and the United States. And he relayed the frustration of special forces who were told to stand down in Tripoli – Hicks said he did not know who gave the order – from deploying to Benghazi.

“They were furious,” Hicks told lawmakers on Capitol Hill. “I will quote Lt. Col. Gibson. He said, ‘This is the first time in my career that a diplomat has more balls than somebody in the military.’”

IN DEPTH: Official: US Special Forces team wasn't allowed to fly to Benghazi during attack

Hicks joined two other witnesses in a hearing driven primarily by Republicans, who have zealously pursued the Benghazi incident based on suspicions that President Barack Obama and then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had been caught flat-footed by the attack, or worse, orchestrated a cover-up about the attack to benefit the president’s re-election bid.

At no point did Hicks or his fellow witnesses – Mark Thompson, acting deputy assistant secretary for counterterrorism, and Eric Nordstrom, diplomatic security officer and former regional security officer in Libya – accuse the president or Clinton of having halted forces that might have assisted besieged diplomats in Benghazi. Democrats repeatedly pointed to testimony suggesting that reinforcements would have not have arrived in time, anyway.

But Republicans seized on several morsels of information, in particular Hicks’s incredulity toward the administration’s initial explanation, voiced by U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, that the attack was the spontaneous outgrowth of protests related to an anti-Islamic video.

“I was stunned. My jaw dropped, and I was embarrassed,” Hicks said of his reaction to Rice’s appearances on a series of Sunday talk shows following the attack. He further testified that there were no indications of protests in Libya, and that at no time did they suspect that the Benghazi attack was related to protests.

Republicans also homed in on suggestions by Hicks that a top Clinton aide had reacted angrily when Hicks agreed to speak privately with GOP investigators looking into the Benghazi attack. Hicks said that Cheryl Mills, Clinton’s chief of staff, called him “upset” about his conversation with the GOP lawmakers.

The witnesses also expressed their misgivings about the Accountability Review Board’s (ARB) findings in a subsequent investigation into the government’s response to the attacks. The ARB, the witnesses said, failed to interview senior enough leaders in the State Department.

The testimony prompted pointed responses from Ambassador Thomas Pickering, who co-authored the ARB, and allies of Clinton, the popular former secretary of state who’s seen as a potential presidential candidate in 2016.

“I believe the Accountability Review Board did its work well,” Pickering, a coauthor of the report, said Wednesday afternoon on MSNBC. “I think the notion, quote, of ‘a cover-up’ has the elements of Pulitzer Prize fiction attached to it.”

And Philippe Reines, a senior aide to Clinton, told NBC News that accusations that Mills interfered in an investigation into Benghazi “completely and utterly false.”

Indeed, Democrats headed into the hearing warning against politicization of the Benghazi incident.

“I am not questioning the motives of our witnesses,” said Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings, the top Democrat on the committee, at the outset of the hearings. “I am questioning the motives of those who want to use their statements for political purposes.”

His admonition didn’t stop many Republicans from plowing ahead with their questions.

“It's one of great mysteries,” said Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, of questions as to why terror response forces were not ordered into action on Sept. 11. “Here we have this expertise, we've invested heavily in it, they tabletop it, they understand it, this is exactly what they train for and they were never asked to go into action.”

But while many Republicans appeared eager to keep Benghazi alive as a political issue, not all Republicans seemed as concerned about the issue, or the Obama administration’s forthcoming.

“I’ve been able to read all the cables, I’ve seen all the films. I feel like I know what happened in Benghazi; I’m fairly satisfied,” said Sen. Bob Corker, Tenn., the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, on MSNBC. “I’m fairly satisfied.”

This story was originally published on Wed May 8, 2013 11:02 AM EDT

President Barack Obama extended his recent effort to broaden outreach to Congress with a round of golf on Monday – two Republicans, and one Democrat.

Obama hit the links with Sens. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., Bob Corker, R-Tenn., and Mark Udall, D-Colo.at Andrews Air Force Base, the site of the president’s occasional weekend rounds of golf.

The foursome comes amid a broader attempt by the White House to reach out to members of Congress, particularly Republican senators. The president has hosted several private dinners with senators, Democratic and Republican alike, in hopes of building a better relationship with Congress.

While Obama typically golfs with a group of White House aides considered to be friends of the president, he’s been known to mix business with pleasure before. He’s golfed with former President Bill Clinton, and hit the links with House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, during the height of a summer 2011 showdown between the two men regarding the debt ceiling. 

Coincidentally, two of the invitees to today’s matchup are considered some of the best golfers in Congress. Udall has a handicap of 2, according to Golf Digest, while Corker has a handicap of 2.1.

Obama’s weekend golf excursions, though, have also made him the butt of Republicans’ jokes about the frequency with which the president golfs. 

Monday’s outing was a rare weekday foray for Obama; the weather in Washington was hardly inviting, either, with overcast crowds and evening showers in the forecast.

And the event showed Lady Luck to be a Republican or the day: Chambliss hit a hole-in-one.

"It was number 11 on the South Course, and 156 yards, and I hit a choked down five iron," he said later. "It was pretty special. the ball actually flew the route I wanted it to go. I didn't skull it."

This story was originally published on Mon May 6, 2013 12:33 PM EDT

CHARLESTON, S.C. -- Former South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford, bidding for political redemption in a congressional race after a high-profile divorce that seemingly ended his aspirations, sought to challenge the notion that he has a problem among women voters by spending part of a visit to a small shopping street looking for, as he put it, “a woman who hates me.”

The question of Sanford's ability to win women voters, first raised by his 2009 high-profile affair and divorce, re-emerged after a recent legal dispute with his ex-wife. He further complicated matters during a debate last week, saying he had not heard his opponent when she asked a question about the affair and his use of public funds surrounding the episode.

On Saturday, after answering several questions about whether he thought a trespassing charge at his ex-wife’s home might compromise his standing with female voters, Sanford led reporters on a foray in downtown Summerville, S.C., stopping women to ask them their opinion of him, specifically referring to the question posed by a reporter for NBC News.

“No group’s vote is a monolith,” Sanford said, pointing out that he had recently received an endorsement for Tuesday’s special election from a group of Republican women who took an ad out in a local newspaper.  Sanford is running against Democrat Elizabeth Colbert Busch to fill the South Carolina congressional seat vacated by now-Sen. Tim Scott.

Sanford also noted that during his visit to the hot dog restaurant Perfectly Frank’s, where earlier that afternoon his campaign announced the endorsement of the Tea Party Express, patrons had not brought the issue up.

When the reporter noted that he was speaking to a crowd that included some people who had gone to the restaurant specifically for the campaign event, Sanford dismissed that context as “the case of any political venue." 

“If you’re a political figure, some people, because they hear you’re going to be at some place, they’re going to show up,” he said.

Sanford then walked across the street to begin his meet-and-greet, flanked by two campaign staffers and three reporters, telling the reporter who asked the questions about his status with women that he rejected the “premise” that women wouldn’t vote for him because of his personal life.

He then indicated he wanted to seek out women who “hated” him.

“Let’s go to this woman – does she look biased?” he asked as he crossed the street, the NBC reporter walking next to him. 

As a car whizzed by, he told the reporter, “Watch out, I don’t want you to get run over. Actually I kind of do, but that’s a different story.”

After Sanford caught up with the woman he had pointed out, she told him she was a big supporter and that she would be making phone calls for him on Tuesday.

A staffer, mimicking Sanford’s tongue-in-cheek approach, suggested that the woman had been planted.

A few shops down, he stopped in a women’s consignment store to chat with two shoppers who were visiting South Carolina from Arkansas, but who had seen some of his campaign ads and signs, which they said were “beautiful.”

“You look like you’re totally capable and we wish you luck,” one of the women told him.

Laughing, Sanford pointed to the two cameras in front of him, saying, “you hear that?”

Later, Sanford visited a women’s clothing store where the shopkeeper said she knew one of Sanford’s staffers, and that the staffer “knows I’m in your corner.”

“Oh good,” the former governor said. “[But] that defeats what I’m after.”

Pointing to the NBC reporter, he continued, “We were trying to find her a woman who hates me so she can use it in her TV show. She’s with NBC National.”

As Sanford wrapped up his hourlong canvas, he came across a couple, each of whom expressed their support for him.

After indicating, as he had previously, that the NBC reporter was looking to talk to women who didn’t support him because of his marital history, the woman, Patty Hulbard, responded, “I'm not your biggest fan. What you did I don't appreciate, but that should not influence my vote necessarily.”

 “You line up ideology with my thinking, so I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt,” she continued. 

“I appreciate that. Thank you,” Sanford said.

Turning to NBC’s camera, he pointed and said, “That’s pretty close to what you’re looking for. We’re getting somewhere, all right.” 

This story was originally published on Sun May 5, 2013 11:57 AM EDT

The longer the sequester is in effect, the more we’re learning that it’s not quite the fiscal straightjacket that it might have appeared to be at first.  Despite being billed as automatic spending cuts, the sequester is not an unalterable doomsday machine.

And in the weeks ahead Congress and the Obama administration will be under pressure from advocacy groups and special interests to find other ways to relax some of the fiscal constraints the law was supposed to apply.

Last week’s decision by Congress to explicitly give the Department of Transportation the power to shift $253 million in funds to the Federal Aviation Administration so as to avert furloughs of air traffic controllers was a reminder that despite the “automatic” cuts in the sequester, Congress is still making spending choices and sometimes second- guessing the choices made by executive branch officials.

Even before last week, Congress had already delayed by three months and reduced by $24 billion the size of the spending cuts mandated by the 2011 Budget Control Act.

Addressing the spending cuts at his press conference Tuesday President Barack Obama said, “The only way we're going to lift it (the sequester) is if we do a bigger deal that meets the test of lowering our deficit and growing our economy at the same time. And that's going to require some compromises on the part of both Democrats and Republicans.”

Obama said he had had “some good conversations with Republican senators so far. Those conversations are continuing. I think there's a genuine desire on many of their parts to move past not only sequester, but Washington dysfunction.”

He said he wanted “to do everything we can to create a permission structure” for congressional Republicans to agree with him on an alternative set of spending curbs and tax increases as a substitute for the sequester.

But he rejected the notion that “my job is to somehow get them (congressional Republicans) to behave.”

And he noted that the funding fix that allowed the FAA furloughs to be averted came from “shifting money that's designed to repair and improve airports over the long term to fix the short-term problem. Well that's not a solution.”

Obama explained why he will sign the FAA furlough fix into law by saying, “Frankly, I don't think that if I were to veto, for example, this FAA bill, that that somehow would lead to the broader fix. It just means that there'd be pain now -- which they would try to blame on me -- as opposed to paying five years from now.”

Meanwhile, some Democratic members of Congress are using their week back in their home states and districts to press for more easing of the cuts. On Tuesday Senate Budget Committee chairwoman Sen. Patty Murray, D- Wash., will be hosting an event with cancer, diabetes and other medical researchers at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle to highlight the effects of the spending cuts on medical research. 

Also Tuesday in Tampa, Fla., Rep. Kathy Castor, D- Fla., is holding a press conference with the Hillsborough County Head Start director and local parents to protest the sequester’s effect on the Head Start program.

Obama spokesman Jay Carney on Monday didn’t flatly rule out the idea of the president signing other ad hoc adjustments to the spending cuts if Congress were to pass them.

As with the FAA legislation, loosening the sequester’s constraints might in some cases simply be a matter of re-programming, or shifting around, money within a department’s accounts.

But it does not seem likely that there would be a majority in the House or a 60-vote supermajority in the Senate to rescind the five percent reduction in non-defense discretionary funding (for items such as diabetes research) or the eight percent reduction in defense discretionary funding.

And a House-passed Republican sequester replacement bill (substituting other cuts for the ones currently in force) won’t be passed by the Senate.

So for now Congress is limited to giving executive branch officials flexibility in how they manage their funds.

As painful as the cuts might be, Obama administration officials insist that they are not trying to make them feel or appear more painful than they are.

In fact in some cases, it seems as if Obama administration officials have made chosen the less draconian approach to using their reduced finding – an approach that may have a less visible or dramatic impact on people using federal services or facilities. Jonathan Jarvis, director of the National Park Service, told a House committee two weeks ago that he’d decided to not close any national parks entirely, but instead to spread the sequester’s impact by reducing operating hours and reducing services at some parks.

This underscores the point that the sequester isn’t a government shutdown – no “closed due to sequester” signs will appear at Yosemite or Crater Lake.

And the pain an individual person might feel depends on which federal program he or she is a beneficiary of.

As was true from the beginning -- but has sometimes been lost sight of – the spending cuts weren’t designed to be applied across the board. Exempt from the spending cuts are entitlement programs such as Medicaid, as well as military salaries, and programs for the poor such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. In some cases, the very same people who stand to lose from cuts in one program – such as Meals on Wheels – will still be exempt from cuts in another, such as Medicaid.

This story was originally published on Tue Apr 30, 2013 9:51 AM EDT

The highly anticipated debate between Republican Mark Sanford and Democrat Elizabeth Colbert Busch in South Carolina’s 1st Congressional District special election didn’t disappoint. Sanford accused his opponent of being a Trojan horse for House Democrats, while she accused the former governor of deserting the state for his personal satisfaction.

Both candidates were incredibly feisty at times, and the vitriol between the two in their only meeting before their May 7 faceoff to succeed now-Sen. Tim Scott, R., was palpable.

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Former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford answers a question during the 1st Congressional District debate on April 29 in Charleston, S.C.

Sanford repeatedly hammered Colbert Busch — a Clemson University administrator and the sister of comedian Stephen Colbert — for the financial support she’s getting from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the House Majority PAC and donations funneled to her through ActBlue, and for accepting campaign contributions from labor groups.

Sanford’s fallback, time and again, during Monday’s debate was to tie Colbert Busch to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. When his Democratic opponent only agreed to one face-to-face encounter, Sanford took to debating a cardboard cutout of the former House Speaker on the streets last week.

“It’s not believable to me that someone gives you a million dollars and not expect something in return,” said Sanford, arguing his Democratic opponent would be a reliable vote for Pelosi.

It’s a wise strategy, given that the Lowcountry district is heavily Republican and voted 18 points in favor of GOP nominee Mitt Romney last fall.

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Democratic candidate Elizabeth Colbert Busch, left, looks at former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford as she answers a question during the 1st Congressional District debate on April 29 in Charleston, S.C.

But Sanford’s past transgressions and his recent missteps have put the outcome in jeopardy. He navigated a GOP primary despite his 2009 highly public admission of an affair with an Argentinian woman and the following spectacle which seemingly ended his political career until this attempt at a comeback.

Some reported surveys have shown Colbert Busch with a lead over Sanford but operatives on both sides believe the race remains close.

After a recent accusation of trespassing at his ex-wife’s home, national Republicans pulled their financial support from Sanford’s candidacy.

During a question on the sequester and how to slash federal spending Monday, Colbert Busch saw her chance to pounce on Sanford’s affair, and leapt at it.

“When we’re looking at fiscal responsibility,” said Colbert Busch, “it doesn’t mean you take the money we saved and leave the country for a personal purpose.”

Sanford said he didn’t hear Colbert Busch’s rebuttal and turned the question back to the sequester.

At one point in the debate, ideological stars seemed to be crossed, as Colbert Busch compared herself to former Vice President Dick Cheney, while Sanford equated his quest for redemption to that of former President Bill Clinton

On the issue of gay marriage, Colbert Busch acknowledged she was for “full equality,” calling the issue “a matter of civil rights and equal protection under the law.” And quoting the former vice president, whose daughter is openly gay, argued “Freedom is freedom for everyone.”

When he was asked about voting in favor of President Clinton's impeachment when he was asked, Sanford gave one of his most direct answers of the evening about his affair and subsequent disappearance from the state, asking  “Do you think that President Clinton should be condemned for the rest of his life based on a mistake he made in his life?”

Colbert Busch argued repeatedly that she would take pledges from no one each time Sanford said she was too cozy with congressional Democrats. Talking of her struggles as a single mother and how she rose in the business world, at the end of the debate she even promised she would donate 10 percent of her salary back to taxpayers if elected.

"I want to be very clear," Colbert Busch said forcefully at one point. "No one tells me what to do, except the people of South Carolina's 1st Congressional District."

Sanford also criticized his opponent for accepting donations from labor groups, including ones who opposed Boeing's move to Charleston because the state is a right-to-work state.

Colbert Busch said the National Labor Relations Board was wrong in opposing the Boeing move.

Sanford championed the fiscally conservative voting record he amassed during his time in Congress -- "I was in essence against earmarks before being against earmarks was cool," said Sanford -- but Colbert Busch said sometimes that came at the expense of local voters, and pointed often to his vote against funding the dredging the Port of Charleston.

One of Sanford’s earliest swipes at his opponent was over a $500 donation she had given to his first campaign for governor, deadpanning that his vote on the Port “must not have bothered her that much.”

Colbert Busch rebutted that Sanford “didn’t tell the truth...you turned around and did the opposite in supporting the Port.”

Sanford made a states' rights argument in his opposition to a federal definition of gay marriage. 

And he criticized Colbert Busch for a series of tweets that had been deleted from her campaign twitter account, including one where she said she was pro-choice. The Democrat didn’t back off her position, even in the GOP district though, arguing that such a choice was “an incredibly personal decision between a woman, her doctor, her family and her God.

Sanford said he also would have voted against the gun background check bill, proposed by Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Pat Toomey (R-Pa.), while Colbert Busch said she supported some increased background checks.

“The Second Amendment isn’t there to shoot a duck or a deer,” said Sanford. “It’s the teeth behind every other right Americans enjoy. You need to be very careful treading upon rights that were guaranteed by our Founding Fathers.”

This story was originally published on Mon Apr 29, 2013 10:28 PM EDT

Former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford meets the Democrat looking to end his bid for political redemption, Elizabeth Colbert Busch, in a high-profile debate Monday evening, just one week before the May 7 special election that will send one of them to Congress.

Colbert Busch and Sanford will share a stage for their first and only debate ahead of next Tuesday's special election to fill the vacancy that occurred following then-Rep. Tim Scott's, R, appointment to the U.S. Senate earlier this year.

Mic Smith / AP

Former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford speaks with reporters at Hay Tire & Automotive in Mount Pleasant, S.C., on Monday, April 22, 2013.

The campaign has attracted an intense amount of coverage in the national media because of the two candidates involved. Sanford, the former governor whose term ended in ignominy following an extramarital affair that resulted in his divorce and an ethics rebuke, is seeking a chance at political redemption. Standing in his way is Colbert Busch, the Clemson University administrator whose candidacy has been aided by the fame of her brother — political satirist Stephen Colbert of Comedy Central. 

While Sanford entered the showdown with an upper hand over Colbert Busch in this traditionally Republican district, the race was thrown into turmoil in recent weeks by Jenny Sanford, the former governor's ex-wife. She filed court documents accusing Sanford of trespassing on her property, thereby reviving some of the ugly, public 2009 divorce that ended the former two-term governor's possible aspirations to run for president. 

In the days following that revelation, Democrats and their allies went on the attack with television ads attacking Sanford. Republicans, meanwhile, retreated, forcing Sanford to fend for himself in the campaign when the National Republican Congressional Committee announced it would not run ads in the race. (The most recent poll, which was conducted by automated phone interviews, suggested Colbert Busch had the advantage over Sanford; NBC News does not officially recognize those polls.) Sanford has responded to his perceived slide by casting Colbert Busch as a handmaiden of Democrats' relatively unpopular leaders in Washington. Sanford went so far as to debate a cardboard cutout of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., to illustrate his point.

Still, Monday's debate might offer the candidates their best chance to affect the trajectory of the race before voters head to the poll. Perhaps in a reflection of which way things are going, Sanford's demanded more debates — that is, more opportunities to ding Colbert Busch in public. The showdown will be broadcast on C-SPAN.

This story was originally published on Mon Apr 29, 2013 3:44 PM EDT

The House overwhelmingly passed a bill on Friday to give the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) flexibility to defray spending cuts from its budget as part of the sequester, allowing the agency to restore furloughed air traffic controllers whose absences had spurred nationwide flight delays.

The House moved quickly late Friday morning to follow the lead of the Senate, which unanimously approved legislation late Thursday evening to give the secretary of transportation increased authority to transfer funds from its existing budget to restore furloughed air traffic controllers.

The legislation heads to the White House next for President Barack Obama's signature. White House press secretary Jay Carney said at his press briefing on Friday that Obama would sign the legislation.

Though some House Democrats griped on Friday that the air traffic controller furloughs should provide the impetus for Congress to address all of the cuts prescribed by the sequester, the House easily cleared the two-thirds procedural threshold it needed to approve the FAA patch. 

The sequester, a series of $85 billion in automatic spending cuts applied across all government agencies, started on March 1. It was an outgrowth of the 2011 agreement between Congress and the Obama administration to raise the debt ceiling, and only took effect because of their subsequent inability to reach an alternative fiscal agreement.

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This story was originally published on Fri Apr 26, 2013 12:13 PM EDT