Senate leaders give floor time to vulnerable Dems

Mark Pryor, Kay Hagan, Mary Landrieu and Mark Udall are all at risk in 2014. | AP Photos

Top Democrats are putting something special together for their Senate colleagues in tough races this year: a vulnerable-incumbent protection program.

At-risk senators will get to beef up their back-home cred by taking the lead on bills and amendments tailored to their campaigns. And they won’t be stuck in the back row at news conferences but will be in front of TV cameras and taking center stage during Senate debates.

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It’s all part of an effort to blunt a furious Republican midterm campaign centered on attacking President Barack Obama and Democrats in the Senate who supported his signature health care law.

(PHOTOS: Senators up for election in 2014)

Leaders are coalescing around giving Arkansas Sen. Mark Pryor the lead on a bill to protect the Medicare eligibility age, which has become a key issue in his race. Kay Hagan will tout her fight for long-term unemployment benefits rejected by the GOP-dominated North Carolina Legislature and her likely opponent, statehouse Speaker Thom Tillis. And leaders hope to give Jeanne Shaheen a triumph on energy efficiency, a bipartisan breakthrough that would play well in purple New Hampshire.

There are other, more narrowly tailored options that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and his lieutenants could consider. Hagan has a bipartisan deal on a sportsman’s bill to shore up her hunting cred, while Colorado’s Mark Udall and Louisiana’s Mary Landrieu want to fast-track U.S. natural gas imports — a key industry in their states.

“We try to showcase our members who are up for reelection so they have a chance to shine and show what they believe in, why they are seeking reelection in their states,” said Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.). “I think it helps a lot.”

Other possibilities include bequeathing a veterans bill to Montana’s John Walsh, who served in the military, and taking up manufacturing legislation from Delaware’s Chris Coons. And Democratic leaders still haven’t ruled out a vote on proposed fixes to Obamacare championed by red-state Democrats, despite reluctance to do anything to undermine the law.

One of the most intense election-year pushes comes from Pryor, who wants to prevent House Republicans from raising the eligibility age of Medicare above 65. In Arkansas, he has repeatedly attacked GOP opponent Rep. Tom Cotton for supporting a conservative budget that would gradually raise the eligibility age to 70. Now he stands to get a vote on his own bill to build on those broadsides.

“People are concerned about that. And we have over 500,000 people in our state who are on Medicare, and it’s a very important part of their lives. And so we want to protect it and not let some folks — especially on the House side — try to fundamentally alter it,” Pryor said.

A spokesman for Cotton’s campaign shot back: “Anyone who voted for Obamacare, as Sen. Pryor did, can’t credibly claim to be ‘protecting Medicare.’”

The strategy isn’t just pursuing overtly partisan ideas to appeal to the Democratic base — though there’s plenty of that — but also about forcing Republicans to help some of their biggest Democratic targets score legislative victories.

Shaheen’s energy efficiency bill with Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) is on a shortlist of bipartisan proposals Reid may bring up by this summer. It may have sufficient GOP support to avoid a repeat of last fall, when a push by Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) on an Obamacare amendment tanked the bill, thanks to revisions made to incorporate ideas from both parties.

One senior Senate GOP aide stressed that such bipartisan measures still face an uncertain fate because Democratic leaders don’t want to vote on Republican energy amendments, including on the Keystone XL pipeline. And in an election year that tilts toward the GOP, some Republicans will be all too happy to stymie bipartisan bills that might help Democrats keep the Senate.

“Does that happen? Sure it does. I think we know that,” said Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee ranking member Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, a Shaheen-Portman supporter. “Sometimes people look at who the author is, and look at whether or not they’re running, and then decide whether they’re even going to look at the bill.”

Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) blamed election-year politics for preventing lawmakers during the previous Congress from passing a bill to increase access for hunters, anglers and other sportsmen — in part because his stewardship of the bill looked good back in Montana.

“Unfortunately, people thought that if they passed that, I’d win the race in Montana. Guess what? I won it anyway,” Tester said in an interview. “It needs to pass because it’s a good bill. Has nothing to do with politics.”

This time, the lead Democratic sponsor of sportsman legislation is Hagan, who is targeted by the GOP. Hagan introduced a bipartisan compromise in early February with Murkowski that is cosponsored by a swath of vulnerable Democrats and deal-seeking Republicans.

Hagan will have something even more state-specific to tout Monday when the Senate passes its unemployment bill. Democratic leaders slipped in Hagan’s language to restore long-term unemployment benefits to North Carolina that fell out of federal compliance — aid that expired under the watch of state House Speaker Tillis.

Though energy issues often divide Democrats, leaders also want to help Landrieu, the newly installed Senate Energy and Natural Resources chairwoman, claim a legislative win for her energy producing state. Landrieu passed a popular Senate bill to rein in rising flood insurance rates in Louisiana, but so did her chief GOP opponent, Rep. Bill Cassidy, accentuating the need for her to capitalize on a fortuitously timed leap to the chairmanship.

POLITICO – Congress

Senate leaders give floor time to vulnerable Dems

US nuclear plants vulnerable to 9/11-style terrorist attacks: report

Published time: August 16, 2013 10:18

The more than 100 nuclear reactors across the United States are inadequately prepared to repulse terrorist attacks, a new report warns.

The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, or NRC, presently requires that energy plants are capable of preventing attacks carried out by five or six people, according to the report, entitled “Protecting US Nuclear Facilities from Terrorist Attack.”

The report, prepared by the Nuclear Proliferation Prevention Project at the University of Texas, focuses on the terrorist attacks of 2001, and warns the NRC to prepare for something much bigger down the road.

The combined public and private security provided at the US’s 104 commercial nuclear reactors and three research reactors “is inadequate to defend against a maximum, credible, non-state adversary,” the researchers said, adding that private-sector nuclear facilities remain “less protected than government facilities that face similar risks of theft of fissile material or radiological sabotage, which makes no sense.”

There also remains the risk of attacks from “high-powered sniper rifles and rocket-propelled grenades,” the researchers said.

The report also draws particular attention to security at three research reactors, including one in Maryland that is situated 24 miles from the White House. These facilities are powered by highly-enriched uranium, which could be used to make nuclear weapons if the supplies fell into the hands of terrorists.

The US government has made some progress since September 11, 2001, when nuclear plants only had to protect against attacks by three people, according to Alan Kuperman, the project coordinator and a co-author of the report.

“That is a good sign of progress, but that does not address the concern we have about nuclear reactors,” Kuperman said.

Since 2001, the US nuclear industry has spent over $ 2 billion on enhanced security, the report said, adding “it is difficult to know if those enhancements have been adequate.”

A spokesman for the nuclear energy sector’s trade agency, the Nuclear Energy Institute, told Reuters that security at US nuclear facilities had improved markedly since 9/11, with a total of 9,000 armed officers guarding them.

But according to the report’s authors, even that seemingly robust number of officers would not be enough to fight off a well-coordinated terrorist attack.

Prior to the revisions following the 9/11 attacks, “the numbers (of anticipated terrorists attacking a nuclear site) were kept relatively low because intelligence agencies generally assumed that they themselves were capable of detecting conspiracies of more than a few members.”

That assumption, the report says, was proven wrong by the events of 9/11 when 19 hijackers, using commercial jets as weapons of mass destruction, successfully staged terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington, DC.

The NRC slammed the report, which was requested by the Pentagon, as a “rehash of arguments from a decade ago,” when the country was on high alert following the deadliest attacks on American soil.

“The report contains no new information or insight,” David McIntyre, an NRC spokesman, told Reuters. He said the nuclear watchdog had bolstered security requirements for commercial nuclear power plants and was confident that these were adequately protected.

The question now is how the US government, which has been forced to trim back on federal programs in the aftermath of the economic crisis, will be able to foot the bill for more security at America’s nuclear energy plants.

RT – USA

US nuclear plants vulnerable to 9/11-style terrorist attacks: report

NSA chief says U.S. infrastructure highly vulnerable to cyber attack

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. critical infrastructure – which ranges from telecommunications to water to energy supplies – is not well prepared to handle a destructive cyber attack, the top U.S. general in charge of cybersecurity said on Wednesday.

National Security Agency chief General Keith Alexander, making his first public appearance since revelations surfaced last week about U.S. telephone and internet surveillance efforts, made the comments in a statement prepared for testimony before Congress.

“On a scale of one to 10, with 10 being strongly defended, our critical infrastructure‘s preparedness to withstand a destructive cyber attack is about a three based on my experience,” Alexander, also in charge of the U.S. military’s Cyber Command, wrote in the statement prepared for the Senate Appropriations Committee for a hearing on cybersecurity.

Alexander said the United States has been and continues to be a target of cyberattacks by foreign nations.

About 90 percent of the nation’s critical infrastructure is owned by the private sector, and therefore is not under the control of the U.S. government or military.

While he made no mention of the leaks about NSA surveillance programs, Alexander said it was vital to have a strong Defense Department role in cyberspace in light of what he called real and growing threats.

“While we feel confident that most foreign leaders believe that a devastating attack on the critical infrastructure and population of the United States by cyber means would elicit a prompt and proportionate response, it is possible, however, that some regime or cyber actor could misjudge the impact and the certainty of our resolve,” he said.

Alexander told the Reuters Cybersecurity Summit last month that the United States was increasingly vulnerable to attacks like those that destroyed data on tens of thousands of computers in Saudi Arabia and South Korea in the past year.

(Reporting by Deborah Charles)

Congress News Headlines – Yahoo! News

NSA chief says U.S. infrastructure highly vulnerable to cyber attack

NSA chief says U.S. infrastructure highly vulnerable to cyber attack

An aide (L) takes notes as U.S. General Keith Alexander, director of the National Security Agency (NSA) and U.S. Cyber Command, speaks to reporters during the Reuters Cybersecurity Summit in Washington, May 14, 2013.

Credit: Reuters/Stelios Varias

Reuters: Politics

NSA chief says U.S. infrastructure highly vulnerable to cyber attack