Dec 11, 2014 3 min read

Wake Up To Politics - December 11, 2014 - Spending Deadline Edition

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Thursday, December 11, 2014
698 Days Until Election Day 2016It's Thursday, December 11, 2014, I'm Gabe Fleisher for this Spending Deadline Edition of Wake Up To Politics, and reporting from WUTP world HQ in my bedroom - Good morning: THIS IS YOUR WAKE UP CALL!!!
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Short Wake Up today asks a BIG question - will Congress pass the spending bill?

Capitol Hill News

CIA Report Released Senate Intelligence Committee chair Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) released a report Tuesday, after years of delay, on the CIA’s pot-9/11 tactics for interrogation of detainees.
The report, which remains classified but an executive summary of was released Tuesday, found that the CIA misled both the public and government officials on its use of waterboarding and other torture tactics, with then-Vice President Dick Cheney, then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfield and then-Secretary of State Colin Powell not being informed of the program until 2003. Then-President George W. Bush was kept in the dark until 2006, four years after the “Enhanced Interrogation Techniques” program was created by the CIA.
Protesting the release of what they said was a politically-charged report, Republicans on the Intelligence Committee released their own report Tuesday, far less critical of the Bush Administration and CIA. Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC), a senior member of the panel and incoming chairman, attacked the Democratic report, saying, “The only motive here could be to embarrass George W. Bush,” of Feinstein’s review.
While this was the stance of most Republicans, some, including former prisoner of war Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), supported the release of the report.
$1.1 Trillion Spending Bill Filed in House After weeks of back-and-forth, negotiators finally agreed to a $1.013 trillion spending bill, which was filed in the House Tuesday night, ready for passage by both houses of Congress ahead of the end-of-Thursday deadline.
The package funds the government through September, with the exception of the Homeland Security Department, funded only through February to try and stop President Obama’s immigration executive order from being implemented. This combination of temporary funding (called a “CR”) and long-term funding (called an “omnibus”) has been nicknamed the “CRomnibus” by the press in recent days.
At 3 PM Wednesday, just hours after it was filed, the House Rules Committee will meet to consider the “cromnibus,” and both houses of Congress could vote on the bill Thursday, giving lawmakers very little time to read the bill’s 289,861 words and 1,603 pages.
In the agreement, most big increases of money is allotted to problems oversees, to combat the Ebola outbreak in West Africa and the Islamic State (ISIS) in Iraq and Syria.
LINKS: For more on the spending bill, you can read all 12 sections in their entirety, courtesy of the House Rules Committee, here. Or you can read the Washington Post’s review of the policy instructions, or riders, in the package – topic by topic.
Hearing Update: House The U.S. House Select Committee on Benghazi, a panel created in May 2014 to investigate the September 2012 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, will hold its second public hearing today.
Witnesses at the hearing, titled “Reviewing Efforts to Secure U.S. Diplomatic Facilities and Personnel,” will include Assistant Secretary of State for Diplomatic Security Greg Starr and Steve Linick, the Inspector General at the State Department.White House Watch
The President’s Schedule At 11 AM, President Obama will drop in on a meeting of the President’s Export Council, which advises him on “policies and programs that affect U.S. trade performance and promote export expansion.”