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WASHINGTON The leaders of the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee issued a bipartisan statement on Thursday rejecting President Donald Trump's assertion that the Obama administration tapped his phones during the 2016 presidential campaign.

The top Republican in Congress, House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan, added his voice to a growing chorus of lawmakers saying there was no sign of a wiretap.

In a testy briefing with reporters, White House spokesman Sean Spicer forcefully defended the president, citing news reports of intelligence collection on possible contacts between Trump associates and Russia in the presidential campaign.

"There is no question that there were surveillance techniques used throughout this," Spicer said.

The Republican president, without providing evidence, has accused his predecessor, Democrat Barack Obama, of wiretapping him near the end of the campaign. An Obama spokesman said that was "simply false."

"Based on the information available to us, we see no indications that Trump Tower was the subject of surveillance by any element of the United States government either before or after Election Day 2016," Richard Burr, the Republican chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and Senator Mark Warner, the committee's Democratic vice chairman, said in a statement.

Ryan also said there was no evidence of surveillance.

"The point is, the intelligence committees in their continuing, widening, ongoing investigation of all things Russia, got to the bottom - at least so far - with respect to our intelligence community that - that no such wiretap existed," the House speaker told reporters.

'HE STANDS BY IT'

Pressed at the White House briefing on whether Trump would back down from his wiretap accusations, Spicer said: "He stands by it."

Spicer also chastised the media for focusing so much attention on comments disparaging Trump's claim about surveillance. He said reporters had not focused enough on comments from officials denying evidence of any collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign.

The Russian government has rejected an accusation by U.S. intelligence agencies that it worked to influence the election in Trump's favor by hacking computer systems, among other methods.

Trump has been dogged by allegations that his associates had ties to Russian officials. Trump fired his national security adviser, Michael Flynn, last month after he failed to disclose contacts with Russia's ambassador before Trump took office on Jan. 20.

An official familiar with the investigations by Congress and intelligence and law enforcement agencies said investigators had looked as aggressively and thoroughly as they could for evidence of any spying on Trump or his associates but had found none.

On March 4, six weeks after he took over from Obama, Trump made the wiretap accusations in a Twitter post.

"How low has President Obama gone to tapp my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!," Trump wrote.

At least four congressional committees included the startling accusation in their investigations of possible Russian meddling in the election campaign and Russian ties to Trump and his associates.

On Wednesday, House of Representatives Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, a Republican, and top Democrat Adam Schiff told reporters they had seen no evidence that Trump Tower was tapped and said they would ask Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James Comey about the issue during a public hearing on Monday.

On March 9, Comey briefed Nunes, Schiff, Ryan, Burr, Warner and three other top congressional officials on the same intelligence.

Trump appeared to back away from his accusation of wiretapping in a Fox News interview on Wednesday night.

"But wiretap covers a lot of different things. I think youre going to find some very interesting items coming to the forefront over the next two weeks," Trump said.

(Additional reporting by Mark Hosenball; Editing by Grant McCool and Peter Cooney)

Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny pressed U.S. President Donald Trump about undocumented immigrants in the United States at their first meeting on Thursday, a day before St Patrick's Day.

LONDON Britain's GCHQ intelligence agency dismissed claims made on a U.S. television station that it helped former President Barack Obama eavesdrop on Donald Trump after last year's U.S. presidential election.

WASHINGTON U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis met with Saudi Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on Thursday and they discussed U.S.-Saudi military cooperation in the fight against Islamic State, the Pentagon said in a statement.

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Leading Republicans, Democrats reject Trump's Obama wiretap assertion - Reuters

Sorry, poor people of America. Republicans are quietly sealing all the exits on the poverty trap.

Its a four-part process, in which officials at all levels of government are taking part:

First, reduce poor womens access to the reproductive services they need to prevent unintended pregnancies, so they have less control over when, and with whom, they have children.

Second, make it harder for any unexpectedly expecting women to have abortions.

Third, make the adoption process more expensive, reducing incentives for other families to adopt the babies resulting from these unplanned pregnancies. (Yes, amazingly, Republicans plan to do this.)

Finally, cut the services these involuntarily growing low-income families rely on to help support and care for their children, and to move up in the world.

Lets take a walk through the policies that constitute this poverty-prolonging policy four-step, shall we?

It begins with House Republicans American Health Care Act, which would eliminate all federal funding for Planned Parenthood.

Federal dollars are already barred from being used for abortions; the AHCA would prevent federal funds from being used for any other Planned Parenthood service, too. This is unfortunate, given that Planned Parenthood is the largest provider of contraceptive care for poor women in the country. Some of its patients would be able to find other providers of reliable, effective contraception, but many wouldnt. In more than 100 counties, Planned Parenthood is the only clinic providing publicly supported contraceptive services to poor women, according to the Guttmacher Institute.

In its analysis of the health-care bill, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that about 15 percent of people who live in areas without other clinics or medical practitioners serving low-income populations would lose access to care leading to more unintended pregnancies.

Now consider that at the state level, Republican officials have been aggressively curbing access to abortion, by banning the procedure after 20 weeks, imposing impossible-to-meet regulatory and licensing requirements on providers, and implementing waiting periods. As a result and by design, of course the women who do get pregnant without planning to will be less likely to terminate their pregnancies, even if they are not interested in having a baby. (Incidentally, Medicaid would pay for many of these births; the CBOs Trumpcare analysis estimated that eliminating Planned Parenthood funding for just a year would leave Medicaid on the hook for several thousand additional births.)

What options do these women have, then?

Pro-life conservatives often urge women seeking abortions to consider adoption instead. But under the House Republicans tax plan, adoptions would get more expensive.

You read that right.

The House leaderships A Better Way blueprint calls for dramatically cutting tax rates, especially for the rich. It partly pays for these rate cuts by eliminating some credits and deductions. Among those set to go? The adoption tax credit.

Adopting a child can be enormously expensive, running into tens of thousands of dollars. This tax credit was designed to offset some of those costs, up to $13,460 per child, though the credit phases out for higher earners. In 2014, about 74,000 families claimed the credit, costing the government about $355 million, according to Internal Revenue Service data.

For context, the mortgage-interest deduction, which the Republican tax-reform plan would preserve, will cost the federal government about $69 billion this year about 200 times as much.

I doubt Republicans have anything against adoptive parents; in fact, one of the architects of the House tax plan, Rep. Kevin Brady (R-Tex.), is himself an adoptive parent (though at a recent speech, he noted that he did not qualify for the adoption tax credit because his family was in the wrong tax bracket). Promoting adoption is just not their priority, pro-life rhetoric to the contrary.

In any case, whatever Republicans intentions, the elimination of this tax credit would mean that at least on the margin, women who became pregnant accidentally would have fewer options.

Which leads us, finally, to President Trumps newly released budget.

Trumps budget would dramatically slash the social safety net, especially services for the poor, and especially services for poor families. It would cut housing and energy subsidies for low-income households, as well as after-school, before-school and summer programs that millions of parents depend on. Moreover, it would decimate many of the programs that low-income parents and children rely on to climb out of poverty, including job training, college assistance and community banking.

Thus the cumulative effect of Republicans family policies: force poor people to have more children than they want or believe they can afford, then tell them and their children that theyre on their own.

So much for family values.

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How Republicans plan to hurt American families - Washington Post

Budget lands with thud

President Donald Trumps budget plan is hitting lots of congressional Republicans where they and their voters live, reports Newsdays Emily Ngo.

Rep. Peter King (R-Seaford), for one, doesnt like what he sees so far in the Homeland Security budget, which eliminates or reduces state and local grant funding by $667 million.

Any reduction to NY & LI is dead on arrival, he tweeted.

While many Republicans favor the sharp boost in military spending, some of the deep cuts to domestic programs --including widely popular items like medical research --are a harder sell to them and face strong Democratic opposition.

Big reductions for diplomacy and foreign aid also strike members of both parties as self-defeating for national security.

Budget chief Mick Mulvaney said, Folks who voted for the president are getting exactly what they voted for. He called Meals on Wheels the kind of social program that is just not showing any results --serving up a tasty sound bite to foes of the cuts.

The current U.S. defense budget, nearly $600 billion, is already almost as much as the next 14 nations combined. Yet experts at the International Institute for Strategic Studies see Russia and China closing the technology gap.

Trump now wants to commmit $54 billion more for the military, but how it is spent --and not wasted --holds the key to whether it would strengthen U.S. security, Newsdays Dan Janison writes.

For its plan to secure the Mexican border, the Trump administration has already called for more guns --thousands of additional law enforcement officers --and more money, including billions to start building the wall.

Now they want lawyers, too. Trumps budget calls for hiring 20 of them for legal efforts to acquire private land--seizing properties by eminent domain, if necessary --so there are places to build the barrier. Another 20 lawyers would be added for immigration litigation assistance.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Friday that military action against North Korea is "on the table" if the country continued to develop its weapons program.

Regardless of what table he may have been referring to, Tillerson issued the warning while visiting South Korea.

"If they elevate the threat of their weapons program to a level that we believe requires action then that option is on the table," he told reporters.

"Certainly we do not want for things to get to a military conflict," he added. "But obviously if North Korea takes actions that threaten the South Korean forces or our own forces then that would be met with an appropriate response."

The top Republican and Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee said they see no indications Trump Tower was the subject of surveillance by any element of the United States government either before or after Election Day 2016.

The statement by Sens. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) and Mark Warner (D-Va.) echoed those from House counterparts a day earlier.

But Trump isnt giving up on his accusation against former President Barack Obama. He stands by it, said Press Secretary Sean Spicer, who angrily read off a list of clippings --none of them with actual evidence for Trumps claim --as well as speculation by a Fox News commentator that Obama outsourced the surveillance job to Britains spy agency.

See Newsdays story by Tom Brune and Emily Ngo.

A key congressional committee narrowly approved a Republican health care bill Thursday, but three GOP no votes exposed GOP divisions over the plan to replace Obamacare, Newsdays Yancey Roy reports.

House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) has conceded the bill would have to be altered before winning congressional approval. Trump tweeted Thursday afternoon: Great progress on healthcare. Improvements being made --Republicans coming together!

There are many great Irish proverbs. After his White House meeting with Irish Prime Minister Endy Kenny, Trump celebrated the U.S.-Ireland friendship with one of the more obscure ones, with allusions to grudges and betrayal.

Always remember to forget the friends that proved untrue, but never forget to remember those that have stuck by you, Trump said.

Perhaps he forgot what he told Michigans Republican governor, Rick Snyder, a day earlier as the president coaxed him into a photo op, even though you didnt endorse me. As the cameras clicked, Trump added, I never forget.

Originally posted here:
Trump's budget gets the side-eye from plenty of Republicans - Newsday

New York Times

Why Republicans Keep Talking About Health Care 'Prongs' New York Times Here's why the prongs are crucial to the effort to roll back Obamacare: Republicans have chosen to pass their health reform bill using a special budget procedure that limits the policy changes they can make. That means that many of their key policy ... Republican policy takes aim at the middle class | Letters to the editor ...STLtoday.com Republicans' Obamacare repeal fight turning into battle over Senate ...Washington Examiner The Republicans' 3 prongs have 3 big problemsVox all 14 news articles »

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Why Republicans Keep Talking About Health Care 'Prongs' - New York Times

Ad will collapse in seconds CLOSE /health care March 15, 2017 03/15/2017 5:40 a.m. By Margaret Hartmann

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The Congressional Budget Offices estimate that 24 million people will lose health coverage by 2026 under the Republican health-care plan has kicked off a new phase in the effort to repeal and replace Obamacare: the hunt for a scapegoat. Vice-President Mike Pence and Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price spent Tuesday on Capitol Hill trying to rally support for the health-care bill, but more and more Republicans are coming out against the current version of the legislation and pointing fingers at each other.

The most obvious target is the man behind the bill, which fails to achieve the Republicans contradictory goals for the health-care system. Breitbarts escalating attacks on House Speaker Paul Ryan have added fuel to suspicions that chief strategist Steve Bannon hasnt given up on his goal of ending Ryans career.

But as the Washington Post notes, Breitbart is far from the only conservative outlet bashing Ryancare. Newsmax chief executive Christopher Ruddy even published a piece urging President Trump to abandon the current bill on Tuesday (though he went with the less catchy moniker Ryan Plan II).

Trump figures things out pretty quickly, and I think hes figuring out this situation, how the House Republicans did him a disservice, said Ruddy, a longtime friend of Trumps. President Trump is a big-picture, pragmatic Republican, and unfortunately the Ryan Republican plan doesnt capture his worldview.

Even Republicans who dont consider Ryan the enemy have expressed alarm about the American Health Care Act. The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday that at least a dozen Senate Republicans, including some who had previously kept a low profile in the health debate, have expressed serious doubts about the legislation making its way through the House. The report poured cold water on the theory that passage in the House would build enough momentum to get the AHCA though the Senate. Republicans cant afford to lose more than two Senate votes.

Since the senators objections range from concerns about depriving millions of affordable health insurance to claims that the bills tax credits amount to a Republican welfare entitlement, it seems modifying the legislation would only alienate another GOP faction.

According to the Huffington Post, Republicans may already be giving up on getting AHCA passed in the Senate.

The focus of House leadership has been more about getting a bill out of the House that is unchanged and in keeping with the Better Way plan, instead of truly seeing to potential roadblocks that exist in the House and Senate, said a Republican House member.

The Trump administration is said to be considering moving the bill to the right to appease the Freedom Caucus. The thinking is that moderates may be willing to get on board if they think AHCA will fail in the Senate anyway. Their vote would be merely another declaration of their opposition to Obamacare, and the Senate would be accused of dropping the ball.

One senior House aide was already calling out senators who claim to oppose the AHCA from the right, saying theyre actually opposed to the bill because Obamacare worked in their states.

The question people should be looking at is whether Republican senators like Tom Cotton and Rand Paul are actually interested in repealing Obamacare, or whether theyre sabotaging this to preserve the Medicaid expansion in their states, said the aide. These senators masquerading with conservative objections are too afraid to admit they want to keep Obamacare.

Of course, as President Trump has stated several times, the Republicans preferred Plan B is to keep blaming Senate Democrats. As the Huffington Post notes, theres a major flaw in that strategy:

In that scenario, voters fail to recognize that Republicans have the power to pass this bill without a single Democratic vote, and the ire over Obamacare doesnt dissipate even though voters have seen the GOP alternative.

Will voters remember that Trump promised an Obamacare replacement thats going to be better health care for more people at a lesser cost, then failed to put much energy into crafting that plan? Maybe, but blaming other people for his mistakes happens to be one of his strong suits.

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That would effectively double the number of U.S. troops in the country.

Auto execs asked Trump to review the rules and hes giving them what they want.

Seventeen House Republicans many from areas already suffering the consequences of climate change have signed onto a call for action.

Sometimes the world hears alarming things when America doesnt speak.

VIDEO: If he says great things about me, Im going to say great things about him.

There are no easy answers for the rise of right-wing populism. But attacking the GOPs grotesquely unpopular economic agenda may be the best we have.

The blizzard may have disappointed, but it was enough to handicap the MTA.

Wall Street sees Deputy Treasury Secretary nominee Jim Donovan as a check on Steve Bannons economic nationalism.

If Republicans are unable to resolve their problem over repealing and replacing Obamacare, their timetable for the rest of the year is in big trouble.

After the dismal CBO estimate, more Republicans are turning against AHCA and each other.

Senator Whitehouse says the FBI director suggested hed give them a clearer explanation of the bureaus activities by March 15.

Without the alternative minimum tax, which Trump wants to eliminate, he could have paid a rate of less than 4 percent.

Hey, America waited this long. Whats another 20 minutes?

His campaign is suffering, but, so far, he has refused to drop out of the race.

No flexibility for them. And they arent happy about it.

Republican Joe Barton of Texas made a request, and it was not honored.

The threat of a record-setting snowstorm became a slushy mess of about seven inches in Manhattan.

After helping make his state the target of boycotts over discrimination, Pat McCrory says hes facing a political purge.

In the 12 weeks after Trumps election, U.S. applications for Kiwi citizenship were up 70 percent.

They were rounded up after quite the chase, and a little help from the NYPD.

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Republicans Search for Someone to Blame for Trumpcare - New York Magazine