Republicans to spend millions to reach minorities

Published March 17, 2013

Associated Press

The head of the Republican National Committee says the party will spend $10 million this year to send hundreds of paid staffers into communities to talk with Hispanic, black and Asian voters.

RNC chairman Reince Priebus on Sunday said the party would send employees from coast to coast to build the party's credibility in racial and ethnic communities that supported President Barack Obama over GOP nominee Mitt Romney last year. Priebus says the party cannot "parachute" into communities in the months before an election and expect to have clout.

Priebus is scheduled to outline his plan for the party on Monday. Priebus tells CBS' "Face the Nation" that part of that plan will be a nominating convention in June or July instead of August and fewer debates during the primaries.

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Regulation Nation: New federal rules for school food will cost millions, group says

Newly proposed federal regulations aimed at the snack foods and drinks served in the nation's schools could come with a hefty price tag.

The American Action Forum estimates the regulations, which include caps on serving sizes and calorie counts, will cost schools $127 million and require more than 926,000 hours of paperwork. 

Sam Batkins, director of regulatory policy at the institute, says the proposals amount to yet another unfunded federal mandate for state and local governments, "at a time when many of their budgets are still struggling."

The Food and Nutrition Service regulations would be administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which says schools in at least 39 states already have some kind of snack food standards in place. Thousands of schools "have already taken voluntary steps towards meeting the proposed standards," the department said, adding that many of the schools have started making the changes with little or no impact to their revenue.

The new proposals come as a part of a second wave of regulations stemming from the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010. Administrators are still working to comply with a number of other mandates that have significantly changed school food options in recent years. They include a requirement that each student take a serving of fruit or vegetable as part of their lunch or the federal government may not reimburse the cost -- driving up prices for both students and school districts.

But getting the healthier fare onto kids’ lunch trays doesn't necessarily mean that they'll actually consume the food. One West Philadelphia High School student told a local reporter that kids use the servings to play "food basketball," simply tossing away the fruit placed on their tray.

"Like, if you have an orange or an apple, you take it, and you have a trash can, shoot it in the trash can and see if you can make it," the student said.

That's the very thing first lady Michelle Obama urged kids not to do Monday, speaking in a Google Fireside Hangout marking the third anniversary of the creation of her Let's Move! initiative. Obama urged kids to give fruits and veggies a try, saying, "I want every kid to commit to not throwing out anything."

The USDA will be taking public comments on the newest school food and drink proposals through April 9 at www.regulations.gov.

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Kerry: U.S. releasing millions in aid to Egypt, but with promise of reform

CAIRO –  Secretary of State John Kerry said Sunday the United States will give Egypt $250 million more in aid, following President Mohammed Morsi's pledges for political and economic reforms.

However, Kerry also said the Obama administration will hold Morsi, who came to power in June as Egypt's first freely elected president, to his commitment.

“The American people want to see the political and economic success of our long-time partners and friends in Egypt,” Kerry said in Cairo. “We look forward to continuing to work closely with all Egyptians. But “it is clear that more hard work and compromise will be required to restore unity, political stability and economic health to Egypt.”  

Kerry is making his first trip to an Arab nation since taking office. And the two days of meetings in Egypt have proven tense and fraught with political peril.

“I expect a lot,” Egyptian Defense Minister Abdul Al-Sisi told Kerry on Sunday.

Kerry replied: "I expect a lot from you.”

The secretary of state met Saturday with Foreign Minister Mohamed Amr, who told Kerry that Egypt expects long-time friend the United States to support the most populous Arab nation during its current economic woes.

Kerry also is meeting privately with some opponents of Morsi’s Islamist government who had refused to meet publicly with the American delegation.

Egypt is still trying to make good on a $4.8 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund. An agreement would unlock more of the $1 billion in U.S. assistance promised by President Obama last year and set to begin flowing with Kerry's announcement.

"The United States can and wants to do more," Kerry said. "Reaching an agreement with the IMF will require further effort on the part of the Egyptian government and broad support for reform by all Egyptians.”

Kerry cited Egypt's "extreme needs" and Morsi's "assurances that he plans to complete the IMF process" when he told the president that the U.S. would provide $190 million of a long-term $450 million pledge "in a good-faith effort to spur reform and help the Egyptian people at this difficult time."

Separately, the top U.S. diplomat announced $60 million for a new fund for "direct support of key engines of democratic change," including Egypt's entrepreneurs and its young people. Kerry held out the prospect of U.S. assistance to this fund climbing to $300 million over time.

Recapping his meetings with political figures, business leaders and representatives of outside groups, Kerry said he heard of their "deep concern about the political course of their country, the need to strengthen human rights protections, justice and the rule of law, and their fundamental anxiety about the economic future of Egypt."

Those issues came up in "a very candid and constructive manner" during Kerry's talks with Morsi.

Syria and Iran also came up, according to officials.

With parliamentary elections in April approaching and liberal and secular opponents of Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood saying they will boycott, Kerry called the vote "a particularly critical step" in Egypt's democratic transition.

Violent clashes between protesters and security forces have created an environment of insecurity, complicating Egyptian efforts to secure vital international aid.

Officials in the Egyptian presidency said Kerry stressed the need for consensus with the opposition in order to restore confidence in Egypt that it can ride out the crisis. Morsi was reported to have expressed the importance of Egypt's relationship with the United States, which is based on "mutual respect," and focused on the importance of the democratic process in building a strong and stable nation.

Kerry made clear that in all his meetings, he conveyed the message that Egyptians who rose up and overthrew Mubarak "did not risk their lives to see that opportunity for a brighter future squandered."

He also told the country's bickering politicians that they must overcome differences to get Egypt's faltering economy back on track and maintain its leadership role in the volatile Middle East.

The U.S. is deeply concerned that continued instability in Egypt will have broader consequences in a region already rocked by unrest.

U.S. officials said Kerry had planned to stress the importance of upholding Egypt's peace agreement with Israel, cracking down on weapons smuggling to extremists in the Gaza Strip and policing the increasingly lawless Sinai Peninsula while continuing to play a positive role in Syria's civil war.

The impact of his message of unity to the opposition coalition seemingly was blunted when only six of the 11 guests invited by the U.S. Embassy turned up for the Saturday session and three of those six said they still intended to boycott the April parliamentary election, according to participants.

Kerry said that the U.S. would not pick sides in Egypt, and he appealed to all sides to come together around human rights, freedom and speech and religious tolerance.

In an apparent nod to the current stalemate in Washington over the U.S. federal budget, Kerry acknowledged after meeting with Amr that compromise is difficult yet imperative.

"I say with both humility and with a great deal of respect that getting there requires a genuine give-and-take among Egypt's political leaders and civil society groups just as we are continuing to struggle with that in our own country," he said. "There must be a willingness on all sides to make meaningful compromises on the issues that matter most to all of the Egyptian people."

The opposition accuses Morsi and the Brotherhood of following in the footsteps of Mubarak, failing to carry out reforms and trying to install a more religiously conservative system.

Morsi's administration and the Brotherhood say their foes, who have trailed significantly behind Islamists in all elections since the uprising against Mubarak, are running away from the challenge of the ballot box and are trying to overturn democratic gains.

From Egypt, Kerry headed to Saudi Arabia on Sunday, with later stops in the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, where his focus is expected to be the crisis in Syria. Kerry is set to return to Washington on Wednesday.

Fox News' James Rosen in Cairo and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Inmates collecting millions from fraudulent unemployment checks

They're behind bars, but you're still paying their "salaries." 

State and federal officials say inmates across the country continue to collect millions each year in fraudulent unemployment benefits -- often the result of oversight -- with the most recent case in Pennsylvania, where more than 1,000 people collected benefits while behind bars.

Pennsylvania officials said this week the fraud occurred in county prisons because they failed to implement a system of cross-checking the Social Security numbers of benefit applicants, like they did with inmates in their state and federal prisons.

Republican Gov. Tom Corbett said his administration is correcting the problem. But the 1,162 inmates had already collected about $334 every week for more than four months, costing taxpayers roughly $7 million.

The state labor department said detecting the fraud is more difficult now that benefit checks -- once intercepted in inmates’ mail -- have largely been replaced with direct deposits to bank accounts. And the biweekly phone calls to renew benefits can be made by a friend or relative at home.

Overall unemployment fraud is now at 2.85 percent, according to the Labor Department. The agency doesn’t have a specific number for fraud payments but said overall improper payments cost taxpayers $4.9 billion from July 2011 through June 2012, the agency’s most recent reporting period.

The problem is hardly isolated to Pennsylvania. The states with the highest fraud rate over that period were Arizona at 9.21 percent; Mississippi at 9.05 percent; Louisiana at 8.29 percent; South Dakota at 5.95 percent; and Pennsylvania and New Mexico tied at 5.22 percent. The total amount of improper payments was roughly $890 million.

A recent audit in South Carolina purportedly shows the state is also paying unemployment benefits to inmates as well as children, dead people and residents of other states.

State Sen. Kevin Bryant said the percentage of claims could be as high as 25 percent. However, Bryant, a Republican, said Wednesday the sample audit was performed by a private firm and the findings cannot be released unless the state’s Department of Employment and Workforce hires it for a full audit.

In Arizona, officials purportedly found 475 inmates collected roughly $1.1 million in 2010 and 2012. To detect the fraud, the state’s Department of Economic Security used the same Social Security cross-referencing that Pennsylvania was using in state and federal prisons since 1997.

Arizona officials, like others across the U.S., are trying to recoup the money through such methods as offsetting future benefits and taking tax refunds.

A U.S. Labor Department spokesman told FoxNews.com the U.S. fraud rate continued to drop as the agency looks for new ways to detect scams, “but the goal is to insure taxpayers are not being impacted by improper payments and fraud.”

He also said New York is working on a pilot project that officials hope will find new ways for states to improve oversight efforts.  

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