GOP moves to slash domestic programs

GOP moves to slash domestic programs

WASHINGTON

Republicans now controlling the House promised Thursday to slash domestic agencies’ budgets by almost 20 percent for the coming year, the first salvo in what’s sure to be a bruising battle over their drive to cut spending to where it was before President Barack Obama took office.

“Washington’s spending spree is over,” declared Paul Ryan, the House Budget Committee chairman who announced the plan. “The spending limits will restore sanity to a broken budget process,” he said, returning “to pre-stimulus, pre-bailout levels.”

Republicans won’t get everything they want. Democrats are in charge of the White House and the Senate, and even House Republicans may have second thoughts when the magnitude of the cuts sinks in.

Obama pushes for clean energy

STATE COLLEGE, Pa.

President Barack Obama, turning briefly to his eclipsed domestic agenda, sharpened his sales pitch for clean-energy technology Thursday by promising that the payoff would be a wave of jobs — the kind good enough to support families and long-term American prosperity.

In a quick trip to Pennsylvania, a politically critical state, Obama proposed a tax credit and other ideas aimed at getting businesses to retrofit their buildings and save costs. He acknowledged that as presidential ideas go, making commercial buildings more energy efficient “may not sound too sexy,” but he said the commitment to such research could save billions in utility bills and create jobs of true “national purpose.”

Police: Bandit returned after heist

LAS VEGAS

The bankrupt son of a Las Vegas judge followed a crude holdup at a posh casino by racking up hundreds of thousands of dollars in gambling losses and spending a week like a high roller, but got caught after trying to hawk his stolen chips online to poker players, police said Thursday.

An arrest report for the helmeted bandit, who ran out of the Bellagio hotel- casino with $1.5 million in chips during a gunpoint heist Dec. 14, said Anthony M. Carleo lost about $105,000 at the resort over the next month — including $73,000 on New Year’s Eve. He stayed at least one week at the resort in late January, enjoying meals, drinks and rooms furnished by the casino.

hSUV plunges into Okla. river; 3 killed

MIAMI, Okla

An SUV carrying eight mushroom-farm workers veered off a snowy highway bridge Thursday and launched itself off an angled, plowed snowdrift and over the guardrail before plummeting into a shallow, icy river 61 feet below.

Three died and the others suffered from hypothermia and trauma after their red Chevrolet Avalanche careened off the Interstate 44 bridge and into the Spring River.

“That alone is a very dangerous type of crash. This is a very traumatic crash,” Oklahoma Highway Patrol Lt. George Brown said. “The ground temperature was 11 degrees below zero, so it would take only a second to become hypothermic in this water and ice.“

Associated Press