Obama visits San Bernardino shooting victims

Obama is praising new House Speaker Paul Ryan and other top Capitol Hill leaders for the orderly negotiations of the just-passed budget and tax deal.

“I do want to thank Congress for ending the year on a high note”, Obama said in his annual year-end news conference.

“You’re absolutely right that it is very hard for us to detect lone-wolf plots or plots involving a husband and wife, in this case, because despite the incredible vigilance of all of our law enforcement, homeland security, etc., it’s not that different from us trying to detect the next mass shooter”, he said.

Fourteen people were killed in the shooting at a social services center in San Bernardino.

Three Californians serving long prison terms for drug possession are among 95 people having their sentences commuted by President Barack Obama.

Obama offered a winding defense of his administration’s strategy against ISIS that at times betrayed his annoyance with critics who say his strategy is failing. The White House said that’s more than the combined total of the previous five presidents. He said he’s now hoping to stitch together congressional support for the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal and for criminal justice reform.

As part of his effort to change the criminal justice system, President Barack Obama on Friday commuted lengthy sentences for six federal prisoners from Houston and one from Galveston who had been convicted on narcotics charges.

“I do think you have seen from the Russians that after a couple of months they are not really moving the needle that much”, he said.

Obama noted that the final agreement met his demands on investing in domestic programs and avoiding most of Republicans’ ideological policy provisions.

He also affirmed his longstanding position that Syrian President Bashar Assad must leave power for Syria to resolve its civil war, even though his administration has recently said it could accept an unspecified transition period during which Assad stayed.

Obama applauded his Affordable Care Act for slashing the percentage of US citizens without health benefits down to 10 percent “for the first time since records were kept” – which he said amounted to 17 million additional Americans getting coverage. “And one of the things we’ll be doing is engaging with the high-tech community to find out how we can, in an appropriate way, do a better job, if we have a lead, to be able to track a suspected terrorist”, Obama said. “It’s incredibly disturbing. These are not low level drug dealers”, said Ray Hunt, president of the Houston Police Officer’s Union.

He says its population will be below 100 early next year. “No government is going to have the capacity to read every single person’s texts or social media”, he said. “He will take steps to highlight this issue and why it’s important” through next year, she said.

On the eve of an election year, Mr Obama said he believed the next Democratic presidential nominee would be strong and would ultimately be elected president.