I fixed the issue by removing the change address. I'm still curious about the 2nd part of my question.
If you're creating the raw transaction and don't provide a change address, doesn't that mean you just spent the change in miner fees? In other words, if you have two input transactions of 1
BTC each, and the amount you're spending is 1.01
BTC, without a change address, 0.99
BTC becomes transaction fee.