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 1BTC each, and the amount you're spending is 1.01BTC, without a change address, 0.99BTC becomes transaction fee.

I fixed the issue by removing the change address.  I'm still curious about the 2nd part of my question.