Photograph by Justin Lane/EPA/Corbis

The National Debt Clock and an estimate of the Untied States’ national debt, as well as an estimate of each family’s share of that amount, on Dec. 31, 2012, in New York City.

That’s the U.S. debt ceiling as of Monday, according to the Treasury Department.

It’s the first number the Treasury has released since President Barack Obama signed a suspension of the limit in early February, Bloomberg’s Ian Katz and Kasia Klimasinska report. The ceiling was $16.394 trillion at the time and was suspended through May 18. It increased to account for deficits that accrued since February.

Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew said May 10 a one-time payment of $59.4 billion from Fannie Mae confirms that the U.S. won’t hit the cap until September.

He announced in a letter to lawmakers Monday new steps to keep the government running under the limit. The measures include a “debt-issuance suspension period” which frees up about $6.4 billion a month, Bloomberg’s Meera Louis reports.

The Treasury also can continue borrowing for several months by shifting money among government accounts.

Original post is Bloomberg by the Numbers: $16.699 Trillion by Political Capital.

The surveys show limited interest in what some Republicans are calling an administration cover-up, and what President Barack Obama today called a “political circus.”

Eight months after the Sept. 11 violence that claimed four American lives, the polls by Public Policy Polling and the Pew Research Center offer different pictures of who Americans trust on the issue. In the survey by PPP, a Democratic-oriented firm, respondents said they trust former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton more than Republican lawmakers, 49-39 percent. Among Pew respondents, 37 percent said the Obama administration has been honest in what it’s said about the attacks, while 40 percent said it’s been dishonest.

Pew also found that most Americans — 56 percent — say they aren’t following the investigation. A majority of PPP respondents said Congress should focus on issues besides Benghazi. Immigration and gun background checks were both rated more important.

Clinton’s 52-44 percent  favorable/unfavorable rating was unchanged from March despite congressional testimony last week that reignited the debate, according to PPP.

Congressional Republicans “remain very unpopular” with a 36-57 percent approval/disapproval rating, PPP said. Still, that’s up from a 15-75 percent rating in January following Congress’ fiscal cliff debate. In the Pew poll, 36 percent of voters said Republicans have “gone too far” in the Benghazi investigation, while 34 percent approved of their approach.

Among Republican respondents to PPP, 41 percent said they consider Benghazi “the biggest political scandal in American history.” Of those voters, 39 percent couldn’t identify the country where Benghazi is located.

Original post is Reignited Benghazi Debate Doesn’t Sway Public Opinion by Political Capital.

Photograph by Robyn Beck/AFP via Getty Images

Tea Party supporters cheer at the Tea Party Unity Rally ahead of the Republican National Convention, in Tampa, Florida.

The Internal Revenue Service apologized for extra scrutiny of Tea Party groups this morning, sending Washington into a Twitter tizzy.

Lois Lerner, the IRS’s director of exempt organizations, said at a conference the tax agency improperly flagged some anti-tax groups for extra scrutiny, Bloomberg’s Jonathan Salant reports.

Mentions of “IRS” on Twitter spiked to over 40,000 after the news broke at about 11 a.m., according to Topsy, a social media analysis company. That’s almost twice the number of “IRS” mentions during the last few days of tax season.

Republican lawmakers and their aids were quick to spread the

The #IRS admits they targeted conservative groups in 2012. politi.co/17R3OGU #tcot

— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) May 10, 2013

Suspicions confirmed: “IRS Apologizes for Targeting Conservative Groups” abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireS…

— John McCain (@SenJohnMcCain) May 10, 2013

Re: #IRS story: the fact that Americans were targeted by the IRS b/c of their political beliefs is unconscionable 1.usa.gov/15UIpiy

— Darrell Issa (@DarrellIssa) May 10, 2013

Today is amazing RT @goldfarb: The senior IRS official briefing the press just said: “I’m not good at math.”

— Brendan Buck (@Brendan_Buck) May 10, 2013

Republicans weren’t the only Twitter users voicing disapproval. Jon Lovett, a former White House speechwriter, questioned on Twitter why the IRS isn’t taking disciplinary action against the employees responsible. He also tweeted:

I don’t see why only conservatives should get mad that the IRS targeted conservative groups.

— Jon Lovett (@jonlovett) May 10, 2013

IRS seems to be claiming this was stupidity, not malice. Maybe so. But we shouldn’t take their word for it and neither should Congress.

— Jon Lovett (@jonlovett) May 10, 2013 

Judd Legum, editor of the progressive blog Think Progress, wrote:

FWIW, I think the IRS’ behavior is legitimately problematic. No evidence it was part of a political strategy however

— Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) May 10, 2013

Lerner drew extra ridicule from the Twitter-verse for telling reporters on a conference call, “I’m not good at math.” She clarified that she is a lawyer, not an accountant, according to The Fix.

“I’m not good at math” trumped only by “I was told there would be no math”.

— The Fix (@TheFix) May 10, 2013

Sample letter: “Dear IRS: I apologize for not paying taxes on time. About those deductions I mistakingly took…I’m just not good at Math.”

— Ana Navarro (@ananavarro) May 10, 2013

Possible IRS spox clarification: “I’m not good at math, but there’s always money in the banana stand.”

— Brett LoGiurato (@BrettLoGiurato) May 10, 2013

Four hours after the news broke, “IRS” was still at the top of the trending list on Twitter in Washington. It’s likely to stay there this afternoon: A White House press briefing has been pushed back to 3:15 and is running late.

Original post is IRS Apology Draws Twitter Scorn by Political Capital.

Photograph by John Tlumacki/The Boston Globe via Getty Images

Rep. Ed Markey gives Sheila Decter, of Newton, a hug while he campaigns at Johnny’s Luncheonette.

The day after Rep. Ed Markey won the U.S. Senate Democratic primary in Massachusetts, the Senate Republicans’ fundraising arm has released an ad portraying the congressman as a baby — the infant on the cover of Nirvana’s “Nevermind” album, no less.

In a new ad entitled “Ed Markey’s Worst Hits,” the National Republican Senatorial Committee uses the template of a greatest-hits CD commercial to dance all over the 36-year House veteran’s voting history.

“Ed Markey came on hot like disco, kicking it off in the ’70s by voting to raise debt and helping Washington influence-peddling,” the narrator says over an electric guitar riff. “Markey really took ’80s excess and big spending to a whole new level by voting to raise the debt ceiling 31 times.”

Markey won his party’s nomination Tuesday by defeating Rep. Stephen Lynch, by 57-43 percent. Lynch endorsed Markey today.

Lynch: I’m eager to be a full throated supporter of Ed Markey twitter.com/AnnieLinskey/s…

— Annie Linskey (@AnnieLinskey) May 1, 2013

Markey will now face Republican businessman and former Navy SEAL Gabriel Gomez in a June 25 dance-off special election for Secretary of State John Kerry’s former Senate seat.

Markey’s staff took just four minutes after Gomez won his primary yesterday to release a statement accusing him of being “the first domino for the national GOP seeking to take control of the U.S. Senate and enact an extreme agenda,” Bloomberg’s Annie Linskey reported.

Dominoes and disco attacks are just the beginning of an intense campaign period: Markey has $4.6 million in campaign funds to spend, which is nine times as much as Gomez.

“And don’t forget his blow-out hit: voting to raise his own pay by 40 percent,” the NRSC ad narrator says of Markey. “Oh yeah, he’s bad.”

It’s just that crazy little thing called politics.

Original post is Republican Attack Ad Gives Markey Disco Fever by Political Capital.

Photograph by Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg

General David Petraeus speaks during a Senate Armed Services Committee confirmation hearing for reappointment and commander of the U.S. Forces in Afghanistan in Washington, D.C.

First it was Mark Sanford running for Congress. Then it was Anthony Weiner floating a New York City mayoral campaign. Now, David Petraeus is putting himself out there post-scandal — as both a university professor and one lucky philanthropist’s work0ut buddy.

Former CIA Director and retired Army General Petraeus is joining Macaulay Honors College at the City University of New York as a public policy visiting professor, the university announced yesterday. He starts Aug. 1.

“I look  forward to leading a seminar at Macaulay that examines the developments that could position the United States – and our North American partners – to lead the world out of the current global economic slowdown,” Petreaus, who has a doctorate from Princeton University, said in a statement.

The new professor is also the advertised prize of a virtual raffle hosted by Omaze, a for-profit crowdfunding website that raises money for charities. The raffle offers a “grueling” workout with Petraeus on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.

The website, which deems Petraeus “the celebrity” of the “once-in-a-lifetime experience,” is raising money for the Mission Continues, an organization that awards community service fellowships to recent veterans, according to its website.

There’s no fitness requirement noted on Omaze, but participants might want to read up on Petraeus’ six-minute miles before entering.  Petraeus has had plenty of time for his rigorous workouts since he resigned as CIA director last year after the disclosure of his affair with his biographer, Paula Broadwell.

“Test your physical limits during an intense workout with the man that was once in charge of all U.S. armed forces’ foreign operations before discussing military strategy over a well-deserved coffee,” the website advertises. It adds that the workout will occur “in late summer or early fall 2013″ and makes no mention of his fall from grace.

A contribution of just $10 will enter a donor into the drawing, so Omaze users don’t have to go all in.

Original post is Crowdfunding Site Offers Professor Petraeus as Prize by Political Capital.

Photograph by Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg

The Washington Monument stands behind cherry trees blossoming in Washington, D.C.

Updated 2:35 pm

The Office of Management and Budget hands out President Barack Obama’s 2014 budget in a Starbucks as the sun comes up.

It’s 6:35 am, and a dozen reporters are gathered in downtown Washington, waiting for an OMB staffer carrying CDs. He is five minutes behind schedule due to roadblocks around the White House. The budget files he’s releasing are two months late.

Obama’s $3.8 trillion budget proposal arrives at the Capitol after the House and Senate already have adopted non-binding budget resolutions so different in their goals that there’s almost no prospect for compromise, Bloomberg reports. Reporters held their headlines until the White House’s embargoed release after the president spoke from the Rose Garden at 11 am today. “Our economy is poised for progress as long as Washington doesn’t get in the way,” he said.

The president’s budget, officially due on Feb. 1, is usually the kick-off for  budget season in Washington. This year’s budget – delayed until cherry-blossom season after a series of manufactured fiscal crises on Capitol Hill – is a potential tie-breaker.

Because of congressional gridlock, “the president is pretty much stepping onto the same playing field that he would have if he had started on time,” Joseph Minarik, senior vice president of the Committee for Economic Development, said in an interview.

Republicans started early today bashing the proposal on the Senate floor and on Twitter:

“It sounds like the White House just tossed last year’s budget into the microwave,” Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said.

Loving our new Vine video! Obama’s budget in 6 seconds. vine.co/v/btnbn9JDDur

— Reince Priebus (@Reince) April 10, 2013

I liked @tonyfratto‘s phrase this am calling Obama budget proposal a possible “middle path to nowhere.” — Ben White (@morningmoneyben) April 10, 2013

Oh good. The White House plans to use fictional “war savings” in their budget again. — Brendan Buck (@Brendan_Buck) April 10, 2013

O’s thought bubble: “Um…someone remind me. What exactly were we thinking when we decided 2send the budget up 2 months late?”

— Ari Fleischer (@AriFleischer) April 10, 2013

Even Democrat Elizabeth Colbert Busch, who is running for the South Carolina 1st District  House seat against former Gov. Mark Sanford, rejected the plan:

Businesswoman Colbert Busch Rejects President Obama’s Budget | Press Release bit.ly/16MCmJV #SC1 SC01 #SCtweets #CHS

— ColbertBuschSC (@ColbertBuschSC) April 10, 2013

The outlook appears grim, and budget experts aren’t sure whether Obama’s proposals are any more or less likely to be taken up by Congress now that it’s April. At 65 days late, Obama’s 2014 plan is the most over-due budget in modern history, a fact House Republicans have criticized frequently over the past few weeks.

“Many people believe that because he gets to go last, it provides the president the chance to give more, not less, leadership on this issue. I think that’s an open question,” Douglas Holtz-Eakin, president of the American Action Forum and former economic adviser to Sen. John McCain’s 2008  presidential campaign, said in an interview. He added, “It has more to do with their willingness to take a leadership role on the deal.”

Congress will likely continue to wait for “the moment when the debt limit hits the fan,” said Minarik, who is a former policy director and economist for the House and OMB.

“Will the president proposing entitlement reductions shock the system?” he said. “There aren’t too many indications at this point that would lead you to think so.”

The reporters at Starbucks had at least one reason to be glad for the budget’s two-month delay: If they had received the budget in February, it wouldn’t have been 63 degrees in Washington for their walks back to their newsrooms, the cherries in full bloom.

Original post is Obama’s Budget Handoff: $3.8 Trillion Grande by Political Capital.

Photograph by Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg

Copies of the Fiscal Year 2014 Budget sit on a pallet at the U.S. Government Printing Office in Washington, D.C. on April 8, 2013.

By Jonathan Nicholson

When Republicans and Democrats describe each other’s budgets, a person could be forgiven for thinking the plans are as far apart as possible.

Republicans say putting the budget into balance by 2023 is necessary to help get the economy on track, with spending reductions alone and not raising taxes. Democrats say the cuts would hurt growth and instead want to stabilize the deficit in proportion to the size of the economy.

Not long ago — and seemingly forgotten in the current debate about spending programs and tax reform – Republicans said the deficits under George W. Bush were sustainable and in proportion to the size of the economy, while Democrats criticized Republicans and Bush for not reducing the deficit more quickly, Bloomberg BNA reported.

With the deficit-to-GDP ratio in fiscal 2012 at 7.0 percent, the switch in tone begs the question: Have times changed or have only the political winds shifted, reflecting the difference in control of the White House?

Read the full story at Bloomberg.com.

Original post is Bush Debt Load Endorsed by Republicans Now Rejected by Political Capital.

Photograph by Alex Wong/Getty Images

Sen. Heidi Heitkamp during a hearing before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on March 21, 2013 on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC.

It’s down to the Final Four.

Freshmen Sens. Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota and Joe Donnelly of Indiana announced their support for same-sex marriage this morning, leaving just four Democratic senators who haven’t publicly endorsed it.

Donnelly, a Catholic and conservative Democrat, posted his announcement on his Facebook page. He concluded:

“With the recent Supreme Court arguments and accompanying public discussion of same-sex marriage, I have been thinking about my past positions and votes. In doing so, I have concluded that the right thing to do is to support marriage equality for all.”

Heitkamp previously said she believes same-sex marriage is a state issue. She released this statement today:

“In speaking with North Dakotans from every corner of our great state, and much personal reflection, I have concluded the federal government should no longer discriminate against people who want to make lifelong, loving commitments to each other or interfere in personal, private, and intimate relationships.  I view the ability of anyone to marry as a logical extension of this belief. The makeup of families is changing, but the importance of family is enduring.”

Sens. Tim Johnson of South Dakota, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, Mark Pryor of Arkansas and Joe Manchin of West Virginia are the only Senate Democrats who have not publicly backed same-sex marriage. Pryor and Landrieu are up for re-election in 2014.

Just two Republicans, Sens. Rob Portman of Ohio and Mark Kirk of Illinois, have switched to support of same-sex marriage.

That raises the tally of support in the Senate to 53.

Jonathan Salant contributed to this report, and see his report at Bloomberg.com.

Original post is Final Four: Gay Marriage Draws Two More Democrats, Four Left by Political Capital.

Photograph by Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images

A same-sex marriage supporter waves a rainbow flag in front of the US Supreme Court on March 26, 2013 in Washington, DC, as the Court takes up the issue of gay marriage.

Florida Sen. Bill Nelson just took himself off a shrinking list of Democratic Senate holdouts: He reversed his position against same-sex marriage.

With Nelson as the 51st senator to voice support, more than half the U.S. Senate now backs same-sex marriage.

Nelson will ask the Supreme Court to overturn the California law prohibiting same-sex marriage, he said in a statement in the Tampa Bay Times, excerpted here:

“Simply put, if The Lord made homosexuals as well as heterosexuals, why should I discriminate against their civil marriage? I shouldn’t, and I won’t.”

“So I will add my name to the petition of senators asking the Supreme Court to declare the law that prohibits gay marriage unconstitutional.”

Nelson, whose home state of Florida voted for President Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012, told the Miami Herald he believes marriage is a state issue after Obama announced his support for same-sex marriage in May 2012.

“I believe marriage should be left to the states, and Florida voted on same-sex marriage in 2008,” he said at the time. Floridians voted 62-38 percent to define marriage as between one man and one woman in 2008, the Herald reported. Currently, 75 percent of Florida voters support at least civil unions for same-sex couples, according to Public Policy Polling.

Nelson’s reversal comes three weeks after Sen. Rob Portman, an Ohio Republican, said he supports same-sex marriage. Prompted by two March Supreme Court cases on the issue, a wave of Democratic senators and Republican Sen. Mark Kirk of Illinois followed Portman’s lead.

Only six Democratic senators have not endorsed same-sex marriage: Tim Johnson of South Dakota, Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, Joe Donnelly of Indiana, Mark Pryor of Arkansas and Joe Manchin of West Virginia. Among them, Pryor and Landrieu are up for re-election in 2014.

Original post is Nelson Backs Gay Marriage: Six Democratic Senators Left Silent by Political Capital.

Photograph by John Moore/Getty Images

Migrant farm workers carry cases of freshly picked spinach on a farm near Wellington, Colorado.

As lawmakers work to finalize an immigration law rewrite that would provide a path to citizenship for many of the undocumented already here, fewer than half of all Americans say the undocumented should be eligible to become citizens, according to a survey run by the Pew Research Center.

While 71 percent of respondents to a new Pew poll say undocumented immigrants should be able to stay in the U.S. as long as they meet certain requirements, 24 percent say they should be eligible for permanent residency.  Only 43 percent say undocumented immigrants should be eligible for citizenship.

Another 27 percent of respondents say undocumented immigrants should not be allowed to stay in the country legally.

Pew’s findings come as eight senators work to finalize a bill that provides undocumented immigrants with a path to citizenship, Bloomberg’s Julie Hirschfeld Davis reports. The bipartisan Senate group is pushing to unveil its measure the week of April 8.

Approximately 11 million undocumented immigrants currently live in the U.S.

The national survey of 1,501 people was conducted March 13-17.

Original post is Undocumented Should Be Able to Stay, With Some Conditions: Poll by Political Capital.