Photograph by Sam Hodgson/Bloomberg

Pedestrians wait in line to cross the border into the U.S. at the San Ysidro Port of Entry in Tijuana, Mexico.

A majority of Americans favor giving undocumented immigrants legal status without first securing the borders, according to an ABC News/Washington Post poll out today.

As the Senate prepares to take up legislation that passed the Judiciary Committee earlier this week, 51 percent of respondents said immigrants should either get a path to legal status now or at the time of a border security increase. Thirty-four percent said the borders should be secured first.

Most respondents, 58-38 percent, supported a way for undocumented immigrants to get legal status if “they pay a fine and meet other requirements.”

On another issue, 67 percent said senators were wrong to block consideration of a bill requiring expanded background checks for gun purchasers. Twenty-nine percent said the Senate was right.

Among those who said the Senate was wrong, 64 percent said Senate Republicans deserved the blame for the measure’s failure while 17 percent blamed President Barack Obama.

The poll of 1,001 adults was taken May 16-19 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.

Original post is Majority Supports Legal Status for Immigrants Before Securing Border by Political Capital.

Photograph by Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Christina King, left, and Lynne Sherrer, center, hold signs during a Tea Party Internal Revenue Service (IRS) demonstration on May 21, 2013 in West Palm Beach, Florida.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is adding his voice to those trying to tie the ongoing Internal Revenue Service scandal to the new health-care law, which will expand coverage to more than 25 million uninsured Americans.

McConnell, of Kentucky, called for delaying the law’s implementation until an investigation of the IRS’s targeting of Tea Party groups for extra scrutiny was completed. The IRS will help enforce the new health-care legislation.

“We’re going to have Americans worrying that they might be discriminated against too, just for having an opinion,” McConnell said today on the Senate floor. “And you know what? We’re not going to be able to tell them not to worry. Because we don’t yet know the truth ourselves.”

The IRS is tasked with making sure Americans carry insurance or pay a penalty, a key part of the health-care law. The law makes insurance more affordable and spreads out the risk to companies by creating a larger pool of customers, including younger, healthier Americans who won’t need medical services as much as older, sicker residents. The law is modeled after the measure successfully championed by then-Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, the 2012 Republican presidential nominee.

“The Supreme Court declared the individual mandate – the core of Obamacare – to be a tax, so IRS involvement is going to be an unavoidable part of any rollout,” McConnell said. “It needs to be halted.”

McConnell called for the law to be repealed, joining House Republicans who have tried 37 times to repeal all or part of the statute. Republicans have yet to offer an alternative that would extend health insurance to millions of Americans now without it.

The head of the IRS office handling the health care law, Sarah Hall Ingram, was in charge of the office supervising nonprofits until December 2010 — before the IRS began taking a closer look at groups applying for 501(c)(4) status with “tea party” in their name. The 501(c)(4) tax-exempt status would enable them to hide their donors even if they engage in political activity.

Original post is McConnell Joins Effort to Tie Health-Care Law to IRS Scandal by Political Capital.

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Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Senate Budget Committee Chairman Patty Murray answer reporters questions before a Senate Democratic Policy Committee luncheon meeting at the Captiol on May 9, 2013 in Washington, DC.

The Senate is run by millionaires while Tea Party favorite Marco Rubio is still in debt.

That’s some of the information gleaned today from senators’ annual personal financial disclosure forms.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, reported assets of between $2.8 million and $6.3 million, including mining claims in Searchlight valued from $100,000 to $250,000. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and his wife, former U.S. Labor Secretary Elaine Chao, had assets of between $9.2 million and $36.5 million.

On the other other side of the financial spectrum,  Rubio, a Florida Republican, reported a negative net worth, with assets of between $259,000 and $860,000 and liabilities of between $450,000 and $1 million.

He did receive $800,000 in royalties from Penguin Group USA Inc. for his 2012 memoir, “An American Son,” and paid off his remaining student loan debt of  between $100,000 and $250,000.

“When I finished school, I owed over $100,000 in student loans, a debt I paid off just a few months ago,” Rubio said in February as he delivered the official Republican response to President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address.

Read the full story at Bloomberg.com.

Original post is Senators’ Finances Run from Debt to Millions by Political Capital.

Photograph by Win McNamee/Getty Images

Acting IRS Commissioner Steven Miller, left, and former IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman confer during a break in testimony before the Senate Finance Committee May 21, 2013 in Washington, DC.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington has again sued the Internal Revenue Service over its regulation of nonprofits incorporated under Section 501(c)(4) of the tax code.

The watchdog group is asking the U.S. District Court to direct the IRS to draft rules governing 501(c)(4) organizations, such as Crossroads GPS, founded with the help of Republican strategist Karl Rove, and Priorities USA, which was created by former aides to President Barack Obama.

In an earlier lawsuit and in a rule-making petition, CREW has argued that tax law, which requires 501(c)(4)s to be “operated exclusively” for social welfare, is at odds with IRS regulations that say such organizations only need to be “primarily engaged” in social welfare.

CREW filed the lawsuit as the Senate Finance Committee held its first hearing about the ongoing IRS scandal in which the agency targeted for extra scrutiny groups with “patriot” or “Tea Party” their names.

“Now that the entire country has been educated about this previously obscure tax matter, this lawsuit may finally spur reform,” said Melanie Sloan, executive director of CREW. “The current IRS scandal directly stems from the problematic regulation.  Only by changing it can we be sure we won’t see a repeat of the current debacle.”

Original post is Watchdog Group Files Second Lawsuit Against IRS by Political Capital.

Photograph by Joe Raedle/Getty Images

IRS protesters on May 21, 2013 in West Palm Beach, Florida. Tea Party activists organized the protest against the Internal Revenue Service saying they improperly targeted conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status.

Almost three-fourths of Americans think it was “inappropriate” for the Internal Revenue Service to target Tea Party groups for extra scrutiny, according to an ABC News/Washington Post poll out today. A majority of respondents said the government was harassing those organizations.

The survey of 1,001 adults showed 74 percent opposed the targeting of the Tea Party organizations that sought nonprofit status, while 20 percent said it was appropriate. Fifty-six percent said the government deliberately went after the groups while 31 percent said it was a bureaucratic mistake. Nonprofits incorporated under Section 501c4 of the U.S. tax code face limits on their political activity.

Respondents split 45 percent to 42 percent on whether the Obama administration was covering up the facts.

By an even larger margin, 55 percent to 33 percent, respondents said the Obama administration was covering up the facts around the attack on a U.S. facility in Benghazi, Libya, that killed four people, including the U.S. ambassador.

It’s no surprise then that more Americans, 54 percent to 38 percent, said they feel the government is doing more to threaten individual rights than to protect them.

Despite speeches, press releases and hearings, congressional Republicans have not been able to gain politically from the Obama administration stumbles, the poll found. Sixty percent of respondents said congressional Republicans were dealing with unimportant issues, while 51 percent said President Barack Obama was handling issues of importance to them. That mirrored Obama’s approval rating, 51 percent, with 44 percent disapproving.

The poll, taken May 16-19, had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.

Original post is IRS Was Wrong to Target Tea Party Groups, ABC-Post Poll Shows by Political Capital.

The FEC announced today that Ensign and his committees will pay $32,000, while the parents owe $22,000.

At issue has been whether $96,000 paid by Ensign’s parents, Michael and Sharon Ensign, to Cindy and Doug Hampton and two of their children was a campaign contribution in excess of legal limits.  Cindy was the former campaign worker that Ensign had the affair with while her husband, Doug, worked for the senator.

Ensign disclosed the affair in June 2009. His lawyer, Paul Coggins, said a month later that the payment was made “out of concern for the well-being of long-time family friends during a difficult time.”

Ensign resigned his Senate seat in May 2011 after the chamber’s Ethics Committee announced it was hiring an outside counsel for the investigation into the payment, which could have resulted in public hearings.

In announcing his resignation on his website, Ensign said that “while I stand behind my firm belief that I have not violated any law, rule, or standard of conduct of the Senate, and I have fought to prove this publicly, I will not continue to subject my family, my constituents, or the Senate to any further rounds of investigation, depositions, drawn out proceedings, or especially public hearings. For my family and me, this continued personal cost is simply too great.”

Ensign had won his Senate seat in 2000. It is now held by Republican Dean Heller.

Original post is Ensign to Join Parents in Paying FEC Fines Totaling $54,000 by Political Capital.

Visitors to the National Republican Congressional Committee’s website are told how the party “most heavily” relies on small donors while its Democratic counterpart’s “primary sources of funding” include labor unions, trial lawyers and Democratic House members.

Fundraising figures analyzed by the Center for Responsive Politics tell another story.

The House Democrats’ fundraising arm took in 36 percent of the $22.6 million it raised from January to March in donations of $200 or less, according to CRP, a Washington-based research group.

The NRCC raised 14 percent of its $17.4 million in receipts from small-dollar donors.

For the 2012 elections, the NRCC raised $39.1 million from House Republicans, more than the $21.9 million that Democratic House members donated to their fundraising arm.

And while the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee raised $6.2 million from lawyers and labor, the NRCC brought in $9.9 million from Wall Street employees after every House Republican voted against imposing new regulations on the financial sector that has been blamed for contributing to the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.

Wall Street gave $3.3 million to DCCC for 2012 elections. The committee’s website says only that the committee “is supported by the contributions of individuals and other groups from throughout the country.”

In 2013, Republicans have raised $2.5 million and Democrats have raised $8.2 million in small donations.

“Democrats are embroiled in three major scandals this week, but President Obama still found time yesterday to fundraise in New York City for the DCCC with his special interest cronies – liberal groups you can guarantee aren’t being targeted by the IRS,”  NRCC spokesperson Andrea Bozek said in an email.

Original post is House Republican Fundraising Claims Don’t Match Statistics by Political Capital.

Photograph by Alex Wong/Getty Images

The Capitol in Washington, DC.

The Senate could be on the verge of entering the modern world when it comes to campaign finance.

More than one-third of the Senate — 35 senators — have attached their names to legislation that would require candidates to file their campaign finance information electronically to the Federal Election Commission, rather than on paper to the Secretary of the Senate. Senators and their opponents are now the only federal candidates who still use paper; others have been filing electronically for a decade.

The bill, S. 375, has bipartisan support. It was introduced by Democrat Jon Tester of Montana and Republican Thad Cochran of Mississippi. Previous efforts to require electronic filings have been blocked by Senate Republicans.

While presidential, House, political party and political action committee filings can be made instantly available for public inspection and analysis, it takes weeks, if not months, before Senate filings can be entered into the FEC’s computers.

“Through its insistence on clinging to this time consuming and expensive process of paper-based filing, the U.S. Senate succeeds only in denying voters vital information about who is bankrolling campaigns until after the votes have been counted, but that is precisely the goal of opponents,” said Meredith McGehee, policy director for the Campaign Legal Center, an advocacy group that favors stronger campaign finance laws.

Original post is Senators Eye 21st Century World of Campaign Finance by Political Capital.

Photograph by Pete Marovich/Bloomberg

Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl, a Republican from Arizona, second left, is surrounded by members of the media, as he walks through the Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Dec. 30, 2012.

The revolving door between Capitol Hill and K Street keeps spinning, even as the general public doesn’t think highly of Congress.

“Attitudes of the American public and their evaluation of Congress probably don’t align perfectly with that of K Street headhunters who want to hire people who know how to work Capitol Hill,” said Sheila Krumholz, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics.

An April 4-7 Gallup poll gave Congress a 79 percent disapproval rating. And a Democratic-leaning online survey firm, Public Policy Polling, gave Congress lower favorable ratings than root canals, traffic jams and head lice.

Even so, at least 22 departing members of the last Congress have found jobs with law firms, trade associations or in government relations departments of groups that lobby.

“The constituency inside the Beltway is very different than the American people,” said Matt Kibbe, president of Freedomworks, a Tea Party-aligned group.

While barred from lobbying their former colleagues during a cooling-off period, the former lawmakers can still be invaluable, offering insights and developing strategies for their new colleagues and clients.

“There are clients and potential clients who feel that’s an important component of a public policy team,” said Holly Fechner, vice chairwoman of the public policy and government affairs practice at Covington & Burling LLP, which brought on two heavyweights: Jon Kyl of Arizona, who had been the second-ranking Republican in the Senate, and Democrat Howard Berman of California, who had served as chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

“They stand out in terms of being real leaders and problem solvers,”  said Covington’s public policy group chairman, Dan Bryant.

Both know how to reach across the aisle. Kyl placed in his new office — located along Pennsylvania Avenue between the Capitol and White House — a plaque that includes a picture of him and his colleagues of both parties who reached an agreement to put some limits on the use of the filibuster.

Original post is K Street Woos Ex-Lawmakers as Voters View Congress With Disdain by Political Capital.

Photograph by Daniel Acker/Bloomberg

A Facebook Inc. logo.

Facebook is getting disliked by environmental groups and progressive organizations such as Moveon.org in response to ads being run by affiliates of a group created by Facebook founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg.

Moveon, Sierra Club and the League of Conservation Voters are among the organizations that said today they would not advertise on Facebook for at least two weeks.

Zuckerberg’s group, Fwd.us, was set up to promote a rewrite of U.S. immigration laws. It also funds Democratic-leaning and Republican-leaning organizations, each with their own boards of directors, running issue ads in support of senators who back new immigration laws.

The commercials, though, highlight other issues beyond immigration as they try to show supporters of overhauling immigration in a favorable light.

An ad praising Sen. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, features him criticizing President Barack Obama for not approving construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, which environmentalists say will increase the use of fossil fuels blamed for global warming. An advertisement backing Sen. Mark Begich, an Alaska Democrat, applauds him for supporting oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Former Sen. Russell Feingold, a Wisconsin Democrat, said Fwd.us has “chosen a strategy that’s condescending to voters and counterproductive to the cause” of enacting a new immigration law.

Sarah Feinberg, a spokeswoman for Facebook, declined to comment.

Original post is Facebook Disliked: Environmentalists Challenge Ads for Senators by Political Capital.