Photograph by Alex Wong/Getty Images

Rep. Mike Kelly (R-PA) speaks during a hearing before the House Ways and Means Committee on May 17, 2013 on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC.

Rep. Mike Kelly came to politics late and, only in his second term at 65 years of age, the actuarial tables don’t favor him rising to become a Capitol Hill kingpin. He could retire tomorrow, though, and know that he made the most of one moment in the spotlight.

As a member of the House Ways and Means Committee that held a hearing today on the the IRS political scandal, the Pennsylvania Republican did more than just join in the expected bipartisan grilling of outgoing agency boss Steven Miller — he scorched him, and in the process earned a prolonged standing ovation from spectators.

As you can see here, Kelly starts out in fairly routine fashion but then gets to the bottom line that most citizens can relate to — IRS chieftains can offer all the excuses they want about a poorly managed agency being the root cause for the untoward scrutiny given Tea Party groups, but John Q. Public doesn’t get cut that type of slack when its audit time.

Addressing a clearly chagrined and morose Miller, Kelly noted: “If you think it’s uncomfortable sitting over there, you ought to be a private individual when the IRS is across from you questioning.”

At the risk of causing his own immediate family to perhaps squirm a bit, Kelly later used a personal anecdote to speak truth to bureaucrats: “I have a grandson who’s afraid to get out of bed at night because he thinks there’s somebody under the bed that’s going to grab him. And I think most Americans feel that way about the IRS. I mean, you get a letter from you folks, or a phone call, it’s with terror that you look at it.”

Gaining a head of steam, he drove his point home with gusto: “You talked about — you’re a horribly run organization. If you’re on the other side of the fence, you’re not given that excuse.” When a taxpayer deals with the IRS, he continued, “You’re not allowed to be shoddy, you’re not allowed to be run horribly, you’re not allowed to make mistakes, you’re not allowed to do one damn thing that doesn’t come in compliance. If you do, you’re held responsible right then.”

The Mediaite website headline sums it up: “GOP Rep. Mike Kelly Delivers Brutal Takedown of IRS to Audience’s Applause.”

Kelly came to Congress as part of the 2010 Republican tsunami, knocking off a one-term Democratic incumbent in a district in Pennyslvania’s northwest corner. Owner of a Chevrolet-Cadillac deadlership he took over from his father, Kelly’s previous political experience consisted of four years on the city council in Butler, a Pittsburgh suburb.

The one time he had strayed from his Keystone State roots was to attend the University of Notre Dame, where he was recruited to play football. He got his degree there, though his athletic career was quickly sidetracked by a knee injury his freshman year.

Today, he got the ball and ran with it.

and look who was watching:

Must watch! RT @caintv: Rep. Mike Kelly levels blistering attack at IRS Comm. Steven Miller bit.ly/Z1QJu0

— Herman Cain (@THEHermanCain) May 17, 2013

Original post is Mike Kelly’s IRS Spotlight for John Q. Public: Standing Ovation by Political Capital.

Photograph by Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg

Steven Miller

Speaking of the truth vs. the whole truth, House Republicans did some selective editing of an inspector general’s report during today’s hearing on the Internal Revenue Service.

Steven Miller, the acting — and outgoing — commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service, denied today that the agency had targeted small-government groups for tougher scrutiny of their applications for tax-exempt status.

Republicans at a Ways and Means Committee hearing pushed back on that, noting that the inspector general’s report used the word “target” 16 times.

“It’s a common understanding of the word,” said Rep. Peter Roskam, an Illinois Republican. “And so I would just suggest that it’s a well-settled doctrine and we not waste a lot of time parsing on it.”

The count of 16 mentions is true — on a simple word search.

Each of those 16 references describes the allegations the inspector general researched, which themselves came from congressional Republicans.

None of the uses of the word “target” in the report describes the inspector general’s findings.

What did the report say? That the IRS used “inappropriate criteria” to screen applications.

Original post is IRS: Republicans’ Own Selective Examination: ‘Targets’ by Political Capital.

Maguire, 74, filed a federal statement of candidacy to seek the northern 5^th District seat held by Republican Scott Garrett, according to documents on file at the Federal Election Commission.

Maguire was elected to the House in 1974 at 35, a member of the big Democratic class of “Watergate Babies” elected three months after President Richard Nixon resigned in disgrace. Maguire served through 1980, when he was unseated by Republican Marge Roukema.

Maguire ran for the Senate in 1982, placing second in a Democratic primary won by Frank Lautenberg, who was elected to the first of five terms.

Garrett succeeded Roukema after the 2002 election and is serving his sixth term. He leads the House Financial Services panel that oversees capital markets and government-sponsored enterprises.

New Jersey’s 5^th District takes more than 70 percent of its population from Bergen County, including the communities of Hackensack, Fair Lawn, Paramus and Ridgewood. It also includes parts of Sussex, Warren and Passaic Counties. The district has a median household income of $86,213, 14^th-highest in the nation, according to a 2011 Census Bureau estimate.

The district, redrawn before the 2012 election, backed Republican Mitt Romney over President Barack Obama by 51 percent to 48 percent, according to data compiled by Political Capital.

An e-mail to Maguire’s campaign wasn’t immediately returned.

Original post is Ex-Rep. Maguire Readies New Jersey Comeback Campaign by Political Capital.

Photograph by Joe Klamar/AFP via Getty Images

People march through the streets of Oxnard, California, for immigration reform and to honor the legacy of Cesar E. Chavez, founder of the United Farm Workers of America, on March 24, 2013.

At the rose-adorned grave-site of Cesar Chavez, co-founder of the National Farm Workers Association, widow Helen Chavez had one wish for the visiting President Barack Obama.

“I would like to make sure and request that you get immigration reform passed,” she said at that encounter last fall, according to Arturo Rodriguez, a longtime associate of the late farmworkers’ leader and now president of the United Farm Workers, recounting Obama’s reply: “He said, `You know what, Mrs. Chavez, I promise you I will get that done.”’

While the Obama White House hasn’t taken the public lead on an immigration bill shaped by a bipartisan group of senators working its way through the Judiciary Committee — wary that any bill with Obama’s name on it will become a target for Republican opposition — the president has blessed the bill as within the bounds of the sort of comprehensive legislation he wants: Offering a path to citizenship for some 11 million undocumented workers already in the U.S., while securing the nation’s borders and instituting a sensible program of guest-worker visas for lower- and higher-skilled workers alike — including farmworkers.

During negotiations over the farmworker provisions of the bill led by Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California and Republican Marco Rubio of Florida, the UFW’s Giev Kashkooli says, the Obama administration’s Departments of Homeland Security, Agriculture and Labor were instrumental in guiding which one of the many proposals on the bargaining table would work and which ones wouldn’t. The agencies provided good “technical assistance,” he said, “on what was possible and what was not possible.”

At the center of the farmworkers’ concerns in what could be the most significant immigration legislation in a generation is the provision enabling those who have toiled in American fields without legal residency to seek a path to citizenship, Rodriguez says. At least 800,000 and as many as 1.1 million families  stand to benefit from that, he says.

“We’re very optimistic and very hopeful,” Rodriguez said today, at a breakfast sponsored by Bloomberg Government in Washington. “We developed what I believe is a very important step… to ensure that they gain legal status,” he said. “They’ve earned the right to be able to do that in this country.”

Today, as the Democratic-run Senate Judiciary Committee continues work on amendments to the bipartisan bill, the Republican-run House Judiciary Committee is taking testimony on far more limited legislation involving the guest farmworker program. House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte of Virginia, the bill’s sponsor, has spoken out against a path to citizenship for the undocumented, and is more interested in specific legislation enhancing border security and amending the guest-worker visa programs.

Yet the House’s bill is worse than limited, Rodriguez maintains. As Bloomberg’s Alan Bjerga reports on Rodriguez’s remarks, it represents a throw-back to the 1940s and 1950s, he says — evoking the Bracero program in place from 1942-64. Prompted by a need for manual labor during World War II, the agreement between the U.S. and Mexico permitted Mexican citizens to take temporary farm work in the U.S. Initially, 10 percent of their pay was deducted for savings accounts that many of the workers never saw. A Labor Department employee in 1964 called it “legalized slavery.”

“We can’t afford to go back in history,” Rodriguez said.

Negotiations in the House among another bipartisan group of lawmakers for broader legislation along the lines of the Senate bill are reported at a near-impasse. Yet, “there’s too much momentum at this point,” Rodriguez suggests. “I don’t think Congress can afford to ignore this anymore.”

On Oct. 3, one month before his reelection, Obama traveled to Nuestra Senora Reina de la Paz – Our Lady of Peace — in Keene, California, resting place of Cesar Chavez and home of the union he led until his death in 1993. The president declared 105 acres a national monument to be managed by the National Park Service. He visited Chavez’s grave with his widow and declared the farmworkers’ movement a “story of determined, fearless, hopeful people who have been willing to devote their lives to making the country a little more just and a little more fair.”

In November, Obama won 71 percent of the Hispanic vote, which helped him defeat Republican Mitt Romney.

The narrative of the immigration debate under way in Washington suggests that Republicans ultimately will align with Democrats on a long-sought revision of U.S. law because it is in their political self-interest to avert another drubbing.

Yet will passage of an immigration bill repair the Republican Party’s torn relations with Latino voters, following a campaign in which deportation of the undocumented drove the party’s primary contests?

“It’s hard to say what the dynamic would be — how it would change peoples’ thinking,” Rodriguez said. “We’re like everybody else out there,” he said, suggesting that the public at large will thank Congress for taking action on what everyone knows is “a broken immigration system” — and look askance at failure.

Original post is Immigration Bill: Promise with a Prayer by Political Capital.

Photograph by Rainier Ehrhardt/AP Photo

Former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford arrives to give his victory speech on May 7, 2013, in Mt. Pleasant, S.C. Sanford won back his old congressional seat in the state’s 1st District in a special election.

That’s how many U.S. House members in the current 113^th Congress have served non-consecutive tenures.

The total includes Mark Sanford, a South Carolina Republican who was sworn in yesterday to the House, where he previously served from 1995 to 2001. Sanford was South Carolina’s governor from 2003 to 2011.

Sanford won a special election on May 7, beating Democrat Elizabeth Colbert Busch in a Republican-tilting district in and around Charleston that includes much of the territory he previously represented.

Sanford is one of seven House Republicans now serving a second stint in the House, along with Reps. Steve Chabot of Ohio, Steve Pearce of New Mexico, Matt Salmon of Arizona, Mike Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, Tim Walberg of Michigan and Steve Stockman of Texas.

Sanford, Chabot, Salmon and Stockman were all members of the big House Republican freshman class of 1994, when the party won control of the chamber for the first time in four decades.

The nine Democrats who have served non-consecutive terms are Reps. David Price of North Carolina, Jim Cooper of Tennessee, Richard Nolan of Minnesota, Bill Foster of Illinois, Carol Shea-Porter of New Hampshire, Alan Grayson of Florida, Ann Kirkpatrick of Arizona, Dan Maffei of New York and Dina Titus of Nevada.

Original post is Bloomberg by the Numbers: 16 by Political Capital.

Photograph by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Speaker of the House John Boehner, left, conducts a ceremonial swearing-in with U.S. Rep. Mark Sanford (R-SC), center, and his mother Peggy Sanford, right, at the Capitol on May 15, 2013 in Washington, DC.

Original post is Sanford Takes Office, Declaring Himself ‘Humbled’ and Appreciative by Political Capital.

Photograph by Paul Sakuma/AP Photo

A Wal-Mart in San Jose, Calif.

That’s how much money state governments could reap in additional sales tax revenue if Congress agrees to let them tax out-of-state retailers, Bloomberg News’ Richard Rubin reports.

While the Senate is expected to vote today on the measure, the House is moving much more slowly despite pressure from retailers such as Wal-Mart Stores Inc., who say they’re losing business to online competitors because their consumers aren’t charged sales taxes.

Original post is Bloomberg by the Numbers: $23 Billion by Political Capital.

Photograph by Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg

People jog on the National Mall near the Capitol in Washington, D.C.

A plurality of voters don’t want split government, and would prefer one party to control both the White House and Congress, according to a Quinnipiac University poll out today.

The survey showed 48 percent of voters saying they want the same party in charge of both the executive and legislative branches, while 43 percent said they want political power divided. The Democrats currently control the White House and the Senate while the Republicans hold a majority in the House. Voters who said they were independents favored divided government, 53 percent to 35 percent.

Voters showed a preference for a Democratic congressional candidate over a Republican nominee,  41 percent to 37 percent margin. Democrats would need a net pickup of 17 seats to win back the House.

“The question, of course, is whether that margin will be there in 18 months when voters to go to the polls,” said Peter Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac polling institute.

That margin hasn’t been there in three of the last four off-year elections taking place during the last term of a two-term president. The party that didn’t control the White House gained congressional seats in 1958 (Dwight Eisenhower), 1986 (Ronald Reagan) and 2006 (George W. Bush). The exception: Democratic gains in 1998 under Bill Clinton.

Original post is Voters Weary of Divided Government by Political Capital.

Photograph by Richard Ellis/Getty Images

House of Representatives Democratic candidate for the state of South Carolina Elizabeth Colbert Busch, listens to her opponent Republican candidate for the open Congressional seat of South Carolina, Former South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford, during their debate at the Citadel on April 29, 2013 in Charleston, South Carolina.

Former South Carolina Republican Gov. Mark Sanford promoted his anti-spending views, and Democratic opponent Elizabeth Colbert Busch touted her political independence in their only debate before a May 7 election in a vacant U.S. House district.

Sanford, seeking a political comeback, said he had a “20-year track record of trying to do something about the way the government spends,” pointing to favorable ratings from groups promoting fiscal restraint when he was governor from 2003 to 2011 and as a member of the House from 1995 to 2001.

“If we’re ever going to get our arms around a whole host of issues in Washington, D.C., what we need is leadership,” Sanford said. “And what has been shown in my time” as a public official “is a consistent willingness to lead on financial matters.”

Colbert Busch, an older sister of political satirist Stephen Colbert, promoted her background as a business development official in South Carolina’s wealthiest and best-educated district, numbered the 1st. It’s a Republican-tilting area that takes in Hilton Head, part of Charleston and other territory along the state’s Atlantic Coast.

“I am a fiscally conservative, independent, tough businesswoman,” Colbert Busch said at the debate, which was held at The Citadel, a military school in Charleston, and sponsored by Patch.

Sanford is trying to restart a political career derailed in 2009 when, while serving as governor, he admitted to lying to his staff about hiking on the Appalachian Trail to mask a visit to Argentina to see his mistress. Sanford is now engaged to the woman.

While the election has been colored by Sanford’s personal travails, the debate focused primarily on policy issues.

Colbert Busch said she would promote jobs and bipartisanship in Congress. She aligned herself with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in endorsing a comprehensive overhaul of immigration laws that includes a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. She described President Barack Obama’s 2010 health-care overhaul as an “extremely problematic” law that “needs an enormous fix,” while defending some of its provisions.

Colbert Busch said the National Labor Relations Board had “no business” suing Boeing Co. in 2011 over the aerospace company’s decision to open an assembly line in South Carolina, a “right to work” state where employees can’t be required to join unions or pay dues.

Sanford regularly linked Colbert Busch to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California and to labor unions that oppose right-to-work laws.

Taking campaign donations from labor unions “is not exactly decrying where NLRB was on the Boeing issue,” he said.

Colbert Busch rejected Sanford’s efforts to tie her to national Democratic figures.

“Nobody tells me what to do, except the people of South Carolina’s 1^st district,” she said.

Colbert Busch said that Sanford’s anti-spending positions hurt job-creation efforts and the deepening of the Port of Charleston. She aligned herself with more traditional Democratic positions in backing abortion rights, same-sex marriage and expanded gun background checks.

Sanford is campaigning without the assistance of the National Republican Congressional Committee, the campaign arm of House Republicans, which pulled out of the race earlier this month after news stories surfaced that his ex-wife, Jenny Sanford, filed a complaint alleging her ex-husband had trespassed at her home in February. They divorced in 2010.

Sanford has said he wanted to watch the second half of the Super Bowl with his youngest son and had tried to contact his ex-wife, who has custody.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the political wing of House Democrats, and House Majority PAC, a super-political action committee aiding Democrats, have paid for hundreds of thousands of dollars in television advertisements attacking Sanford.

The district was last represented by Republican Tim Scott, who resigned in January to become a U.S. senator.

Original post is Sanford vs. Colbert Busch in Debate by Political Capital.

Photograph by J. Scott Applewhite/AP Photo

President Barack Obama makes a final get-out-the-vote push for Democratic candidates, Attorney General Dick Blumenthal, running for U.S. Senate, left, and Rep. Jim Himes, D-Ct., right, in Bridgeport, Conn.

As the 2014 campaign begins, one bright spot for House Democrats is their early success raising campaign funds.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee raised $22.6 million in the first three months of this year compared with $17.5 million for its partisan counterpart, the National Republican Congressional Committee.

Yet money is one of many factors that shape election results, and it surely isn’t the most important one. Other factors militate against the 201-member Democratic minority securing a 218-seat majority next year — reconfigured district maps that favor Republicans, an inefficient clumping of Democratic voters in large metropolitan areas and the ability of some Republican incumbents to win competitive districts.

While President Barack Obama is helping House Democrats raise money, midterm elections almost always are difficult for the White House’s party. An administration’s supporters are less enthusiastic about voting in a lower-turnout midterm election year.

Obama is “very serious about raising money for congressional Democrats. But I’m not sure this is a challenge that money alone can solve,” Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut, the DCCC’s finance chairman, said at a Bloomberg Government breakfast. “On the House side, the numbers are daunting in terms of Democrats taking control of the House, very daunting.”

Original post is DCCC Finance Chair: Winning House ‘Very Daunting’ by Political Capital.