Photograph by Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call/Getty Images

Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wisc., speaks at the 2013 Conservative Political Action Conference at the Gaylord National Resort & Conference Center at National Harbor, Md., on March 15, 2013.

Hurry up or slow down with that immigration overhaul?

What would Mitt Romney do? Or perhaps more pointedly going forward, Paul Ryan?

Slow down, some of the Republican Party’s leaders were saying last week, in the midst of the hunt, capture and killing of the two men accused of bombing the Boston Marathon who had immigrated with their family from Kyrgyzstan.

“How can we beef up security checks on people who wish to enter the United States? How do we ensure that people who wish to do us harm are not eligible for benefits under the immigration laws, including this new bill before us?” Sen. Charles Grassley, ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee, asked last week.

“You know, in all due respect to my colleagues, that’s ludicrous,” Sen. John McCain of Arizona, one of the Republican sponsors of the immigration overhaul, said in an interview with Bloomberg TV’s Trish Regan over the weekend. “This legislation tightens our borders, increases security.”

So how about Ryan — whose presidential ticket led by Romney in 2012 was politically saddled with the tough anti illegal immigration rhetoric on which Romney campaigned during the primaries? Ryan is considered among his party’s prospects for 2016.

Ryan said today that last week’s Boston bombings prove the legislation is necessary.

Speaking to reporters after a speech to the City Club of Chicago, the chairman of the House Budget Committee said last week’s incidents show changes are needed for the sake of national security.

“We do not know how to even track people who overstay their visas,” Ryan said. “We need a modern immigration system that helps us not only protect our border, but protects national security in all of its aspects. So, if anything, I would say this is an argument for modernizing our immigration laws.”

Ryan, 43, said he was “not at all” concerned that members of his own party might move away from changes being proposed because of the Boston bombings.

“We just don’t know all of the facts,” he said, adding that lawmakers shouldn’t make “knee-jerk” assessments about legislation because of Boston.

Ryan appeared with Rep. Luis Gutierrez, a Democrat from Illinois who is one of his party’s leaders in pushing for immigration changes. Gutierrez agreed with Ryan that Boston made clearer the need for changes to current laws.
“If anything, it tells us we need to work on it even more,” he said of the legislation.

In his speech, Ryan said the immigration changes working their way through Congress will boost the U.S. economy and provide numerous other benefits. He called them the “farthest down the path” on the issue he’s seen.

“If we get this right, we’ll help the rule of law, we’ll help the economy, we’ll help national security, and we’ll re-inject faith that our federal government can actually get something right for a change,” he said.

John McCormick contributed from Chicago. 

Original post is Ryan: No Slow-Down on Immigration by Political Capital.

Photograph by Joshua Roberts/Bloomberg

Senator Mark Warner, a Democrat from Virginia, in Washington.

Senator Mark Warner places the odds for a bipartisan debt-reduction deal at better than 50-50, and has outlined plans to roll out fresh ideas in the coming weeks on where to find the revenue to finance it.

Warner, a first-term Democrat who has been a leading participant in several unsuccessful bipartisan efforts to forge agreement on slicing the federal debt through a combination of spending cuts and revenue increases, said at a Bloomberg Breakfast in Washington today that he is in a “period of optimism” about the chances of doing so now.

“This is eminently doable,” Warner said of a package that would cut $2 trillion from the long-term debt. Without offering specifics, Warner said he was looking at ways to raise the revenue that would be needed for such a proposal as an alternative to rewriting the tax code — which has been the  chief means of doing so in deficit negotiations thus far.

“I’m not ready to come fully clean yet,” said Warner, adding later that he was in the process of sharing his ideas with Republican lawmakers and think tanks to determine his  proposal’s prospects and when to unveil it.

“Are there other default mechanisms, if tax reform doesn’t get there, that could be broad-based, fair, progressive, and that might attract attention?” he said.

Warner, who co-founded a company that is now part of Overland Park, Kansas-based Sprint Nextel Corp. and served as Virginia’s governor from 2002 to 2006, said lawmakers may be more inclined to strike a deal because “looking stupid at some point has got to motivate people.”

Still, he added, doing so would require both sides to save face in the stalemate, perhaps by embracing some fresh mechanisms for raising revenue that neither side has rejected in past negotiations.

“The validity of some good, new ideas in this debate are important, but equally important is just the idea of having some new ideas, so that people can get off their well-established positions,” he said.

Illinois Senator Dick Durbin, the No. 2 Democrat who has  also been involved in previous bipartisan debt talks, said earlier this week he thought the chances of a compromise were now less than 50 percent.

Warner criticized House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s fiscal blueprint, arguing that the Wisconsin Republican’s proposed cuts to education, infrastructure and research and development spending are misguided from a business perspective.

Republican presidential nominee and co-founder of the private-equity firm Bain Capital LLC Mitt Romney “would never invest in the Paul Ryan business plan for this country,” Warner said. “It is a bad business plan for America. There is no nation in the world that we’re competing against that has as bad a business plan as what he’s laid out.”

Original post is Warner: Budget Deal Better Than 50-50 by Political Capital.

Photograph by Mark Kauzlarich/The Janesville Gazette/AP Photo

Wisconsin Congressional candidate Rob Zerban speaking at campaign event in Janesvilles, Wis., on Oct. 3, 2012.

The Wisconsin Democrat who tried to unseat Rep. Paul Ryan in 2012 is eyeing a rematch with the Republican vice-presidential nominee.

Rob Zerban, a former county supervisor, filed paperwork establishing an “exploratory” bid in Wisconsin’s 1^st District, which includes Kenosha, Racine and other territory in the southeastern part of the state.

“Since the election, I have been inundated with phone calls and emails from people all over the First District urging me to come forward again to give the people of Southeast Wisconsin a viable alternative to Paul Ryan,” Zerban said in a statement first shared with Political Capital today announcing an exploratory committee, often a precursor to a full-fledged campaign.

Ryan, the House Budget Committee chairman, beat Zerban by 55 percent to 43 percent in 2012, when Ryan was Mitt Romney’s running mate and closely linked to the national Republican Party. The Romney-Ryan ticket carried Wisconsin’s 1^st by 52 percent to 47 percent in the 2012 election, according to Political Capital calculations.

Unseating Ryan may be more difficult in 2014, when voter turnout will dip at the midpoint of President Barack Obama’s second term. The White House’s party rarely gains ground in Congress in midterm elections.

Democrats including Zerban have attacked Ryan’s fiscal blueprint, which calls for balancing the budget through about $4.6 trillion in spending cuts over 10 years.

“My hope is that, over the next few months, we will begin to have a conversation about what the people of Wisconsin’s First District really want: a secure future, not federal austerity,” Zerban said.

Balancing the budget “helps us get a healthier economy, stronger growth,” Ryan  said yesterday on Bloomberg Television’s “In the Loop.”

Original post is Paul Ryan’s Wisconsin Opponent Explores 2014 Rematch by Political Capital.

The House will devote the whole day to debating fiscal 2014 budget blueprints. Look for votes on alternatives to the proposal drafted by Budget Chairman Paul Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican. The Senate edges forward on the spending bill for the rest of fiscal 2013, with votes planned on a substitute amendment. If the Senate can reach agreement for a final vote on the spending bill today, work can begin on its fiscal 2014 budget plan.

And members of the Federal Open Market Committee are expected to keep interest rates near zero as they conclude two days of talks over policy today. Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke is tightening control of the central bank’s communications to ensure investors hear his pro-stimulus message over the more hawkish views from regional bank presidents, Blooomberg News reported.

Former Gov. Charlie Crist, running as a  Democrat, tops Florida Gov. Rick Scott by 50-34 percent among registered voters in a survey about the 2014 election,, according to a Quinnipiac University poll. Voters say by 50-40 percent that Crist’s switch from Republican to independent to Democrat shows he is a pragmatist rather than lacking in core beliefs.

The Interior Department opens bids to lease 38.6 million acres off coasts of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama for exploration that may tap 1 billion barrels of oil and 4 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. Sens. Lisa Murkowski, an Alaska Republican, and Mary Landrieu, a Louisiana Democrat, will hold news conference at the same time on legislation aimed at ensuring producing states receive a fair share of energy revenues.

The House Agriculture Committee marks up seven bills today, mostly dealing with swaps and intended to ease Dodd-Frank derivative rules.Republcian  Gov. Bob McDonnell of Virginia appears on Bloomberg TV to discuss legislation that allows states to collect taxes on sales by out-of-state companies incl Amazon. Republican Sens. John Barrasso of Wyoming, Orrin Hatch of Pennsylvania and Mike Johanns of Nebraska hold a media availability on legislation “to repeal the most burdensome and costly aspects of the president’s health care law.”

The FCC holds an open meeting to consider measure to improve reliability of 9-1-1 service.

And on the first day of Spring, Sucampo Pharmaceuticals Inc. hosts The Pink Tie Party, a fundraiser held with more than 30 participating restaurants to kick off the 2013 National Cherry Blossom Festival.

There are, however, no blossoms around the Tidal Basin yet.

Original post is Washington Daybook: Awaiting Cherries by Political Capital.

Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush addresses the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Fla., on Thursday, Aug. 30, 2012. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

Jeb Bush says it’s time his Republican Party stops being known as the “anti” party. It’s time, he says, to reach out to Americans who have been excluded.

“We used to be the party in the front,” Bush said in remarks prepared for his keynote speech tonight at the Conservative Political Action Conference outside of Washington “After the last election, we’re the party in the back.”

The question, he said, is how his party once again elects presidents in the mold of Ronald Reagan, honored at tonight’s event.

For now, Bush is content not to be considered one of those candidates. The former governor of Florida, brother of one president and son of another, says he has not ruled out a campaign in 2016. Yet Al Cardenas, his longtime friend and former Republican Party of Florida chairman who now chairs the American Conservative Union sponsoring CPAC, says Bush is “open” to the idea.

For now, Bush has opted out of the straw poll which CPAC traditionally holds at its conventions. That comes tomorrow, at the close of a convention that has featured the likes of Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida and Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, sure to be considered among the potential contenders in 2016. It’s too soon to think of that, Bush’s office said this week.

Tonight, he was talking about the future of the party.

Alluding to the IBM super-computer, “Watson,” Bush asked: “I wonder what Watson would say if he brought all that computing power to bear on the political future of the Republican Party?”

“First, Watson would probably note that Republicans lost the popular vote in five of the last six presidential elections. In those six elections Watson would be quick to point out that a total of more than twenty million votes were cast for presidential candidates who were not Republicans. That’s a staggering number. How can that be?”

“If Watson were to read the blogs, tweets, and Facebook posts that mention the Republican Party, it would find that all too often we’re associated with being “anti” everything. Way too many people believe Republicans are anti-immigrant, anti-woman, anti-science, anti-gay, anti-worker… and the list goes on. Many voters are simply unwilling to choose our candidates because those voters feel unloved, unwanted and unwelcome in our party.”

“And so tonight my thought is this: if Watson can learn from its past mistakes, so can we.This means that we must move beyond the divisive and extraneous issues that currently define the public debate. Never again can the Republican Party simply write off entire segments of our society because we assume our principles have limited appeal. They have broad appeal. We need to be larger than that.”

“For exactly the same reason that millions of immigrants were drawn to our shores from every nation, we need to draw into our party people from every corner of society because conservative principles, and not liberal dogma, best reflect the ideals that made this nation great. We should be united in the principle that everyone should be given the opportunity to rise to the top, to raise a family, and to be free. Our core principles — greater individual responsibility, more personal freedom, smaller and more effective government — are the only principles that can offer our children the full measure of their potential in the greatest of American centuries.”

“I’m here to tell you there is no ‘us’ or ‘them.’ The face of the Republican Party needs to be the face of every American, and we need to be the party of inclusion and acceptance. It’s our heritage and it’s our future and we need to couch our efforts in those terms.”

“As Republicans, we need to get re-acquainted with the notion that the relationships that really matter are not made through Twitter and social media. Real relationships take time to grow, and they begin with a genuine interest in the stories, dreams and challenges harbored within each of us.”

“We used to be the party that understood personal connections matter.”

`We need to be that party again.”

Original post is Jeb Bush: Republicans Too ‘Anti’ by Political Capital.

Photograph by Carolyn Kaster/AP Photo

House Budget Committee Chairman Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., holds up a copy of the 2014 Budget Resolution as he speaks during a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington on March 12, 2013.

House Republicans would need to eliminate about $5.7 trillion in tax breaks over the next decade to meet the targets in their budget, the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center said today.

The budget, which will be on the House floor next week, calls for reducing the corporate tax rate to 25 percent from 35 percent and repealing the alternative minimum tax. It aims for a top individual rate of 25 percent, down from 39.6 percent.

Achieving those goals would be particularly hard if Republicans also attempt to keep the current progressiveness of the tax code, because the rate cuts in the plan provide most of their benefits to top earners. The same problem plagued Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s call for tax rate cuts during the 2012 campaign.

Under the budget, 55 percent of the tax cuts would go to the top 1 percent of the income distribution, according to the center. Tax breaks are distributed more evenly across the population.

The budget, written by Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, doesn’t attempt to detail how Republicans would pay for the rate cuts. The House Ways and Means Committee, on which Ryan serves, has that task and plans to pass a tax code overhaul this year.

Original post is Ryan Needs $5.7 Trillion in Taxes to Meet Budget Goals: Policy Center by Political Capital.

For conservatives who just don’t get enough conservatism at the Conservative Political Action Conference, now there’s CPAC the Cruise.

In the glossy program handed out to those arriving today for the opening day of the CPAC conference at National Harbor, in Oxon Hill, Maryland, on the Potomac River south of Washington, there’s an ad for a seven-day “celebrity summit cruise” Oct. 19-26.

Details appear limited for now, except for an e-mail address and phone number for more information.

It is a project of the American Conservative Union, which hosts the annual CPAC, where Republicans from Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida to Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin will be addressing conference-goers over three days.

Bloomberg’s political reporting crew will be filing updates from the CPAC gathering throughout the coming days.

And looking for more details on that conservative cruise.

Original post is SS CPAC, a Cruise with Celebrities by Political Capital.

Photograph by Tim Sloan/AFP via Getty Images

The Easter Bunny looks out from the Truman Balcony during the Annual Easter Egg Roll at the White House in this file photo.

This begs the question of whether the Easter Bunny has a budget:

Leaders of both parties in Congress have asked for a return to regular order, pushing for committees to work through bill drafting and for floor action to finish the legislative sausage making process.

Look no further than the Senate floor this morning for something all too familiar and “regular” in Washington – the Reid recess threat and the Ryan budget.

With work days flying by and a Easter recess set to begin in less than 12 days, the Senate has yet to complete work on either the Continuing Resolution to fund the government through the end of the fiscal year or the Senate version of a budget.  Their most urgent deadline is March 27 — when a current spending resolution expires.

Majority Leader Reid, a Nevada Democrat, has promised an open amendment process for both bills, undoubtedly taking plenty of floor time and work.

“We have our Easter recess coming a week from Friday and we’re not going to be able to do that,” Reid lamented today on the floor.  ”Everyone should be prepared to change their plans the first few days – we hope it’s the first few days -of the Easter recess.”

Recess threats from Reid are not new to the chamber, nor is his disapproval of the House budget proposed by Wisconsin Republican Paul Ryan, the House’s budget chairman.

Before taking off on a familiar line of criticism for the House budget, Reid noted the similarities in Ryan’s spending calculations over the last three years: “Gee-wiz, not again … even the name is the same!”

Original post is Easter Bunny Eats the Budget Talks by Political Capital.

Photograph by Win McNamee/Getty Images

Rep. Paul Ryan, center, Chairman of the House Budget Committee, joins with other members of the committee as he arrives for a press conference at the Capitol where he unveiled his budget plan on March 12, 2013 in Washington.

That’s how much House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan would cut out of federal spending over the next 10 years.

Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican who was his party’s vice presidential nominee in 2012, introduced a proposal yesterday that he said would balance the budget in 2023 by reducing the annual rate of spending growth to 3.4 percent from 5 percent without tax hikes.

Bloomberg’s Brian Faler has more here about Ryan’s budget, which drew criticism from Democrats who control the Senate.

President Barack Obama will release his fiscal 2014 budget the week of April 8, more than two months late, Bloomberg’s Roger Runningen reports.

Original post is Bloomberg by the Numbers: $4.6 Trillion by Political Capital.

Photograph by Eric Gay/AP Photo

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush speaks in Austin, Texas, on Feb. 26, 2013.

Jeb Bush is “open” to running for president in 2016.

So says Al Cardenas, a longtime political associate and friend of the former Florida governor.

Open, Cardenas noted today — nothing more, not committed, simply open.

For his part, Bush says he has not ruled out a run for the Republican Party’s nomination.

Not ruled out and open may be two ways of saying the same thing.

Nevertheless, all this represents a significant shift in the expressions of a politician who in the past has brushed aside entreaties to re-enter elective politics. Last year, the brother of one former president and son of another said he viewed 2012 as that “window of opportunity” for him — “this was probably my time,” he told Charlie Rose on CBS News’ “This morning.” At same time, asked if he had “made a decision that you don’t want to be president,” Bush replied: “I have not made that decision.”

Bush’s book-promoting tour of the Washington media circuit last week, including a run of several Sunday talk shows following the release of his “Immigration Wars,” certainly helped spur new speculation about his plans for 2016.

Cardenas, a Miami lawyer who served two terms as chairman of the Republican Party of Florida during Bush’s two-term reign of the Sunshine State, maintains that the book was not motivated by thoughts of 2016 — rather, a deep interest in the issue and a desire to help the party rebuild its relationship with Hispanic voters. Cardenas supports a bid for comprehensive immigration reform and also supports Bush’s stated attempts to seek a compromise on citizenship or residency for the millions of undocumented immigrants already in the U.S.

Cardenas also is chairman of the American Conservative Union, convening an annual meeting at National Harbor outside of Washington later this week that will draw many of the party’s conservative leaders — including an appearance by Mitt Romney, the 2012 Republican nominee for president who hasn’t spoken in a forum such as this since November. Cardenas, joining a Bloomberg editor and reporter over lunch at National Harbor today, said Romney accepted his invitation several weeks ago without pause and has no plans to “re-hash the campaign.”

The Conservative Political Action Conference, celebrating its 40th year, will hear from the likes of Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida and House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, also viewed as potential 2016 White House prospects. They will join some 50 senators, congressmen, governors and others — including New York-based real estate developer Donald Trump — addressing the conference’s main assembly over three days starting Thursday.

The keynote speaker at CPAC Friday night: Jeb Bush.

Original post is Jeb Bush ‘Open’ to 2016: CPAC Chair by Political Capital.