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 William Thomas Cain/Getty Images

Rep. Joe Sestak (D-PA), standing onstage with his wife Susan and daughter Alex, concedes the Pennsylvania Senate race to Republican Pat Toomey November 3, 2010 at the Radnor Hotel in St. Davids, Pennsylvania.

Just six months have passed since the last election and 18 months remain until the next one in November 2014. Pennsylvania Democrat Joe Sestak already is planning for the election after that.

Sestak, a former House member who lost a Senate race in 2010, will prepare for a rematch against Republican incumbent Pat Toomey in a 2016 Senate election still 42 months away, Sestak said in a video today.

“The Senate needs a leader accountable only to we the people, not any other interest,” Sestak said in the three-minute video, which uses Independence Hall in Philadelphia as a backdrop.

“Together we can have an honest discussion about the issues and the challenges we face. We will hold our leaders and ourselves accountable to have a government of the people, by the people, for the people,” Sestak said as he announced what his website calls an “exploratory committee.”

Sestak raised $460,250 in the first three months of 2013, according to a report he filed last month with the Federal Election Commission. He may use those funds for a Senate campaign.

Toomey beat Sestak in 2010, a good Republican year, by 51 percent to 49 percent after Sestak beat party-switching Sen. Arlen Specter in the Democratic primary.

Toomey is a former president of the Club for Growth, a group that promotes free trade and supports slashing government spending and taxes, though he’s attracted attention recently as a co-sponsor of an amendment that would have expanded the background check system for firearm purchasers. Toomey was one of four Republicans who supported the amendment, which failed to win the requisite 60 votes last month.

Original post is Sestak Eyes Pennsylvania Comeback — in 2016 by Political Capital.

Photograph by Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP Photo

Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H., waves as she ends her speech at the 40th annual Conservative Political Action Conference in National Harbor, Md., on March 15, 2013.

Written with Jonathan Salant

Sen. Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire says opponents “can’t bully me into changing my vote” on background checks for gun buyers.

The opponents in this case, she says, are New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and President Barack Obama. The mayor, co-founder of Bloomberg LP, parent company of Bloomberg News, is among the mayors in Mayors Against Illegal Guns who announced a new TV ad this week targeting Ayotte for her vote against the background check bill that died in the Senate for lack of 60 votes.

In doing so, the mayors say, Ayotte voted against the 89 percent of New Hampshire voters who support the measure. Ayotte has been singled out more than any of the other Republican opponents of the measure because of where she lives, a swing state that is sympathetic to Democratic causes.

Ayotte says the legislation she opposed, which would require purchasers at gun shows and over the Internet to undergo the same criminal background checks as those buying weapons from licensed firearm dealers, would do “nothing to prevent a deranged individual from obtaining and misusing firearms to commit horrific tragedies like the one in Newtown.”

Original post is Ayotte in Crossfire: ‘Can’t Bully Me’ 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 John Moore/Getty Images

Mexican immigrants work on a housing construction site on May 3, 2013 in Denver, Colorado.

A Social Security Administration analysis says the Senate’s bipartisan immigration proposal would boost U.S. tax revenue, create jobs and increase the gross domestic product over the next 10 years.

Stephen Gross, chief actuary for the agency, says the bill would have a “substantial positive effect” on the economy, in a letter to Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, a Republican who helped draft the legislation and requested the analysis.

The analysis, released today, may aid backers of the legislation, which has been criticized by opponents as a drain on the U.S. economy. A report released earlier this week by the Republican-leaning Heritage Foundation said that creating a path to citizenship for about 11 million undocumented immigrants now in the U.S. would cost taxpayers $6.3 trillion over five decades.

According to the Social Security Administration, the bill would add more than $275 billion in revenue to Social Security and Medicare, increase the gross domestic product by 1.63 percent and add more than 3 million jobs over the next decade.

The Senate Judiciary Committee tomorrow plans to begin considering hundreds of amendments to the legislation.

“The timing couldn’t be better,” said Frank Sharry, executive director of immigrant-rights group America’s Voice in
Washington. “It’s a game changer.”

Original post is Social Security Report ‘Game-Changer’ for Immigration Bill by Political Capital.

Photograph by Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg

Senator Harry Reid, a Democrat from Nevada, listens to a question during a news conference after the weekly Democratic Policy Committee meeting in Washington, D.C.

“Like schoolyard bullies, if Republicans can’t win, they’ll take the ball and go home,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid complained during his session-opener this morning.

The Nevada Democrat was referring to the  impasse between House and Senate on how to proceed toward a budget agreement. Both chambers have passed their own budget resolutions with huge differences remaining between the Republican and Democratic versions.

The Senate budget resolution, passed earlier this year on a party-line vote, was the first one to clear the chamber in almost five years.

Reid acknowledged this delay explaining that his counterparts, “Ask and then ask again for the Senate to pass a budget resolution… Well they got what they wished. The dog finally caught the car.”

With unanimous consent, the majority leader could appoint conferees from the Senate to iron out differences with colleagues in the House, but Republicans thus far have objected to his requests.

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz did just that last night on the Senate floor as he attempted to instruct conferees on the budget to not raise taxes or the debt ceiling. The objection earned the ire of the majority leader this morning as Reid, without naming him, singled out Cruz.

“Last night, a very junior senator from Texas said Republicans would agree to go to conference only if Democrats first would give in to their demands,” Reid explained. “Maybe the junior senator from Texas doesn’t remember, but we remember. We remember the government being on the verge of losing its ability to be part of the world community by not paying its debts.”

Feigning Senatorial cordiality, he continued: “My friend – I’m sorry – the junior Senator from Texas said he wanted a guarantee that as a bargaining pawn that we would make sure that the debt ceiling would not be raised.”

After the name-calling and finger pointing, Reid closed his morning speech with an accusation usually reserved for the playground: “Republicans refuse to play the game unless we let them win.”

Original post is Senate Recess Over, Playground Still Busy 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.

Bloomberg’s Heidi Przybyla reported he would last week.

.@jimdemint: Proposed #immigration reform bill would cost U.S. trillions of dollars in the long term. #ThisWeek

— This Week (@ThisWeekABC) May 5, 2013

In 2007, the last time Congress attempted to overhaul a system permitting millions to live undocumented in the U.S., the Heritage Foundation predicted costs in the trillions — costs borne by the nation’s public assistance and safety-net programs. Under its new president, the former Republican senator from South Carolina, Heritage will reprise that line of attack.

“The study you’ll see from Heritage this week presents a staggering cost of another amnesty in our country,” DeMint said this morning on ABC News’ “This Week,” based on the “detrimental effects long-term” of government benefits that would eventually go to the millions offered a path to citizenship under the reform legislation currently being considered. “There’s no reason we can’t begin to fix our immigration system so that we won’t make this problem worse. But the bill that’s being presented is unfair to those who came here legally. It will cost Americans trillions of dollars. It’ll make our unlawful immigration system worse.”

Douglas Holtz-Eakin, the Cato Institute and others already have weighed in with a countervailing argument: The benefit to the economy of millions of people finding a potential path to citizenship and with that the tax revenue generated by legal employment.

DeMint today is reiterating what Heritage’s Mike Gonzalez said last week as Bloomberg’s Washington bureau reported on all this: He fully supports legal immigration — but not the “amnesty” that comes with offering 11 million undocumented people a path to citizenship. In the 800-page bill that a bipartisan group of senators has advanced — and which the Senate Judiciary Committee will start examining on Thursday — DeMint warns of another behemoth that nobody is really reading. Like “Obamacare.”

Gang of Eight immigration bill is just like #Obamacare. @jimdemint asks Americans to read the bill. #ThisWeek

— Heritage Foundation (@Heritage) May 5, 2013

.@jimdemint: If people read the bill, it will be blocked. #ThisWeek

— This Week (@ThisWeekABC) May 5, 2013

Heritage will have to contend with another senator from South Carolina, Lindsey Graham, who is taking the Holtz-Eakin path to passage of the immigration bill with fellow senators of both parties. And still other Republicans will find their party riven along a line which some of them say is essential to the party’s future, re-engaging with Hispanic voters who helped re-elect President Barack Obama. That line runs between Florida’s Marco Rubio, one of the co-sponsors of the bill, and Texas’sTed Cruz, a freshly minted DeMint kind of senator.

That line will be drawn bright this week, as Heritage, and the bill, take the stage.

Original post is Jim DeMint’s Sugar-Free Taste of Immigration Bill: ‘Like Obamacare’ by Political Capital.

Photograph by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Attendees look at a display of tactical shotguns during the 2013 NRA Annual Meeting and Exhibits at the George R. Brown Convention Center on May 3, 2013 in Houston, Texas.

The National Rifle Association is meeting in Houston.

Which can only mean one thing. It’s showtime:

Colorado’s Magpul brought an intriguing vehicle to Houston. Note the hula girl dashboard accessory. #NRA twitter.com/bykowicz/statu…

— Julie Bykowicz (@bykowicz) May 3, 2013

Bloomberg’s Julie Bykowicz is there – as her story linked at left and tweets here show.

They’re not only celebrating the defeat of the gun bill in the Senate, they’re also discussing such issues as:

Discussion on hotel shuttle to Houston NRA convention: Is it legal to send ammo through FedEx or UPS? No one knew answer. #NRA

— Julie Bykowicz (@bykowicz) May 3, 2013

The sheriff is in town:

NRA adopts a law and order image at its Houston conference, which begins today. #nra twitter.com/bykowicz/statu…

— Julie Bykowicz (@bykowicz) May 3, 2013

Original post is NRA Convention: Roof-Mounted Microbus Cannon and More by Political Capital.

Photograph by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Boxes of ammunition sit on the shelf at Sportsmans Arms in Petaluma, California.

If proponents of gun safety legislation were counting on a public backlash over the Senate’s vote against expansion of background checks for gun-buyers, they won’t find it here:

Among Americans surveyed by the Pew Research Center on a subject which generally has been found to enjoy 90 percent public support — the expansion of gun background checks — only 47 percent voiced negative feelings about the Senate’s vote while 39 percent had a positive reaction.

The White House and other advocates of gun safety have suggested that senators who scuttled the background check bill will be hearing from voters. Yet this initial gauge of public reaction suggests something less than a groundswell of reaction on the issue.

The Senate voted 54-46 for a bipartisan measure last week — falling six votes shy of the 60 needed to advance it in the chamber. Five Democrats and 41 Republicans voted no, though Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid did so to preserve his right to ask for reconsideration of the matter.

Overall, 15 percent of Americans surveyed said they are angry this legislation was voted down and 32 percent said they are disappointed. On the other side, 20 percent said they are very happy the legislation was blocked, while 19 percent said they are relieved.

The national survey of 1,002 adults was conducted April 18-21.

“Republicans and Democrats paid equally close attention to the gun debate last week: 40 percent across party lines say they tracked the events very closely, making it the second most closely followed story last week, after the terrorist bombings at the Boston Marathon.” Pew notes.

Original post is Public Reaction to Senate Gun Vote: 47% Negative, 39% Positive by Political Capital.