Kirk said he and Sen. Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, will introduce Pritzker at her confirmation hearing in the Senate tomorrow.

“I met with Ms. Pritzker and found her to be someone who is willing to take on special interests, and I am confident her successful private-sector record and close ties to the business community will be beneficial to all of Illinois,” Kirk said in a statement.

Kirk told the Chicago Tribune on Monday that he hadn’t decided whether to back Pritzker. He made his Tuesday announcement after receiving a phone call from Mark Koulogeorge, a Republican and venture capitalist in Northbrook, Ill., who advocated for Pritzker, the Tribune reported today.

Koulogeorge has donated $18,700 to Kirk since 2000, according to Federal Election Commission records. He also donated $2,000 to Obama’s 2004 Senate campaign and $2,300 to his 2008 presidential campaign.

Pritzker, who led record fundraising for Obama’s first presidential campaign, is likely to face  tough questions about her business history and personal finances at tomorrow’s hearing. Expected topics include a suburban Chicago bank that failed after Pritzker and her family expanded subprime lending there and did pioneering work with mortgage-backed securitization, as detailed by the Treasury Department in 2002, Bloomberg’s John McCormick reports.

Senators also could ask how Pritzker inadvertently understated a portion of her income by at least $80 million in a disclosure form for her nomination. She amended the document last night, Bloomberg’s Brian Wingfield reports

Original post is Kirk Backs Pritzker After Call From Donor by Political Capital.

Photograph by Pete Marovich/Bloomberg

Senator Rand Paul, a Republican from Kentucky, questions a witness during a Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations hearing in Washington, D.C., on May 21, 2013. Apple Inc. Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook defended his company’s use of offshore tax shelters before U.S. senators who castigated the most-valuable technology company for avoiding $9 billion and more in payments.

A small corner of hell may be freezing over.

Sen. Rand Paul, the Kentucky Republican and fierce Obama administration critic, today opposed a bill to provide arms to Syrian rebels with an argument that could have come straight from the White House. Officials there have resisted greater involvement in the two-year-old civil war between rebel groups and President Bashar al-Assad.

White House spokesman Jay Carney, asked about arming rebels on May 9, said the administration doesn’t want to “make decisions that inadvertently cause more chaos or more violence in Syria.”

Paul warned of the same danger during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee meeting to mark-up the bill.

“I’m concerned with the slippery slope to war,” Paul told fellow senators before the bill passed with a bipartisan boost, 15-3. It now goes to the Senate for a vote.

Paul wasn’t alone in his objections. Democratic Sens. Chris Murphy of Connecticut and Tom Udall of New Mexico also raised concerns.

“By arming, are we making the situation better?” Udall asked his colleagues.

Paul said U.S. officials don’t know enough about the opposition fighting the “murky” war. The bill would allow the U.S. to arm “people associated with al Qaeda” who are fighting against Assad, and U.S. weapons could also reach Islamists who target Christians, he suggested.

Either way, he said, there’s no way to be sure that any U.S. weapons reach “good, liberty-loving Jeffersonian democrats.”

Original post is Paul Echoes White House in Opposition to Arming Syrians by Political Capital.

Photograph by Tim Boyle/Bloomberg

A taxi leaves the Hyatt Regency Chicago hotel.

Updated 3:20 p.m. EST

Hotel and restaurant union workers plan to protest President Barack Obama’s pick of billionaire Hyatt heiress Penny Pritzker to lead the U.S. Department of Commerce.

“Hyatt has singled itself out as the worst hotel employer in the United States, leading the industry in outsourcing practices that destroy good jobs and hurt housekeepers,” UNITE HERE said today in a statement. The labor group has about 250,000 members.

For years, working conditions have prompted labor strikes and boycotts of Hyatt Hotel Corp., based in Chicago — also Obama’s home before he was elected president in 2008.

UNITE is a member of the umbrella labor organization AFL-CIO, which has documented labor problems at the hotel chain in years past.  AFL-CIO spokesman  Jeff Hauser declined to comment on UNITE’s protest of Pritzker when reached this afternoon.

Hotel workers affiliated with UNITE plan to gather today from 4:30 p.m. to 6 p.m. Chicago time at the Hyatt McCormick Place. Organizers say they expect about 1,000 protesters. The New York Daily News first reported plans for the rally earlier today.

“Under Pritzker’s direction, Hyatt has led the hotel industry in a race to the bottom by aggressively subcontracting out career hotel jobs to minimum wage temps,” Cathy Youngblood, a Hyatt housekeeper and advocate for electing  a hotel worker to Hyatt’s board of directors, said in UNITE’s statement today. “This is not the model that will lead our country to a bright economic future.”

The rally comes as Senate confirmation hearings are scheduled to begin this week. Top Republicans told Bloomberg News they plan to ask tough questions of the billionaire heiress based on her disclosure of income from a trust in the Bahamas. Obama derided his 2012 Republican challenger Mitt Romney for having offshore accounts.

“It isn’t just about her or the offshore stuff, it’s about the fact that the president made a big deal out of Romney’s offshore accounts,” Senator Charles Grassley, an Iowa Republican, said in an interview with Bloomberg’s Laura Litvan.

Original post is Hotel Union Protests Obama Commerce Nominee by Political Capital.

Photograph by Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg

Jeffrey Zients, acting director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), speaks during a news conference on April 10, 2013.

That’s how much President Barack Obama’s budget proposal would trim federal budget deficits over the next decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Obama’s budget would produce deficits of $5.2 trillion between fiscal 2014 and fiscal 2023, compared with $6.3 trillion under the CBO’s baseline projections, the nonpartisan budget agency said in a report May 17.

Obama’s proposals would increase the deficit in this fiscal year and in the next two, relative to the amounts the CBO projects in its baseline. The deficits would be smaller than the baseline figures between 2016 to 2023, ranging between 0.1 percent and 1.4 percent of gross domestic product.

The CBO last week projected a fiscal 2013 deficit of $642 billion, or 4 percent of GDP, the smallest shortfall in five years. The deficit was 10.1 percent of GDP in fiscal 2009.

The policy changes in Obama’s budget would increase revenues by $974 billion and reduce outlays by $172 billion, according to the CBO report. The biggest policy changes include reducing military spending in Afghanistan, limiting deductions that lower taxpayers’ income tax liability, and changing the way some benefit programs are indexed for inflation by adopting a “chained” consumer price index.

Original post is Bloomberg by the Numbers: $1.1 Trillion by Political Capital.

Photograph by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

First lady Michelle Obama delivers the commencement speech during the Bowie State University graduation ceremony at the Comcast Center on the campus of the University of Maryland on May 17, 2013 in College Park, Maryland. Obama received and Honorary Doctor of Laws degree before addressing the 600 graduates of Maryland’s oldest historically black university and one of the ten oldest in the country.

That midlife crisis is over, it appears:

Credit The Hill for noticing the first lady’s appearance at Bowie State University for a commencement address sans bangs.

The forehead covering first appeared on her 49th birthday in January, just in time for President Barack Obama‘s second inauguration.

“This is my midlife crisis, the bangs. I couldn’t get a sports car,” she later told talk show host Rachael Ray. “They won’t let me bungee jump. So instead, I cut my bangs.”

Michelle Obama ditches her bangsj.mp/15TG2N7 by @emilylgoodin

— The Hill (@thehill) May 17, 2013

The president had said how much he liked those bangs, back during the inaugural ceremonies.

At the National Building Museum, one of Washington’s great public spaces, a freshly inaugurated Obama greeted supporters at the start of his second term, and opened with a comment on his wife’s new hair-do.

“I love her bangs,” the president said of his wife’s cut.

Maybe it was the IRS that got her to reconsider — a subject-changer at 1600 Pennsylvania.

Original post is Michelle Obama: The Bangs Are Gone by Political Capital.

Photograph by Kevin Winter/Getty Images

Singer Carole King performs onstage at the 28th Annual Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony at Nokia Theatre L.A. Live on April 18, 2013 in Los Angeles, California.

President Barack Obama has got a friend in Carole King, a staple singer of the Democratic fundraising performance circuit who will appear at the White House next week to receive the 2013 Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song.

It’s not too late to recognize the singer and songwriter who has made the Earth move for so many fans so far away. She’s been to Canaan and may feel home again among the tapestries in the house where Obama has handed the same award to Stevie Wonder (2009), author of the president’s election and re-election theme song, “Signed, Sealed Delivered. ”

This is the first time the Gershwin award has gone to a natural woman, indeed a nightingale.

There will be no crying in the rain, as the show will be staged indoors, in the East Room, not up on the roof.

It should be one fine day, though it’s going to take some time to get through the program, with James Taylor (Democratic convention troubador), Billy Joel, Gloria Estefan and Trisha Yearwood playing at Wednesday’s installment of “In Performance at the White House.”

The whole Loco-Motion will be aired on PBS on Tuesday, May 28, at 8 pm EDT.

Meanwhile, King is polishing her credentials as a Democrat who takes good care of her babies, in this case Terry McAuliffe, the super-fundraiser and candidate for governor of Virginia:

Please join @terrymcauliffe for a Day of Action. Watch: youtube.com/watch?feature=… … #vagov

— Carole King (@Carole_King) May 17, 2013

Original post is Carole King: White House Earth-Mover by Political Capital.

Photograph by Charles Dharapak/AP Photo

Ousted IRS chief Steve Miller, right, and J. Russell George, Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, are sworn in on Capitol Hill, on May 17, 2013, prior to testifying before the House Ways and Means Committee hearing on the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) practice of targeting applicants for tax-exempt status based on political leanings.

That grand slam of Benghazi emails, IRS head-rolling and a reporter’s shield law batted by the White House this week was a sure signal that the Obama administration plans to power through the controversies at hand.

So says Jennifer Palmieri, the White House communications director, on PBS’s NewsHour:

White House Comm’s Dir @jmpalmieri tells @newshour “we will manage through” series of issues/distractions this week

— Judy Woodruff (@JudyWoodruff) May 16, 2013

a trifecta of headaches for the White House “comes with the territory” says White House Comm’s Dir @jenpalmieri in @newshour intvu

— Judy Woodruff (@JudyWoodruff) May 16, 2013

Original post is White House: We’ll ‘Manage Through’ by Political Capital.

Photograph by Mladen Antonov/AFP via Getty Images

A cardboard cut-out of President Barack Obama in a tent defending “Obamacare” at a street fair in Charlotte, North Carolina.

The long-running competition for one-upsmanship over Obamacare in three pithy words has reached a fever pitch, pitting the White House and allies against repeal-minded Republicans with all sorts of bystanders weighing in — remembering that last summer one of those entries read: Guarantees President Romney.

The White House stands on terra firma with this one:

It’s. The. Law. #ObamaCareInThreeWords, twitter.com/whitehouse/sta…

— The White House (@whitehouse) May 16, 2013

Yet the partisan competition is undeterred, and seldom have so many people with day jobs devoted so much time to debating something so momentous in such abbreviated fashion.

Counted 100 new tweets on this track in the last five minutes.

#ObamaCareInThreeWords–> $1,000,000,000,000 In Taxes

— Eric Cantor (@GOPLeader) May 16, 2013

IRS in control. #ObamacareInThreeWords

— Michele Bachmann (@MicheleBachmann) May 16, 2013

#obamacareinthreewords: God Bless America!

— Donna Brazile (@donnabrazile) May 16, 2013

RT @gopleader: #ObamaCareInThreeWords –> Another Broken Promise

— Darrell Issa (@DarrellIssa) May 16, 2013

No gender discrimination.#ObamaCareInThreeWords #womenpaysameasmen

— Stephanie Cutter (@stefcutter) May 16, 2013

IRS. Is. Boss #obamacareinthreewords

— Heritage Foundation (@Heritage) May 16, 2013

Good for America. #obamacareinthreewords

— D Wasserman Schultz (@DWStweets) May 16, 2013

#ObamaCareInThreeWords –Job Killing Regulations

— RNC (@GOP) May 16, 2013

The speaker’s office has been stuffing the ballot box:

RT @gopleader: #ObamaCareInThreeWords –> Run by #IRS.

— Speaker John Boehner (@SpeakerBoehner) May 16, 2013

#ObamaCareinThreeWords: Scares small businesses –> j.mp/10qCYTK

— Speaker John Boehner (@SpeakerBoehner) May 16, 2013

#ObamaCareinThreeWords –> Repeal for jobs

— Speaker John Boehner (@SpeakerBoehner) May 16, 2013

Original post is Obamacare in Three Words: OMG by Political Capital.

Photograph by Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call/Getty Images

Danny Werfel, federal controller, Office of Management and Budget, testifies before a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing in Hart Building on the impacts of the sequestration on his agency.

Updated at 3:25 pm EDT

President Barack Obama has picked Danny Werfel, controller of the Office of Management and Budget, as acting commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service.

Werfel, 42, will replace Steven Miller, who was forced to resign yesterday amid revelations that the agency had targeted Tea Party-related groups for scrutiny of their tax exempt status. Werfel will start May 22 and serve through the end of the fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30, the White House announced today.

“Throughout his career working in both Democratic and Republican administrations, Danny has proven an effective leader who serves with professionalism, integrity and skill,” Obama said in a statement. “The American people deserve to have the utmost confidence and trust in their government, and as we work to get to the bottom of what happened and restore confidence in the IRS, Danny has the experience and management ability necessary to lead the agency at this important time.”

An acting commissioner doesn’t require Senate confirmation, though Werfel has been through that process before. He was confirmed by the Senate in October 2009 as controller at OMB.

At OMB, the White House says, he has been “responsible for coordinating OMB’s efforts to initiate government-wide improvements in all areas of financial management, including financial reporting, improper payments, real property management, financial accounting standards, grants management, and financial systems. More recently, Mr. Werfel has taken on an expanded role within OMB, leading the coordination of OMB’s efforts in the areas of Federal procurement, information technology, and personnel policy and performance management. ”

He has served as deputy controller, chief of the Financial Integrity and Analysis Branch, budget examiner in the Education Branch, and Policy Analyst in the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs.  He also served as a trial attorney in the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division.

He holds a Masters Degree in Public Policy from Duke University, a law degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and a Bachelors Degree in Industrial and Labor Relations from Cornell.

Original post is Obama Naming Werfel for IRS by Political Capital.

Photograph by Alex Wong/Getty Images

President Barack Obama, left, and former President George W. Bush arrive at the opening ceremony of the George W. Bush Presidential Center on April 25, 2013 in Dallas, Texas.

That second term can be a real problem.

On May 19, 2005, the Pew Research Center reported that then-President George W. Bush’s popularity was slipping:

“Americans are critical of President Bush’s job performance in many policy areas, but negative opinions of his handling of the economy and Iraq are doing the most damage to his overall approval rating, which now stands at 43 percent. Just 35 percent approve of the president’s handling of the economy, down from 43 percent in February and 45 percent in January.”

“`With the level of violence rising in Iraq, Bush’s ratings also have slipped on that issue ­ from 45 percent in January, to 40 percent in February, and 37 percent currently. Over the same period, positive opinions of his handling of foreign policy have fallen 10 points, to 38 percent. There has been greater stability in Bush’s marks on energy policy and Social Security, but he gets positive ratings of only about 30 percent on both issues (energy policy 31 percent, Social Security 29 percent).”

President Barack Obama has no Iraq war to worry about, and he is winding down U.S. involvement in Afghanistan.

But he does have the IRS to worry about now.

And that cuts closer to home for more Americans than any foreign conflict in recent years.

Having accepted the forced resignation of the acting IRS commissioner this week after it was revealed that workers had singled out Tea Party-related groups for scrutiny, the president will confront continuing questions as the first of the congressional hearings start tomorrow.

The president’s job approval, which reached 58 percent after reelection, in December, stood at 53 percent as recently as mid-April in the Gallup Poll’s count. Today, it is down to 48 percent in a three-day survey, May 13-15.

By the Pew Research Center’s count, the president’s job approval stood at 51 percent in April, after slipping to 47 percent in March.

Both counts are somewhat better than the 43 percent that Bush was looking at in this stage of his second term.

Nate Silver has taken it a step further, looking at the average standing of past seven presidents, back to Harry Truman.

“The seven presidents were quite popular, on average, in their first term,” Silver reports at the FiveThirtyEight blog. “Their approval ratings averaged 59 percent throughout their first term, and 57 percent in the final year of their first term, when they faced an election.”

“By contrast, the same presidents averaged a 48 percent approval rating during their second term. Moreover, their approval ratings declined throughout their second term – to an average of only 42 percent by the final year of their second term.”

At the same time, he attempts to dispel the myth of the cursed second term.

Original post is Obama’s Second Term vs. Bush’s Second Term: Job Approval #s by Political Capital.