The pro-gun control group founded by former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., and her husband, Mark Kelly, launched new radio ads Wednesday against two GOP senators who voted last week to block legislation expanding background checks for gun sales.

Americans for Responsible Solutions (ARS), the group founded by Giffords and her husband, unveiled new ads that accuse Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H., of opposing "common sense" measures to "keep guns out of the hands of criminals."

The ads are significant because they represent the first real effort by a pro-gun control group to inflict some measure of political damage against its detractors following last week's bipartisan vote to block a bipartisan compromise on background checks from moving forward. ARS said it had received over 24,000 donations since the Senate vote, and would be introducing additional targets of advertising later this week.

McConnell is up for re-election in 2014, but in Republican-leaning Kentucky; he hasn't yet attracted a major Democratic opponent. Ayotte doesn't face re-election until 2016, though her race in swing-state New Hampshire will be much tougher.

Proponents of stricter gun laws are counting on public opinion -- which, right now, largely favors expanded background checks for gun sales -- to persist, and allow them to inflict some political damage on those senators who blocked the legislation.

Other groups, like Mayors Against Illegal Guns, which is backed by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, have also vowed political retribution for lawmakers who oppose tighter gun measures.

To that end, a new Pew Research Center/Washington Post poll released Wednesday found that 47 percent of Americans were either "disappointed" or "angry" at last week's Senate vote; 39 percent said they were "relieved" or "very happy" at the largely-GOP push to block the background checks legislation.

That poll was conducted April 18-21, and has a 3.7 percent margin of error.

This story was originally published on Wed Apr 24, 2013 11:04 AM EDT

In a case that could affect Republicans’ standing with Latino voters, Sen. Charles Grassley, R- Iowa, is pledging to block Senate confirmation of President Barack Obama’s nominee for labor secretary, Thomas Perez.

Jim Watson / AFP - Getty Images

Ranking Member Senator Chuck Grassley, R-IA, questions Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano as she testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Capitol Hill, Feb. 13, 2013, on comprehensive immigration reform.

Grassley accuses Perez – now the assistant attorney general for civil rights – of improperly arranging a swap. If the city of St. Paul, Minn. would withdraw a major fair housing case which was about to be argued before the Supreme Court, then the Justice Department would agree to not go to court in support of a whistleblower suing the city.

Perez testified at his confirmation hearing Thursday before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee that he had acted properly in the St. Paul cases, and that the pivotal decision on the whistleblower was made not by him but by Assistant Attorney General Tony West and career Justice Department attorney Michael Hertz.

Perez said Hertz had decided that whistleblower Frederick Newell, who alleged misuse of federal funds by the city of St. Paul, had a weak case that didn’t merit intervention by the Justice Department on his side.

Grassley, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, is taking a special interest in the Perez nomination because he was the chief sponsor of the 1986 version of the whistleblower law – the False Claims Act—which allows people who uncover fraud in government programs to receive a portion of recovered damages and to be protected from retaliation.

Grassley said Wednesday evening before Perez’s confirmation hearing, that he “is supposed to be representing the United States of America and he has all these people in the Justice Department that are professional people and they decide what False Claims cases you take – and he interfered with that.”

Grassley added, “We had the prospects of winning a $200 million False Claims case. We had a whistleblower that goes out on a limb to bring it to the government’s attention. There’s some case before the Supreme Court that he (Perez) doesn’t want them to rule on, so he gets the city to remove it (from the high court docket) – doesn’t that sound like it’s not in the public interest?”

Grassley said he would object to the Senate even taking up the Perez nomination for a vote.

Addressing Republicans’ vulnerability with Latino voters, Congressional Hispanic Caucus Chairman Rep. Rubén Hinojosa, D- Texas, said Tuesday, "For a party that is trying to overcome racially insensitive comments and engage the Hispanic community, I would suggest not smearing a highly qualified Latino cabinet nominee.”

But when asked whether the Perez battle might risk damaging the Republican Party’s appeal to Latinos, Grassley replied, “There are plenty of qualified Latino people that haven’t forgotten their public responsibilities.”

Perez won strong support from HELP Committee chairman Sen. Tom Harkin, D- Iowa, at Thursday’s hearing. “Frankly I’m surprised” that Republican senators are criticizing Perez for intervening in the St. Paul case, Harkin said. “Lawyers make strategic judgments all the time about what cases should be appealed, and given the stakes in this matter, and the importance of strong enforcement of the Fair Housing Act, I think it’s clear the department made the right call.”

Harkin added that he had examined the case with a “fine-tooth comb” and told Perez “the evidence clearly shows that you acted ethically and appropriately at all times.”

Perez told Harkin that it was city officials, not him, who first suggested the idea of linking the decision to withdraw the civil rights case in which the city was a party and the decision by the Justice Department to not side with whistleblower Newell.

Perhaps more important than the whistleblower aspect of the case is the effort by Perez to avoid an potentially unfavorable Supreme Court ruling on the use of a legal theory called “disparate impact” in cases under the Fair Housing Act.

Under disparate impact analysis, a plaintiff need not prove that the defendant intended to discriminate on the basis of race. Instead, disparate impact looks at whether the defendant had a policy that resulted in a statistical disparity in the way members of a racial or ethnic minority were treated.

After discussions with Perez early in 2012, the city of Saint Paul agreed to withdraw a fair housing case which was only three weeks away from its oral argument in the Supreme Court.

The case, Magner v. Gallagher, arose out of attempts by the city of St. Paul to aggressively enforce housing code violations against apartment owners who rented to low-income tenants.

In response, a group of St. Paul landlords made the argument that a disproportionate number of their renters were African-American and that the city’s aggressive enforcement of the housing code would have the effect of increasing costs, raising rents, and shrinking the number of rental units for African-American tenants. Thus the city’s policy would have a “disparate impact” on a racial minority, they contended.

But if the justices had rejected this argument and disallowed the use of disparate impact in fair housing cases, it could have had ripple effects on other civil rights laws.

At Thursday’s hearing, Perez told Sen. Lamar Alexander, R- Tenn., the ranking Republican on the HELP committee, “Bad facts make bad law and I thought that this (Magner v. Gallagher) case was a poor vehicle” for raising the issue of the use of disparate impact in enforcing the Fair Housing Act.

Alexander accused Perez of “an extraordinary amount of wheeling and dealing outside the normal responsibilities of the assistant attorney general for civil rights….It seems to me you’re manipulating the legal process to try to get the result you want from the Supreme Court in a way that that’s inappropriate….”

Recommended stories:

• First Thoughts: Why the gun measure went down to defeat

A Tennessee congressman who's found himself in trouble before on Twitter said he'd tried to "punk" the Washington press corps by directing, then deleting, a seemingly flirty tweet to the singer Cyndi Lauper this week.

After having found himself in the middle of a frenzy earlier this year regarding a message he sent toward a young woman -- whom he later admitted was his daughter -- Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., said that he was attempting to rope D.C. reporters into a feeding frenzy by directing a tweet toward Lauper, the '80s pop star. Both had attended a White House celebration of Memphis music earlier this week.

Cohen made two tweets toward Lauper on Tuesday, which he subsequently deleted. Both were archived by a government transparency group, the Sunlight Foundation:

"@cyndilauper great night,couldn't believe how hot u were.see you again next Tuesday.try a little tenderness."

"Cyndi,Wow what a night!See you next Tuesday and Try a little tenderness again!Wow!What a special night.Thanks Steve."

Two days later, he mentioned Lauper again, this time on the House floor where he praised her performance at the White House event.

“While there were a lot of great performers there, I want to put a particular shout-out to Ms. Cyndi Lauper, ‘cause she’s special,” he said. 

On Friday, Cohen told NBC News that the tweets were part of an elaborate prank, to demonstrate how the media jumps for salacious stories. He went on to say "tweet and delete" is the best way to get media's attention, accusing the press of a shameful rush to judgment.

Cohen hopes that the attention given to the Lauper tweet while promote a PBS documentary that airs on Tuesday about Memphis Soul music. (Cohen represents a Memphis-area district.)

He also mentioned that he had "waited for two months to trick the press corps after what they did to my family," referencing the revelation that he is the father of a young woman he tweeted at during the State of the Union address.

**UPDATE**

During a press event Friday, Cohen was asked why the media should believe that the tweets were fake. He told reporters that he spoke to two other lawmakers about the plan before it unfolded. 

"They can call (Rep.) John Yarmuth and (Rep.) Joe Courtney who I talked to about it on Monday on the floor and said, 'Boys, wait till I see what I do this week with the press,'" Cohen said, "So call Yarmuth or Courtney."

Spokesmen for both offices tell NBC News that Cohen informed them of the plot after it had happened. 

Also of note: the House wasn't in session on Monday.

NBC News reached out to Cohen's office for clarification, and was told that he misspoke -- he meant to say that the other lawmakers were told of the plan before the story broke, not before the tweets were deleted.

NBC's Frank Thorp contributed to this report.

This story was originally published on Fri Apr 12, 2013 2:14 PM EDT

Women are a key driver of support for legislation overhauling the nation's gun and immigration laws, according to new data in the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, just as Congress prepares to take up major legislation on both of those issues.

Women outpace men in their support for stricter gun laws and immigration reform that provides undocumented immigrants a pathway to citizenship, data which becomes more salient in light of the Republican Party’s effort to regain its footing with women voters after last fall’s elections.

View full poll results here

The gender gap is most pronounced when it comes to the issue of stricter gun controls, legislation on which the Senate voted to begin consideration this Thursday.

Sixty-five percent of women said they favor stricter laws governing the sale of firearms, versus just 5 percent who favor less strict laws. Twenty-seven percent of women said the law should be kept as it is now. By comparison, 44 percent of men favor stricter gun laws, while 41 percent said laws should stay the same.

(Also of note: Self-described mothers favor stricter gun laws even more overwhelmingly; 70 percent of mothers with children in the home said that laws governing firearm sales should be tightened.)

While the gap is less pronounced, women respondents in this month’s NBC/WSJ poll were more sympathetic to arguments in favor of comprehensive immigration reform.

Women favor immigration reform that allows a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants by a 36-point margin. Sixty-seven percent of women said they would favor such a proposal, versus 31 percent who would oppose those reforms. Men also favor immigration reform, but by a slightly slimmer, 60 percent to 38 percent spread.

When explained that a pathway to citizenship would involve paying a fine, any back taxes, passing a security background check and taking other measures, men and women would favor immigration reform at roughly the same levels: Seventy-eight percent of women favor such a proposal, versus 74 percent of men.

The gender gap also extends to some high-profile social issues at the forefront of American political debate at the moment, like same-sex marriage.

In the poll, women favor allowing gay and lesbian couples to marry, 56 percent to 40 percent. Men, by contrast, favor allowing same-sex marriages, 50 percent to 43 percent. (That's a relatively seismic shift for men; in the March 2004 NBC/WSJ poll, just 26 percent of men favored gay marriage, while 52 percent opposed.)

The poll was conducted April 5-8, and has a 4.3 percent margin of error for the subsample of women, and a 4.5 percent margin of error for the subsample of men.

With a bipartisan group of senators expected to unveil immigration-reform legislation in the next few days, a brand-new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll finds that nearly two-thirds of Americans – including eight-in-10 Latinos – support giving undocumented immigrants a path to citizenship.

A slight majority of Republican respondents oppose this path, possibly foreshadowing the resistance which any comprehensive immigration reform bill might receive, especially in the GOP-controlled House of Representatives.

But when Republicans hear that a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants includes paying fines and back taxes, almost three-quarters of them support the idea.

What’s more, a majority of the public – for the first time in the poll – agrees with the statement that immigration strengthens the nation, reflecting a shift in attitude on this issue. 

Republican pollster Bill McInturff, who conducted this survey with the Democratic firm Hart Research Associates, says that this change in sentiment on immigration “speaks to something potent,” particularly given the economic struggles of the past five years.

"These more positive attitudes provide more leeway for lawmakers to build support for change on this issue," McInturff adds.

View the poll results here

On other matters, the poll shows a majority of the public favors stricter gun laws, President Barack Obama’s approval rating falling below 50 percent for the first time since Oct. 2012, and fewer than two-in-10 Americans saying the automatic budget cuts known as “the sequester” have significantly affected them.

Immigration – a strength or weakness?
A majority (54 percent) agrees with the statement that immigration adds to the nation’s character and strengthens it by bringing diversity and talent to the country.

Saul Loeb / AFP - Getty Images

Tens of thousands of immigration reform supporters march in the "Rally for Citizenship" on the West Lawn of the US Capitol in Washington, DC, on April 10, 2013.

In a 2010 NBC/WSJ survey, fewer than half of respondents agreed with that statement, and in 2005, a plurality said that immigration weakened the nation.

Additionally, the Democratic Party holds a 7-point advantage over the Republican Party on the question of which party does a better job in dealing with immigration.

Among an oversample of Latino respondents, the Democratic edge increases to 26 points.

Regarding the current legislative debate over immigration, 64 percent of respondents say they favor allowing undocumented immigrants to have the opportunity to become legal American citizens.

That includes 82 percent of Latinos, 80 percent of Democrats and 54 percent of political independents supporting a path to citizenship.

But 51 percent of Republicans oppose it, versus 47 percent who back it.

Yet when told that the pathway to citizenship would require paying fines and back taxes, as well as passing a security-background check, support grows – with 76 percent of total respondents, and 73 percent of Republicans backing the path.

That pathway to citizenship is the heart of a comprehensive immigration reform proposal that the so-called “Gang of Eight” senators – including Democrats Chuck Schumer and Dick Durbin and Republicans John McCain and Marco Rubio – are drafting and plan to introduce in the next few days.

The proposal also calls for strengthening the U.S.-Mexico border, tying that security to establishing the path to citizenship and expanding legal immigration.

A majority of all respondents (51 percent) believe undocumented immigrants should be eligible for citizenship five years after application. Just 12 percent say the eligibility should occur after 10 years, and only 18 percent believe citizenship should be immediate.

On border security, nearly two-thirds of Americans (63 percent) think the U.S.-Mexico border is “mostly” or “totally” not secure, compared with a smaller percentage of Latino respondents (49 percent) who believe that.

55 percent favor stricter gun laws
In addition to immigration, Congress is grappling with the issue of gun control, with the Senate expected to vote on Thursday whether to begin debate on a Democratic-backed measure requiring background checks for most gun sales.

According to the poll, 55 percent favor stricter laws covering the sale of firearms.

That’s down 6 points from the Feb. 2013 NBC/WSJ poll – conducted after Obama’s State of the Union address that contained a call to action on gun control – but it’s essentially unchanged from the Jan. 2013 poll.

Yet there’s a wide political divide to these numbers: 82 percent of Democrats favor stricter gun laws, while just 27 percent of Republicans do.

Obama’s approval rating drops to 47 percent
Despite majorities backing the broad outlines of his legislative priorities on immigration and guns, President Obama confronts a pessimistic public and declining poll numbers.

Only 31 percent of Americans believe the country is headed in the right direction – a decline of 10 points since Dec. 2012.

His overall job-approval rating stands at 47 percent, which is down 3 points since February and which represents the first time he’s been below 50 percent since just before the 2012 election.

In addition, 47 percent approve of the president’s economic handling (up three points from February), and 46 percent approve of his handling of foreign policy (down six from Dec. 2012).

Democratic pollster Fred Yang of Hart Research says that the public’s sour attitude, particularly on the economy, has “dragged down” Obama’s numbers.

Sequester’s limited impact (so far)
Lastly, the NBC/WSJ poll finds that only a combined 16 percent of Americans say the automatic across-the-board budget cuts that went into effect earlier in the year have impacted them either “a great deal” or “quite a bit.”

By comparison, a whopping 75 percent say the cuts to military and non-military programs have affected them “just some” or “not much.”

But a plurality of respondents – 47 percent – believe the cuts will mostly harm the economy, versus 30 percent who say they won’t have an impact.

The NBC/WSJ poll was conducted of 1,000 adults (including 300 cell phone-only respondents) from April 5-8, and it has an overall margin of error of plus-minus 3.1 percentage points.

The proposed Fiscal Year 2014 budget which President Barack Obama unveiled Wednesday would raise taxes for some Americans, not all of them upper-income earners, while awarding tax breaks to particular groups and interests such as college students, people who don’t save for retirement, and investors in low-income neighborhoods.

What’s most notable in the Obama plan is that despite much talk from the Simpson-Bowles commission and from other reformers of simplifying the tax code, Obama would, if Congress passed his plan, still be very much in the business of using the tax code to try to fine-tune the economy and engineer certain policy outcomes.

This targeted tax break approach seems exactly opposed to the tax reform effort that the chairmen of the House and Senate tax-writing committees are planning later this year.

Under his plan – which covers the next 10 years – tax revenues would be nearly $1 trillion higher than the baseline current-law forecast by the Congressional Budget Office. Much of that additional revenue would come from tax increases he is proposing.

The president seeks to increase taxes by far more than the $600 billion tax increase in the American Taxpayer Relief Act (ATRA) of 2012 which he signed into law on Jan 2.

He would get the $580 billion by reducing certain tax preferences for upper-income earners. He would limit the value of itemized deductions to 28 percent for families in the highest tax brackets – an idea he offered in his very first budget proposal back in 2009.

Among the other tax increases Obama proposes:

• A new “Financial Crisis Responsibility Fee” imposed on large banks and financial institutions, a kind of retroactive charge five years after the 2008 bailout of the financial sector. The fee is intended “to fully compensate taxpayers for the support they provided to the financial sector during the 2008–2009 economic crisis and to discourage excessive risk-taking” in the future, the president’s budget document says. If enacted, this targeted financial sector tax would raise nearly $60 billion, budget officials say.
• An increase in the estate and gift tax of nearly $72 billion. This was an issue Congress thought it had settled when it passed ATRA at the end of 2012.
• $78 billion in increased taxes on cigarettes and tobacco products.
• $44 billion in tax increases on oil, natural gas and coal producers by eliminating certain tax breaks for those industries.
• $10.7 billion from indexing all tax penalties to the inflation rate.
• $9.3 billion from limiting the amount of money that higher-income people could put in tax-sheltered retirement accounts.

Yuri Gripas / Reuters

A staff member prepares the release and distribution of President Barack Obama's Fiscal Year 2014 Budget at the Government Printing Office in Washington April 10, 2013.

Many of these tax increases can be seen as part of an ongoing project by the president to shift more of the burden of paying for government and especially entitlement programs to upper-income Americans, both retirees and the currently employed.

In the same vein, the president again offered certain Medicare ideas he'd included in his budget plan last year: $68 billion in higher premiums, co-payments and surcharges for mostly higher-income Medicare recipients.

He’d get another $120 billion or so in revenue by tweaking the inflation indexing formula used to set the levels for the tax brackets, the standard deduction, and other provisions in tax law.

But on the other hand Obama also proposes an array of new tax breaks.

For example, he seeks:

• A 10 percent tax credit for small businesses that hire new employees or increase wages. This would cost $25.7 billion in lost revenue.
• Creation of tax-preferred "Promise Zones” in high-poverty communities which would provide tax breaks for hiring workers and investing within the zones, an idea somewhat reminiscent of former Housing Secretary Jack Kemp's Urban Enterprise Zones. This would cost $5.3 billion in lost revenue.
• A new tax-preferred bond program called America Fast Forward Bonds, at a cost of $10 billion, for public school construction.
• A new tax credit to encourage employers to offer retirement savings plans and to automatically enroll workers in them. Cost: $17.6 billion.

Obama’s proposal also makes some assumptions about future spending that might not turn out to be realistic: for example, it forecasts nearly $1.8 trillion in savings from overseas military operations that it assumes will not take place during the next 10 years.

The Obama blueprint isn’t likely to be adopted, but some of its specific proposals might be, if the president can use his persuasive power to bring Republican members of Congress to accept at least some of his new tax increases.

The initial response from GOP leaders was at best tepid.

“The document headed our way does not appear designed to bridge the differences between the House- and Senate-passed budgets. That’s the role Americans would expect the president to play at this stage,” said Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell.

In the battles over the budget, there are really just two issues: How much revenue the government takes in and how much it spends. 

President Barack Obama signed a big tax increase into law on Jan. 2, and since then Republicans have tried to keep the fight squarely focused on the spending-side of the ledger. But that hasn't stopped Democrats and others from seeking different, and at times innovative, ideas for bringing in more cash to federal coffers.

Some of them are new, such as limiting the amount of money that could be shielded from taxes in retirement accounts. But not all of the proposals are targeted at higher earners.

Although it may be months before a tax reform effort promised by the chairmen of the House and Senate tax-writing committees moves into higher gear, an increasing number of items are now on the tax menu.

Some of these proposals could be ingredients in a compromise deal on taxes and entitlements between Obama and GOP congressional leaders.

In Obama’s budget proposal for Fiscal Year 2014, which will be formally released Wednesday, administration officials say the president will offer a few new contributions to the revenue debate:

• A change in the inflation indexing formula used to set the levels for the tax brackets, the standard deduction and other provisions in tax law. Obama will propose using a less generous indexing measure called “chained CPI.” According to an analysis by the Congressional Budget Office, using chained CPI for the tax code would raise nearly $124 billion in new revenue over 10 years.
• An increase in taxes on cigarettes and other tobacco products in order to help pay for an initiative to provide preschool education to four-year-old children.
• A limit on the amount of money that could be shielded from taxation in retirement accounts. The Obama proposal would prohibit individuals from accumulating more than $3 million in IRAs and other tax-sheltered retirement accounts. This proposal would raise $9 billion over 10 years, according to administration officials.

Obama will likely reiterate his support for an idea he has proposed since 2009 and which Senate Democrats endorsed in their budget resolution: limiting deductions and other tax preferences for upper-income people.

Meanwhile, there’s some bipartisan support for a tax or fee on carbon dioxide emissions. Former Secretary of State George Shultz --who served under President Ronald Reagan -- and conservative University of Chicago Nobel laureate economist Gary Becker co-authored an op-ed in Monday’s Wall Street Journal endorsing the idea of a revenue-neutral tax on carbon.

This would encourage producers and consumers to shift away from more carbon-intensive energy sources such as coal and toward less carbon-intensive sources. They’d also eliminate tax breaks for various energy sources, such as biodiesel. The revenue from the carbon tax could be refunded to taxpayers, perhaps in the form of a “carbon dividend,” Shultz and Becker argue.

Although their version is revenue-neutral, the carbon tax idea could end up being part of a larger package of revenue raisers.

Susan Walsh / Susan Walsh / AP

President Barack Obama gestures as he speaks during an Easter Prayer Breakfast in the East Room of the White House in Washington, Friday, April 5, 2013.

The carbon tax concept won the support of 41 senators, all of them Democrats, during a vote three weeks ago, when it was proposed by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., as an amendment to the Fiscal Year 2012 budget resolution.

Whitehouse said Tuesday that the lesson of that vote was “we’ve got a more solid base of support than I thought and obviously we need lots of room to grow in order to move it along.”

Whitehouse said a carbon tax could be part of the tax reform effort that Senate Finance Committee chairman Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., and House Ways & Means Committee chairman Rep. Dave Camp, R-Mich., will lead this year.

The Rhode Island Democrat argued that a carbon tax could be made appealing to Republicans since the revenue that would be generated could be used to pay for tax cuts: “They’d probably want to do things like get rid of the estate tax, lower the corporate tax rate – I’m not sure we’d be thrilled with all of those – but it’s a discussion worth having,” he said.

Senate Finance Committee ranking Republican Orrin Hatch of Utah said he had noticed Shultz’s support for a carbon tax, adding, “I’ve basically been against a carbon tax, but I’ll look at it and see.”

Another Senate Finance Committee member, Ben Cardin, D-Md. said Tuesday the carbon tax is an idea “absolutely we need to take a look at ... we need to look at different revenues to take care of our energy and transportation needs.”

As for using chained CPI to index parts of the tax code, Cardin said he was “very much aware” of the increased revenue that would result from that change. “More revenue is a good idea, but chained CPI also affects the beneficiaries not only of Social Security but other programs. My preference is to do entitlement reform without affecting middle-income and lower-income beneficiaries.”

Related:

Budget, immigration, gun control: Congress returns to debate cornerstones of Obama agenda

First Thoughts: Obama to offer compromise budget to Republicans

With budgets on the table, Washington divide remains as wide as ever

Democrats are relishing in a surprising opportunity to possibly pick up a House seat in a solidly Republican district in South Carolina, where Mark Sanford is hoping to stage a political comeback next month.

Sanford, the embattled former governor who left office in 2011 under a cloud of scandal following an extramarital affair that publicly wrecked his marriage, officially won the Republican nomination for the May 7 special election to fill the vacancy in South Carolina’s 1st congressional district. He beat rival Republican Curtis Bostic in a runoff election with about 57 percent of the vote.

Though Sanford represented this reliably GOP district for three terms in the 1990s, he faces a tougher-than-expected challenge from Democratic nominee Elizabeth Colbert-Busch, a Clemson University administrator and the sister of Comedy Central personality Stephen Colbert.

For Sanford, a onetime conservative rock star who had once flirted with the possibility of seeking the Republican presidential nomination, next month’s special election is a shot at redemption, both personal and political. His 2009 admission of an affair with an Argentinian woman, María Belén Chapur, and bizarre subsequent explanations of his absence to pursue that affair, nearly ruined his career and left a lasting negative impression with voters that could help Colbert-Busch score an unlikely victory.

An internal poll released by the Colbert-Busch campaign earlier this week showed the Democrat leading Sanford by three points – within the poll’s margin of error, but still noteworthy for its reflection of a competitive race in this district that Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney won last fall by 18 points.

Sanford, speaking Wednesday on “Morning Joe,” argued that Colbert-Busch’s ability to skate to the Democratic nomination as he endured a competitive Republican primary, helped explain those numbers.

“I think that when people really begin to digest those ideas – some real strong contrasts in terms of where she would be versus where I would be – that's going to substantially change a poll that, right now, simply defines name ID as people know it, not issue ID,” he said. “And ultimately, I think debates and campaigns are ultimately decided on issues.”

Colbert-Busch benefits, too, from her brother’s celebrity and heightened media interest in the campaign. It’s for that reason that Republicans in Washington said Wednesday that they are watching the race closely, and refuse to take for granted a seat that Democrats haven’t held since 1981.

Both Republicans and Democrats generally admit that the race might not be as close if not for Sanford, and the baggage associated with his affair. But GOP sources also contend that Colbert-Busch has managed to escape most scrutiny, and that the district’s Republican-leaning voters will end up with Sanford once his Democratic opponent’s views are fully litigated over the course of the next month.

The National Republican Congressional Committee, which is tasked with electing GOP candidates to the House, for instance on Wednesday chided Colbert-Busch for campaigning while continuing to remain on-staff at Clemson.

Bruce Smith / AP

Former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford leaves the voting booth after voting at his precinct in Charleston, S.C., on Tuesday, April 2, 2013.

“Why should South Carolina taxpayers have to foot the bill for Elizabeth Colbert Busch to campaign for Congress? We already knew Colbert Busch supported Obama and Pelosi’s big-spending policies, but now she’s taken her disregard for the taxpayers to a new low,” said NRCC spokeswoman Katie Prill.

(Clemson says the NRCC's characterization is incorrect, and that Colbert-Busch is not on the state payroll at the moment. Her annual leave, to which she is entitled, ended on March 26. "Elizabeth Colbert Busch is not on the state payroll in South Carolina. She took a leave of absence from her job at Clemson University the day she filed for office," said John Gouch, the school's assistant director of media relations.)

The ultimate test of both parties’ commitment might come in the form of a check cut by the NRCC or its Democratic counterpart, the DCCC. Both sides maintain that they have not yet decided whether to spend money on television ads in this coastal South Carolina district, which could help swing the race toward either candidate.

Meanwhile, Democrats are eager to have Sanford available as a public face of the GOP over the next month, if not more. South Carolina Democrats on Wednesday eagerly reminded reporters of the letter written by state Republican lawmakers (including now-U.S. Sen. Tim Scott, R) to Sanford in 2009, which asked for his resignation (Sanford declined). The letter called Sanford’s actions during his affair an example of “poor decision making and questionable leadership.”

Sanford’s bid for a comeback also comes as Republicans nationally seek to overhaul their image, and broaden the GOP’s appeal among Hispanics, young voters and women – three groups among whom the party suffered during last fall’s election.

“The last thing they [Republicans] need is Mark Sanford to be their public face,” a Democratic campaign source said in anticipation of the bruising – and increasingly nationalized – campaign set to play out over the next few weeks.

This story was originally published on Wed Apr 3, 2013 1:34 PM EDT

With senators preparing to unveil a bipartisan bill following a weekend agreement between top business and labor groups, advocates for comprehensive immigration reform have a lot of reasons to believe that their long-held dream is finally in sight.

But the other side says: Not so fast.

While even the most vocal opponents of comprehensive reform acknowledge that the politics of immigration have changed – with 71 percent of Latino voters favoring Barack Obama in the last election – those gearing up to fight the legislation argue that the overall landscape hasn’t shifted as dramatically as supporters might think.

“It’s one thing to say ‘we need to do this’ at a 30,000 feet kind of level,” says Dan Holler of Heritage Action for America, the Heritage Foundation’s advocacy arm. “But once they start getting down to the details of the legislation, I don’t think things have fundamentally changed for most of the public since 2007.”

Among veterans of past immigration fights, “2007” is shorthand for the defeat of the comprehensive reform effort in June of that year. That bill – which, like the current proposal, included a path for illegal immigrants to pay penalties and eventually become eligible for citizenship – collapsed after furious outcry from opponents of “amnesty,” delivering a stinging loss to backer President George W. Bush.  

Many of the same arguments made by opponents of that legislation are being echoed this time: that legalization inherently rewards people who committed a crime by residing in the U.S. illegally; that undocumented immigrants are a drain on federal resources; and that amid a still-sluggish economy, an influx of work-authorized immigrants means fewer jobs for unemployed Americans.

"This is a matter that the whole country needs to be looking at, particularly when we’ve got low unemployment among our low-skilled workers already," Alabama Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions, who worked to defeat the 2007 measure, told NBC News. "If you legalize 11 million, including seven or eight million workers, they will be free to compete more aggressively for the all the jobs. You've got a pretty serious double-whammy there." 

Related: April's shower of activity on Capitol Hill 

Over the Easter weekend, business and labor groups reached agreement on a framework for a temporary low-skilled worker program, which includes controls to keep recipients of a new “W visa” from depressing others’ wages or taking positions that could be filled by American workers. But not all of the specifics of that proposal are clear.

While the compromise notched a major victory for proponents of reform, the optics of the deal may not sit well with the public, Sessions points out. 

Susan Walsh / AP

Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., is seen during a committee hearing on Capitol Hill, Jan. 31, 2013.

"I do not believe that a deal should be reached between big labor and big business and everybody’s just supposed to rubber stamp it," he said. "That is not the way legislation is supposed to be done in America." 

Outside groups are focused on the economic argument as well. 

“Everything other than the politics is worse now than it was in 2007,” says Rosemary Jenks, a lobbyist for NumbersUSA, an immigration limitation group heavily involved in fighting the Bush-backed measure.

And according to Jenks, that includes, most importantly, the unemployment rate. It’s improved in recent months to 7.7 percent, but is currently higher than the 4.5 percent recorded by the Bureau of Labor Statistics in the summer of 2007.

NumbersUSA – which works to strictly limit legal immigration in addition to opposing efforts to legalize undocumented immigrants – and other groups aim to again mobilize opponents of reform by arguing that the proposed legalization and guest-worker programs would hurt Americans already struggling to find work.

Along with the argument that legalization inherently rewards a criminal action, the economic consequences of immigration will be one of the primary messages underpinning events like the annual “Hold Their Feet to the Fire” radio broadcasting event scheduled for later this month, when conservative hosts will gather in Washington, D.C., to ramp up opposition to the comprehensive reform bill.

On the legalization question, public opinion appears to be trending in the direction of reform. 

In January, a NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll found for the first time that a majority of Americans support granting legal status to some illegal immigrants, with 52 percent of respondents saying that they favor such plans and 46 percent opposing them.

In 2007, the same poll found 44 percent supporting legalization compared to 51 percent opposing it.

But, while the number has consistently decreased since 2006, there’s still a significant minority of Americans who view immigrants as a drag on America’s economy.

A Pew Research Center poll published last week showed that 41 percent of Americans agree with the statement that “immigrants today are a burden on our country because they take our jobs, housing and health care.”

Proponents of reform say that they are ready for a rematch of the battle they lost six years ago, and no one is expecting an easy win.

“We’re very, very optimistic,” said Felipe Benitez of the Alliance for Citizenship, the umbrella group spearheading the pro-reform effort. “And we are ready for a big, big fight.” 

This story was originally published on Mon Apr 1, 2013 7:02 PM EDT

Want a sense of the scope of the GOP's internal divide between conservatives and the party establishment? Take a look at some recent poll numbers that paint a fuller picture of just how many of the Republican Party's core elements object to the direction of the party.

A CBS News poll released Tuesday evening found what most other polls have recently: the Republican Party suffers from a negative impression among most Americans.

Sixty percent of all U.S. adults, the CBS poll found, have an unfavorable opinion of the Republican Party, versus 31 percent who have a favorable opinion of the GOP.

Democrats, expectedly, have strongly negative opinions toward Republicans; self-described independents are also sour on the GOP, 60 to 24 percent.

A closer look inside the numbers, though, tells the deeper story.

One in four self-described Republicans, 25 percent, also said in the CBS poll that they had a negative opinion of their own party – an ominous sign as the GOP searches for a pathway back to electoral success.

Much of the news about efforts to remake the party, such as the Republican National Committee's new "Growth and Opportunity Project," have been confined to an inside-the-Beltway audience. Much of the outreach called for by the report has yet to take place, making any improvement in voters' impression of the party a lagging indicator.

Moreover, the GOP's internal angst might not necessarily be surprising given the party is still reeling from its loss in a second consecutive presidential election. More recently, party leaders cut a deal that allowed taxes to rise -- a prospect that's anathema to the Republican base.

The CBS poll doesn't offer more detailed breakdowns, but looking inside the internal numbers of the NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll late last month and a CNN/ORC poll released in mid-March offer clues to the source of internal Republican discord.

Both polls found that blanket "Republicans" had a slightly more favorable opinion of the Republican Party than in the CBS poll. The NBC/WSJ poll, conducted in late February, found that 63 percent of Republicans had a favorable opinion of the Republican Party, versus 15 percent who expressed a negative impression; 21 percent of self-described GOPers were neutral. Similarly, 82 percent of Republicans rated the party favorably in the CNN poll, versus 14 percent who had an unfavorable opinion of the GOP.

It's among conservatives where opinion turns against the Republican Party establishment.

Less than half of self-identified conservatives -- 48 percent -- expressed a favorable opinion of the Republican Party in the February NBC/WSJ poll. Twenty-six percent of conservatives had a negative opinion of the party of which they ostensibly serve as the base, and a quarter -- 25 percent -- were neutral.

The CNN poll includes similar numbers; that poll, which was conducted from March 15-17, found that 58 percent of self-identified conservatives have a favorable opinion of the Republican Party, versus 36 percent who hold an unfavorable impression.

The numbers cut to the core of the GOP's identity crisis. Party leaders wish to broaden the party's appeal and, on some issues (like immigration reform), move toward the political center. That extends to primary elections, in which the GOP establishment hopes to re-assert itself, and avoid instances where unelectable conservatives sometimes topple candidates regarded as more electable in the general election.

To be sure, too, these numbers don't necessarily suggest that conservatives are so disaffected that they would stay home in general election contests. Even the most critical of conservatives eventually came around last fall to supporting Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney.

But these numbers suggest that the party's right flank -- the heart and soul of the Republican Party -- haven't bought in. And until they do, a transformation of the party will be that much more difficult.

As they prepare to take a two-week Easter break, Congress has been busy passing bills and resolutions on taxes and spending, but there are several budget paths converging all at once.  What does all the action really mean? Here’s a guide to what’s happening:

Both houses of Congress this week passed a $1.27 trillion spending bill to keep the government operating for the rest of the fiscal year, that is, until Sept. 30. Was that bill part of the process of designing a budget for the government?

No. That bill – passed by the House on Thursday and by the Senate on Wednesday – was a measure to keep non-entitlement spending at current levels until the end of fiscal year 2013. That bill is separate from the plan – called the budget resolution -- for the new fiscal year which begins on Oct. 1.

This week the House and Senate have each been working on their own budget resolutions for the coming fiscal year.

Recommended: Senate votes to kill part of 2010 health care overhaul

What did that spending bill have to do with the spending reductions required by the Budget Control Act of 2011 – the so-called “sequester”?

That bill abides by the spending limits sets by the Budget Control Act. It does not try to undo those limits.

What exactly is the budget resolution which each house of Congress was working on Thursday and Friday?

The budget resolution is a blueprint for spending and for revenues. It does not specify exactly how much money will be spent in the coming fiscal year, for example, on the federal inspectors who check on meat, poultry, and eggs. Nor does the blueprint in itself appropriate money to be spent. Instead it sets broad targets and creates a framework within which Congress will consider separate revenue and spending bills.

Does the budget resolution apply only to the coming fiscal year that starts on Oct. 1?

No, it attempts to set goals for ten years, through 2023.

Can a budget blueprint that’s being voted on this week accurately reflect what economic conditions might be in 2016 or 2018 or 2023?

No. If, for instance, there were another recession in 2016, revenues would decrease since workers would lose their jobs and not be paying income taxes.

But Congress uses a budget “baseline,” a set of assumptions, prepared by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office to try to forecast what employment levels will be during the next ten years, what interest rates will be, etc. The CBO baseline also assumes that current laws – such as the tax law that Obama signed on Jan. 2 -- will remain in effect and will not subsequently be changed by Congress.

If the House and Senate each pass different budget resolutions, would they need to negotiate in a conference committee a compromise version of a budget?

Yes, but since their budget blueprints plans are so different they may not try to do that. If so, there would no official budget resolution for Fiscal Year 2014. Sarah Binder, an expert on Congress at George Washington University and the Brookings Institution, said Thursday, “There doesn’t seem to be any hope of going to conference and actually doing the real budget process.”

Did Congress pass a budget resolution last year?

No. The Senate has not passed a budget resolution in four years.

Without a budget resolution, will federal spending stop?

No, spending continues under either a temporary spending bill similar to the one now in effect, or by means of specific appropriations bills for the departments and agencies.

What are the main features of the blueprint which the House passed on Thursday – and how does that proposal differ from the Senate Democrats’ plan?

Under the leadership of House Budget Committee chairman Rep. Paul Ryan, the House passed a plan that would sharply reduce federal debt as a percentage of national income and would reduce Medicaid and other health care spending as a percentage of national income. Ryan’s proposal would also make fundamental changes in the Medicare program for people who’d become eligible for benefits in 2024 or later. Ryan’s plan would offer the choice of traditional fee-for-service Medicare along with private health care plans. His critics charge that this would lead to the demise of the traditional Medicare design.

Senate Democrats’ plan offered by Budget Committee chairman Sen. Patty Murray, D- Wash., would preserve the current design of Medicare. It would also instruct the Senate Finance Committee to come up with legislation by Oct. 1 that would raise $975 billion in new tax revenues over the next ten years. That legislation would not be subject to a Senate filibuster.

If a budget blueprint is more or less a statement of goals for a ten-year period, how much real significance does it have?

It’s a statement of the priorities the Senate or House majority has, for example, on education or defense.

But what’s especially important in the Senate is that the budget process can be used to circumvent the requirement that bills have 60 votes before advancing to final passage.

Using a process called “reconciliation,” the Senate can pass a budget measure with only 51 votes.

Given the current political lineup, in order to enact tax reform or entitlement reform into law, Senate Democrats would need their plan to be approved by a Republican-majority House.

How can the Senate budget debate be used to score points for the 2014 elections?

Over time the Senate has developed a process called the “vote-a-rama,” which allows senators to offer a theoretically unlimited number of amendments to the budget resolution.

Some of these amendments may be simple statements of belief or perhaps might be used to put senators up for reelection in 2014 in an awkward spot explaining why they voted against it.

For example, Sen. David Vitter, R- La., said Thursday he’ll be offering amendments to end automatic pay increases for members of Congress, to require photo identification for voting in federal elections, to set up an entry-exit system to determine whether foreign visitors to the United States leave when their visas expire, and to halt greenhouse gas regulations until the governments of China, India and Russia implement similar rules to reduce emissions in their countries. 

This story was originally published on Fri Mar 22, 2013 8:44 AM EDT

There’s been plenty of talk among Washington Republicans about the need to recruit better candidates, the kind who will avoid cringe-worthy campaign moments that did in several GOP candidates last fall, and weighed down the party nationwide.

But there are already several conservatives gearing up for high-profile races over the next two years who threaten to stop that effort in its tracks.

Following the missteps of candidates like Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock – the Senate candidates in Missouri and Indiana, respectively, who lost winnable Senate races after making roundly criticized comments about rape – establishment Republicans have been far more vocal about the need to rein in primary processes that produced such nominees.

The fact that 2012’s mistakes were not an aberration compounded Republicans’ worries. The same Tea Party fervor that produced rock stars like Rand Paul and Marco Rubio yielded Republican Senate nominees like Christine O’Donnell, Ken Buck and Sharron Angle – GOP candidates regarded as having squandered good pickup opportunities in Delaware, Colorado and Nevada.

This week’s Republican National Committee report recommending ways to strengthen the party came out and said it bluntly: “Groupthink is an issue.”

But in races like this fall’s gubernatorial campaign in Virginia – along with several high-profile state races next fall – will offer direct tests of whether the GOP can finally navigate the narrow strait between conservative allegiance and electability in the general election.

The most immediate test will come this fall in Virginia, where Ken Cuccinelli is the candidate looking to keep the governor’s mansion in Republican hands for two consecutive terms for the first time since the mid-1990s.

Cuccinelli has long been a favorite of conservatives, having used his current office as state attorney general to launch court challenges to President Barack Obama’s health-care law. His reservoir of support on the right helped push Virginia’s relatively more moderate lieutenant governor, Bill Bolling, out of the race. (Bolling subsequently weighed running as an independent candidate, but decided against it.)

And already, Cuccinelli has run his race in swing-state Virginia as an unabashed conservative. (His campaign-year manifesto, appropriately, is entitled “No Apologies.”) Whether that tack will work in a state that’s drifted toward the political middle – represented best by Obama’s wins there in 2008 and 2012 – is very much an open question, one which will be answered this fall.

Already, likely Democratic nominee Terry McAuliffe’s campaign has revived a familiar playbook against Cuccinelli, seizing every opportunity to cast him as out-of-step with Virginia voters. The latest example came this week when a Democratic tracker released a video of Cuccinelli appearing to compare slavery to abortion during a speech last summer.

"Over time, the truth demonstrates its own rightness, and its own righteousness," Cuccinelli says in the clip. "Our experience as a country has demonstrated that on one issue after another. Start right at the beginning -- slavery. Today, abortion."

The McAuliffe campaign pounced.

“His comments reflect a career-long focus on an extreme ideological agenda that has nothing to do with Virginians’ top concern: the economy,” the Democratic candidate said. “Politicians who constantly create controversy on divisive social issues harm Virginia’s standing as one of the best states for business.”

And, looking ahead to some of next year’s campaigns, there are other GOP candidates who could follow in Cuccinelli’s steps and pose a challenge to Republicans’ efforts to seek out pitch-perfect nominees to wage successful campaigns in swing states.

Steve Helber / AP file photo

Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli gestures as he talks about the Supreme Court decision on the health-care law during a press conference Thursday, June 28, 2012 in Richmond, Va.

In Iowa, Rep. Steve King has an inside track to the Republican nomination in next year’s Senate race, where he’ll be looking to pick up a seat for the GOP following the retirement of Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin. He survived a competitive re-election campaign last fall, an experience which he said hadn’t caused him to back off of his brand of unflinching conservatism. 

“I went through the toughest election of my life last fall. I had tracking cameras around me from St. Patrick’s Day through Nov. 6 … always focused on me, trying to get a second or a minute that they could use against me in an ad,” King said in his speech last week before CPAC, the gathering of conservative activists. “They’re in the business of trying to undermine and weaken us, and I didn’t back up on any principle.” 

Republicans are also nervously watching Michigan, where they’re trying to avoid the missteps of 2012, when Senate nominee Pete Hoekstra doomed his campaign early on with a racially-charged ad targeting Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow. 

Already, several Republicans have bowed out from the race, easing the path for the libertarian-minded Rep. Justin Amash, should he decide to seek the nomination. Though his conservatism isn’t necessarily in the mold of Cuccinelli or King, Amash would almost certainly face the same efforts from Democrats looking to cast him as too conservative for the Great Lakes State. 

Just in his second term, Amash has exhibited a repeated willingness to ruffle fellow Republicans’ feathers, so much that he ended up being one of the four House Republicans stripped of their committee assignments by the GOP leadership this year. He told National Review in December that House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, would not be welcome in his district. And Amash was one of the lawmakers Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., last week called “wacko birds” for their opposition to the Obama administration’s drone policy.

Amash was one of 10 Republicans who, on Thursday, voted against Rep. Paul Ryan’s 2014 budget because it didn’t go far enough in cutting spending. Another was Georgia Rep. Paul Broun, a deeply conservative Republican who’s the only officially announced GOP candidate in the state’s Senate race. 

He said in an interview earlier this month that his fellow Republicans aren’t doing enough to repeal Obamacare, despite the repeated votes to repeal part or all of the law. (It inevitably dies in the Senate, or would face a veto from Obama.) 

“There are a lot of Republicans who call themselves conservatives, who, in fact, are not,” Broun said. “We need to continue to, every few weeks, have a bill on the floor to repeal pieces of Obamacare as well as votes to repeal the whole law. President Obama will not sign a bill, but that’s the point.”

Related:

GOP report calls for sweeping reforms to compete in 2016

Three days, two breakout stars and one Big Gulp: Eight takeaways from CPAC

'We have to compete': GOP assesses path back to power