Wonkbook: Obama’s belated immigration push

(Kathy Willens - AP) “I cannot guarantee that it is going to be in the first 100 days,” then-candidate Barack Obama told Univision’s Jorge Ramos in May of 2008. “But what I can guarantee is that we will have in the first year an immigration bill that I strongly support and that I’m promoting.” That didn’t work out. Five months later, the economy collapsed, and so did a lot of the Obama campaign’s hopes for its first-year in office. (Little known fact: the campaign’s original plan for the first 100 days called for doing deficit reduction first in order to build credibility for health care and energy. It’s interesting to “what-if” a world in which they’d gotten to implement that.) But excuses don’t matter. Results do. And that comment is, to the Latino community, a key broken promise. Ramos, for one, is making certain it’s not forgotten, and that the administration pays for breaking it.

But though “in the first year” failed, perhaps “before the next election” will do. Obama will head to Texas tomorrow to argue that the administration has made the necessary first steps in immigration reform: they’ve stepped up border security, workplace enforcement, and deportations. Now, he’ll say, there needs to be a more permanent solution.

It’s hard to imagine this Congress, at this moment, turning its attention towards a sober and successful discussion of immigration reform. The administration knows that, and so the president’s speech will call for more outside pressure to force Congress to act. That’s doesn’t guarantee an outcome, either, of course. But even if it fails substantively, it could work politically, convincing the Latino community that their problem isn’t with a president who wants to sign immigration reform, but with a Congress that doesn’t want to touch it, and they should vote accordingly.

Five in the morning

1) Obama’s hitting the road to push immigration reform, reports Laura Meckler: “President Barack Obama travels to Texas on Tuesday to make the case that his administration has worked hard to secure the border and the time has come for Congress to deal with the 10.8 million people already in the U.S. illegally. He will also argue that those who care about this issue need to step up pressure on Congress to act, a point he has made privately in a string of meetings with business executives, evangelical leaders and Hispanic celebrities...Hoping to push through the political stalemate, Mr. Obama has held private meetings to discuss immigration with political figures such as New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, business leaders such as John Engler, president of the Business Roundtable; and religious leaders such as Leith Anderson, president of the National Association of Evangelicals.”

2) John Boehner is trying to win over Wall Street on the debt ceiling, reports Jake Sherman: “House Speaker John Boehner will step up his efforts Monday to lay out a strategy for raising the debt ceiling to a crowd heavy on Wall Street players who are anxiously watching the fierce debate over the debt ceiling unfold. In a speech to the Economic Club of New York in Midtown Manhattan, the Ohio Republican is set to reiterate to leading financial executives that he believes that reforming Medicare should be part of negotiations in raising the debt ceiling, saying that there needs to be ‘an honest conversation,’ because the program is on an ‘unsustainable path if changes are not made,’ according to sources familiar with the speech. Boehner also is expected to advocate for immediate cuts rather than deficit and debt targets preferred by some Democrats.”

3) The appellate battle over health care reform starts this week, reports Kevin Sack: “A five-week flurry of federal appellate hearings on the constitutionality of the Obama health care law kicks off Tuesday in Richmond, Va., beginning the second round of a race to the Supreme Court among a multitude of litigants eager to strike down the president’s signature domestic achievement. At Tuesday’s hearing, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit will consider a pair of contradictory rulings sent up from the lower courts. In one case, filed by Virginia’s attorney general, a federal district judge in Richmond ruled late last year that Congress had exceeded its authority by requiring most Americans to obtain health insurance. In the other, filed by Liberty University, a conservative Christian institution, a district judge sitting 100 miles away in Lynchburg, Va., upheld the insurance mandate.”

4) A single-payer bill in Vermont is heading to the governor’s desk for signing, reports Nancy Remsen: “House Speaker Shap Smith, D-Morristown, announced the 94-49 vote that points Vermont toward a consolidated health care system covering all residents...The bill’s next stop is Gov. Peter Shumlin’s desk. ‘Obviously, I intend to sign the bill,’ Shumlin said. ‘This really is an extraordinarily exciting moment for Vermont. We have a long way to travel, but I am convinced we can get health care right and this is the bill that will get us there.’ The outcome of the House vote was never in doubt, but supporters and opponents still took a few minutes to stake out their positions on the measure.”

5) More states are pushing anti-union bills, report Kris Maher and Amy Merrick: “Lawmakers in New Hampshire and Missouri are advancing so-called right-to-work bills that would allow private-sector workers to opt out of joining unions, the latest such efforts to curb labor unions in the legislative season that in many states is now entering the home stretch. The measures, if successful, would mark the first expansion in a decade of right-to-work laws, which are on the books in 22 states. Lawmakers in New Hampshire, where Republicans took control of both chambers last fall, passed a right-to-work measure last week. Its success will hinge on whether the state House of Representatives has enough votes to override a promised veto by Democratic Gov. John Lynch. If the bill passes, New Hampshire would become the first right-to-work state in the Northeast, historically a union stronghold.”

Country-rock interlude: Ryan Adams plays “Come Pick Me Up” on the Late Show with David Letterman .

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Still to come: States are cutting unemployment benefits; Third Way calls global spending caps “the next Smoot-Hawley”; Paul Krugman blames the elites; a primer on Medicare’s new cost-cutting board; more and more parents of US citizens are getting deported; the Senate is set to move on cutting oil subsidies this week; and two adorable kittens crash into each other.

Economy

Unemployment remains high, but the states are cutting back in unemployment insurance, writes Annie Lowrey: ”Despite that deal, in the past month or so, a number of lawmakers have started to whittle benefits back. In March, Michigan became the first state to take an axe to its standard unemployment benefits, even though the state boasts one of the worst labor markets in the nation. The Republican government cut the number of state-sponsored, initial weeks from 26 to 20, effective in January. It said the state simply could not afford them: It owes the federal government $3.9 billion, borrowed to pay past unemployment benefits, and just cannot go further into the red. (Michigan and 48 other states have mandatory balanced-budget rules.) For all the other states cutting back, the issue is inaction, rather than fiscal pressure. Some states needed to make a certain simple legislative fix to ensure that the federal government kept on kicking in its share of weeks of benefits—weeks of benefits already budgeted and paid for in Washington. A number of states failed to do so. So, on April 16, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Wisconsin all lost 20 weeks of federal benefits, effective immediately. Missouri did on April 2 as well.”

Sen. Chuck Schumer wants new fees for high-speed traders, reports Jacob Bunge: “Sen. Charles Schumer told regulators that sophisticated electronic traders should bear the cost of monitoring their dealings, with special fees assessed to firms that issue and then rapidly cancel securities orders. The New York Democrat said that such charges could defray the expense of building a new system to track in real time the orders that high-frequency traders pump into U.S. markets, a year after the ‘flash crash’ sent stocks into a 20-minute tailspin. ‘In the aftermath of last year’s Flash Crash, the need for more coordinated market surveillance has never been clearer,’ Mr. Schumer wrote in a letter to Securities and Exchange Chairman Mary Schapiro, a draft of which was reviewed by Dow Jones.”

Global spending caps, like those in McCaskill-Corker, could become “the next Smoot-Hawley,” warns Third Way: “It isn’t popular to say out loud, but the massive and expensive bank bailouts and stimulus likely saved the United States from a depression. Counter-cyclical, antirecessionary government spending is necessary to keep the economy going when private sector investments, capital liquidity, and consumer spending dries up. Government spending levels are certain to be maxed out during good times and would have to be cut dramatically when the economy shrinks. Thus, just at the time when government needs to spend it would be forced to contract. Escape from the caps requires a two-thirds majority—an impossibility for Congress under almost any conceivable circumstance. Global Spending Caps could one day become the next Smoot-Hawley.”

Elites caused the economic downturn, and Europe’s crisis, writes Paul Krugman: “The Great Recession was brought on by a runaway financial sector, empowered by reckless deregulation. And who was responsible for that deregulation? Powerful people in Washington with close ties to the financial industry, that’s who. Let me give a particular shout-out to Alan Greenspan, who played a crucial role both in financial deregulation and in the passage of the Bush tax cuts -- and who is now, of course, among those hectoring us about the deficit. So it was the bad judgment of the elite, not the greediness of the common man, that caused America’s deficit...The real story of Europe’s crisis is that leaders created a single currency, the euro, without creating the institutions that were needed to cope with booms and busts within the euro zone.”

Economists could use more humility, writes Greg Mankiw: “After more than a quarter-century as a professional economist, I have a confession to make: There is a lot I don’t know about the economy. Indeed, the area of economics where I have devoted most of my energy and attention -- the ups and downs of the business cycle -- is where I find myself most often confronting important questions without obvious answers. Now, if you follow economic commentary in the newspapers or the blogosphere, you have probably not run into many humble economists. By its nature, punditry craves attention, which is easier to attract with certainties than with equivocation. But that certitude reflects bravado more often than true knowledge. So let me come clean and highlight three questions that perplex me.”

The Justice Department and the FTC’s antitrust infighting hurts consumers, writes Steven Pearlstein: “Both agencies appear to be quietly, and separately, laying the groundwork for a much broader investigation to determine whether Google is using anti-competitive practices to protect its dominance in the Internet search business. The leaders of both agencies would like nothing more than to bring a high-profile case that would take its place in history along with the government’s landmark challenges of Standard Oil, IBM, AT&T, Microsoft and Intel...Gee, I thought the idea of the antitrust laws was to encourage competition between businesses, not regulators. Google is hardly the only turf being fought over by the antitrust cops. Every big merger, it seems, is now the occasion for extended wrangling over who is going to review it.”

The Detroit bailout worked, writes EJ Dionne: “Far too little attention has been paid to the success of the government’s rescue of the Detroit-based auto companies, and almost no attention has been paid to how completely and utterly wrong bailout opponents were when they insisted it was doomed to failure...You won’t see a news conference where the bailout’s foes candidly acknowledge how mistaken they were. The lack of accountability is stunning but not surprising. It reflects a deep bias in the way our political debate is carried out. The unexamined assumption of so much political reporting is that attacks on government’s capacity to do anything right make intuitive sense because ‘everybody knows’ that government is basically inefficient and incompetent, especially when compared with the private sector.”

Adorable animals colliding adorably interlude: Two kittens are involved in a crash test.

Health Care

Bara Vaida explains how the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB) will work: “Beginning with fiscal 2015, if Medicare is projected to grow too quickly, the IPAB will make binding recommendations to reduce spending. Those recommendations will be sent to Capitol Hill at the beginning of each year, and if Congress doesn’t like them, it must pass alternative cuts -- of the same size -- by August. A supermajority of the Senate can also vote to amend the IPAB recommendations. If Congress fails to act, the secretary of Health and Human Services is required to implement the cuts by default...Hospitals, doctors, drug companies and some patients’ groups are worried IPAB will recommend reductions in Medicare payments -- which they say already are too low -- and that they won’t have the time or ability to counter the cuts during accelerated congressional action.”

Paying for outcomes would allow us to cut Medicare and Medicaid without much pain, writes John McDonough: “Paying for Outcomes means encouraging hospitals, physicians and other provider groups to reduce potentially preventable events -- PPEs -- that harm patients and add costs. In other words, the approach rewards health care organizations that provide high-quality, effective care, and dings providers that deliver lower quality, less effective care...This approach has been pioneered and refined over many years by two researchers from 3M Health Information Systems, Dr. Norbert Goldfield and Richard Averill... Goldfield and Averill have shown that their approach is ready for prime time with predicted short-term savings as high as...8 percent from preventing unnecessary readmissions...and 3 percent from deterring unnecessary outpatient procedures and ancillary treatments.”

Domestic Policy

More and more parents of US citizens are being deported, reports Kevin Sieff: “There are more mixed-status families living in the United States than ever before -- non-citizens and citizens under the same roof. Many of those families will be affected by the Obama administration’s aggressive deportation plans, with a record 400,000 immigrants expected to be returned to their home countries this year. It’s likely that more than 20,000 of those deportees have children who are U.S. citizens, according to experts who have analyzed federal data. Parents are left to choose between dividing the family between two countries, to keep children who are U.S. citizens in U.S. schools, or moving together to Mexico or Central America, where the education is inferior and the language is often foreign to U.S.-born children.”

FCC chair Julius Genachowski is managing to anger everyone, report Brooks Boliek and Kim Hart: “Julius Genachowski is nobody’s angel. To conservatives, the chairman of the FCC is a regulatory zealot, bent on making the free market conform to a government-mandated vision. To liberals, he’s a would-be champion who sold them out when the going got tough, watering down his landmark net neutrality proposal to appease the other side. In many ways, he faces some of the same criticism from both sides that has plagued President Barack Obama, Genachowski’s law school buddy. In trying to strike the right balance in their policies, both men have managed to tick off their supporters as well as their detractors...New fires are just being lit for the agency’s review of the AT&T/T-Mobile deal.”

’90s sketch comedy interlude: Ben Stiller in “Bruce Springsteen counting”.

Energy

Senate Dems are moving this week on repealing oil subsidies, reports Carl Hulse: “Linking two of the politically volatile issues of the moment, Senate Democrats say they will move forward this week with a plan that would eliminate tax breaks for big oil companies and divert the savings to offset the deficit...President Obama and some top Congressional Democrats have said they want to take some of an estimated $21 billion in savings from ending the tax breaks and steer it to clean energy projects. But the Senate’s Democratic leadership is calculating that using it to cut the deficit instead makes it a tougher issue politically for Republicans who are trying to burnish their conservative fiscal credentials...Many Republicans are certain to oppose the proposal, making it hard for Democrats to assemble the 60 votes that will be needed to break a filibuster, given the resistance from energy-state senators in their own ranks.”

Some think the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is too close to industry, reports Tom Zeller: “Critics have long painted the commission as well-intentioned but weak and compliant, and incapable of keeping close tabs on an industry to which it remains closely tied. The concerns have greater urgency because of the crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi plant in Japan, which many experts say they believe was caused as much by lax government oversight as by a natural disaster. The Byron pipe leak is just one recent example of the agency’s shortcomings, critics say. It has also taken nearly 30 years for the commission to get effective fireproofing installed in plants after an accident in Alabama. The N.R.C.’s decision to back down in a standoff with the operator of an Ohio plant a decade ago meant that a potentially dangerous hole went undetected for months.”

Closing credits: Wonkbook is compiled and produced with help from Dylan Matthews and Michelle Williams.