Last Call

If there's any wonky study on immigration reform that will ensure House Republicans will murder the legislation in its crib, this is it.

With the debate raging over whether immigration reform would gouge taxpayers, Senator Marco Rubio’s office has asked the Social Security Actuary to produce an analysis of the legislation. The findings will provide immigration reform advocates with a major boost.

You can see the findings in a letter from the Office of the Chief Actuary to Senator Rubio that is also accompanied by a table.

The most important finding, for the purposes of the debate, is that the Gang of Eight immigration reform proposal would create 3.22 million jobs by 2024, and boost GDP by 1.63 percent. “We estimate a significant increase in both the population and the number of workers paying taxes in the United States as a result of these changes in legal immigration limits,” the analysis says.

Can't have that!  Bill's dead now, and that's even if it makes it to the House.  Odds are really good now that Republicans will finish the job early by destroying the bill with hundreds of amendments.

The Senate Judiciary Committee will be taking its first crack at the bill Thursday. Republicans opposed to reform have now turned to a time honored tradition of oppositional behavior in the Senate: Offering a whole bunch of amendments to slow down the process and. If they're lucky, they'll be able to slip in a poison pill amendment—a change so noxious that it makes the entire bill harder to pass.

How many amendments? Well, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) is currently leading the pack with seventy-seven. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) has proposed 49, and Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) is bringing up the rear with 24.

And every one will have to be voted on.  Awesome.  Good luck with that, guys...

The I-Word Is Coming

Those of us who lived through Clinton's second term know what's coming in Obama's second term, the only question is when House Republicans pull the impeachment lever and what excuse they'll use.  Perhaps it will be Dow 15,000, because that's impeachable, right?

[Monday] the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 15,056, an all-time record. For one conservative group, this can only mean one thing: it’s time to impeach President Obama.

That was the message Capitol Hill Daily, a conservative publication based out of Baltimore, sent to Citizen United’s listserv today. They accused President Obama of “wreck[ing] the stock market” and asked readers to take a poll about whether he should be impeached as a result.

It doesn't matter.  Obama Derangement is a full blown secotr of the economy now, if anything.  But at some point House Republicans will have to take a vote on impeachment, or the rabid tea party monster they've unleashed will turn on them instead.  That day of reckoning is coming soon...

 They'll find a reason.  If they can't find it, they'll manufacture it. 

Count on it.

Pick Your Poison, Name Your Price

We're to the point where we have articles about what the House GOP will try to extort from the President in exchange for not collapsing our government, our economy, and our country, and those articles are written as standard operating political procedure for congressional Republicans.

Conservatives in the GOP conference say they are evaluating debt-ceiling proposals against a deal they struck with Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and his lieutenants during the annual retreat in January. That deal says increases in the debt ceiling will only come about once debt-reducing laws are enacted, they said.

Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp (R-Mich.) has discussed developing a plan that would fast-track a rewrite of the tax code and tie it to raising the debt ceiling over multiple stages.

“That would be a real tough sell for me because that’s not the deal,” Rep. Mick Mulvaney (R-S.C.) said. “It was tax reform would be tied to the debt ceiling. That doesn’t mean the House passes tax reform. It means we get tax reform.”

Republicans expect 100% of what they want and the economy suffers trillions in damage from supply-side idiocy and austerity hysteria, or else they force a default and...the economy suffers trillions in damage.

This is where we are right now, and this is apparently completely acceptable as the new political normal.  It's also Obama's fault for not being nice enough to Republicans who fully expect to not have to compromise, ever.

Amazing and depressing at the same time.  No wonder everything is broken.

StupidiNews!

• Aurora, Colorado theater shooting suspect James Holmes will plead not guilty by reason of insanity according to his defense team.
• House GOP budget point man Rep. Paul Ryan is rejecting any notion of a larger "grand bargain", saying the two parties are just too far apart.
• While Russia and Syria are reportedly on board with US negotiations, Syrian rebel groups may not be part of talks aimed at ending the civil war there.
• Banks are apparently very afraid of Wal-Mart offering financial services like prepaid cards, and want regulators to step in.
• Human facial recognition software still has a number of drawbacks, as evidenced by the manhunt for the Boston bombers.