Obama 'commends' GOP senators on immigration reform

President Obama reached out on Tuesday to the Republican members of the bipartisan group of senators that crafted a framework for passing immigration reform.

Obama called Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.), Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) to discuss progress on passing immigration reform. The three senators are part of the so-called Gang of Eight, which unveiled a framework for passing immigration reform in late January.

Obama recently sat down with the Democratic members of the group to discuss progress on passing immigration reform.

"This afternoon, the President placed calls to Sen. Graham, Sen. McCain, and Sen. Rubio to discuss their shared commitment to bipartisan, commonsense immigration reform and to commend the Senators for the bipartisan progress that continues to be made by the Gang of Eight on this important issue," a statement from the White House said.

Obama did not speak with Sen. Jeff Flake (Ariz.), the fourth Republican member of the group, who was traveling, according to the White House.

The phone calls between the Republicans and Obama came a few hours after the White House and Rubio's office traded accusations about communication over immigration reform. Rubio's office said earlier on Tuesday that White House staffers had not been in contact with Rubio or his office about immigration reform, but the White House said its staffers had met with Rubio's office.

"During the calls, which build on conversations that have taken place at the staff level, the President reiterated that he remains supportive of the effort underway in Congress, and that he hopes that they can produce a bill as soon as possible that reflects shared core principles on reform," the statement continued.

On Saturday, Rubio criticized the Obama administration after USA Today published leaked details of the administration's proposal for an immigration reform law. Obama has said he would push his own immigration plan if Congress cannot come to an agreement on comprehensive immigration reform.

"As the President made clear when he met with Democratic Senators involved in the process last week, that while he is pleased with the progress and supportive of the effort to date, he is prepared to submit his own legislation if Congress fails to act," the White House statement continued. "He thanked the senators for their leadership, and made clear that he and his staff look forward to continuing to work together with their teams to achieve needed reform."

Graham's office described the conversation between the senator from South Carolina and Obama as "short" and "cordial." Obama called at around 2 p.m., according to Graham's office.

"They discussed the need for immigration reform and why it is important we fix our broken immigration system," Graham spokesman Kevin Bishop said.

Rubio was in Jerusalem when he talked to Obama on Tuesday.

"Sen. Rubio appreciated receiving President Obama's phone call to discuss immigration reform late tonight in Jerusalem," according to Rubio spokesman Alex Conant. "The senator told the president that he feels good about the ongoing negotiations in the Senate, and is hopeful the final product is something that can pass the Senate with strong bipartisan support."

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DAY'S END ROUNDUP

FROM THE BLOGS:

Homophobia in the GOP makes it hard for party to compete nationally
The Daily Beast's Peter Beinart says that despite the GOP's attempts to become more racially diverse, their eventual downfall lies in their refusal to accept LGBT citizens.

The marketing genius of Marco Rubio
Emily Zanotti of Daily Caller shows that Sen. Marco Rubio's (R-Fla.) power (and ability to connect with more voters) lies in his ability to make great entertainment out of politics.

Republicans go from daddy party to baby party
Cato's Doug Bandow worries that Republicans are spending too much time arguing over issues that don't matter.

GOP governor to Karl Rove: Take a hike
Mother Jones's Andy Kroll details the growing backlash again Karl Rove's new super-PAC.

OTHER NEWS SOURCES

Scott Brown blames phone for unusual "Bqhatevwr" tweet
The former senator claims he wasn't drinking when he accidentally sent out the strange tweets, The Hill's Justin Sink reports.

Sanford: 'I failed mightily' in personal life, but always defended the taxpayers
The former South Carolina governor is hoping voters will look past his indiscretions in office as they prepare to elect a replacement for Sen. Tim Scott's open House seat, The Hill's Meghashyam Mali reports.

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Alcohol Causes 20,000 Cancer-Related Deaths In The U.S. Each Year

The next time you feel the lure of the “last call” at the bar, you might want to keep this in mind: alcohol consumption causes over 20,000 cancer-related deaths in America ever year, making it a significant preventable risk factor for the disease.

As CBS News reports, the World Health Organization already classifies alcohol as the world’s third largest risk factor for disease burden. But its link with cancer is “not widely appreciated by the public and remains underemphasized even by physicians,” the study’s author, Dr. Timothy Naimi of the Boston University School of Medicine, explained in a press release.

The report’s authors hope to combat that ignorance with their findings, which conclude that alcohol causes as many as 3.7 percent of all American cancer-related deaths annually — and drinking alcohol increases risk factors for “cancers of the mouth, throat, esophagus, liver, colon, rectum and breast:”

Researchers determined that alcohol-related cancer death took away an average of 18 potential years from a person’s life. Average consumption for the group was 1.5 drinks a day or less, and those drinkers made up 30 percent of the reported deaths. Larger amounts of alcohol led to higher risks of dying from cancer. Forty-eight to 60 percent of the deaths were attributed to people who drank three or more drinks a day.

“When it comes to alcohol consumption and cancers, clearly excessive drinking is the riskiest type of drinking,” Naimi said to CBS station WBZ in Boston. “But when it comes to cancer, there is no safe level of alcohol consumption.”

In addition to figuring out how many cancer deaths were related to alcohol, researchers also determined that breast cancer was the most common type of drinking-related deaths in women. This form of cancer alone made up 15 percent of the alcohol-related deaths, amounting to 6,000 women annually.

For men, mouth, throat and esophageal cancers were the most common alcohol-associated deaths, making up about 6,000 deaths annually.

All told, the combined costs of lost productivity from criminal justice proceedings, missed work, and medical care related to drinking alcohol adds up to $223 billion in health expenditures every year. That number might actually be even bigger, considering that it likely does not incorporate the full breadth of cancer-related costs caused by alcohol.

The findings also underscore the disproportionate toll that alcohol advertising targeting America’s youth may have on the black population. In general, alcohol advertising targets young, black Americans, a group that also tends to be more susceptible to both getting cancer and dying from cancer than other racial demographics.

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Chipping Away At Roe: Arkansas And North Dakota Advance ‘Fetal Pain’ Abortion Bans

So far this year, GOP lawmakers in Arkansas and North Dakota have practically tripped over each other to see which state can introduce more anti-abortion legislation. Among other abortion restrictions, each state is currently advancing a “fetal pain” measure to outlaw abortion procedures after 20 weeks of pregnancy — based on the scientifically disputed notion that fetuses can feel pain at that point — despite the fact that similar laws have been blocked in court for running afoul of the reproductive rights granted under Roe v. Wade.

On Monday, state senators in both Arkansas and North Dakota approved 20-week abortion bans. Neither measure makes an exception for the health of the woman, despite the fact that women who seek late-term abortions often do so because they discover unexpected health issues or fatal fetal abnormalities. Arkansas’ measure does include narrow exceptions to allow abortion services in the cases of rape, incest, or to save the woman’s life — but North Dakota’s abortion ban doesn’t even make the narrowest exceptions for rape or incest.

Nebraska was the first state to pass a 20-week abortion ban under the specious logic that fetuses can feel pain during the second trimester of pregnancy. Since then, seven other states have passed similar laws, and two fetal pain measures in Georgia and Arizona are currently being blocked from taking effect.

But the possibility of an impending court challenge won’t stop anti-choice lawmakers who are insistent on slowly chipping away at women’s constitutional right to reproductive health services. Both Arkansas and North Dakota have also proposed more extreme abortion measures — a “heartbeat ban” in Arkansas that would outlaw abortion after just 12 weeks, and a “personhood” measure in North Dakota that could ban all abortions and even some forms of contraception — that go even further to circumvent Roe, which guarantees women’s right to a legal abortion until the point of viability, around 24 weeks of pregnancy.

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USA Today teams up with Pew for public opinion polling

The Pew Research Center will replace Gallup as USA Today’s polling partner, the newspaper announced on Tuesday.

The first USA Today-Pew poll will be released this week and will gauge “attitudes toward the agenda facing Congress and the priorities outlined by President Obama in his State of the Union address.”

In January, Gallup and USA Today split up after a 20 year polling relationship.

?According to the Gallup statement, posted on CEO Frank Newport’s blog, the “evolving” worlds of journalism and opinion research provoked the two to reevaluate their relationship.?

The developments come on the heels of a tumultuous year in the world of polling.??

The 2012 election was marked by cries of bias from first one political party and then the other, provoking furious debate over the reliability of data proffered by various polling outlets.?? Republicans said the surveys relied on voter sample sizes that gave too much weight to high Democratic turnout. Even Mitt Romney’s campaign got in the act, arguing pollsters relying on the 2008 turnout to determine the makeup of the 2012 electorate were mistaken. ??Turnout in 2012 ended up similar to 2008, sending President Obama to an easy victory over Romney.??

However, the Obama campaign at one point attacked a Gallup poll that showed Romney holding a 4-percentage-point lead in the swing states over the incumbent. ??Democratic pollster Joel Benenson argued Gallup’s likely-voter screening method “created a bias against groups inclined to support Obama,” and was the reason the candidates were tied among women, traditionally an Obama stronghold.

Gallup was also criticized in mid-October when Obama’s job approval rating spiked, according to its daily tracking survey. The jump seemed to be the result of a shift in the polling outlet’s methodology, in which it increased the proportion of cellphones it surveyed.??

“It’s common,” Newport told The Hill at the time, referring to criticism of polling techniques. “The campaigns have a war room-type mentality, and both campaigns feel the need to quickly jump on any news of any type that could be viewed as negative for their candidate.”?

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Why Manny Pacquiao Refusing To Fight In Vegas Doesn’t Prove A Problem With American Tax Policy

Conservatives are overjoyed at the news that boxer Manny Pacquiao is refusing to fight his next bout in the United States because he doesn’t want to pay taxes, and anti-tax groups like Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform are already using it as an example of how America’s “punitive” tax policy makes it less competitive with other countries around the world.

ATR first worries that the American tax code will make it more likely that other boxers follow Pacquiao’s lead, then expands into a broader critique of taxes on ordinary American investment:

Fewer boxing matches per year would mean fewer vendors, a decrease in tourism, and less money being spent in host cities. Hosting a major sporting event has proven to create jobs and insert economic life within the city. The federal government needs to follow the examples being set by GOP governors seeking to reduce their respective state’s income tax burden or risk losing investments across every industry.

At the end of the day, people migrate and invest in places where they will receive the most for their services and skills. The higher the income tax, the less return these same people will see. By continuing to have this excessively high income tax, the U.S. continues to discourage businesses and workers looking to make profitable investments.

The most obvious problem with this thinking is that the Marquez-Pacquiao fight is somehow going to bring great benefit to Las Vegas. It won’t. Fight or no fight, Vegas hotels and casinos are going to be full of high-rollers and ordinary gamblers and non-gamblers alike, because it’s Las Vegas. The utility of a sporting event in that type of economy is almost certainly even smaller than the utility of bigger sporting events, and gearing tax policy toward the attraction of sporting events is a terrible idea anyway.

The real problem, though, is the idea that tax policy is somehow the only factor in where future fights will take place. Fight promoters are going to lose a substantial amount of money if Pacquiao and Marquez fight in Asia, because more people will pay to watch if they fight in the U.S. That means there is an advantage for promoters and even most boxers to fighting in the U.S. even if they have to pay higher tax rates. It even extends in Pacquiao’s case, since lower tax rates aren’t the only reason he wants to fight in southeast Asia: nearing the end of his career, the Filipino boxer sees it as an opportunity to broaden his global fan base.

And that hits at the fallacy of ATR’s broader critique of American tax policy. Conservatives aren’t necessarily wrong when they argue that “people migrate and invest in places where they will receive the most for their services and skills.” Where they go wrong is in assuming that tax rates are the only or even the dominant determinant in that equation, and in assuming that people and their investments automatically flow to the lowest tax rate attainable. Place matters to people, and the United States is still a more advantageous place to do business, make social and business connections, and live than many other countries with lower tax rates. That’s why rich people don’t flee high-tax states like California and New York en masse, because California and New York still offer business and social advantages to many of the people who choose to live there that other states don’t have. And it’s why businesspeople and their investment don’t just up and leave the U.S. even though we charge a higher personal tax rate than many other countries. There’s no evidence backing up the claim that taxing the rich hurts growth or drives away investment, and in the U.S., periods of higher marginal tax rates actually featured higher rates of economic growth.

There are any number of reasons why people choose to live, invest, and do business in the places they do, and taxes fund many of the things, from education to infrastructure to law enforcement that protects against the graft and corruption that are the price of doing business in Macau, that make certain places advantageous to others. Conservatives don’t like to acknowledge that reality, though, because it makes it obvious that race-to-the-bottom tax policy, in which wealthy people like Pacqiuao benefit at the expense of everyone else, is a fallacious idea.

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Health Insurers Decline on Proposed Medicare Advantage Cuts

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The Supreme Court Will Hear A Republican Party Lawsuit To Make Citizens United Even Worse

Billionaire casino mogul and major GOP donor Sheldon Adelson

The Supreme Court’s election-buying decision in Citizens United v. FEC enabled wealthy corporations to spend unlimited money to change the course of American elections, and a subsequent lower court decision gave the green light to super PACs funded by unlimited donations from millionaires, billionaires and corporations. Today, the Supreme Court announced it would hear another case — brought by none other than the Republican National Committee — that would go even further towards transforming American democracy into the Wild West.

Despite recent election-buying decisions permitting unlimited donations to super PACs and other groups that exist independently of campaigns and political parties, federal law still limits individual donations to candidates and to the parties themselves. In the next election cycle, these limits include a $2,600 cap on individual donations to a single candidate, and an overall limit of $123,200 in contributions to candidates, political party committees and similar organizations. The Republican Party’s lawsuit seeks to eliminate most of these limits on election-buying — most importantly, by removing the $123,200 cap on total contributions.

As the unanimous lower court decision upholding this cap explained, removing it would corrupt our election system even more by allowing billionaires to launder as much money as they want through political party committees to individual candidates:

Eliminating the aggregate limits means an individual might, for example, give half-a-million dollars in a single check to a joint fundraising committee comprising a party’s presidential candidate, the party’s national party committee, and most of the party’s state party committees. After the fundraiser, the committees are required to divvy the contributions to ensure that no committee receives more than its permitted share, but because party committees may transfer unlimited amounts of money to other party committees of the same party, the half-a-million-dollar contribution might nevertheless find its way to a single committee’s coffers. That committee, in turn, might use the money for coordinated expenditures, which have no “significant functional difference” from the party’s direct candidate contributions. The candidate who knows the coordinated expenditure funding derives from that single large check at the joint fundraising event will know precisely where to lay the wreath of gratitude.

Significantly, this opinion was written by Judge Janice Rogers Brown, who is one of the most conservative judges in the country. Brown previously authored an opinion suggesting that all labor, business or Wall Street regulation is constitutionally suspect, and she once compared liberalism to “slavery” and Social Security to a “socialist revolution.”

As a lower court judge, however, Brown was also required to follow Supreme Court precedents. The five conservative justices who gave us Citizens United, by contrast, are not.

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Obama seeks to repair rift with Republicans on immigration reform

President Obama reached out to key Senate Republicans on Tuesday in an effort to smooth the waters over immigration reform.

Obama placed calls to Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) Tuesday afternoon after the Republican senators accused the White House of undermining bipartisan negotiations in the Senate with the weekend release of the administration’s own immigration bill.

According to White House press secretary Jay Carney, Obama told the senators “that he remains supportive of the effort underway in Congress, and that he hopes that they can produce a bill as soon as possible that reflects shared core principles” of immigration reform.

“He thanked the Senators for their leadership, and made clear that he and his staff look forward to continuing to work together with their teams to achieve needed reform,” Carney added in a statement.

The president’s outreach came after last weekend’s leak of draft White House legislation depicting the administration’s preferred immigration reform package.

That bill did not tie a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants to new border security measures and did not create a new visa exit system — two provisions Republicans have insisted on in negotiations.

Republican leaders said the release undercut Senate negotiations and threatened to politicize the reform effort.

“If actually proposed, the president’s bill would be dead on arrival in Congress, leaving us with unsecured borders and a broken legal immigration system for years to come,” Rubio said in a statement.

Republicans also accused the White House of barreling forward on immigration without seeking input from across the aisle.

In a statement released earlier Tuesday, Rubio spokesman Alex Conant said that no one in the Florida lawmaker’s office had ever been contacted by the White House to discuss immigration policy.

“President Obama and the White House staff are not working with Republicans on immigration reform. Senator Rubio’s office has never discussed immigration policy with anyone in the White House,” Conant said.

The White House immediately pushed back on that assertion, with a senior administration official citing at least five instances in which White House officials had met with representatives from a bipartisan group of Senate negotiators.

Conant returned fire, saying that while Rubio’s staff had been briefed on administration efforts on behalf of a reform package, their suggestions had never been solicited.

Republican support for the immigration package is thought largely to hinge on Rubio, and the phone calls Tuesday appeared to be an effort by the White House to repair relations.

The gesture seemed to have paid off, with spokesmen for the Republican senators issuing optimistic statements following the phone calls.

“Senator Rubio appreciated receiving President Obama’s phone call to discuss immigration reform late tonight in Jerusalem,” Conant said. Rubio was traveling Tuesday in Israel.  

“The Senator told the President that he feels good about the ongoing negotiations in the Senate, and is hopeful the final product is something that can pass the Senate with strong bipartisan support.”

A spokesman for Graham called the call “short” and “cordial,” but said the South Carolina lawmaker and Obama agreed “it is important we fix our broken immigration system.”

A senior Democratic congressional aide close to the bipartisan immigration talks downplayed the criticism from Rubio and other Republicans about the leaked White House bill.

The aide suggested it was all part of the complicated political dance that must take place to keep both liberals and conservatives at the table on immigration reform.

“I don’t think it hurts the process at all,” the aide said. “It shows the president is serious, and he’s not going to wait forever for Congress to act.”

The White House in recent weeks has made a public show of demonstrating that it has learned the lessons of its fight for healthcare reform in 2009. Then, Obama faced criticism for allowing bipartisan Senate talks to drag on for too long, wasting political momentum and allowing opposition to escalate into a firestorm.

Now, the White House has offered repeated public reminders that it is prepared to submit its own bill if Congress dawdles, and the leak of parts of it over the weekend could serve as a spur for that process.

“I wouldn’t say we were surprised” by the leak, the Democratic aide said.

The aide did voice regret that the published proposal did not encompass the entirety of the principles Obama has laid out on immigration reform, which include enhancements to border security and reforms to the legal immigration system.

“It’s unfortunate that only a piece of it was leaked out,” the aide said.

Janet Murguía, head of the National Council of La Raza, an Hispanic civil-rights group, said there’s “some legitimacy” to Rubio’s criticisms of Obama. But she was quick to add that it’s also “legitimate and appropriate” for the president to remind lawmakers that he’ll push his own reforms if Congress fails to reach a deal on its own. 

She characterized the partisan barbs as “healthy tensions” that put pressure on both sides to secure comprehensive reforms this year.

“Both appear committed,” she said.

Mike Lillis and Russell Berman contributed.

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North Carolina Governor Signs ‘Unprecedented’ Gutting Of Unemployment Insurance

North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory (R) today signed a law that imposes severe cuts to his state’s unemployment insurance program, a change that will also cost jobless workers in the state access to the federal unemployment compensation program.

McCrory’s signature earned him a rebuke from the National Employment Law Project, which said in a release that the law will result in “the most severe cuts to both state and federal unemployment insurance of any state in the nation”:

These heartless cuts, in the state with the fifth-highest jobless rate in the nation, at 9.2 percent, show a shocking disregard for 400,000 unemployed North Carolinians and their families, many of whom will now go from struggling to barely make ends meet to outright struggling to survive. The immediate pain of these cuts will fall on North Carolinians unfortunate enough to lose work through no fault of their own in a weak economy where jobs are scarce. But the entire state will take a hit from the loss of hundreds of millions of dollars in spending at local businesses that would’ve boosted the local and state economies.

The law reduces the maximum benefit allowed from $535 a week to $350 while cutting the number of weeks an unemployed worker is eligible for the program from 26 to 20. As a result, 170,000 jobless North Carolinians will also lose access to $780 million in federal unemployment funds. The average unemployed worker in the United States has been off the job for 35 weeks, meaning many jobless workers will now face the prospect of searching for a new job without access to a safety net program.

Republican state senators have touted the law as “re-employment” program, even though research suggests that workers who receive unemployment benefits search harder for jobs than those who don’t. McCrory, meanwhile, praised the fiscal responsibility of the law, which will allow North Carolina to pay back money owed to the federal government a measly three years earlier than it would have under the old program.

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CMS Rate Proposal Hits HMOs

 Highlight transcript below to create clipTranscript:  Print  |  Email Go  Click text to jump within videoTue 19 Feb 13 | 01:07 PM ET The proposed rate cute outlined by CMS is putting pressure on all of the Medicare advantage players, with CNBC's Bertha Coombs.

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