Rubio Offers Full-Throated Support for Immigration Bill

Senator Marco Rubio offered an extraordinary endorsement of legislation to overhaul the nation’s badly strained immigration system on Sunday when, after holding back for weeks, he appeared on no fewer than seven television talk shows to explain and defend a plan that he said would be “a net positive for the country, now and in the future.”

As Mr. Rubio, a Florida Republican who is a member of a bipartisan group of eight senators preparing to unveil their immigration legislation on Tuesday, pressed his case again and again on the airwaves, new details of the bill emerged. Prominent among them was a proposed fee of roughly $2,000 that illegal immigrants would have to pay before they could earn legal status.

As part of that plan, which was still being completed on Sunday, these immigrants would have to pay $500 when they apply for a temporary work permit, and would have the next 10 years to pay the remaining $1,500 or so, a person familiar with the negotiations said.

Republicans in particular have insisted that the 11 million illegal immigrants already in the country should face a tough path — including paying a fee, getting in line behind those seeking citizenship but who have not lived in the country illegally, and learning English — before they could apply for citizenship.

A Senate aide described the $2,000 figure as “significant but not impossible, punitive but not unreasonable.” Democrats and immigration advocates had originally pushed for a lower amount.

Mr. Rubio’s one-man media blitz on Sunday was a striking show of confidence for a lawmaker who only weeks ago had been a voice of caution, a counterweight to the optimism being expressed by others in the group.

On Sunday, by discussing the plan on the five major network talk shows and on the Spanish-language networks Telemundo and Univision, he was clearly signaling that the plan was ready for scrutiny by the public and by Congress, and that he was prepared to throw his full weight behind it — perhaps, at the same time, risking his own prospects for a widely expected presidential run in 2016.

His tone seemed to reflect those high stakes.

In each appearance he spoke with a sense of urgency, arguing that the plan did not constitute amnesty for illegal immigrants. He said that they would receive no federal benefits during the 13 or so years it would take them to qualify for full citizenship and that the plan depended on tougher border security and better systems for verifying the employment and legal standing of people already in the country.

The new plan would also include a path to citizenship for an additional 500,000 or more people who are currently in “limbo” status — including refugees; people who face persecution in their home countries; and people with visas specifically designated for trading and investing with countries with which the United States has signed treaties of commerce and navigation, another person familiar with the bill said.

Mr. Rubio’s status as a Tea Party member, a prominent young Latino and a rising star in the Republican Party means his imprimatur on the legislation will carry weight. One leading Republican, Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, praised Mr. Rubio last week as “indispensable” and “a game changer.”

The timing of the plan’s formal introduction remained unclear, though the group was hoping to go public with its bill on Tuesday. Mr. Rubio would say only that it would come “as early as this week.” But a Democrat in the bipartisan group, Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, said that all remaining hurdles had been removed.

“I see nothing in the way,” Mr. Schumer said on the ABC News program “This Week,” “and I think you’ll see a major agreement that’s balanced, that’s fair, that will have the widespread support of the American people on Tuesday.”

Ultimate passage is far from guaranteed. But Republicans are deeply concerned about attracting Latino voters — Mr. Obama won 70 percent of their votes last year — and the measure is seen as the major element of the president’s second-term agenda that has the best prospects.

The Senate group’s push for an immigration overhaul was also being greeted on Sunday as an example of the sort of productive bipartisan cooperation that has become exceedingly rare in Washington.

“The eight of us have met in the middle, and I think that’s where the American people are,” Mr. Schumer said. He had only praise for Mr. Rubio, whom he called “a tremendous asset here.”

Even Karl Rove, the former political adviser to President George W. Bush who is known as a hard-nosed partisan strategist, welcomed the cooperation on immigration.

“The Democrats and Republicans here have tried to cobble together a bill that is thoughtful, sensitive, tough, and with an eye toward getting something done,” Mr. Rove said on “Fox News Sunday.”

Whatever the outcome, he said, it showed leadership on Mr. Rubio’s part. Concerning the presidential race in 2016, he added, “I think it helps him.”

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Supercommittee GOP, Democrats swap offers (AP)

By DAVID ESPO, AP Special Correspondent David Espo, Ap Special Correspondent – Wed Oct 26, 7:13 pm ET

WASHINGTON – Republicans on Congress' deficit-reduction supercommittee outlined a plan Wednesday that includes spending cuts but none of the increases in tax revenue sought by Democrats, completing an initial exchange of offers that left the two sides far apart despite weeks of secret talks.

Officials also said the Democratic proposal on Tuesday and the GOP counter-proposal 24 hours later both included a provision to slow the inflationary increase in future Social Security benefits, suggesting it could become part of any compromise that might emerge.

The Republican offer calls for somewhat more than $2 trillion in deficit savings over a decade, according to officials in both parties. Less than half of that amount would come from increases in items such as Medicare premiums, the sale of public lands and airport fees — measures that increase government revenue without changing personal or corporate taxes.

Spending cuts include about $500 billion from Medicare over a decade and another $185 billion from Medicaid, these officials said.

By contrast, Democrats want $1.3 trillion in higher tax revenue, a similar amount in spending cuts and enough other savings elsewhere in the budget to finance a $450 billion jobs bill along the lines that President Barack Obama is recommending.

The officials who described the rival approaches did so on condition of anonymity, saying they were not authorized to provide details of the committee's confidential discussions. In private, each side also disparaged the other, providing yet another indication that the panel's deliberations have not shown significant progress.

Still, the exchange marked a quickening in the pace of activity by the committee after dozens of hours of closed-door meetings, and senior leaders in both parties are becoming more involved.

The panel of six Republicans and six Democrats has until Nov. 23 to recommend deficit savings of $1.2 trillion. But in fact, most if not all of the decisions must be made by early next month to give the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office time to render precise estimates on their costs and impact on future deficits.

Whatever the committee recommends must be approved by both houses of Congress in December if lawmakers want to avoid automatic spending cuts of $1.2 trillion across a range of federal programs.

There were signs of Democratic dissension one day after Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., outlined a proposal on behalf of his party's negotiators.

According to several officials, he called for $1.3 trillion in increased tax revenue over a decade, and $1.3 trillion in spending cuts. Another $1 trillion in savings would come from the presumed reduction of Pentagon costs in Iraq and Afghanistan and $500 billion more from a reduction in interest costs resulting from declining deficits.

Those savings would be on top of cuts that Congress approved earlier in the year of nearly $1 trillion.

For Democrats on the committee, it appeared that the most contentious of the items would slow the growth of monthly checks to recipients of Social Security and other benefit programs, curtail Medicare spending by $400 billion over a decade and Medicaid by another $75 billion.

Several Democrats said during the day that the presentation had the support of a majority of the six Democrats on the panel, leaving the impression that at least one, and possibly two, of the party's lawmakers had not signed on.

Others suggested that Rep. James Clyburn, D-S.C., a member of the party's leadership, and Rep. Xavier Becerra, D-Calif., had not agreed to support the recommendations.

A spokesman for Clyburn declined comment.

James Gleeson, a spokesman for Becerra, said, "I wouldn't assume he's one way or the other."

By contrast, Republicans appeared to avoid any ideological pitfalls in their counter-offer, pulling well back from a position that House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, took earlier in the year in private talks with Obama.

In those discussions, Boehner and the president discussed legislation to enact tax reform that was assumed to result in economic expansion and increases in tax revenue of $800 billion over a decade.

After the collapse of those talks, Republicans have struggled in the ensuing months to avoid any conflict with Grover Norquist, a prominent conservative activist and author of a pledge not to raise taxes that many GOP lawmakers have signed.

In fact, tax reform has figured prominently in the deficit committee's private discussions, according to officials in both parties, and is viewed as a possible key to an agreement.

Under this theory, if Republicans are willing to agree that additional revenue does not constitute a tax increase, it might entice Democrats to agree to savings from Medicare and other government benefit programs that account for much of the growth in federal spending in recent years.

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Associated Press writer Andrew Taylor contributed to this report.

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