The Edge: Irrational Exuberance on Immigration?

National Journal Staff

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Irrational Exuberance on Immigration?

Who're you going to believe: Sens. John McCain and Chuck Schumer, or your own eyes, which have witnessed the tendency of gridlock to repeat itself?

A day after the House Republicans decided to slow down immigration reform and split it into small pieces, the Arizona Republican and New York Democrat—part of the "Gang of Eight" behind the Senate's sweeping bill—emerged from a White House meeting with President Obama to say they were encouraged.

Why? One: Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., is interested in getting to yes. Two: House Republicans at least want to do something. Three: Senators are ready to negotiate. Four: Obama is doing a great job leading from behind. It's imperative that GOP House members "do not feel that they have been unduly pressured by the president of the United States," McCain said. "The president is walking a careful line here and I think it's the appropriate one."

Never mind that there's a chasm on the central issue, the Senate-passed path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. One of McCain's trademark cracks comes to mind: It's always darkest right before it's totally black. Maybe he sees something we don't.

Jill Lawrence
@JillDLawrence

TOP NEWS

HOUSE NARROWLY PASSES FARM BILL. The House voted 216-208 mostly along party lines to pass a pared-down farm bill Thursday afternoon, a vote that observers believe is an important victory for Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and other GOP leadership in the chamber, National Journal's Billy House reports. The measure lacks a reauthorization of the food stamp program included in the bill's last version. The food-stamp funding was a major reason the last bill was rejected last month, an embarrassing blow to House Republican leaders. Read more

  • The White House has said the president will veto the current measure because it leaves out funding for food stamps, Reuters reports. Read more

HOUSE REPUBLICANS STEADFAST IN OPPOSITION TO IMMIGRATION REFORM. House Republicans strongly opposed a comprehensive immigration overhaul Wednesday, despite admonitions from Boehner that a GOP stonewall could incur political costs, The New York Times reports. Republicans are resistant to moving quickly on the issue, showing no interest in the immigration bill passed by the Senate. Meanwhile, President Obama plans to take the issue directly to the public, and Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., has been working quietly with Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., to craft a bipartisan agreement in the House. Read more

  • Former President George W. Bush broke his usual post-presidency silence on political issues to endorse immigration reform, but conservative members of the House don't appear to be listening, The Washington Post reports. Read more

EGYPT'S LEADERS CELEBRATE U.S. STATEMENTS DENOUNCING MORSI'S RULE. Egypt's interim government leaders are cheering comments made by a State Department spokesman that the government of ousted President Mohamed Morsi "wasn't a democratic rule," and are interpreting them as a sign that $1.5 billion in annual U.S. aid to the country will continue uninterrupted, Reuters reports. A spokesman for the interim government replied that the remarks "reflect understanding and realization about the political developments that Egypt is witnessing in recent days, as embodying the will of the millions of Egyptians who took to the streets." Morsi, meanwhile, has not been seen or heard from since the toppling of his regime last week, though authorities continue to promise he is detained but safe. Read more

  • Egypt is at a crossroads, Michele Dunne writes in The New Republic. It could wind up like Turkey, with repeated military intervention that eventually leads to democracy. Or it could wind up like Algeria, and suffer a decade of civil war. Read more

SENATORS CLOSE TO DEAL ON STUDENT LOAN RATES. A bipartisan group of senators is closing in on a compromise that could provide a long-term fix for student-loan interest rates, The Hill reports, but the plan still faces several hurdles. The deal would tie interest rates on Stafford loans to the market, a plan that is similar to those endorsed by House Republicans and the White House. The coalition pushing the proposal consists of Sens. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., Angus King, I-Maine, Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., and Richard Burr, R-N.C. Read more

  • Uncommon divisions among Senate Democrats have stymied efforts by party leadership to reverse the doubling of interest rates on subsidized student loans, The New York Times reports. Read more

GOP AMENDMENTS TO DELAY OBAMACARE MANDATES FAIL IN SENATE COMMITTEE. Two Republican amendments brought up today in the Senate Appropriations Committee sought to delay the Affordable Care Act's employer and individual mandates, and both were rejected on party-line votes, The Hill reports. Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kan., proposed the amendments during a markup of a Health and Human Services appropriations bill for 2014. Though the idea gained little traction in the Senate, Boehner announced today that his chamber will also vote on whether to delay the mandates. The Republican efforts come just a week after the Obama administration said it would delay the implementation of the employer mandate. Read more

FILIBUSTER RULE CHANGE COULD COME SOON. A proposed rule change to the filibuster could become reality if Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., pushes forward with a plan that would prevent the minority party from blocking presidential appointees, The New York Times reports. Reid and his counterpart Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., exchanged barbs over nominees today, sparking a debate on the Senate floor over the controversial rule change. A compromise that would end the holdup of Environmental Protection Agency nominee Gina McCarthy and Labor secretary nominee Thomas Perez was rejected by Reid and other Democratic leaders because several other nominees remain blocked by Republicans. The proposed rule change would not affect filibusters targeting legislation and judicial nominees. Read more

  • Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., tweeted during the floor debate that if the Democrats don't change the rules now, Republicans will do so the next time they're in the majority. Read more

EARLY SUPPORT COULD UNDERMINE CLINTON. Crack organizers from Obama's campaigns are the latest to join the Hillary Clinton-for-president movement and, like others involved, they say they are just trying to make things "Ready for Hillary" if she decides to run. But the bandwagon effect is fueling an "inevitability" narrative that damaged Clinton in 2008, and is allowing her no reprieve from politics, National Journal's Jill Lawrence writes. Read more

EVIDENCE MOUNTS THAT SLAIN BOMBING SUSPECT TOOK PART IN 2011 BOSTON MURDERS. Growing evidence indicates an unsolved 2011 triple homicide in a Boston suburb may have been partly carried out by slain Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev, suggesting authorities may have had a missed opportunity to prevent the April 15 attack, The New York Times reports. Federal investigators said they were using "old-fashioned" detective work to build a case against Tamerlan in the 2011 murders. Tamerlan's younger brother, Dzhokhar, appeared in court on Wednesday to plead not guilty on all counts related to the bombing. Read more

EPA AND LABOR DEPARTMENT NOMINEES HAVE VOTES TO BE CONFIRMED. McConnell said today that EPA nominee Gina McCarthy and Labor Secretary nominee Tom Perez have enough votes to defeat filibusters, Talking Points Memo reports. McConnell claimed that Democrats have not yet scheduled a vote, holding up the approval process for the two nominees. McConnell also went after Reid, accusing the Democrat of undermining chamber's reputation by relenting to pressure from what McConnell called "the Far-Left" and "Big Labor" "to ratify the President's unconstitutional decision to appoint nominees to the NLRB and the CFPB without the input of the Senate." Read more

QUOTABLE

"I barely know who William and Kate are. ...Charlemagne?" -- Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, when asked about name suggestions for Prince William and Duchess Kate's not-yet-born baby (The Hill)

BEDTIME READING

'MAGICAL' SIBERIAN CAVE HOLDS GENETIC GOLD, SPARKS QUESTIONS. In mid-2008, Russian archaeologist Alexander Tsybanko was digging in southern Siberia when he found a piece of bone, National Geographic's Jamie Shreeve reports. Tsybanko said it was the "most unspectacular fossil I've ever seen." Over a year later, the discovery gave Johannes Krause, then working for the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, the biggest scientific day of his life. Despite the popular belief that the piece belonged to early modern humans, testing revealed that "it belonged to a new kind of human being, never before seen." Referred to as Denisovan, the being is named after the cave, Denisova, where the bone and a tooth were found, a place evolutionary geneticist Svante Pääbo calls "the one spot on Earth that we know of where Neanderthals, Denisovans, and modern humans all lived." Read more

TOP TWEETS

THE QUIRK

SHOWING THEM HOW IT'S DONE. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., authored a BuzzFeed post outlining 11 reasons that Congress should tackle student-loan interest rates, complete with GIFs. See it here

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