Congressional Climate

Table of Contents

GEITHNER TO PLEAD FOR HIGHER DEBT CEILING

SEN. DEMINT MAY RUN FOR PRESIDENT

IMMIGRANTS JOINING TEA PARTY

Congressional
Climate Bill Tracking

H.R.658 - FAA Reauthorization and Reform Act of 2011

H.R.164 - Damaged Vehicle Information Act

H.R.514 - FISA Sunsets Extension Act of 2011

H.R.1 - Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2011

H.R.4 - Small Business Paperwork Mandate Elimination Act of 2011

H.R.96 - Internet Freedom Act

H.R.605 - Patients' Freedom to Choose Act

S.244 - State Health Care Choice Act

Video Of The Day

Is President Saleh Losing His Control Over Yemen?

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Please enjoy today's issue of the Congressional Climate newsletter, brought to you by Lobbyit.com!

Today's Hill Action:

THE SENATE:

No meeting scheduled for today.

SENATE COMMITTEES:

Senate Commission on Security & Cooperation in Europe (10:00 a.m.): To receive a briefing on local elections and political instability in Albania. HVC-201.

THE HOUSE:

The House will meet at 10:00 a.m. today.

HOUSE COMMITTEES:

Tim Geithner to the Hill on debt ceiling

Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner will head to Capitol Hill on Thursday to urge House freshmen to support an increase in the debt ceiling or risk being responsible for potential fiscal disaster, POLITICO's Morning Money first reported Wednesday.

With the Aug. 2 deadline for raising the limit two months away, Geithner will speak to freshmen - a group dominated by tea party-backed fiscal conservatives - as part of the Obama administration's broader efforts to get Hill Republicans to see the danger the administration is warning about if the limit is not boosted.

Geithner's visit to the Hill will follow a Wednesday trip by dozens of House Republicans to the White House to demand trillions of dollars in cuts from President Barack Obama in exchange for an increase in the debt ceiling.

On Tuesday, the House voted 318-97 against a bill that would have endorsed a "clean" increase on the debt ceiling without any spending cuts. Republicans wanted the bill to fail to show that spending cuts would be a necessary part of any deal to raise the debt limit.

Republican freshmen, many elected on platforms built on cutting federal spending and reducing the federal debt, are particularly dug in about the debt ceiling, but Geithner will try to make the case that inaction could result in a major blow to the U.S economy.

And some freshmen, at least, say they are open to being persuaded.

"I'm a 'no' until I can be convinced that Washington is serious. I'm not a 'yes' with these stipulations," one freshman, Steve Southerland (R-Fla.), told POLITICO last month. "You convince me, for a reason, why I need to be a 'yes.' That takes methodical conversation, and I've not had that. I've not seen that. That's not just by our leadership, that's by our administration-we're all in the same boat here."

DeMint mulls White House bid

Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) says he is considering running for president after frustrated conservative activists have pleaded with him to run.

DeMint told The Hill that he has discussed a White House bid with his wife and will pray on the question out of respect for his supporters across the country.

The Tea Party favorite, who had indicated he was not going to run in 2012, would significantly shake up the race if he were to jump in.

Many on the right have expressed major reservations about the GOP candidates in the race, claiming they have not energized the base and/or can't beat President Obama.

The second-term senator would have the inside track to win South Carolina, a key early state in the nomination process. Since 1980, every Republican who has triumphed in the Palmetto State has gone on to capture the GOP presidential nomination.

Some conservative activists compare DeMint to former Sen. Barry Goldwater (R-Ariz.) and former President Reagan, predicting he could quickly unify social and fiscal conservatives.

DeMint insists he has no plans to run. But he won't dismiss the growing calls for him to enter the contest.

"It's humbling and out of respect, my wife and I have talked about it," DeMint said late last week of a possible White House bid. "Out of respect for the people who have asked us to think about this, that's what we're going to do. I don't want to imply that I'm changing in mind, but I want to consider what all these folks are doing."

Without a doubt, DeMint would face significant hurdles if he launched an eleventh-hour bid. Throughout his political career, DeMint has not been shy in confronting major players in the Republican Party on a wide range of issues. His candidacy would not be popular in Washington, though that dynamic could also be used as an asset on the campaign trail.

There are also questions as to whether he could attract independent voters in a general-election match-up against Obama.

Two GOP factions have begun to draft DeMint for a presidential run.

One is organized by Richard Viguerie, a conservative pioneer in the field of direct-mail political marketing, who helped Reagan win election in 1980.

The other is Conservatives4DeMint, which claims to have about 4,700 members and regional coordinators in 35 states.

Viguerie held a Saturday conference call with allies to plan the initial stages of the draft movement.

"I've asked him about the presidential thing twice in the last five or six weeks," Viguerie said of his recent conversations with DeMint.

"I think he's giving it serious consideration. Hopefully this will push him over the line and give him the encouragement that there would be a strong base of support," Viguerie added.

He said DeMint compares to Goldwater in 1964, whom conservatives drafted to challenge President Johnson, and Reagan in 1976 and 1980 respectively.

"He would be the dominant movement conservative leader," Viguerie said. "He would be the front-runner overnight."

Angela Toft, national director of Conservatives4DeMint, said the group launched in January after DeMint supporters began corresponding through Facebook. What began as a local fan club in California soon gained national membership.

"A groundswell erupted," she said.

Toft said DeMint caught people's attention by supporting conservative candidates such as Florida Sen. Marco Rubio (R), Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul (R) and California Senate candidate Chuck DeVore through his leadership committee, the Senate Conservatives Fund.

Toft said, "I know Sen. DeMint has no personal ambition to be president, but I hope he will answer the call of the American people and run."

DeMint, 59, said everything would have to fall into place for him to launch a campaign.

"It would take an extraordinary set of circumstances for me to get in. I've learned not to rule out anything in life," he said.

DeMint has already traveled to Iowa and New Hampshire to participate in candidate forums. He's looking into having a candidates' forum in South Carolina, as well, but has not set a date.

He said the purpose of these meetings is to pick a principled, conservative nominee in 2012.

"What I'm trying to do in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina is to encourage people to wait, not endorse candidates early," he said.

DeMint wants conservative activists to wait, before pledging support, to see what positions candidates such as former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney say about the debt ceiling, a balanced-budget amendment and spending levels.

"What I want to be able to do is offer the right candidate a broad consensus of voters in these three early states that have waited," he said.

DeMint endorsed Romney in 2008.

Some DeMint backers point out that the junior senator from South Carolina is one of the few conservatives in the GOP who is willing to take on his own party's leadership. As a House member in 2003, DeMint rebuffed then-President George W. Bush by opposing an expansion of Medicare to include a prescription drug benefit.

DeMint also took on Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) over earmarks in the 111th Congress. McConnell, a longtime member of the Appropriations Committee, resisted DeMint's proposal to establish a moratorium on earmarks. DeMint persisted, despite facing criticism within the GOP conference. He later triumphed, when his GOP colleagues adopted an earmark ban late last year.

DeMint broke with party leaders again last year when he backed Rubio in the Florida Republican primary while National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman John Cornyn (Texas) supported former Gov. Charlie Crist, who later switched to become an Independent.

He defied McConnell in the 2010 Kentucky GOP primary by endorsing Paul after McConnell made clear he was behind former Kentucky Secretary of State Trey Grayson. Paul defeated Grayson before winning the general election last fall.

DeMint is a proven fundraiser. He raised $9.3 million through the Senate Conservatives Fund in the 2010 election cycle, disbursing it to an array of conservatives, including Paul, Rubio and Senate freshmen Pat Toomey (R-Pa.), Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) and Mike Lee (R-Utah).

The fund has raised $1.2 million so far this year, according to its website.

Some Immigrants Turn to Tea Party

Lolita Mancheno-Smoak, an immigrant from Ecuador who once dreamed of becoming her country's president, has found an unlikely home in the tea party movement.

When she launched her campaign for county school board last week at Brion's Grille in Fairfax, Va., she was not alone - flanked by immigrants from Europe, Asia and Latin America who have joined tea party groups in the face of unrelenting criticism that the movement is isolationist and anti-immigrant.

Mancheno-Smoak, who started attending tea party meetings in February, is one of several immigrants running for local office in Virginia under the tea party banner.

Tito Muñoz, a Colombian immigrant who owns a construction company and won the nickname "Tito the Builder" as a vocal supporter of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in 2008, is running for Virginia Senate. Jo-Ann Chase, a Puerto Rican, says she is the first Latina candidate for a state House seat.

In Northern Virginia, many of the immigrants who have gravitated to the tea party have roots in socialist countries and are intensely afraid that the U.S. is headed down the same path. They embrace the tea party's small government, socially conservative messages and say the only immigration they are for is the legal kind. They don't bat an eye when it comes to the movement's tough anti-illegal-immigrant rhetoric.

Muñoz hosts a one-hour Spanish language radio show called "America Eres Tu" broadcast Saturday afternoons on WURA 920 AM out of a trailer in Dumfries, Va. He prints copies of the Constitution in Spanish and answers questions about U.S. politics from those who are new to the country.

"If the immigrants understood what was happening in America there would be a revolt against those politicians," said Muñoz, who became a citizen in 2008. "Obama's talking one way and doing another and the Hispanics do not know about that hanky-panky."

He has launched a state political action committee, TitoPAC, and a federal 527 called the Conservative Hispanic Coalition, to fund his run for state Senate.

"Why do immigrants leave their country? Because they don't have opportunity and they don't have freedom, because politicians control everything," he said. "We come to America and we are going to have the same crap? Then we might as well go back there."

Genaro Pedroarias, the national committeeman of the Republican National Hispanic Assembly of Virginia, said the tea party is a natural fit for many of northern Virginia's immigrants from countries like Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua.

"Most Hispanics who come to this country come here to flee socialistic and oppressive regimes," said Pedroarias, who is Cuban. "They are some of the most vibrant members of the tea party."

Lin Dai Kendall, who left Honduras when she was 33, blames the U.S. immigration system for persistent unemployment among those who are here legally. She's part Chinese, part Spanish and part Hispanic and doesn't hesitate to call President Barack Obama a Marxist.

"These people want to call themselves progressive; I call them regressive," Kendall said. "What is immoral to me is standing there with my hand out waiting for the government to support me."

Vera Martin moved to the U.S. from what is now the Czech Republic when she was 5 years old. Now, she is hitting the campaign trail for her husband, who is running for state Senate, and Mancheno-Smoak.

"I come from a socialist country," said Martin, who worked for a consulting firm that helped her country's transition to capitalism after the fall of the Communist Soviet Union. "I know what socialism means. I know what socialized health care is like and I know what you pay to support that system."

Latinos voted for Obama over McCain by a margin of more than 2-to-1 in 2008, according to the Pew Hispanic Center. But his failure to deliver on his promise for comprehensive immigration reform has many feeling disheartened.

Muñoz and tea party-affiliated immigrants said the news media are just as complicit as the politicians, casting the tea party as anti-immigrant and racist - which he calls lies and propaganda.

The push to diversify the tea party movement comes from national umbrella organizations like FreedomWorks as well as from the community groups themselves. Roll Call reported last month about a national effort, beginning in Texas, to help tea party groups reach out to minorities using organizing tactics developed by liberal organizations.

"There is no way to deny it; the majority of them are white men," said Kim Jossfolk, an organizer with a tea party group in Alexandria, Va. "We have a lot of minorities who I think are afraid to come to our meetings, not because we would do anything to them but because their communities look at them as some kind of traitor."

Jossfolk, who is white, has invited Herman Cain, the black Republican presidential candidate, to address her group and works frequently with the offices of Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who is Hispanic, and Reps. Allen West (R-Fla.) and David Scott (D-Ga.), who are black.

The tea party, much like the Republican Party, needs to focus on refining its tone on immigration issues or else it runs the risk of alienating Hispanics, noted David Cardenas, who partnered with Jeb Bush Jr. to found SunPac, a Florida-based group dedicated to engaging Hispanics in the political process.

"Even when there is a different political perspective, the tone is almost as important," said Cardenas whose father, Alberto, was recently named head of the American Conservative Union. "They need to make inroads in the Hispanic community or they are going to be in trouble."

If Democrats and Republicans both struggle with reaching immigrants, than the tea party may very well be the answer.

"To me, anyone that left their country to come to this country is a tea partyer," said Marta Saltus, one of Smoak's supporters whose family is Argentinean.

Until tomorrow,

Lobbyit.com