Erica Werner Posts

House Republicans unveiled a slimmed-down bill Tuesday to address the immigration crisis on the U.S.-Mexico border by sending in National Guard troops and speeding migrant youths back home. The election-year measure would allow Republicans to say they tried to solve the humanitarian problem in South Texas, even though it stands no chance of becoming law.

A year after the Senate passed a sweeping immigration bill, a leading backer in the House declared Wednesday that legislative efforts on the issue are dead. Rep. Luis Gutierrez of Illinois, long one of the most bullish Democrats about the chances for action in the GOP-led House, took to the House floor to announce that he'd officially given up.

Senate Republicans on Wednesday blocked legislation aimed at letting people refinance their student loans at lower rates, a pre-ordained outcome that gave Democrats a fresh election-year talking point against the GOP. Student loan debt has topped $1 trillion and emerged as a drag on the economy and on middle-class families across the country, making it a ripe target for politicians ahead of midterm elections where Democrats risk losing their Senate majority.

Sylvia Mathews Burwell will have to run a Senate committee gauntlet before being confirmed as Health and Human Services Secretary. But detractors will have to call attention to Obama's now-successful healthcare overhaul, better known as Obamacare.

Immigration advocates are swarming the country this month, trying to persuade House Republicans to pass a comprehensive overhaul. It was hard to tell at the town-hall meeting that second-term Republican Rep. Andy Harris held recently in this town northeast of Baltimore.

Two of the lead authors of the Senate bill, Sens. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and John McCain, R-Ariz., rejected the piece-by-piece approach at a breakfast meeting with reporters Thursday hosted by the Christian Science Monitor. Schumer and McCain said that any time an immigration issue is advanced individually, even something widely supported like visas for high-tech workers or a citizenship path for those brought as children, lawmakers and interest groups start pushing for other issues to get dealt with at the same time.

"What we have found is, ironically, it may be a little counterintuitive, that the best way to pass immigration legislation is actually a comprehensive bill, because that can achieve more balance and everybody can get much but not all of what they want," Schumer said. "And so I think the idea of doing separate bills is just not going to work. It's not worked in the past, and it's not going to work in the future."

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said Tuesday that her agency knew of alleged Boston bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev's trip to Russia last year even though his name was misspelled on a travel document. A key lawmaker had said that the misspelling caused the FBI to miss the trip.

Napolitano's disclosure came as news to Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who told the secretary that it contradicted what he'd been told by the FBI.

"I never said that! I never said that!" Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, interjected as Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., suggested that some were using the Boston bombings as "an excuse" to slow down or stop the bill.

Four Democratic and four Republican senators formally unveiled a sweeping immigration bill Thursday at a news conference attended by traditional opponents from big business and labor, and conservative and liberal groups.

The bill would bar anyone who arrived in the U.S. after December 31, 2011, from applying for legal status and ultimately citizenship, according to the aide, who was not authorized to discuss the proposals before they were made public and spoke on condition of anonymity.

It also would require applicants to document that they were in the country before December 31, 2011, have a clean criminal record and show enough employment or financial stability that they're likely to stay off welfare.

"There will be a great deal of unhappiness about this proposal because everybody didn't get what they wanted," Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., a leader of the eight senators negotiating the legislation, said Sunday. "There are entrenched positions on both sides of this issue."

Sen. Chuck Schumer, McCain and their "Gang of Eight" already missed a self-imposed deadline to have their bill ready in March, but Schumer said he hoped that this week, it will happen.

Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky is endorsing a pathway to citizenship for the nation's 11 million illegal immigrants, a significant move for a favorite of tea party Republicans who are sometimes hostile to such an approach.

Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky is endorsing a pathway to citizenship for the nation's 11 million illegal immigrants, a significant move for a favorite of tea party Republicans who are sometimes hostile to such an approach.

President Barack Obama is weighing 19 steps he could take through executive action alone, congressional officials said. But the scope of such measures is limited. Obama is expected to unveil his proposals Wednesday.