Two days after President Obama met with Senators Schumer (D-NY) and Graham (R-SC) to discuss moving forward on immigration reform, Senator Graham appeared on a Sunday morning talk show where he criticized President Obama and his “unwavering commitment” to immigration reform as “political spin” in response to plans for a large immigration rally next week. Graham delivered a one-two punch, chastising the President not only for pursuing reconciliation in order to pass healthcare reform, but for failing to get his hands dirty on immigration. On the one hand, Graham made it clear that he will continue to work with Senator Schumer to produce a public document laying out reform principles, but on the other he challenged the President to put his commitment on the line by writing his own bill. No matter how you read the statement, the evident frustration in Graham’s voice suggests that there is something more here than political grandstanding.

On ABC’s “This Week,” Sen. Graham addressed a variety of topics including health care and the closing of Guantanamo Bay, challenging the president to lead and make compromises. He saved his most pointed words, however, for immigration:

The idea that the president has‬‪ been unwavering on immigration doesn’t really pass the smell test. One line in the State of the Union that was unnoticeable is not‬‪ ‘unwavering.’ A hastily called meeting Thursday because of a rally next‬‪ weekend is not ‘unwavering,’ it’s CYA. (short for ‘covering your [butt]’).

Unwavering is sending two Cabinet‬‪ members over to the House and the Senate two hours a day for two months‬‪ with dozens of senators trying to write a bill .‬‪.. President Obama has not been‬‪ unwavering on immigration reform. He has pretty much ignored it because‬‪ he has been consumed by health care.

…This idea that this administration has been unwavering on immigration reform is just political spin, and the people at the rally ought to know that.

President Obama: lead. You‬‪ write an…immigration reform bill. You do the heavy‬‪ lifting. You put together a comprehensive immigration reform package. ‬‪You bring it to the Senate and House and see how many Democrat and‬‪ Republican supporters you can get. ‬‪All you have done is talk about what we should do, now is the time‬‪ to lead.

Fairly strong words for someone who, just days before, sat down with the President to discuss a bipartisan way forward on an immigration bill and called for more public support from the White House.

And yet, Sen. Graham has long been a supporter of immigration reform. Back in 2007, Graham called out anti-immigrant rhetoric as bigoted and discussed a desire to fix our broken immigration system at an NCLR awards ceremony. In the same year, Sen. Graham supported S.1639, an immigration bill co-sponsored by Sens. Jon McCain and Ted Kennedy, despite cries of “Grahamnesty” from his own party. While Graham doesn’t have the best track record when it comes to harsh immigration enforcement measures, he still agreed to help Sen. Schumer garner GOP support for a comprehensive immigration bill in 2009. Furthermore, Sen. Graham stated (in the same ABC interview) that he will continue to work with Sen. Schumer on producing a blueprint for moving forward—clearly a sign that Graham hasn’t yet given up on the process.

However, in a press statement following his Thursday meeting with President Obama and Sen. Schumer, Sen. Graham warned the President that using reconciliation to push health care through would halt immigration reform and “make it much harder for Congress to come together on a topic as important as immigration.” That coupled with his talk show criticism of the President suggests that Graham is taking Obama’s political strategies very personally. The question is, will the personal get in the way of the getting the job done?

Either way you slice it, playing politics with immigration reform is likely to get in the way of real progress—especially for the 11 million undocumented immigrants who need reform legislation the most. Edward Alden, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, says it best:

Sen. Lindsey Graham should be commended for his willingness to work across the aisle on big issues like energy and climate change, treatment of detainees and immigration reform. But what exactly should the administration do with a threat of this sort? It could give up on health care, I suppose, and leave 30 million people without insurance and everyone else crossing their fingers that they don’t develop a “pre-existing condition” at the wrong time. Or it could abandon immigration reform, keep jailing and deporting 400,000 people a year and keep sending back home the bright foreign students who want to build companies and employ Americans but can’t face a 10- or 15-year wait for a green card. The problem with these political parlor games is that they hurt real people in the real world.

In the midst of trying to wrap up health care, President Obama carved time out of his schedule yesterday to meet with reformers and key Senators on comprehensive immigration reform (CIR). After yesterday’s meetings, some are reporting that the President is again committed to moving CIR this year. Supporters of immigration reform are wary, but hopeful, that this time he means business.

Yesterday afternoon, the President met with leaders of grassroots immigration groups, unions, and faith communities for over an hour to discuss their demands for greater White House engagement on immigration reform, commitment to moving a bill this year, and to remembering that real people are hurting. They want evidence of real engagement in time for the huge gathering of immigration reform supporters in Washington on March 21. Many of these leaders were from organizations that soundly criticized the White House for a continued escalation in deportations at a press conference earlier this week.

The President also met with Senators Schumer and Graham to discuss their progress on putting together a bipartisan immigration reform bill. According to a statement released by Senator Schumer’s office, they asked the President to put his weight behind gathering more support in the Senate for the bill and in helping to nail down the details of the future flow component of the bill, an area where business and labor have been trying to find agreement.

Why the flurry of activity? As March 21 nears, there has been growing pressure on both the President and Senators Schumer and Graham to make good on last year’s promises to get immigration reform done sooner rather than later. A real show of progress is necessary to reassure tens of thousands of people who will gather on the mall that reform is imminent. Otherwise, the Administration and both parties are likely come under attack for failing to keep their promises. Politicians don’t like to hear that. As Bob Creamer writes in the Huffington Post, even many Republicans dread the negative publicity of continued inaction on immigration.

But before we get ahead of ourselves, we should recognize that getting legislation to the President’s desk is a long and complicated process of politics and policy—and the political is clearly the key component right now. For example, many are trying to extract the meaning of Senator Graham’s recent statement that immigration reform would be dead in the water if the White House pursued reconciliation to get healthcare reform passed. Since the Republican party as a whole has been threatening the collapse of the known world should reconciliation be used, this is probably just political posturing. But it could also be a convenient excuse to walk away from immigration reform, especially if no other Republicans are willing to come on board.

Assuming that reason prevails and immigration reform moves, turning the private framework into a public document is job one for the Senators. That, too, will lead to intense scrutiny from the left and the right, a call for more details, and lots of pressure to turn principles into legislation. Once you start fleshing out the details, you start risking internal and external disagreements on both the policy and the politics of immigration reform.

But, given the start and stop character of immigration reform over the last year, yesterday’s pronouncements also provide a new sense of momentum and hope. It demonstrates the growing scope and depth of the immigration reform movement. It shows that immigration reform is becoming a mainstream issue that has to be reckoned with. It also shows that real people can get through to our leaders if they bang the drum loud enough.

If yesterday’s events are accompanied by some concrete actions between now and the March 21, it is likely that the President and the Senators will reap the benefits of some public praise. If they are just empty promises, however, things could start to become uncomfortable come midterm elections.

Photo by Downing Street.

“Today I met with Senators Schumer and Graham and was pleased to learn of their progress in forging a proposal to fix our broken immigration system. I look forward to reviewing their promising framework, and every American should applaud their efforts to reach across party lines and find commonsense answers to one of our most vexing problems. I also heard from a diverse group of grassroots leaders from around the country about the growing coalition that is working to build momentum for this critical issue. I am optimistic that their efforts will contribute to a favorable climate for moving forward. I told both the Senators and the community leaders that my commitment to comprehensive immigration reform is unwavering, and that I will continue to be their partner in this important effort.”

Expectations are running high when it comes to moving forward with comprehensive immigration reform (CIR). Apparently the White House is taking note of the concerns voiced by grassroots groups and the mobilizing around a March 21 march. The White House had three scheduled meetings on immigration today—one with immigration advocates, another with Senators Schumer and Graham and a third with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. While immigration advocates eagerly await outcomes of today’s meetings, the recent momentum of reform has created a buzz among some Congressional members on how exactly an immigration bill might move forward.

Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY), who is taking the lead on a reform bill along with Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC), is looking for yet another Republican co-sponsor. Additionally, Schumer is trying to hash out an agreement between business and labor on specifics in the bill. According to Politico:

Lindsey Graham and I are working. We only have a couple of more things to get done — and they’re hard. One of them is to get another Republican on the bill. One is to finally deal with the issue of getting business and labor on the same side on low-wage workers. We will not pass an immigration bill unless it’s bipartisan. I think everyone agrees with that. Everyone agrees to put a bill on the floor of the Senate and not have it pass, as happened a few years ago, is a bad idea.

Senator Graham, likewise, stressed the importance of bipartisanship and called on the White House to muster up more support for reform.

At the end of the day, the President needs to step it up a little bit. One line in the State of the Union is not going to do it. I think moderate Democrats have to come on board before you get Republicans, and Republicans have to come on board before you get Democrats.

Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ), a long time leader and supporter of immigration reform, also asked for more movement from the White House and stressed the importance of reform to the Latino community.

For the Latino community in this country, it’s the civil rights issue of their time, so delay obviously adds to disillusionment. Immigration reform would seal the community’s commitment to the Democratic Party.

Majority Whip, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), commented that moving reform forward this year is doable as long as there is cooperation from across the aisle.

[When] asked whether he thought there was room on the legislative calendar for a comprehensive immigration bill, [Durbin responded] “There is—if we can get enough agreement on the other side of the aisle. I favor [comprehensive reform]. Sen. Schumer is our leader on this. He’s looking for Republican support to make it happen.”

On the other side of the aisle, Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA), who fills the shoes of immigration juggernaut, late Sen. Ted Kennedy, told Fox News this week that he would be willing to consider Schumer and Graham’s bill.

You need a strong border enforcement. You need a strong E-verification. I…have always felt that part of the problem is that we haven’t provided the proper resources for people to be processed quickly enough. And when you have people waiting in line six, seven, eight, nine years in some instances, it’s a disincentive to (immigrate) legally…In terms of allowing people to step ahead of the people who are trying to do it legally, I have a real problem with that.

Sen. George LeMieux (R-FL), who took over for now retired Sen. Mel Martinez (R-FL), told Politico that although he hasn’t been approached yet, that he would look at an immigration bill.

My feeling on immigration reform is that the system is broken. We need to do something about it. There was a huge effort to do something about it from people with good minds on both sides and it failed. But we have a continuing need to address border security. We have a continuing need to figure out a solution to what we’re going to do with the 10.8 million people who are in this country illegally. I’m a person who’s here to try to solve problems and if there’s a thoughtful piece of legislation that’s worked out, I’m happy to look at it.

And finally, Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL), who introduced the progressive CIR ASAP reform bill back in 2009, urged the President to keep his campaign promise.

I’m happy to know of the president’s renewed interest in immigration reform. This is the story of the candidate Obama not being one and the same as the President Obama. It’s about keeping campaign promises. That’s what this is about.

Photo by White House.

In a new report, Progressives for Immigration Reform (PFIR)—a front group for the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR)—regurgitates an argument as tired as it is flawed: that immigration hastens the destruction of the environment in the United States. Specifically, the report claims that immigration-driven population growth is increasing the nation’s “ecological footprint” and exceeding the country’s “carrying capacity.” This is a faulty line of reasoning that overlooks the degree to which destruction of the environment is a function not of population size, but of how a society utilizes its resources, produces its goods and services, and deals with its waste.

In other words, the PFIR report fails to mention that a few people can pollute a lot, or a lot of people can pollute a little. Even in countries with similar standards of living, there is no direct, one-to-one relationship between population size and environmental degradation. For instance, according to the World Resources Institute, the United States is home to 30% fewer people than the European nations of the EU-15, yet produces 40% more greenhouse gases (GHGs), such as carbon dioxide and methane. In fact, U.S. emissions of GHGs on a per capita basis are more than double those of the EU-15. The production of GHGs in the United States is not the result of population size, but of the degree to which we as a society rely upon fossil fuels, power plants, industrial processes, and automobiles that actually produce GHGs.

The pseudo-environmentalism of the PFIR report is actually a variety of “green xenophobia” which offers no useful guide for the formulation of effective policies on immigration or the environment. The PFIR report represents the latest attempt by a web of anti-immigrant groups allied with FAIR, and its founder John Tanton, to co-op progressive rhetoric in a dubious attempt to persuade political progressives that immigrants are to blame for environmental destruction, African American unemployment, and a host of other socioeconomic problems.

However, blaming immigrants for pollution won’t fix the dysfunctional U.S. immigration system, reduce the U.S. economy’s dependence on fossil fuels, or improve the emissions systems on automobiles. The PFIR report itself casually mentions at the end that its rather limited approach “does not explicitly address any number of critical issues” such as the environmental impact of pollution, the over-exploitation of resources, “the human assault on biodiversity, or environmental justice.” The PFIR report is little more than environmental window dressing for the anti-immigrant movement.

Photo by ashley.adcox.

While comprehensive immigration reform (CIR) remains stalled somewhere between the House, Senate, and the Administration, four noted experts were interviewed by the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) about how immigration reform would affect the U.S. economy. These interviews were posted on CFR’s website yesterday. David Scott Fitzgerald, Associate Director for the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies at the University of California, San Diego; Heidi Shierholz, an economist for the Economic Policy Institute; Mark Krikorian, Executive Director for the Center for Immigration Studies; and James Carafano, Director for Foreign Policy Studies at the Heritage Foundation offered opinions on immigration and the economy. While their opinions varied widely, there were notable areas of agreement: our system is in need of repair, and legalization would not be the great harm to our economy that restrictionists tout.

So how would mass legalization affect the U.S. economy overall?

According to Fitzgerald, the effect would be positive, as legalized immigrants would start paying federal income and payroll taxes. These taxes would offset any social welfare costs becoming available like unemployment insurance, Social Security, and Medicare. In the end, Fitzgerald hypothesizes that CIR would result in a “slight net fiscal benefit and slightly higher economic growth.” Meanwhile, economist Heidi Shierholz points out that while new immigrant workers would add to our labor supply, they would also be steady consumers of goods and services as well as create more jobs. Furthermore, Shierholz predicts that immigration actually boosts wages for native-born workers at all levels of education—including those without a high school diploma.

We might expect to hear the exact opposite from the other two participants. However, Krikorian, a long time immigration restrictionist opposed to any type of legalization, actually agreed that a legalization program would help make the economy bigger. Carafano, another restrictionist, states that legalization would “probably be a ‘wash’ on the U.S. economy,” but admits that “there might be some modest benefits gained in recouping some taxes, imposing some penalties, and avoiding the cost of detention and holding immigration hearings.” However, as expected, Krikorian and Carafano peddle back their legalization comments with the typical restrictionist qualification that the economic benefits of legalization would be wiped out by the costs of implementation and access to social services.

But wait a minute, if everyone agrees that legalization is good—or at least not bad—for the economy, why aren’t we all supporting legalization?

While many disagree on how to go about it, most advocates and policymakers on both sides of the spectrum agree that something needs to be done with our current broken immigration system. Even noted immigration restrictionists like Krikorian and Carafano struggle to deny that CIR will benefit our economy. Of course, immigrant advocates and restrictionists are going to continue to disagree on the solution to the immigration problem. But Congress and the Administration should take note of recent research and analysis on the economic benefits of immigration reform and use it to push forward with finding a solution.

Photo by Visual Dichotomy

This week, President Obama is scheduled to meet with two key congressional players in the movement for immigration reform—Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) and Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC)—who are working together behind the scenes to draft a bipartisan immigration bill. The President is expected to ask Sens. Graham and Schumer to produce a reform bill blueprint that “could be turned into legislative language.” While some will interpret this week’s meeting as another positive signal from the White House and others as a “last-ditch effort in an election year,” the White House affirms that the President is still committed to reforming our immigration system.

According to the L.A. Times, White House spokesperson Nick Shapiro said:

The president is looking forward to hearing more about their efforts toward producing a bipartisan bill…The president’s commitment to fixing our broken immigration system remains unwavering.

For many advocates, the upcoming White House meeting is a welcomed signal that immigration remains a priority for the President, particularly as grassroots groups across the country vent frustrations over the continuation of Bush-era “enforcement-only” policies. Immigration advocates have been disappointed by a perceived lack of leadership on this issue on the part of the President. Advocates have also cautioned that inaction on immigration reform could cause political fallout, particularly if the growing Latino electorate decides that there has not been enough movement on immigration reform and either stays home or votes for the opposition party.

Much like stalled health care legislation, it may be easy for President Obama to blame Congress for playing politics. But even in the absence of a much needed immigration overhaul, there are things the Obama Administration could do to improve immigration policy if he were serious about fixing the system. Last week, IPC released a review of DHS under the Obama Administration which outlines a series of changes the Administration could make absent legislation.

Conventional wisdom holds that the longer it takes President Obama to pass a major piece of legislation, the more political clout he loses come mid-term election. We understand that the President is currently facing some difficult legislative hurdles with health care and the economy, but regardless, immigrant advocates, as well as Asian, Latino and immigrant voters, are going to look to hold the President accountable for his actions—or inactions—on immigration reform. Talking to Senators Schumer and Graham is a welcomed step, but now the Administration has to show some real strength by making Administrative reforms and demonstrating that it is engaging the issue in a meaningful way. Real action will go a long way toward drumming up needed support in Congress and from a constituency whose vote could make all the difference come election time.

Photo by White House.

Yesterday, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a simple but clear reminder to the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) that it must act within the bounds of the law. The issue before the court was whether USCIS could properly deny an employment-based, “extraordinary ability” visa because the petitioner had not demonstrated “the research community’s reactions to his [scholarly] publications” – an arbitrary requirement with no justification in the law. The court, in Kazarian v. USCIS, found that USCIS unlawfully imposed a requirement on the petitioner that was not found in the regulations. The court said that “neither USCIS nor an AAO may unilaterally impose novel substantive or evidentiary requirements beyond those set forth [in the regulations].” In other words, USCIS cannot bypass the law.

Unfortunately, what happened in this case is not an isolated incident, and therefore immigration advocates nationwide warmly welcome the court’s admonishment of the agency. There are countless examples of the immigration agencies adding new requirements or additional bars to immigration applications that have no basis in law. Over the past few years, the American Immigration Council’s Legal Action Center (LAC) has challenged several unlawful agency practices and has forced the government to change its policies. Successful LAC challenges include:

• The agency attempted to preclude “arriving aliens” (a subset of parolees) who are in removal proceedings from applying for adjustment of status even though the statute clearly made them eligible. After successful litigation challenging this policy, the agency changed its position.
• USCIS adopted regulations requiring foreign physicians who have practiced in medically underserved areas of the United States to meet requirements not authorized by Congress before they are eligible for adjustment of status. The court of appeals said that the agency’s policy was in conflict with the law and struck down the regulation.
• USCIS was requiring employment-based third preference (EB-3) workers to have a bachelor’s degree or a single foreign equivalent degree even though the statute allows a person to qualify for EB-3 classification by demonstrating that she possesses the equivalent of a bachelor’s degree based on the combination of education and employment experience. The court concluded that USCIS had no authority to limit eligibility in this way.

In addition, the LAC currently is challenging an immigration court regulation that impermissibly adds a geographic limitation to the statutory right to file a motion to reopen, even though the statute contains no such limitation. Already, two courts of appeals have found that this limitation is unlawful.

Immigrants and their advocates must be vigilant. When the immigration agencies operate outside the law, they must be held accountable. As the Ninth Circuit reminded us this week, the courts provide necessary oversight of government-decision making and help to ensure that the government is playing by the rules.

Photo by Metagrrrl

This week, the U.S. Census Bureau began distribution of the questionnaires for the 2010 Census. The results of the Census will form the basis for the apportionment of congressional districts and the distribution of hundreds of billions of dollars in federal funds, as well as serving to guide community-planning decisions across the country. However, Census 2010 has not been without its share of controversy. In October of last year, for instance, Senator David Vitter (R-LA) proposed an amendment to the Commerce, Justice and State appropriations legislation which would cut off financing for the 2010 Census unless the survey includes questions about immigration status. Additionally, some pro-immigrant activists have suggested that immigrants sit out the Census this year to protest the federal government’s failure to enact comprehensive immigration reform. Yet this would be self-defeating given the high economic and political stakes of an accurate count, and that fact that immigrants are already among those demographic groups who are typically under-counted in the Census.

Anyone living in an area that suffers from a large under-count of immigrants stands to lose out on political representation and federal funds. For instance, an undercount of Latino immigrants would impact anyone living in a state such as California, New York, or Illinois that has a large population of Latino immigrants—meaning that everyone in those states stands to lose political representation and access to economic and educational opportunities if immigrant residents aren’t fully counted in 2010.

According to a 2009 research report from the Census Bureau, roughly $435.7 billion in federal grant and direct assistance money “was allocated based on Census Bureau data”—including “annual population estimates, Decennial Census data, and other Census Bureau sources”—in Fiscal Year (FY) 2007. The 10 federal programs accounting for 83.4 percent of all funding “allocated annually using population and/or income statistics,” as of FY 2007, were:

• Medical Assistance Program {Medicaid} ($203.5 billion)
• Unemployment Insurance ($35.9 billion)
• Highway Planning and Construction ($34.2 billion)
• Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program ($30.3 billion)
• Temporary Assistance for Needy Families ($16.5 billion)
• Federal Pell Grant Program ($13.7 billion)
• Title I Grants to Local Educational Agencies ($12.8 billion)
• Special Education Grants to States ($10.8 billion)
• National School Lunch Program ($7.8 billion)
• Head Start ($6.9 billion)

As the National Research Council notes in a 2009 study, “historically, a key issue has been, and remains, the differential net undercount of blacks, Hispanics, and Native Americans, which has resulted in the repeated underrepresentation of areas in which those groups make up a large fraction of the residents. In particular, the differential net undercount of these groups has led to their receiving less than their share of federal funds and political representation.” In other words, because blacks, Latinos, and Native Americans tend to live in particular areas, everyone in those areas receives less political representation and federal funding if blacks, Latinos, and Native Americans are under-counted.

Photo by thomasclaveirole.

With the passage of the $15 billion jobs bill in the Senate last week, job creation is certainly at the top of the Congressional priority list. As a way to further stimulate the economy, Chairman and Ranking Member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Senators John Kerry (D-MA) and Richard Lugar (R-IN), introduced the Start-Up Visa Act of 2010 last week which incentivizes job creation through the promise of legal residence status—that is, “drives job creation and increases America’s global competiveness by helping immigrant entrepreneurs secure visas to the United States.”

The proposed Start-up Visa Act of 2010 creates a two year visa (EB-6) for immigrant entrepreneurs who “can raise a minimum of $250,000 (with $100,000 of support from qualified venture capitalists or angel investors).” If, after two years, the immigrant entrepreneur creates five or more jobs and collects an addition $1 million in investment or revenue, he/she can obtain a green card.

This bipartisan legislation, as the Washington Post points out, is not a new concept. It’s a more accessible version of the existing EB-5 Immigrant Investor visa program which grants legal permanent residency to immigrants who can prove that their investment (of at least $500,000 to $1 million) in a U.S. business preserves or creates at least 10 U.S. jobs after two years. Rep. Jared Polis (D-CO) proposed an earlier version of the Start-Up Visa Act (H.R. 4259) in the House back in 2009, but that bill was subsequently tucked into Rep. Luis Gutierrez’s immigration reform bill, CIR ASAP.

According to Sen. Lugar:

Our country should strive to attract to the United States the most talented and highly skilled entrepreneurs. We should channel the power of innovative thinkers from around the world and American investors towards creating jobs and encouraging economic growth and future prosperity.

Making the connection between immigration and job growth is not a difficult line to draw. According to the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA), immigrants have started 25 percent of U.S. public companies that were venture-backed—including Google, eBay, Yahoo!, Sun Microsystems, and Intel. The NVCA also estimates that immigrant-founded venture-backed public companies currently employ 220,000 people in the United States and more than 400,000 people globally.

Just last week, Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke testified before a Senate committee about how current immigration policy affects America’s bottom line:

I think our immigration policy which restricts severely the number of highly-trained skilled immigrants is a problem because bringing those kind of folks in helps our high-tech industries develop more competitively — become more competitive.

Needless to say, creating a new visa category to facilitate job growth is certainly one way to go about an economic stimulus—but lawmakers might also want to focus on fixing the immigration system we already have. Studies show that reforming our current immigration system to include a path to legalization for undocumented workers “would yield $1.5 trillion to the U.S. GDP over a ten year period, generate billions in additional tax revenue and consumer spending and support hundreds of thousands of jobs.” For a Congress so focused on fixing our economy and creating new jobs, those numbers are hard to ignore.

Photo by forumepfl.