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Immigration overhaul? GOP, Dem senators vow action

2013-01-28T13:09:05Z

WASHINGTON (AP) — Side by side, leading Democratic and Republican senators pledged Monday to propel far-reaching immigration legislation through the Senate by summer providing a possible path to citizenship for an estimated 11 million people now in the U.S. illegally.

The senators acknowledged pitfalls that have doomed such efforts in the past, but they suggested that November's elections — with Hispanics voting heavily for President Barack Obama and other Democrats — could make this time different.

Passage of the emotionally charged legislation by the Democratic-controlled Senate is far from assured, and a taller hurdle could come later in the House, which is dominated by conservative Republicans who've shown little interest in immigration overhaul. Obama will lay out his own proposals Tuesday, most of which mirror the Senate plans.

Besides the citizenship provision, including new qualifications, the Senate measure would increase border security, allow more temporary workers to stay and crack down on employers who would hire illegal immigrants. The plans are still short on detail, and all the senators conceded that months of tedious and politically treacherous negotiations lie ahead.

But with a re-elected Obama pledging his commitment, the lawmakers argued that six years after the last sustained congressional effort at an immigration overhaul came up short in the Senate, chances for approval this year are much better.

"Other bipartisan groups of senators have stood in the same spot before, trumpeting similar proposals," said Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y. "But we believe this will be the year Congress finally gets it done. The politics on this issue have been turned upside down," Schumer said, arguing that polls show more support than ever for immigration changes and political risk in opposing it.

"Elections. Elections," said Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. "The Republican Party is losing the support of our Hispanic citizens. And we realize that there are many issues on which we think we are in agreement with our Hispanic citizens, but this is a pre-eminent issue with those citizens."

Obama got 71 percent of the Latino vote in November compared to 27 percent for Republican Mitt Romney.

The president will endorse the Senate process during an event in Las Vegas Tuesday, administration officials said. He will outline a similar vision for overhauling the nation's immigration laws, drawing on the immigration "blueprint" he first released in 2011.

The blueprint focuses on four key areas: a pathway to citizenship for the 11 million illegal immigrants in the U.S., improved border security, an overhaul of the legal immigration system and making it easier for businesses to verify the legal status of workers.

Seeking to ramp up pressure on lawmakers, the White House has prepared formal immigration legislation that it could sent to Capitol Hill should the Senate process stall, administration officials said. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to discuss internal strategy.

Like the president's blueprint, the Senate proposals also call for a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants already here. But lawmakers want the creation of that pathway to be contingent upon securing the border and better tracking of people in the U.S. on visas.

The Senate's five-page framework also calls for overhauling the legal immigration system, including awarding green cards to immigrants who obtain certain advanced degrees from American universities, creating an effective high-tech employment verification system to ensure that employers do not hire illegal immigrants in the future and allowing more low-skill and agricultural workers.

In a sign of the challenges ahead, the proposals immediately got a cool reaction from Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.

"This effort is too important to be written in a back room and sent to the floor with a take-it-or-leave it approach," McConnell said. "It needs to be done on a bipartisan basis and include ideas from both sides of the aisle."

Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., said on the Senate floor, "No one should expect members of the Senate are just going to rubber-stamp what a group has met and decided."

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said he was concerned about the proposed path to citizenship.

"To allow those who came here illegally to be placed on such a path is both inconsistent with rule of law and profoundly unfair to the millions of legal immigrants who waited years, if not decades, to come to America legally," said Cruz.

A year after Border Patrol apprehensions of illegal border crossers plunged to the lowest levels in nearly 40 years agents have seen a slight increase in arrests, according to Border Patrol arrest data obtained by The Associated Press. In the budget year that ended in September, Border Patrol agents arrested 356,873 would-be border crossers along the Mexican border. In fiscal year 2011, agents along the Mexican border made 327,577 arrests.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., applauded the framework and said, "I will do everything in my power to get a bill across the finish line."

Pressures from outside groups from business to organized labor to immigrants themselves will be immense, even as lawmakers warily eye voters for their reaction.

Besides McCain and Schumer, the senators endorsing the new principles Monday were Democrats Dick Durbin of Illinois, Robert Menendez of New Jersey and Michael Bennet of Colorado and Republicans Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Marco Rubio of Florida and Jeff Flake of Arizona.

Several of them have worked for years on the issue. McCain collaborated with the late Democratic Sen. Edward M. Kennedy on the comprehensive immigration legislation pushed by then-President George W. Bush that failed in 2007.

The group claims a notable newcomer in Rubio, a potential 2016 presidential candidate whose conservative bona fides may help smooth the way for support among conservatives wary of anything that smacks of amnesty. Rubio has been working with the group while also detailing his own similar immigration proposals to selected media, getting a generally positive reaction from conservative media.

"There are 11 million human beings in this country today that are undocumented. That's not something that anyone is happy about; that's not something that anyone wanted to see happen, but that is what happened. And we have an obligation and the need to address the reality of the situation that we face," Rubio said Monday.

As the group turns to the work of writing legislation, which they hope to see come to a vote in the Senate Judiciary Committee in March, there may be most disagreement over the path to staying in the U.S. legally. In order to satisfy the concerns of Rubio and other Republicans, the senators are calling for the completion of steps on border security and oversight of those here on visas before taking major steps forward on the path to citizenship.

Even then, those here illegally would have to pass background checks and pay fines and taxes in order to qualify for a "probationary legal status" that would allow them to live and work here — and not qualify for federal benefits — before being able to apply for permanent residency, a critical step toward citizenship. Once they are allowed to apply they would do so behind everyone else already in line for a green card within the current immigration system.

That could be a highly cumbersome process, but how to make it more workable is being left to future negotiations. The senators envision a more streamlined process toward citizenship for immigrants brought here as children, and for agricultural workers.

Outside groups including Latino advocacy organizations, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and organized labor were quick to praise the emerging framework. But some also sounded notes of caution.

Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO, questioned a proposal by the Senate group to require illegal immigrants to provide proof of employment before they can gain legal status. Trumka said it could exclude millions of workers "who cannot prove employment because they have been forced to work off the clock or have no employer by virtue of being independent contractors."

Deepak Bhargava, executive director of the Center for Community Change, questioned the process being set out for the path to citizenship. "If the details are not done correctly, the path to citizenship can take far longer than it is reasonable. There is real concern about those details," he said.

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Associated Press writers Julie Pace and Luis Alonso Lugo contributed to this report.

Biden's recent moves stoking chatter about 2016

2013-01-23T12:30:59Z

WASHINGTON (AP) — Joe Biden is thanking Democratic supporters in the afterglow of President Barack Obama's second inauguration, dropping plenty of hints that he may try to cement Obama's legacy with his own presidential campaign in 2016.

Biden packed his schedule with events and receptions attended by party insiders surrounding Obama's inauguration, giving him a chance to thank prominent lawmakers and donors and plant the seeds for a future bid. It comes on the heels of the vice president's prominent role in brokering a compromise on the "fiscal cliff" standoff with Congress and developing gun-control legislation after December's deadly elementary school shooting in Connecticut.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton remains the heavy favorite of the Democratic party faithful, but Biden is making clear that he has no intention of closing any doors that could lead to the White House — especially if Clinton decides not to run.

As vice president, Biden can stay in the spotlight, and he is no stranger to the rigors of a presidential campaign after two unsuccessful bids, in 1988 and 2008. The former Delaware senator has racked up a long list of domestic and foreign policy achievements, even as his occasional off-script moments have become fodder for Republican critics.

"There's a whole lot of reasons why I wouldn't run," Biden, who will be nearly 74 on Election Day in 2016, told CNN before the inauguration. "I don't have to make that decision for a while. In the meantime, there's one thing I know I have to do, no matter what I do. I have to help this president move this country to the next stage."

White House press secretary Jay Carney on Wednesday reiterated Biden's focus on helping the administration achieve Obama's goals, which Carney said was demonstrated most recently in the effort to deliver to Obama a package of policy proposals to reduce gun violence.

"That's the vice president's focus, in his own words," Carney said. "It was when I worked for him, it was throughout the first term, it is now. As he said, other considerations are for the future. He's focused on his work as vice president as the president's partner."

Yet with his high-profile perch, Biden is doing nothing to tamp down the speculation.

Biden's private swearing-in ceremony Sunday was attended by recently elected New Hampshire Gov. Maggie Hassan, someone who would be a potent ally in the state's first-in-the-nation primary. Attendees at a Sunday afternoon reception at the vice president's residence at the Naval Observatory said they noticed a lot of party activists from early voting states like New Hampshire, Iowa and South Carolina.

During the weekend, Biden attended several balls with Democrats who would energize a presidential campaign. At the Iowa State Society Inaugural Ball, Biden told partygoers he was "proud to be president of the United States," prompting cheers. He quickly corrected himself, saying he was "proud to be vice president of the United States, but I am prouder to be ... President Barack Obama's vice president." Laughing it off, he said, "There's goes that."

At a ball celebrating Latino voters, Biden said the Hispanic community was "a decisive factor" in the election. "This is your moment," Biden said. "America owes you." Some party stalwarts said it was noteworthy that Biden asked Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the first Latina justice, to administer the oath of office.

At a ball honoring environmentalists, sponsored by the National Wildlife Federation and other environmental groups, Biden said the Obama administration was committed to confronting climate change. "I don't intend to let these four years go by without getting a hell of a lot done" on the environment, Biden said.

On Inauguration Day, Biden and his wife, Jill, walked part of the parade route, waving to the cheering crowds in a made-for-TV moment. At one point, the vice president even jogged across Pennsylvania Avenue to shake hands with "Today" show weatherman Al Roker, a clip that the morning show played repeatedly the following day.

"It seems obvious that he's going to keep that option open for himself and do the right things," said Mike Gronstal, the Democratic leader of the Iowa state Senate, who attended the Naval Observatory reception. Gronstal said Biden actively worked the room, thanking supporters for their help during the 2012 campaign.

On Tuesday afternoon, Biden met with members of the Democratic National Committee at a private reception after a DNC meeting, where delegates unanimously re-elected Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz to another term as chair.

A long line of DNC members spilled into the lobby before the reception and REO Speedwagon's "Roll With the Changes," a frequently played campaign theme song, could be heard from outside the room. Attendees said Biden thanked them for their work and offered an upbeat assessment of the second term, mingling with party leaders and posing for photographs during the hourlong gathering.

If Clinton decides not to run, Biden could draw upon good will from Obama's voting coalition, an ability to connect with regular folks and extensive campaigning in key states like Iowa, New Hampshire, Florida and Ohio. But he would also need to deal with personal poll numbers that rank below Obama's and a propensity to commit foot-in-mouth moments in an era where political gaffes can quickly sink a campaign.

New Hampshire state Sen. Martha Fuller Clark, who was among the attendees at Biden's Sunday reception, said it was "early to read into" Biden's interest in 2016 but said there was "huge support" in the key primary state.

"He's deeply admired and loved in New Hampshire," Clark said. "Clearly, Joe Biden occupies a key place in our hearts."

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Associated Press writers Josh Lederman, Matthew Daly and Brett Zongker contributed to this report.

Electoral College count affirms Obama's win

2013-01-04T18:34:46Z

WASHINGTON (AP) — Congress made the obvious official on Friday. President Barack Obama has been re-elected.

Photos: Obama wins

In a joint session, Congress formally certified that Obama and Vice President Joe Biden were the winners in the November election with 332 electoral votes, well more than the 270 required. Republican Mitt Romney and his running mate, Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, won 206 votes.

It's a mostly ceremonial — yet constitutionally necessary — vote that's mostly intriguing to political junkies and policy wonks. The count Friday lacked the suspense of the drawn-out campaign and election but was steeped in tradition.

Biden and about a dozen senators trekked across the Capitol from the Senate to the House chamber, and the vice president joined House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, on the rostrum. Senate pages carried two dark wooden boxes that contained the results of the electoral votes that had been counted in the state capitals last month. Clerks used silver letter openers to unseal the envelopes.

Taking turns, the leaders of the Senate Rules Committee — Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn. — and the top members of the House Administration Committee — Reps. Candice Miller, R-Mich., and Robert Brady, D-Pa. — read the results from each state. Biden, who presided over the session, announced the final results to applause from the scattering of House and Senate members in the chamber.

The 12th Amendment directs the electors chosen by the states to meet and vote for president and vice president. Each state gets its equivalent in the 435-member House and the 100-member Senate. The District of Columbia gets the other three electors. Their certified tally sheets must be counted in Washington.

The low-key session was in sharp contrast to the drama in January 2000, when Vice President Al Gore, the loser in the disputed election, presided over the certification of an electoral count that gave the presidency to his rival, Republican George W. Bush. Gore had beaten Bush in the popular vote but lost the electoral count.

Months after the November election, the final official vote from all 50 states and the District of Columbia showed Obama with 65,899,660 votes, or 51.1 percent, and Romney with 60,932,152 votes, or 47.2 percent. Obama is the first president since Republican Dwight Eisenhower to win back-to-back presidential elections with more than 51 percent of the popular vote.

Chief Justice John Roberts will swear in Obama at noon on Jan. 20 at the White House in a private ceremony, and then administer the oath again on the West Front of the Capitol the next day. The Constitution requires that the inauguration take place on Jan. 20 but because it is a Sunday, the public session and the accompanying parade and festivities will occur on Monday.

Biden has asked Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor to swear him in for a second term. She will be the first Hispanic to administer either a presidential or vice presidential oath.

2016 politics on display as Congress ends term

2013-01-03T12:30:08Z

WASHINGTON (AP) — Rep. Paul Ryan, the GOP's 2012 vice presidential candidate, voted for the "fiscal cliff" compromise that raised taxes on the wealthiest Americans. Republican Sens. Marco Rubio and Rand Paul voted against it. And Vice President Joe Biden helped broker the deal with GOP leaders in the Senate.

As Congress closed out its term this week, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie accused fellow Republicans of showing "callous indifference to the suffering of the people of my state" by not holding a vote on Superstorm Sandy aid. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo joined him in the rebuke.

And Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton drew headlines for a different reason after being hospitalized for a blood clot in her head, an illness that raised questions about the Democrat's political future.

While the next presidential primary voting is still three years away, the political implications of the actions and whereabouts of the potential field of 2016 candidates hung over extraordinary year-end Washington drama.

The fiscal cliff vote forced those in Congress who are eyeing presidential runs to stake out early positions which signal how they may be aligning themselves — and which could come back to haunt them should they move forward.

The intense legislative debate also gave would-be candidates involved in them an opportunity to command the spotlight while rivals were on the sidelines. And the weeks of gridlock over the looming fiscal cliff of big tax increases and spending cuts provided governors weighing bids a chance to cast themselves as outsiders and, perhaps, start building a case for taming Washington paralysis.

For Republican White House hopefuls in Congress, the votes on the compromise that raised taxes on the wealthiest Americans could help frame future presidential primary debates over the debt ceiling, tax code reforms and how to fund government and entitlement programs. The party has rejected tax increases for more than two decades but now finds itself trying to regroup after President Barack Obama's re-election and dealing with a struggle between Republicans who want to take a more pragmatic tax approach and tea party loyalists advocating a firm anti-tax position.

"The American people chose divided government. As elected officials, we have a duty to apply our principles to the realities of governing," Ryan said after joining with House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, in support of the bill, putting him in the minority of the GOP caucus and against the tea party.

Ryan may be spared some political fallout from the right, given that Republican activist Grover Norquist, who for years has pushed GOP lawmakers to pledge not to raise taxes, and several other conservative heavyweights supported the bill, including Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn and Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey, the former head of the anti-tax Club for Growth.

Two other potential 2016 presidential candidates drew praise from conservative opponents of the measure for voting to refuse tax increases.

Rubio, a prominent Hispanic lawmaker in a party trying to connect with Latino voters, called the legislation an impediment to "rapid economic growth and job creation." The Florida senator also said it failed to control runaway debt. Paul, the son of GOP presidential candidate Ron Paul, opposed the bill because of the combination of spending and tax increases. The Kentucky senator said: "We're going to raise taxes and we're going to raise spending. Tell me what's good about that?"

On the Democratic side, Biden played a major role in the deal-making, with his late-night talks with Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell leading to the compromise plan. It was a reminder of the former Delaware senator's legislative skills, which could either impress Democratic primary voters or anger liberals who may view the deal as too much of a compromise with Republicans.

As the vice president helped broker a deal, it was hard for Democrats to overlook where Clinton, the party's formidable potential contender, was: She revealed she was being treated in a New York hospital for a blood clot in her head that formed after she suffered a concussion during a fainting spell in early December. She was released from the hospital Wednesday and doctors said they were confident she would make a full recovery. But the extended illness made it more likely that Clinton, 65, would face scrutiny over her health should she run.

Beyond Washington, two prominent Northeast governors weighed in on Congress' year-end wrangling, and wasted little time assailing the House GOP leadership over hurricane relief.

Christie said his state had been betrayed by his fellow Republicans in the House, who refused to bring a Superstorm Sandy aid package to a vote, adding, "America deserves better than just another example of a government that has forgotten who they are there to serve and why."

Cuomo, a Democrat long considered by party insiders to be a possible White House candidate, issued a joint statement with Christie condemning the "inaction and indifference" by the House. "The people of our states can no longer afford to wait while politicians in Washington play games," they said. House Republicans said after Christie's blistering news conference that they would hold a vote Friday for $9 billion for the national flood insurance program and another on Jan. 15 for a remaining $51 billion in the relief package.

It's impossible to say whether this week's votes and comments will become 2016 campaign fodder. But they certainly give hints about how possible candidates are testing the waters — and how their positions are faring with certain parts of the electorate.

"It strikes me that Ryan is thinking he wants to be the establishment candidate," said Doug Gross, an Iowa Republican who chaired Mitt Romney's 2008 campaign in the state. Conservatives may agree — and not look kindly on that. As Erick Erickson, a conservative commentator and the editor of RedState.com, put it on Twitter, "Thus ends the Paul Ryan 2016 Presidential Exploratory Committee."

Still, some Republicans dismissed any fallout from their candidates' votes.

"I don't ultimately think this one vote will hurt any of them," said Sara Taylor Fagen, a Republican strategist. "But to some degree it probably forecasts their voting patterns for the future."

Nonprofit to take part in inauguration parade

2012-12-26T17:38:41Z

DEERFIELD, Wis. (AP) — A Dane County nonprofit will be marching in the presidential inauguration parade in Washington, D.C. next month.

Deerfield nonprofit At Ease is a horse therapy group for soldiers, veterans and their families.

WMTV-TV reports the group was chosen to walk among the first few groups in President Barack Obama's second-term procession on Jan. 21.

The group started about three years ago at Freedom Stables and will send three riders and three horses to the parade.

Dems cast Wis. electoral votes for Obama

2012-12-17T19:41:23Z

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Wisconsin Democrats have cast the state's 10 electoral votes for Barack Obama and Joe Biden.

The 10 Democratic electors met at noon Monday in Republican Gov. Scott Walker's conference room in the state Capitol. Smiling and laughing, the group cast their votes in about 20 minutes. They applauded themselves as they adjourned and donned pin-on buttons with headshots of the president that declared the wearer an Obama elector.

The group's votes will be sent to Biden in his capacity as president of the U.S. Senate. Copies also will go to the national archivist in Washington, D.C., Wisconsin Secretary of State Doug La Follette and U.S. Judge Barbara Crabb, the chief judge for the federal Western District of Wisconsin, where the votes took place.

Electoral College set to affirm Obama re-election

2012-12-17T18:08:07Z

ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — Tradition trumped suspense Monday as members of the Electoral College cast the official, final votes in an exhausting 2012 presidential election, a constitutional formality on President Barack Obama's march to a second term.

The rite playing in state capitols involved party luminaries and tireless activists carrying out the will of each state's voters. The popular vote from state-to-state dictates whether Democratic or Republican electors get the honor, but the outcome is not in doubt.

Obama is on course to get 332 votes to Romney's 206, barring defectors.

In New Hampshire, electors supporting Obama signed their four ballots and sealed the envelopes with wax that has been in the secretary of state's office for more than 70 years.

"It's been a long haul for all of us," said state Secretary of State Bill Gardner, alluding to New Hampshire's first-in-the-nation primary that sparked intense campaigning there for more than a year.

In Mississippi, which Republican Mitt Romney carried comfortably, six men chosen earlier as electors met in a small committee room in the state Capitol and cast their votes for Romney. Well aware they were doing so in a lost cause, they opted for humor. The state's Republican governor, Phil Bryant, joked that Billy Mounger, an 86-year-old elector, probably wished to vote for Calvin Coolidge, a renowned small-government conservative president in the 1920s.

"I'd like to have Coolidge back," said Mounger, a wealthy Jackson businessman.

The ballots are on their way to Washington, where Congress will officially count them on Jan. 6.

With the Electoral College in focus, advocates for revamping the current system seized on the chance to argue for a change guaranteeing the national popular vote winner is elected president. The compact among states would award future electoral votes to the national vote leader regardless of how candidates perform in a particular state. The shift has been approved in nine places and is pending in many others, but it won't take effect unless states possessing a majority of electoral votes ratify it.

Minnesota Rep. Pat Garofalo, a Republican, said an increasingly shrinking electoral college map has lavished candidate attention on a select few states while most are mere spectators.

"The rest of the country gets hosed," he said, adding, "The most important principle here is the candidate who gets the most votes should win and every vote should be equal."

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Contributing to this reporter were Associated Press writers Holly Ramer in Concord, N.H.; Emily Wagster Pettus in Jackson, Miss.

Election hits $2B mark amid last-minute donations

2012-12-07T12:16:25Z

WASHINGTON (AP) — Remarkable for its last-minute surge of contributions, the U.S. presidential election witnessed unprecedented sums of cash boosting two men in their quest for the White House. It was a cost that surpassed $2 billion and sometimes came with the cloak of anonymity for billionaire donors.

The election was the first in which "super" political action committees spent hundreds of millions on television ads, especially those supporting GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney. Super PACs, like those helping President Barack Obama, benefited from deep wells of money from wealthy donors and corporations.

A handful of mega donors stood out. The most prominent were Las Vegas casino mogul Sheldon Adelson and his wife, Miriam, who together contributed nearly $100 million — as promised — to help Republican candidates. On the left, celebrities like Jeffrey Katzenberg poured millions of dollars into efforts helping Obama win a second term.

More than $230 million in super PAC money bolstered Romney's candidacy, adding to the massive haul by the Republican Party for the former Massachusetts governor. The pro-Romney super PACs were able to hammer the president in swing states with meticulously designed ads highlighting a woeful economy and what they portrayed as Obama's failed record.

A sizable chunk of that cash flowed in just weeks before Election Day. Because Federal Election Commission rules don't require groups to report until late November the money they've raised since mid-October, many top donors escaped scrutiny until after the Nov. 6 voting. The Adelsons' $33 million gift to two pro-Romney super PACs, as well as $3 million from Larry Ellison, head of software giant Oracle Corp., were not divulged until Thursday.

The pro-Obama Priorities USA Action raked in nearly 20 percent of the money it raised this election during the final weeks of the campaign. Much of that $15 million haul, records show, came from repeat million-dollar donors like Fred Eychaner, the founder of Chicago-based Newsweb Corp., and from the ranks of Renaissance Technologies, whose investors donated $4 million in the campaign's final weeks.

Those pots of money, in turn, enabled super PACs to dole out millions of dollars on pricey television ads in important swing states, including some where razor-thin ballot margins had been forecast for Election Day.

"The super PACs helped Romney run a more competitive race," said R. Donahue Peebles, an Obama fundraiser from New York. "But, in the end, money can take a candidate only so far."

Surpassing the $2 billion record was long expected after an election season dominated by the supercharged competitive pressures that both campaigns faced in mounting massive fundraising blitzes to stoke expensive media ad battles and ground wars. The Obama and Romney campaigns mobilized competing squads of ultra-wealthy fundraisers, sought aid from free-spending allied super PACS and deployed multimillion-dollar media broadsides and armies of organizers.

Romney and the GOP reported raising more than $920 million by election's end, compared with Obama and the Democrats' $960 million. Obama had been largely outspent by Romney and allied groups during the summer, but the president's campaign began to close that gap as Election Day approached.

Campaigns and outside groups brought in more than $1 billion to help each candidate, an Associated Press review of financial records showed. In 2008, Obama shattered records by raising more than $750 million in donations. Romney's campaign, for its part, said it stretched its dollar competing against an incumbent.

"Every dollar we raised was put to use in the effort to elect Mitt Romney," said finance chair Spencer Zwick, citing strong fundraising during the final weeks leading up to Nov. 6. Romney's election effort brought in $85.9 million since mid-October, compared with Obama's $111 million during the same period.

After a series of high-profile federal court rulings, the nation's relaxed campaign-finance system allowed for unlimited contributions from corporations, labor groups and others; television advertisements from nonprofit groups that concealed who paid for them and the proliferation of more than 1,000 super PACs. Those groups can't coordinate with the candidates they support, but groups on both sides of the political aisle were staffed with former campaign advisers who were deft political fundraisers.

But the election was known just as much for its sources of so-called dark money as it was for its hefty price tag.

Nonprofit "social welfare" organizations spent hundreds of millions more on so-called issue ads, and those groups don't have to disclose their donors because they're governed by tax law. Open-government groups have pushed Congress, to no avail, for a law that would require politically active groups to reveal their finances.

As well, federal rules require timely disclosure for super PACs, but determining who's behind big donations isn't always easy. In summer 2011, a fledgling company dissolved shortly after making a $1 million contribution to a super PAC supporting Romney; records showed that the company, established and closed over a four-month period, was formed by a Romney supporter who once worked with him at the private equity firm Bain Capital.

Other super PACs active this election season benefited from opaque, eleventh-hour contributions. FreedomWorks for America, a prominent tea party group, reported more than $5.2 million in donations during the first half of October — about 90 percent of the group's fundraising haul — from an apparent shell company in Knoxville, Tenn., called Specialty Group that advertises no product or service.

The company's owner, William Rose, said in a statement he was under no obligation to reveal where his money — ultimately used to boost high-profile congressional races — came from.

Wis. governor insists he's not thinking about 2016

2012-11-26T16:27:14Z

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Plenty of Republicans are talking about a possible presidential run by Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, but Walker insists he's not one of them.

Walker told The Associated Press on Monday that he's focused on putting together the next state budget and his job as governor, not a presidential run in 2016.

Walker was elected in 2010 and shot to stardom in the GOP with his fight to eliminate most public workers' union rights. His proposal sparked massive protests at the state Capitol, as well as a June recall election that Walker won handily.

He says after two elections in two years, he's just happy to be working as governor.

Walker also says he hasn't talked to former Republican vice presidential nominee, Paul Ryan, a close friend, about whether he'll run.

INFLUENCE GAME: Tax them, not us, groups say

2012-11-26T08:45:03Z

WASHINGTON (AP) — A big coalition of business groups says there must be give-and-take in the negotiations to avoid the "fiscal cliff" of massive tax increases and spending cuts. But raising tax rates — a White House priority — is out of the question, the group adds.

The homebuilding industry says it won't tolerate even a nick in the mortgage interest deduction. It doesn't matter, industry leaders say, if it's part of a broad, spread-the-pain package designed to tame the soaring debt.

And there's no ambiguity in the views of the top lobbying arm for retirees.

"AARP to Washington: No cuts to Medicare and Social Security in last-minute budget deal" the group's Web site declares. AARP nixes the notion of slowing the cost-of-living formula for Social Security recipients, even if it's part of a big, bipartisan compromise package. And President Barack Obama should drop his idea of raising Medicare's eligibility age, AARP adds.

So much for the notion of shared sacrifice as Congress and the White House face a Dec. 31 deadline to craft a far-reaching deficit-reduction plan. If they fail, the government tips over the so-called fiscal cliff, at least for a time. Nearly everyone's taxes will rise, and federal programs will be whacked. Financial markets might quake, and a new recession could begin, economists say.

In Washington, meanwhile, it's virtually every group for itself, scrambling to protect 100 percent of each tax break and government payout it now enjoys.

America is split down the middle politically, as the last half dozen presidential races have shown. Aside from a few think tanks and civic-minded groups, there's almost no talk of splitting the pain among interest groups, populations and professions in a manner that seems inevitable if lawmakers are to achieve the trillions of dollars in deficit-reduction both parties call for.

The old adage, "Don't tax thee, don't tax me, tax the man behind the tree" was never more in vogue.

Of course, some of the tough talk may be posturing. No one wants to show a willingness to compromise at the start of a long, tough negotiating season.

Still, the adamant positions that major interest groups are taking — and their insistence that sacrifices hit others, not them — underscore the difficulty Obama and congressional leaders face. The tougher a group talks to its members and the public, the harder it is to back down later when a bit of shared pain for everyone emerges as the only path to a deal.

The line-in-the-sand talk begins, of course, with top politicians themselves.

"Raising tax rates is unacceptable," House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said shortly after Obama won re-election. He seemed unfazed by Obama's campaign promise to let the Bush-era tax cuts expire for couples making over $250,000 a year.

Washington insiders think both men might bend, as they did last year when they nearly struck a "grand bargain" combining major spending cuts with tax increases. Boehner's conservative colleagues rebelled before the package took final shape.

Boehner's House caucus seems slightly less restive now. But outside groups are gearing up to fight virtually every idea being floated to reduce spending or raise revenues. To reach a deficit-cutting package big enough to replace the fiscal cliff, lawmakers will have to stare down these groups, which pour millions of dollars into political campaigns and flood congressional offices with constituents' phone calls.

Interest groups, like many politicians, talk warmly of compromise in the abstract. But they dig in when the talk turns to specific ideas that run counter to their philosophies or profitability.

"There has to be give" in the negotiations, said Jade West, who heads the decade-old Tax Relief Coalition, comprised of major business groups. But on the question of raising tax rates on the rich — probably the most-discussed issue on the fiscal cliff table — West said her group is adamantly opposed.

"I don't care what he said," she said of Obama's campaigning on the topic. "The sound bite, 'tax the rich, tax the rich, tax the rich'" ignores the harm such a policy would do, she said.

"Taxing the people who hire is just nuts," West said.

AARP is equally firm in opposing changes to Social Security and Medicare, the mammoth "entitlement" programs that economists say must be reined in soon to avoid disastrously large deficits in future years.

Seventeen months ago, AARP showed more flexibility. Its policy chief said the group would consider modest cuts in Social Security for future retirees, noting that such changes seem all but inevitable at some point. AARP members complained, the official left, and the organization resumed the stance it holds today: no reductions in Social Security or Medicare benefits.

Itemized tax deductions are another area where Democrats and Republicans are looking for possible ways to generate more government revenue. Here, too, powerful lobbying groups are rallying to oppose any changes that would cost their members money.

The home mortgage interest deduction saves borrowers $99 billion a year in taxes, making it easier to buy and sell houses. Should even a small portion of that tax break be eliminated, perhaps for the richest people, to help reduce federal borrowing?

No, says Jerry Howard, chief executive of the National Association of Home Builders. Home owners suffered huge losses in personal wealth during the recent collapse of the housing market and the sector should be spared any further dings, he said.

"While the rest of the nation was in a recession, we were in a depression," he said. "Congress should be embarrassed" to even think of asking homeowners to help pay for a fiscal crisis that lawmakers brought on themselves through years of inaction, he added.

It's the same tune at universities and other institutions that rely on charitable gifts. They want to fully exempt the charitable gift deduction, which costs the government about $51 billion a year, from a role in the fiscal cliff talks.

"We urge you and House leaders not to impose any limits or caps to the charitable deduction," the Charitable Giving Coalition said in a recent letter to Boehner and others.

Like other interest groups, this one says it has special attributes that set it apart.

"The charitable deduction is different than other itemized deductions in that it encourages individuals to give away a portion of their income to those in need," the letter said.

And so it goes, group by group, tax break by tax break, payout by payout. Everyone is special. Everyone is deserving.

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