Des Moines - As Republican candidates crisscross Iowa seeking last-minute support, the Democratic Party is ignoring the field and focusing on front-runner Mitt Romney.

Today in a Des Moines press conference the DNC turned to a former factory worker who lost his job in the 1990’s to attack what it calls Mitt Romney “job killing record” in the private sector.

Randy Johnson, a former union official at an Indiana paper plant that Bain Capital purchased and then sold after labor discussions broke down in 1995 said of Romney, “I really feel that he didn’t care about the workers.”

Johnson said he’s telling his story now to let voters decide for themselves whether Romney should be president.

Now employed by the United Steelworkers Union in Pittsburgh, Johnson admitted Bain likely acted legally in its dealings with Ampad, but he’s accusing Romney of getting rich at the expense of workers.

“They let Ampad go bankrupt and they made 100 million…tell me there’s nothing wrong with that.”

This is not the first time Johnson’s story has been used as a political weapon against Mitt Romney. In 1994 Democrats used Johnson’s story in television ads attacking Romney during his campaign against then incumbent Sen. Edward Kennedy.

Romney’s 14-year tenure at Bain has been a frequent target of attack from the Obama re-election team and his Republican rivals.

Romney claims during his time at the firm Bain created a net total of 100,000 jobs, but he’s also acknowledged not all of the investments have worked out.

“We invested in over 100 different businesses,” he said last month on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,”  “and in those businesses, many were successful, added lots and lots of jobs. Some were not successful. That is the nature of free enterprise.”

On the campaign trail Romney argues that private sector experience is what’s needed to turn around the economy.

First Read has confirmed, per a high-ranking Democratic source, that Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson (D) will NOT seek re-election in 2012.

Due to some tough polling numbers for Nelson, Democrats already had a pretty good chance of losing this seat next year. But Nelson's decision not to seek re-election makes it harder to keep the seat in the red state of Nebraska.

*** UPDATE *** That is, if the Democrats can't find a top-notch recruit. The same high-ranking Democratic source tells NBC News that former Nebraska Sen. Bob Kerrey (D) is considering a run with Nelson's seat open.

And the source sends this shot at the conservative Nelson, who often voted with Republicans: "He will be the least missed member of the Democratic caucus next year."

Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL), who heads up the Hispanic Caucus' Immigration Task Force, gave a thumbs up to Newt Gingrich's recent immigration comments

“Look, I think Mr. Newt Gingrich’s statements are a step in the right direction,” Gutierrez said today on MSNBC’s "Andrea Mitchell Reports." “They are very different than the kind of course that we've been hearing from the Republican presidential candidates.”

He added, “At least he begins to reflect on the reality that we have 12 million undocumented, many with long histories, with children and families and really deep roots in the communities in which they live.”

At a debate last week, Gingrich said he supported allowing illegal immigrants -- who have lived in the United States for 20-plus years -- to gain some type of legal status.

But on the campaign trail today, Gingrich tried to reassure conservatives in his party that he’s not too moderate on immigration, as he condemned the federal government for challenging South Carolina’s controversial immigration law. That law requires police to call federal immigration officials if they suspect someone that they’ve stopped is an illegal immigrant, and it also requires employers to check the immigration status of new employees.

Gingrich’s criticism of the administration doesn’t surprise Rep. Gutierrez, who is headed to South Carolina tomorrow to protest the law.

“I didn't think there would be a lot of consistency to the statements. He's being banged about pretty ruthlessly by his -- the other presidential candidates. So I wouldn't be too surprised if he changed his position,” Gutierrez said.

Sen. Patty Murray (D) and Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R), the co-chairs of the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, released the following statement (after the markets closed):

After months of hard work and intense deliberations, we have come to the conclusion today that it will not be possible to make any bipartisan agreement available to the public before the committee's deadline.

Despite our inability to bridge the committee's significant differences, we end this process united in our belief that the nation's fiscal crisis must be addressed and that we cannot leave it for the next generation to solve.  We remain hopeful that Congress can build on this committee's work and can find a way to tackle this issue in a way that works for the American people and our economy.

We are deeply disappointed that we have been unable to come to a bipartisan deficit reduction agreement, but as we approach the uniquely American holiday of Thanksgiving, we want to express our appreciation to every member of this committee, each of whom came into the process committed to achieving a solution that has eluded many groups before us. Most importantly, we want to thank the American people for sharing thoughts and ideas and for providing support and good will as we worked to accomplish this difficult task.

We would also like to thank our committee staff, in particular Staff Director Mark Prater and Deputy Staff Director Sarah Kuehl, as well as each committee member's staff for the tremendous work they contributed to this effort.  We would also like to express our sincere gratitude to Dr. Douglas Elmendorf and Mr. Thomas Barthold and their teams at the Congressional Budget Office and Joint Committee on Taxation, respectively, for the technical support they provided to the committee and its members.

NEW YORK -- This Saturday marks one month since Occupy Wall Street protesters set-up camp at Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan. Since then the demonstrations have spread to dozens of cities across the country. This weekend, a global day of protests is planned, and organizers say they expect events to be held in more than 800 cities in 71 countries.

Clearly, the movement appears to be growing. Now we have some new information about how the rest of the country views what’s happening in Zuccotti Park and beyond.

From an NBC News/Wall Street Journal Poll released Wednesday:

• 37% of the country tends to support the movement; 18% oppose; 25% have no opinion. That’s more than those who say they support the Tea Party -- just 26% say they support it, while 64% say they do not.

• The movement is most popular in the Northeast, where people tend to support it 48%-15%. It is least popular in the South where 30% support, 22% oppose.

• Perhaps counter-intuitively, the movement has its highest support among the highest income earners, (those making more than $75,000 year): 40% support, 24% oppose. Among the poorest, however, it is also popular (less than 30K year): 35% support, 11% oppose.

• Among ethnic groups, the protests are popular among African-Americans, 41% support, 7% oppose; among Hispanics 35% support, 15 oppose; among Whites 37% support, 18% oppose.

• Among political parties, unsurprisingly, the movement is most popular among Democrats (56%-6%), and least popular among Republicans, where a plurality do not support 17%-34%. Independents support 34%-17%.

Since the demonstrations started there have also been nagging questions about what protesters believe in, and what they want. Early last week New York Magazine conducted an informal survey of 100 protesters at Zuccotti Park to gauge their views on everything from President Obama to capitalism. A few snippets are below.

What do you think of Obama?

• I believed in him, and he let me down: 40
• He’s doing great: 1
• I never believed in him: 27
• He’s doing the best he can: 22

Did you vote in the 2010 midterm elections?

• Yes: 39
• No: 55
• No, but only because I wasn’t 18:

Rank yourself on the following Scale of Liberalism:

• Not liberal at all: 6
• Liberal but fairly mainstream (i.e., Barack Obama): 3
• Strongly liberal (i.e., Paul Krugman): 12
• Fed up with Democrats, believe country needs overhaul (i.e., Ralph Nader): 41
• Convinced the U.S. government is no better than, say, Al Qaeda (i.e., Noam Chomsky): 34

For more from the field on Occupy Wall Street, check out msnbc.com's Field Notes blog.

*** UPDATE *** We checked to see how the supporters and opponents of Occupy Wall Street broke down in their approval or disapproval of President Obama.

Those who tend to support the protesters, said they approved of the president's job 61%-35%.

Those who tend to oppose the protesters, did not approve of the president's job by an 11%-88%

Those with no opinion were 42%-49%.

The margin of error on this question is +/-3.55%.

The summer of Democratic discontent has now spilled over into the fall, John Harwood writes in the New York Times.

The top Senate Democrat, Harry Reid of Nevada, considers the White House chief of staff, William M. Daley, to be ham-handed. Democratic leaders complain that Team Obama’s zeal for secrets creates more problems than it solves.

For instance, Senate Democrats believe inadequate consultation led the White House to botch the unveiling of “pay-fors” for Mr. Obama’s jobs package. Instead of reducing oil industry tax breaks and deductions for affluent taxpayers, which produced Democratic defections, they wanted the White House to adopt the “millionaire’s surtax” that the Senate is now substituting.

Mr. Obama’s advisers think Mr. Reid has overreacted to perceived slights. They view Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, a persistent critic of administration tax strategy whom Mr. Reid promoted within the leadership, as a self-promoting know-it-all.

Despite Republicans' efforts to link Democrat Earl Ray Tomblin to President Obama and his health-care plan, Tomblin pulled out the victory in the West Virginia governor's race.

Tomblin, the acting governor and former state Senate president who took over when Joe Manchin became a U.S. Senator, defeated Republican Bill Maloney, a former drilling company executive, 50%-47%.

Polls, both public and private, had shown the race closing in recent days. And the Republican Governors Association blitzed the airwaves in the Washington, D.C., media market -- which reaches part of West Virginia -- with ads questioning why Tomblin hadn't signed on to a lawsuit seeking to stop the implementation of the federal health-care plan that passed last year.

DES MOINES, Iowa –- Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz says the Republican Party is more worried about beating President Barack Obama than about creating jobs.

“So far, they only appear to care about one job -- Barack Obama’s -- and Democrats care about American jobs,” Wasserman-Schultz said this afternoon during a press avail.

The chairwoman is spending the weekend in the Hawkeye State not only campaigning for a few Members of Congress but also pushing for passage of the president’s American Jobs Act.

“The benefit of the American Jobs Act, not only would it be a shot in the arm for the economy, but President Obama proposed it with it being fully paid for," Wasserman-Schultz said. "We are confident. We can’t afford to wait. We can’t spend months or weeks waiting for scores. We need to act. The American people need jobs now."

It's unclear, however, how the measure would be paid for. The president tasked the joint "supercommittee" with finding a way to do so.

She contended Republicans in Congress want to beat Obama at the expense of the U.S. economy. A lot of the problems, Wasserman-Schultz said, come from the Tea Party and what she said was a lack of leadership by Speaker John Boehner to allow a small group of members to dictate what his caucus will or will not support.

“They are willing to allow the economy to remain stagnant for another 14 months and not move forward together in recovery in order to just be able to regain the White House,” Wasserman-Schultz said about the Republicans not supporting Obama's jobs act.

Of course, she also weighed in on the 2012 GOP presidential race while speaking to reporters at Drake University. After all, she was in that all-important first-in-the-nation caucus state.

“They are really all the same," the Florida congresswoman said. "It doesn’t really much matter which one of them wins the primary. They can’t out right wing the other enough."

The DNC chair, who only mentioned GOP contenders Rick Perry and Mitt Romney by name once, says she is confident that President Obama will win reelection and believes that Democrats can take back the House of Representatives, as well. She said she plans to be back in Iowa a few times next year.

A day after House Republican leaders yesterday were unable to get a stopgap spending measure (continuing resolution) passed in the House, Speaker John Boehner said there was no threat of a government shutdown.

"Listen there is no threat of a government shutdown Let's just get this out there," he said. "This continuing resolution was designed to be a bipartisan bill, and we had every reason to believe that our counterparts across the aisle would support it. Once they began to see where some of our votes were, they decided to play politics and vote against disaster relief for millions of Americans who have been affected by this."

Boehner added, "We are going to meet with our members later today. We are going to present some options and decide on a way forward."

"But I have always believed in allowing the House to work its will. I understood what the risk was yesterday, but why not put the bill on the floor and let the members speak ... and they did."

The measure yesterday failed by a 195-230 vote, with 189 House Republicans voting yes and 48 voting no, and six Democrats voting yes and 182 voting no.

The chief disagreement: The amount of money the continuing resolution would provide for disaster relief after Hurricane Irene, as well as the GOP desire to offset that relief with spending cuts.

"My hope is that they will come out and resolves this," House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said. "Assistance at a time of a natural disaster should not be a controversial issue. It hasn't been recently."

"These people are no less affected as Democrats as Republicans, Americans have been hit hard and it shouldn't be hard for them to be made whole."

This week, Congress will have its first substantial policy argument since the members came back from recess. And what would that be? Another fight over how to continue to fund the federal government.

Here are the parameters of the debate in layman’s terms, as this one is especially confusing (even after the summer's debt-ceiling debate).

1. The money

On Sept. 30, 2011, Fiscal Year 2011 funds will run out. This is the agreement that was reached in March during the near government shutdown. However, unlike in March when the government came within 45 minutes of a shutdown over a funding fight, the general sentiment on Capitol Hill is that neither side wants to even come close to a government shutdown -- since Congress is polling so low. In fact, as House Majority Leader Eric Cantor said today, “Nobody is intending for a government shutdown, the country has had enough of it.”

Part of the debt limit deal was that when the Fiscal Year 2011 ended on Sept. 30, the funding number for Fiscal Year 2012 would be $1.043 trillion. There's no debate on that point. So unlike last March, when both sides wanted to adjust the overall funding number, everyone agrees on $1.043 trillion. This time, however, the debate will be over where the money is spent.

Even on the last point, there’s widespread agreement on the majority of the continuation of funds. But where there's disagreement is on the subject of FEMA and emergency disaster-relief funding.

2. FEMA

Last week, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid passed a stand-alone FEMA/disaster relief funding bill that included $6.1 billion in funds. That bill got support from 10 GOP senators. In an effort to pit House GOPers against Senate GOPers, Reid is going to attach an amendment to the House GOP government funding bill that would make the FEMA/disaster relief funds equal to $6.1 billion and make the Senate vote on it. The House bill appropriates $2.65 billion for FEMA, which is far below Obama’s request of $5.1 billion.

The House GOP says there are giving more than Obama requested in 2011, and that the states themselves have not finished the task of appropriately asking for how much money is needed for disaster relief.

Today, House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy said there are not enough votes in the House for the Senate-passed FEMA funding bill. So that is an issue that needs to be figured out. Cantor dodged a question on whether or not the House would leave town on Friday no matter what -- even if a deal isn’t reached.

Another issue with Democrats is the GOP insistence on off-setting the billion dollars for FY 2011 with cuts in other places. Currently, the FY 2011 funds would be offset by cuts in a green car vehicle loan guarantee bill that is part of Obama's green jobs initiative which -- according to Republicans -- has a $4 billion surplus that hasn't been used. “

3. So where do they go?

House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer said earlier today that Democrats may vote against the overall funding bill if the House GOP pairs budget cuts with FEMA funding (i.e., what they are doing with the green car money).

Why is that important?

There’s speculation that a decent number of conservative House GOPers are going to vote against the government funding bill no matter what, because they deem it to be too costly and are still mad about the debt limit. There’s also speculation that Democrats -- coupled with enough conservative Republicans -- could lead to enough NO votes on the government funding bill. Hoyer sees leverage in House Dems voting no on the bill because the GOP leadership would need to add more FEMA funds to get their votes and avoid a shutdown.

4. Wednesday

The House expects to pass their government funding bill tomorrow -- to which Reid will add his FEMA money as soon as he gets it. It remains to be seen whether or not Reid can get 60 votes again for his version of FEMA funding. If McConnell can whip that number down, then it’s up to Reid to how the government funding bill will proceed. Either he passes the House funding bill or holds out for more FEMA money.

The bill will fund the government through Nov. 18th, 2011. Before Thanksgiving we’ll have to go through this process again and the hope is that Congress will able to fund the government for the full fiscal year. (Don’t hold your breath.)

5. Deadline

The deadline is this Friday because both chambers expect to be on recess next week. It’s expected that an agreement will be reached as the appetite for any discussion of a shutdown is ZERO. However, there’s a small chance that -- due to procedural issues -- they might need to take until Saturday to figure all of this out. We’ll know a lot more after tomorrow.

Last November, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) shot a scene in Chicago for Steven Soderbergh’s new film “Contagion,” which is due to open next week. Days before the shoot, his office issued a tongue-in-cheek statement from Durbin about his Hollywood debut: “All those hours on C-SPAN have prepared me for this historic moment in my life, but I’m still a little nervous. All I can think of is going on too long with the thank you list in my Oscar acceptance speech.”

Well, no word yet on how much screen-time Durbin gets (if you look closely at the trailer you can see a wide shot of him swearing in a witness) or if his performance is Oscar-worthy if he's in the film, but as for his potential as an actor, you might be interested to know he apparently gets a thumbs up from director Soderbergh.

In a statement issued to NBC News shortly after Durbin filmed the scene (and until now unpublished), Soderbergh explained it this way: “Why Steven Spielberg chose Daniel Day Lewis to play Lincoln over Senator Durbin is a complete mystery to me.”

NBC News has learned that the Senate plans to pass -- by unanimous consent -- the House-passed FAA reauthorization bill. This would have the same impact as a "clean" extension of the funding. Workers could be rehired and the impasse resolved.

The Transportation Department will release a letter shortly saying that Secretary Ray LaHood will agree to grant a waiver to the rural communities affected by the House bill. That means they will not be adversely affected.

In a statement, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid says:

"I am pleased to announce that we have been able to broker a bipartisan compromise between the House and the Senate to put 74,000 transportation and construction workers back to work. This agreement does not resolve the important differences that still remain. But I believe we should keep Americans working while Congress settles its differences, and this agreement will do exactly that."

*** UPDATE *** In a statement, LaHood says, per NBC's Jay Blackman: "This is a tremendous victory for American workers everywhere. From construction workers to our FAA employees, they will have the security of knowing they are going to go back to work and get a paycheck - and that's what we've been fighting for. We have the best aviation system in the world and we intend to keep it that way."