A Tennessee congressman who's found himself in trouble before on Twitter said he'd tried to "punk" the Washington press corps by directing, then deleting, a seemingly flirty tweet to the singer Cyndi Lauper this week.

After having found himself in the middle of a frenzy earlier this year regarding a message he sent toward a young woman -- whom he later admitted was his daughter -- Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., said that he was attempting to rope D.C. reporters into a feeding frenzy by directing a tweet toward Lauper, the '80s pop star. Both had attended a White House celebration of Memphis music earlier this week.

Cohen made two tweets toward Lauper on Tuesday, which he subsequently deleted. Both were archived by a government transparency group, the Sunlight Foundation:

"@cyndilauper great night,couldn't believe how hot u were.see you again next Tuesday.try a little tenderness."

"Cyndi,Wow what a night!See you next Tuesday and Try a little tenderness again!Wow!What a special night.Thanks Steve."

Two days later, he mentioned Lauper again, this time on the House floor where he praised her performance at the White House event.

“While there were a lot of great performers there, I want to put a particular shout-out to Ms. Cyndi Lauper, ‘cause she’s special,” he said. 

On Friday, Cohen told NBC News that the tweets were part of an elaborate prank, to demonstrate how the media jumps for salacious stories. He went on to say "tweet and delete" is the best way to get media's attention, accusing the press of a shameful rush to judgment.

Cohen hopes that the attention given to the Lauper tweet while promote a PBS documentary that airs on Tuesday about Memphis Soul music. (Cohen represents a Memphis-area district.)

He also mentioned that he had "waited for two months to trick the press corps after what they did to my family," referencing the revelation that he is the father of a young woman he tweeted at during the State of the Union address.

**UPDATE**

During a press event Friday, Cohen was asked why the media should believe that the tweets were fake. He told reporters that he spoke to two other lawmakers about the plan before it unfolded. 

"They can call (Rep.) John Yarmuth and (Rep.) Joe Courtney who I talked to about it on Monday on the floor and said, 'Boys, wait till I see what I do this week with the press,'" Cohen said, "So call Yarmuth or Courtney."

Spokesmen for both offices tell NBC News that Cohen informed them of the plot after it had happened. 

Also of note: the House wasn't in session on Monday.

NBC News reached out to Cohen's office for clarification, and was told that he misspoke -- he meant to say that the other lawmakers were told of the plan before the story broke, not before the tweets were deleted.

NBC's Frank Thorp contributed to this report.

This story was originally published on Fri Apr 12, 2013 2:14 PM EDT

Women are a key driver of support for legislation overhauling the nation's gun and immigration laws, according to new data in the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, just as Congress prepares to take up major legislation on both of those issues.

Women outpace men in their support for stricter gun laws and immigration reform that provides undocumented immigrants a pathway to citizenship, data which becomes more salient in light of the Republican Party’s effort to regain its footing with women voters after last fall’s elections.

View full poll results here

The gender gap is most pronounced when it comes to the issue of stricter gun controls, legislation on which the Senate voted to begin consideration this Thursday.

Sixty-five percent of women said they favor stricter laws governing the sale of firearms, versus just 5 percent who favor less strict laws. Twenty-seven percent of women said the law should be kept as it is now. By comparison, 44 percent of men favor stricter gun laws, while 41 percent said laws should stay the same.

(Also of note: Self-described mothers favor stricter gun laws even more overwhelmingly; 70 percent of mothers with children in the home said that laws governing firearm sales should be tightened.)

While the gap is less pronounced, women respondents in this month’s NBC/WSJ poll were more sympathetic to arguments in favor of comprehensive immigration reform.

Women favor immigration reform that allows a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants by a 36-point margin. Sixty-seven percent of women said they would favor such a proposal, versus 31 percent who would oppose those reforms. Men also favor immigration reform, but by a slightly slimmer, 60 percent to 38 percent spread.

When explained that a pathway to citizenship would involve paying a fine, any back taxes, passing a security background check and taking other measures, men and women would favor immigration reform at roughly the same levels: Seventy-eight percent of women favor such a proposal, versus 74 percent of men.

The gender gap also extends to some high-profile social issues at the forefront of American political debate at the moment, like same-sex marriage.

In the poll, women favor allowing gay and lesbian couples to marry, 56 percent to 40 percent. Men, by contrast, favor allowing same-sex marriages, 50 percent to 43 percent. (That's a relatively seismic shift for men; in the March 2004 NBC/WSJ poll, just 26 percent of men favored gay marriage, while 52 percent opposed.)

The poll was conducted April 5-8, and has a 4.3 percent margin of error for the subsample of women, and a 4.5 percent margin of error for the subsample of men.

With a bipartisan group of senators expected to unveil immigration-reform legislation in the next few days, a brand-new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll finds that nearly two-thirds of Americans – including eight-in-10 Latinos – support giving undocumented immigrants a path to citizenship.

A slight majority of Republican respondents oppose this path, possibly foreshadowing the resistance which any comprehensive immigration reform bill might receive, especially in the GOP-controlled House of Representatives.

But when Republicans hear that a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants includes paying fines and back taxes, almost three-quarters of them support the idea.

What’s more, a majority of the public – for the first time in the poll – agrees with the statement that immigration strengthens the nation, reflecting a shift in attitude on this issue. 

Republican pollster Bill McInturff, who conducted this survey with the Democratic firm Hart Research Associates, says that this change in sentiment on immigration “speaks to something potent,” particularly given the economic struggles of the past five years.

"These more positive attitudes provide more leeway for lawmakers to build support for change on this issue," McInturff adds.

View the poll results here

On other matters, the poll shows a majority of the public favors stricter gun laws, President Barack Obama’s approval rating falling below 50 percent for the first time since Oct. 2012, and fewer than two-in-10 Americans saying the automatic budget cuts known as “the sequester” have significantly affected them.

Immigration – a strength or weakness?
A majority (54 percent) agrees with the statement that immigration adds to the nation’s character and strengthens it by bringing diversity and talent to the country.

Saul Loeb / AFP - Getty Images

Tens of thousands of immigration reform supporters march in the "Rally for Citizenship" on the West Lawn of the US Capitol in Washington, DC, on April 10, 2013.

In a 2010 NBC/WSJ survey, fewer than half of respondents agreed with that statement, and in 2005, a plurality said that immigration weakened the nation.

Additionally, the Democratic Party holds a 7-point advantage over the Republican Party on the question of which party does a better job in dealing with immigration.

Among an oversample of Latino respondents, the Democratic edge increases to 26 points.

Regarding the current legislative debate over immigration, 64 percent of respondents say they favor allowing undocumented immigrants to have the opportunity to become legal American citizens.

That includes 82 percent of Latinos, 80 percent of Democrats and 54 percent of political independents supporting a path to citizenship.

But 51 percent of Republicans oppose it, versus 47 percent who back it.

Yet when told that the pathway to citizenship would require paying fines and back taxes, as well as passing a security-background check, support grows – with 76 percent of total respondents, and 73 percent of Republicans backing the path.

That pathway to citizenship is the heart of a comprehensive immigration reform proposal that the so-called “Gang of Eight” senators – including Democrats Chuck Schumer and Dick Durbin and Republicans John McCain and Marco Rubio – are drafting and plan to introduce in the next few days.

The proposal also calls for strengthening the U.S.-Mexico border, tying that security to establishing the path to citizenship and expanding legal immigration.

A majority of all respondents (51 percent) believe undocumented immigrants should be eligible for citizenship five years after application. Just 12 percent say the eligibility should occur after 10 years, and only 18 percent believe citizenship should be immediate.

On border security, nearly two-thirds of Americans (63 percent) think the U.S.-Mexico border is “mostly” or “totally” not secure, compared with a smaller percentage of Latino respondents (49 percent) who believe that.

55 percent favor stricter gun laws
In addition to immigration, Congress is grappling with the issue of gun control, with the Senate expected to vote on Thursday whether to begin debate on a Democratic-backed measure requiring background checks for most gun sales.

According to the poll, 55 percent favor stricter laws covering the sale of firearms.

That’s down 6 points from the Feb. 2013 NBC/WSJ poll – conducted after Obama’s State of the Union address that contained a call to action on gun control – but it’s essentially unchanged from the Jan. 2013 poll.

Yet there’s a wide political divide to these numbers: 82 percent of Democrats favor stricter gun laws, while just 27 percent of Republicans do.

Obama’s approval rating drops to 47 percent
Despite majorities backing the broad outlines of his legislative priorities on immigration and guns, President Obama confronts a pessimistic public and declining poll numbers.

Only 31 percent of Americans believe the country is headed in the right direction – a decline of 10 points since Dec. 2012.

His overall job-approval rating stands at 47 percent, which is down 3 points since February and which represents the first time he’s been below 50 percent since just before the 2012 election.

In addition, 47 percent approve of the president’s economic handling (up three points from February), and 46 percent approve of his handling of foreign policy (down six from Dec. 2012).

Democratic pollster Fred Yang of Hart Research says that the public’s sour attitude, particularly on the economy, has “dragged down” Obama’s numbers.

Sequester’s limited impact (so far)
Lastly, the NBC/WSJ poll finds that only a combined 16 percent of Americans say the automatic across-the-board budget cuts that went into effect earlier in the year have impacted them either “a great deal” or “quite a bit.”

By comparison, a whopping 75 percent say the cuts to military and non-military programs have affected them “just some” or “not much.”

But a plurality of respondents – 47 percent – believe the cuts will mostly harm the economy, versus 30 percent who say they won’t have an impact.

The NBC/WSJ poll was conducted of 1,000 adults (including 300 cell phone-only respondents) from April 5-8, and it has an overall margin of error of plus-minus 3.1 percentage points.

Democrats are relishing in a surprising opportunity to possibly pick up a House seat in a solidly Republican district in South Carolina, where Mark Sanford is hoping to stage a political comeback next month.

Sanford, the embattled former governor who left office in 2011 under a cloud of scandal following an extramarital affair that publicly wrecked his marriage, officially won the Republican nomination for the May 7 special election to fill the vacancy in South Carolina’s 1st congressional district. He beat rival Republican Curtis Bostic in a runoff election with about 57 percent of the vote.

Though Sanford represented this reliably GOP district for three terms in the 1990s, he faces a tougher-than-expected challenge from Democratic nominee Elizabeth Colbert-Busch, a Clemson University administrator and the sister of Comedy Central personality Stephen Colbert.

For Sanford, a onetime conservative rock star who had once flirted with the possibility of seeking the Republican presidential nomination, next month’s special election is a shot at redemption, both personal and political. His 2009 admission of an affair with an Argentinian woman, María Belén Chapur, and bizarre subsequent explanations of his absence to pursue that affair, nearly ruined his career and left a lasting negative impression with voters that could help Colbert-Busch score an unlikely victory.

An internal poll released by the Colbert-Busch campaign earlier this week showed the Democrat leading Sanford by three points – within the poll’s margin of error, but still noteworthy for its reflection of a competitive race in this district that Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney won last fall by 18 points.

Sanford, speaking Wednesday on “Morning Joe,” argued that Colbert-Busch’s ability to skate to the Democratic nomination as he endured a competitive Republican primary, helped explain those numbers.

“I think that when people really begin to digest those ideas – some real strong contrasts in terms of where she would be versus where I would be – that's going to substantially change a poll that, right now, simply defines name ID as people know it, not issue ID,” he said. “And ultimately, I think debates and campaigns are ultimately decided on issues.”

Colbert-Busch benefits, too, from her brother’s celebrity and heightened media interest in the campaign. It’s for that reason that Republicans in Washington said Wednesday that they are watching the race closely, and refuse to take for granted a seat that Democrats haven’t held since 1981.

Both Republicans and Democrats generally admit that the race might not be as close if not for Sanford, and the baggage associated with his affair. But GOP sources also contend that Colbert-Busch has managed to escape most scrutiny, and that the district’s Republican-leaning voters will end up with Sanford once his Democratic opponent’s views are fully litigated over the course of the next month.

The National Republican Congressional Committee, which is tasked with electing GOP candidates to the House, for instance on Wednesday chided Colbert-Busch for campaigning while continuing to remain on-staff at Clemson.

Bruce Smith / AP

Former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford leaves the voting booth after voting at his precinct in Charleston, S.C., on Tuesday, April 2, 2013.

“Why should South Carolina taxpayers have to foot the bill for Elizabeth Colbert Busch to campaign for Congress? We already knew Colbert Busch supported Obama and Pelosi’s big-spending policies, but now she’s taken her disregard for the taxpayers to a new low,” said NRCC spokeswoman Katie Prill.

(Clemson says the NRCC's characterization is incorrect, and that Colbert-Busch is not on the state payroll at the moment. Her annual leave, to which she is entitled, ended on March 26. "Elizabeth Colbert Busch is not on the state payroll in South Carolina. She took a leave of absence from her job at Clemson University the day she filed for office," said John Gouch, the school's assistant director of media relations.)

The ultimate test of both parties’ commitment might come in the form of a check cut by the NRCC or its Democratic counterpart, the DCCC. Both sides maintain that they have not yet decided whether to spend money on television ads in this coastal South Carolina district, which could help swing the race toward either candidate.

Meanwhile, Democrats are eager to have Sanford available as a public face of the GOP over the next month, if not more. South Carolina Democrats on Wednesday eagerly reminded reporters of the letter written by state Republican lawmakers (including now-U.S. Sen. Tim Scott, R) to Sanford in 2009, which asked for his resignation (Sanford declined). The letter called Sanford’s actions during his affair an example of “poor decision making and questionable leadership.”

Sanford’s bid for a comeback also comes as Republicans nationally seek to overhaul their image, and broaden the GOP’s appeal among Hispanics, young voters and women – three groups among whom the party suffered during last fall’s election.

“The last thing they [Republicans] need is Mark Sanford to be their public face,” a Democratic campaign source said in anticipation of the bruising – and increasingly nationalized – campaign set to play out over the next few weeks.

This story was originally published on Wed Apr 3, 2013 1:34 PM EDT

Want a sense of the scope of the GOP's internal divide between conservatives and the party establishment? Take a look at some recent poll numbers that paint a fuller picture of just how many of the Republican Party's core elements object to the direction of the party.

A CBS News poll released Tuesday evening found what most other polls have recently: the Republican Party suffers from a negative impression among most Americans.

Sixty percent of all U.S. adults, the CBS poll found, have an unfavorable opinion of the Republican Party, versus 31 percent who have a favorable opinion of the GOP.

Democrats, expectedly, have strongly negative opinions toward Republicans; self-described independents are also sour on the GOP, 60 to 24 percent.

A closer look inside the numbers, though, tells the deeper story.

One in four self-described Republicans, 25 percent, also said in the CBS poll that they had a negative opinion of their own party – an ominous sign as the GOP searches for a pathway back to electoral success.

Much of the news about efforts to remake the party, such as the Republican National Committee's new "Growth and Opportunity Project," have been confined to an inside-the-Beltway audience. Much of the outreach called for by the report has yet to take place, making any improvement in voters' impression of the party a lagging indicator.

Moreover, the GOP's internal angst might not necessarily be surprising given the party is still reeling from its loss in a second consecutive presidential election. More recently, party leaders cut a deal that allowed taxes to rise -- a prospect that's anathema to the Republican base.

The CBS poll doesn't offer more detailed breakdowns, but looking inside the internal numbers of the NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll late last month and a CNN/ORC poll released in mid-March offer clues to the source of internal Republican discord.

Both polls found that blanket "Republicans" had a slightly more favorable opinion of the Republican Party than in the CBS poll. The NBC/WSJ poll, conducted in late February, found that 63 percent of Republicans had a favorable opinion of the Republican Party, versus 15 percent who expressed a negative impression; 21 percent of self-described GOPers were neutral. Similarly, 82 percent of Republicans rated the party favorably in the CNN poll, versus 14 percent who had an unfavorable opinion of the GOP.

It's among conservatives where opinion turns against the Republican Party establishment.

Less than half of self-identified conservatives -- 48 percent -- expressed a favorable opinion of the Republican Party in the February NBC/WSJ poll. Twenty-six percent of conservatives had a negative opinion of the party of which they ostensibly serve as the base, and a quarter -- 25 percent -- were neutral.

The CNN poll includes similar numbers; that poll, which was conducted from March 15-17, found that 58 percent of self-identified conservatives have a favorable opinion of the Republican Party, versus 36 percent who hold an unfavorable impression.

The numbers cut to the core of the GOP's identity crisis. Party leaders wish to broaden the party's appeal and, on some issues (like immigration reform), move toward the political center. That extends to primary elections, in which the GOP establishment hopes to re-assert itself, and avoid instances where unelectable conservatives sometimes topple candidates regarded as more electable in the general election.

To be sure, too, these numbers don't necessarily suggest that conservatives are so disaffected that they would stay home in general election contests. Even the most critical of conservatives eventually came around last fall to supporting Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney.

But these numbers suggest that the party's right flank -- the heart and soul of the Republican Party -- haven't bought in. And until they do, a transformation of the party will be that much more difficult.

There’s been plenty of talk among Washington Republicans about the need to recruit better candidates, the kind who will avoid cringe-worthy campaign moments that did in several GOP candidates last fall, and weighed down the party nationwide.

But there are already several conservatives gearing up for high-profile races over the next two years who threaten to stop that effort in its tracks.

Following the missteps of candidates like Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock – the Senate candidates in Missouri and Indiana, respectively, who lost winnable Senate races after making roundly criticized comments about rape – establishment Republicans have been far more vocal about the need to rein in primary processes that produced such nominees.

The fact that 2012’s mistakes were not an aberration compounded Republicans’ worries. The same Tea Party fervor that produced rock stars like Rand Paul and Marco Rubio yielded Republican Senate nominees like Christine O’Donnell, Ken Buck and Sharron Angle – GOP candidates regarded as having squandered good pickup opportunities in Delaware, Colorado and Nevada.

This week’s Republican National Committee report recommending ways to strengthen the party came out and said it bluntly: “Groupthink is an issue.”

But in races like this fall’s gubernatorial campaign in Virginia – along with several high-profile state races next fall – will offer direct tests of whether the GOP can finally navigate the narrow strait between conservative allegiance and electability in the general election.

The most immediate test will come this fall in Virginia, where Ken Cuccinelli is the candidate looking to keep the governor’s mansion in Republican hands for two consecutive terms for the first time since the mid-1990s.

Cuccinelli has long been a favorite of conservatives, having used his current office as state attorney general to launch court challenges to President Barack Obama’s health-care law. His reservoir of support on the right helped push Virginia’s relatively more moderate lieutenant governor, Bill Bolling, out of the race. (Bolling subsequently weighed running as an independent candidate, but decided against it.)

And already, Cuccinelli has run his race in swing-state Virginia as an unabashed conservative. (His campaign-year manifesto, appropriately, is entitled “No Apologies.”) Whether that tack will work in a state that’s drifted toward the political middle – represented best by Obama’s wins there in 2008 and 2012 – is very much an open question, one which will be answered this fall.

Already, likely Democratic nominee Terry McAuliffe’s campaign has revived a familiar playbook against Cuccinelli, seizing every opportunity to cast him as out-of-step with Virginia voters. The latest example came this week when a Democratic tracker released a video of Cuccinelli appearing to compare slavery to abortion during a speech last summer.

"Over time, the truth demonstrates its own rightness, and its own righteousness," Cuccinelli says in the clip. "Our experience as a country has demonstrated that on one issue after another. Start right at the beginning -- slavery. Today, abortion."

The McAuliffe campaign pounced.

“His comments reflect a career-long focus on an extreme ideological agenda that has nothing to do with Virginians’ top concern: the economy,” the Democratic candidate said. “Politicians who constantly create controversy on divisive social issues harm Virginia’s standing as one of the best states for business.”

And, looking ahead to some of next year’s campaigns, there are other GOP candidates who could follow in Cuccinelli’s steps and pose a challenge to Republicans’ efforts to seek out pitch-perfect nominees to wage successful campaigns in swing states.

Steve Helber / AP file photo

Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli gestures as he talks about the Supreme Court decision on the health-care law during a press conference Thursday, June 28, 2012 in Richmond, Va.

In Iowa, Rep. Steve King has an inside track to the Republican nomination in next year’s Senate race, where he’ll be looking to pick up a seat for the GOP following the retirement of Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin. He survived a competitive re-election campaign last fall, an experience which he said hadn’t caused him to back off of his brand of unflinching conservatism. 

“I went through the toughest election of my life last fall. I had tracking cameras around me from St. Patrick’s Day through Nov. 6 … always focused on me, trying to get a second or a minute that they could use against me in an ad,” King said in his speech last week before CPAC, the gathering of conservative activists. “They’re in the business of trying to undermine and weaken us, and I didn’t back up on any principle.” 

Republicans are also nervously watching Michigan, where they’re trying to avoid the missteps of 2012, when Senate nominee Pete Hoekstra doomed his campaign early on with a racially-charged ad targeting Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow. 

Already, several Republicans have bowed out from the race, easing the path for the libertarian-minded Rep. Justin Amash, should he decide to seek the nomination. Though his conservatism isn’t necessarily in the mold of Cuccinelli or King, Amash would almost certainly face the same efforts from Democrats looking to cast him as too conservative for the Great Lakes State. 

Just in his second term, Amash has exhibited a repeated willingness to ruffle fellow Republicans’ feathers, so much that he ended up being one of the four House Republicans stripped of their committee assignments by the GOP leadership this year. He told National Review in December that House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, would not be welcome in his district. And Amash was one of the lawmakers Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., last week called “wacko birds” for their opposition to the Obama administration’s drone policy.

Amash was one of 10 Republicans who, on Thursday, voted against Rep. Paul Ryan’s 2014 budget because it didn’t go far enough in cutting spending. Another was Georgia Rep. Paul Broun, a deeply conservative Republican who’s the only officially announced GOP candidate in the state’s Senate race. 

He said in an interview earlier this month that his fellow Republicans aren’t doing enough to repeal Obamacare, despite the repeated votes to repeal part or all of the law. (It inevitably dies in the Senate, or would face a veto from Obama.) 

“There are a lot of Republicans who call themselves conservatives, who, in fact, are not,” Broun said. “We need to continue to, every few weeks, have a bill on the floor to repeal pieces of Obamacare as well as votes to repeal the whole law. President Obama will not sign a bill, but that’s the point.”

Related:

GOP report calls for sweeping reforms to compete in 2016

Three days, two breakout stars and one Big Gulp: Eight takeaways from CPAC

'We have to compete': GOP assesses path back to power

Republicans on Tuesday debuted their full 2014 budget, an ambitious proposal that would seek to balance the budget within a decade, but which is also almost certain to never become law.

Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., the Republican budget chief and 2012 vice presidential nominee, called his third budget an "invitation" to President Barack Obama and Senate Democrats to begin bargaining toward a deal to balance the budget. 

"This is not only a responsible, reasonable, balanced plan," Ryan said, "it's also an invitation. This is an invitation to the president of the United States, to the Senate Democrats to come together to fix these problems."

But just as Obama has made new overtures to Ryan and other Capitol Hill Republicans in hopes of breaking the fiscal logjam in Congress, Ryan produced a new budget that offers up few concessions to Democrats, and doubles down upon many of the policies on which Republicans campaigned during last fall's election.

The new Ryan budget calls for repealing Obama's signature health care reform law, and sweeping changes to Medicare for anyone under the age of 54 -- familiar policies for which Republicans have aggressively pushed during the last two years. The budget's goal would be to eliminate all but two income tax brackets, one at 10 percent and the other at 25 percent; it would raise no new revenue through taxes, cutting against the president's own demands for additional revenue.

Click here for the full text of the budget (.pdf)

"While the House Republican budget aims to reduce the deficit, the math just doesn't add up," White House press secretary Jay Carney said in a statement.

But the White House stopped short of waging a blistering assault on the Ryan plan, offering a glimmer of hope that bipartisanship might still eventually carry the day. 

"While the president disagrees with the House Republican approach, we all agree we need to leave a better future for our children," Carney said. "The president will continue to work with Republicans and Democrats in Congress to grow the economy and cut the deficit in a balanced way."

Still, Ryan defended the generally unflinching conservatism of his budget.

"That means we surrender our principles? That means we stop believing in what we believe in?" he asked at a press conference to debut his proposals. "Elections do have consequences ... This is our offer, this is our vision."

The GOP proposal comes amid new overtures by Obama to Republicans in Congress. The president had lunch last week with Ryan, and dinner with a group of GOP senators. Obama will address House and Senate Republicans separately this week, marking a pivot in his strategy toward vexing fiscal issues following bruising battles over the fiscal cliff during the first two months of this year.

Related: Ryan plan sparks budget battle

This latest GOP plan -- the third authored by Ryan since Republicans retook the House in 2010 -- is the opening salvo in a spring full of budget battles, culminating in the mid-May expiration of the nation's borrowing authority. Congress authorized a suspension of the debt limit through that deadline, but made it contingent upon the House and Senate each passing their own budget. (Republicans have repeatedly needled Senate Democrats for failing to pass a budget in recent years.)

"I hate to break the suspense, but their budget won't balance—ever," Ryan wrote in an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal. "We House Republicans have done our part … Now we invite the president and Senate Democrats to join in the effort."

Mandel Ngan / Mandel Ngan / AFP - Getty Images

House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan makes his way to the West Wing on March 7, 2013 for a lunch with President Barack Obama.

Ryan's blueprint claims to achieve $4.6 trillion in savings over through 2023, and steadily reduce government spending as a share of gross domestic product in the meantime. In his op-ed, Ryan asserted the reforms could boost gross national product by as much as 1.7 percent.  Ryan's previous plan projected a balanced budget outside of ten years. 

But the plan also relies on savings accrued from two plans which Republicans had staunchly opposed: the new taxes on the wealthy in the Jan. 1 fiscal cliff deal, and the $715 billion in savings from cuts to Medicare providers as part of Obama's health care reform law. 

Of the new taxes, Ryan said that Republicans were "not going to re-fight the past." When pressed as to how that principle squares with his budget's goal of repealing Obamacare, Ryan pivoted, and said that the health reform law would be so onerous, that the eventual GOP replacement would be an improvement. 

It would achieve its goal through a series of sweeping reforms, most of which are unlikely to survive the Democratic Senate or a presidential veto threat.

Ryan's budget again seeks changes to Medicare, namely by establishing an exchange of private plans (including traditional Medicare) from which seniors could choose, with the assistance of a premium support voucher. The plan would apply for those under the age of 54 — a threshold one year younger than past Ryan proposals — and also employ means-testing, in which wealthier seniors pay a higher share of their premiums.

The Ryan budget also calls for repealing the health care reform law (though it would leave in place savings from cuts in payments to medical providers, a component against which Ryan and Mitt Romney railed during last fall's campaign).

Related: From continuing resolutions to budget blueprints: What you need to know about money wrangling

The campaign also focused heavily on Ryan's past budgets, as Obama and Democratic candidates downballot railed against similar proposed changes to entitlement programs. Those attacks offered a vivid illustration of the political difficulties in putting such aggressive reform plans to paper. That experience helped inform the GOP's demand that Democrats produce their own alternative budget, through which Republican staffers will surely comb to exploit politically.

Ryan's own budget isn't short on additional conservative prescriptions, either. The 2014 budget calls for sweeping tax reform, with a goal of cutting the top corporate tax rate to 25 percent, and simplifying the income tax into two brackets. The tax cuts would be financed by closing loopholes and deductions in the tax code.

The Republican budget will also touch upon other social programs. It would block-grant Medicaid to states, and allow states more flexibility, too, in implementing welfare programs. Ryan's plan would also freeze the current maximum support for students awarded as Pell Grants, a popular program with students (and young voters) that Obama had expanded in his first term.

The proposals, as a whole, amount to a deeply conservative set of proposals offered against the backdrop of new hopes for bipartisan fiscal talks in Washington.

Obama's renewed outreach — and Republicans' relatively warm reception of it — has stoked the embers of hope that lawmakers may finally reach the kind of grand fiscal deal that has eluded them during the past few years. As Ryan unveils his new budget, Obama's own reaction could either preserve these renewed hopes, or allow them to wither after just a few days.

To that end, Obama was set to speak to House Republicans on Wednesday, and Senate Republicans on Thursday. He was also scheduled to give an interview to ABC News on Tuesday, which could be his first on-camera reactions to Ryan's new proposal.

This story was originally published on Tue Mar 12, 2013 10:07 AM EDT

Republicans have lashed out against the Obama administration’s decision to bring a son-in-law of Osama bin Laden to New York City for trial, a high-profile move that would help the president follow through on one of his earliest campaign pledges.

One of the unmet promises from President Barack Obama’s first term involved closing the terrorist detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and bringing suspects to the continental United States for trial.

Related: Bin Laden’s son-in-law pleads not guilty to terror charge in New York

Two days after his first inauguration, the president signed an executive order calling for the closure of the military prison. But bipartisan resistance from lawmakers, who feared trials for terror suspects on domestic soil, scuttled efforts to shutter Guantanamo, leaving prisoners and detainees in legal limbo.

Four years later, Guantanamo remains in operation, and military tribunals – 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s trial is ongoing – continue at the naval base in Cuba. But the Obama administration’s decision to arraign a son-in-law of Osama bin Laden, Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, in federal court on Friday in New York marked maybe its most high-profile example of working to shift terror prosecutions to civilian courts.

And already, Republicans are mounting stiff resistance to the move.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who on Thursday took to the Senate floor to defend Obama’s prerogatives in waging drone strikes, vowed to fight the administration’s decision to bring Abu Ghaith to New York.

"The American people and their representatives in Congress have been clear that they do not want foreign members of al Qaeda brought to the United States,” he said in a statement. “The Obama administration's decision to try Abu Ghaith in a New York district court clearly contravenes the will of the American people. This decision by the Obama administration will not go unchallenged."

The issue of Guantanamo is one on which Republicans have built a rare political advantage over Obama on an issue of foreign policy. Their dogged opposition to terror trials on U.S. soil has won over a handful of Democrats, thereby stymying the administration’s ability to execute one of the president’s first official orders.

And following Abu Ghaith’s “not guilty” plea this morning to charges of plotting to kill Americans, Republicans have piled on in short order.

“What has not changed since the issuance of the president's executive orders is that terrorists working to attack the United States are enemy combatants, and if captured should be placed in military custody where they can be interrogated,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said in a statement. “The decision of the president to import Sulaiman Abu Ghaith into the United States solely for civilian prosecution makes little sense, and reveals, yet again, a stubborn refusal to avoid holding additional terrorists at the secure facility at Guantanamo Bay despite the circumstances.”

Added Republican Rep. Peter King, the New York congressman who’s been vocally critical of terror trials in New York: "While a federal court trial of Abu Ghaith in lower Manhattan would not present the same security issues as a trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, I strongly believe as a matter of policy that military tribunals are the proper venue for enemy combatants. If the Abu Ghaith trial does go forward in federal court it must not be used as a precedent for future enemy combatants who should be tried at Guantanamo."

With Congress out of town, few Democrats have chimed in on the Abu Ghaith decision; he was only extradited on Thursday. Several Democrats, like Manhattan Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., have in the past been vocally supportive of civilian trials in New York.

"I support the government bringing this prosecution in civilian court and expect that the federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York will successfully prosecute Abu Ghaith and put him away for the rest of his life," Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the Democratic chairwoman of the Senate intelligence panel, said in a statement. She has previously supported trials for terror suspects in the United States. "The bottom line is the federal criminal court system works. Hundreds of international terrorists have been convicted in our federal courts since 9/11 and are locked away in heavily fortified federal prisons."

J. Scott Applewhite / AP

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. speaks with reporters on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, March 7, 2013, as he leaves a GOP policy meeting.

Deputy White House press secretary Josh Earnest, though, used Friday’s briefing with reporters to push back against criticism of the move.

“The intelligence community agrees that the best way to protect our national security interests is to prosecute Abu Ghaith in an Article III court,” Earnest said, later adding: “This is somebody who's going to be held accountable for his crimes and will be done -- and that will be done in accordance with the laws and values of this country, and it will be done so in a pretty efficient way.”

This story was originally published on Fri Mar 8, 2013 4:11 PM EST

As Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., plans to unveil his new budget next Tuesday, the House Budget Committee chairman said he had spoken this week with President Barack Obama, who's been ramping up outreach to congressional Republicans.

Ryan told Capitol Hill reporters on Wednesday that he had recently spoken to Obama by phone, though the former Republican vice presidential nominee declined to divulge specifics from the "confidential" conversation. Ryan said he told Obama that "we need to prepare for the retirement of the baby boom generation in this country to save these programs, for not just for the current retirees but for the next wave of retirees after that."

The call from Obama would seem to fit with the recent charm offensive for Republicans being waged by the White House. The administration confirmed Wednesday that Obama would address the House and Senate GOP conferences next week, and the president will dine this evening with a handful of Republican senators.

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Despite the recent conversation with the president, Ryan still took the opportunity to slam him for the Obama administration's own delay releasing its own budget.

"I find it interesting that he's chosen to blow the deadline again — not by a week or two, but for a indefinite period of time," he said. "The White House ought to lead, that's what presidents do. A delay does not show seriousness of purpose."

The Wisconsin congressman's remarks set the stage for this spring's budget battles; the House and Senate have each vowed to produce and pass a budget as part of an agreement last month to extend the nation's debt limit through mid-May. While that's expected to be a hard-fought debate, Ryan insisted he had "hope" both sides could "start talking to each other and start solving these problems."

The new House GOP budget will be unveiled on Tuesday of next week. Ryan declined to outline hard numbers from his fiscal blueprint, explaining that those will be revealed when the budget is formerly introduced. Though he's pledged his new budget would balance the U.S. books by 2023, Ryan said there would not be big differences between this year's budgets and past budgets he has produced.

"It doesn't take enormous changes in our budget to get there and you'll see what they are," Ryan said.

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Democrats have used those past budgets, though, against Republican lawmakers who eventually vote for it. The first budget produced by Ryan in 2011 and its proposed reforms to Medicare became a lightning rod during the 2012 campaign, both on the presidential campaign trail and in scores of House and Senate races. Democrats will carefully comb through Ryan's new budget for any additional provisions of controversy, though Republicans will also be able to pore over the budget that Senate Democrats will have to produce this spring.

One concrete detail offered by Ryan was that the new GOP budget would not rely upon a budget baseline that does not count as savings either the draw down of the war in Afghanistan, or less disaster aid once the Hurricane Sandy relief is paid.

"We're not going to be in Afghanistan for 10 more years…we had a huge hurricane, biggest one since '05, are we going to have a hurricane like that every year? CBO says so in their baseline," the budget chairman explained.

The Congressional Budget Office projects the cost of current programs for the next decade, Ryan's argument is that Democrats can't count the reduction of those programs as savings when they will know they will not exist within 10 years. 

This story was originally published on Wed Mar 6, 2013 1:42 PM EST

With the sequester deadline in the rear-view mirror, House Democrats are staking out their positions in the next budget battle over keeping the government’s lights on after a March deadline.

Rep. Nita Lowey (D-NY), the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, told reporters Tuesday that she's recommending that her fellow Democrats vote against the GOP-drafted short-term federal budget bill.

Alex Wong / Getty Images file photo

Rep. Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.), the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee.

“I'm an optimist,” Lowey said. “I'm hoping that we can end this process with a continuing resolution that makes sense, because Democrats care about reducing the deficit but they don't believe that a sequester is the appropriate way to do it..”

Democrats like Lowey plan to oppose Republicans’ “continuing resolution,” which would fund the government through September 30^th of this year, because it would reduce overall spending due to the across-the-board budget cuts activated by last week’s sequestration order.

They also say that the GOP plan to offer budget flexibility only to defense-related federal agencies is unfair to other programs.

Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, D-Md., who wrangles the Democratic votes in the House, said Tuesday that he is not actively instructing his caucus to vote against the legislation "at this point."

But, with Democratic leaders vocally opposing the GOP measure, it’s clear that it will only pick up a handful of Democratic votes when the bill comes to the House floor this week. (The bill was originally slated for consideration Thursday, but lawmakers now expect to address it earlier due to expected inclement weather. 

The White House said Tuesday that it is "deeply concerned about the impact" of the GOP bill but did not specifically threaten a veto if it passes.

Republicans are confident that they will be able to pass this bill without help from across the aisle, something they've had a problem doing in the past with major bills.

In particular, the conservative bloc of House Republicans seems to accept the CR as being in line with the spending levels that they believe were agreed upon based on the sequester's cuts.

"At the end of the day it's still the number we agreed on, so we're satisfied with that," Rep Tim Huelskamp (R-KS) said. 

Huelskamp added he would like to include some provision related to President Obama's health care law, but said the $982 billion government spending level for the 2013 fiscal year would be considered a "win" for conservatives.

NBC's Carrie Dann contributed to this report.

This story was originally published on Tue Mar 5, 2013 2:47 PM EST

With less than 36 hours to go until the much-discussed 'sequestration' deadline, the Senate blocked a pair of competing bills to prevent the broad, automatic cuts from taking effect.

Neither measure was expected to reach the 60-vote threshold required to move a fix forward, with Republicans and Democrats taking up the legislation largely for show the day before the cuts are slated to kick in. 

The Republican sequester ‘replacement’ proposal -- which would have offered the administration more authority to allocate the spending cuts -- was killed with a vote of 38 to 62. The White House had threatened to veto that bill in the unlikely event that it passed.

A Democratic plan focused on closing tax loopholes and raising some taxes garnered 51 votes, short of the 60 necessary to move it forward. 

With both sides still deadlocked over how to address the deficit, congressional leaders will meet with the president at the White House tomorrow. 

President Barack Obama lambasted Senate Republicans in a statement, saying that GOP opposition to the Democrats' bill stood in the way of a solution. 

"Even though a majority of Senators support [the Democrats'] approach, Republicans have refused to allow it an up-or-down vote - threatening our economy with a series of arbitrary, automatic budget cuts that will cost us jobs and slow our recovery," he said.

"Instead of closing a single tax loophole that benefits the well-off and well-connected, they chose to cut vital services for children, seniors, our men and women in uniform and their families," the statement read. "They voted to let the entire burden of deficit reduction fall squarely on the middle class."
"

Earlier Thursday, competing press conferences, lawmakers from both parties continued to lay blame at each other's feet as they acknowledged that the across-the-board reductions to the nation's military and domestic spending programs are inevitable.

Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid olds a news conference at the U.S. Capitol on the eve of the budget sequester Feb. 28, 2013 in Washington, DC.

House Speaker John Boehner argued Thursday that the budget ball remains in Democrats' court, a case he says he will make again tomorrow in the meeting with Obama.

"My message at the White House will be the same that I'm telling you today,” he said. “It's time for them to do their job and to pass a bill."

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid responded that Republican calls for Democratic action "take a lot of pizzazz."

"They've done nothing," Reid said, saying that House Republicans are hiding behind the lower chamber's now-expired passage of budget measures last year while failing to allow compromise legislation to come up for a vote.

The weariness over the sequester jockeying – which promises to drag on for weeks as the fight shifts to future deadlines for greenlighting federal funding -- even spilled over into the Senate chaplain’s opening prayer this morning.

Mentioning the cuts in his invocation, Senate Chaplain Rev. Barry Black prayed "Rise up, oh God, and save us from ourselves."

NBC's Mike Viqueira contributed to this report. 

This story was originally published on Thu Feb 28, 2013 1:41 PM EST

This story was originally published on Thu Feb 28, 2013 10:37 AM EST