Washington’s battle over whether the United States should get involved in Syria’s civil war took a new turn on Wednesday as the two top senators on the Foreign Relations Committee called for arming rebels and announced that the panel would take up their proposal next week.

Sen. Robert Menendez, the committee’s Democratic chairman, and Sen. Bob Corker, the panel’s top Republican, introduced legislation to provide lethal weaponry and training “to vetted Syrian groups” fighting forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad, they announced in a statement.

“To change the tipping point in Syria against the Assad regime, we must support the opposition by providing lethal arms and help build a free Syria,” Menendez said in the statement.

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The debt ceiling clock is about to start running again. The U.S. Treasury on Friday began using “extraordinary measures” to keep the country from defaulting on its obligations.

As part of a budget compromise in February, lawmakers suspended the country’s legal borrowing limit at $16.394 trillion, and let Treasury keep borrowing to pay all the country’s bills. But on Sunday the debt ceiling will automatically reset to a higher level reflecting the amount borrowed during the suspension period.

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THE Congressional Budget Office released an updated budget outlook today. Here’s the big news:

If the current laws that govern federal taxes and spending do not change, the budget deficit will shrink this year to $642 billion, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates, the smallest shortfall since 2008. Relative to the size of the economy, the deficit this year—at 4.0 percent of gross domestic product (GDP)—will be less than half as large as the shortfall in 2009, which was 10.1 percent of GDP.

The 4% of GDP deficit forecast for 2013 is even more remarkable when one notes that the figure for 2012 was 7%. That’s a breathtaking pace of fiscal consolidation. CBO reckons that the deficit will continue to fall and will drop to 2.1% of GDP in 2015. Public debt as a share of the economy is also forecast to begin falling from next year. The CBO thinks that deficits will begin rising again from 2016 through 2023, and they might. But CBO guesses that the biggest cause of increasing deficit will be the impact of rising interest rates on interest costs.

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As scandal captures much of Washington’s attention, the chairmen of the House and Senate Judiciary committees seem determined to move forward with immigration reform, despite the controversies that will inevitably demand much of their time.

For months, Democrats in the Senate have been pressing for quick action on what could be the body’s biggest legislative accomplishment this year. Even though Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., has issued a statement saying he was “troubled” by news that the Justice Department had obtained phone records of Associated Press reporters, an aide to the committee said there are no plans to schedule a hearing on the issue that could disrupt the markup of the immigration bill, which is already underway.

The committee will begin its third day of markup Thursday, and intends to work through next week and possibly into the weekend to finish work before a recess at the end of the month.

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Treasury Secretary Jack Lew has just sent the following letter to John Boehner and other leaders on the debt ceiling.

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In a rare moment of bipartisanship, the House overwhelmingly passed a bill Thursday aimed at making it easier for small companies to grow and go public.

The House voted 390-23 to pass the bill easing certain rules that the Securities and Exchange Commission enforces on small companies going through the process of becoming a publicly traded company. The Senate is working on a similar version of the bill, and President Obama has indicated he supports it.

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A rapidly shrinking federal budget deficit is upending bipartisan talks to reach a federal budget deal, illustrating the conundrum Washington faces with an improving near-term fiscal outlook but continued longer-term pressures tied to aging baby boomers.

The Congressional Budget Office said Tuesday the federal deficit is expected to shrink to $642 billion in the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, narrowing from the agency’s estimate of $845 billion three months ago and sharply lower than last year’s $1.087 trillion shortfall.

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Overview

Despite an often rancorous debate on broader immigration reform, Congressional leaders in both parties have united around improving the ability of United States employers to hire and continue employing highly-skilled immigrant workers. Large American technology companies have highlighted a substantial gap between the demand and supply of qualified domestic workers in fields like science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM), which has reportedly influenced decisions to outsource these jobs to overseas employees in recent years. As a result, addressing problems the existing highly-skilled visa programs is a top priority for Congress and several influential American industries.

How does the current system work?

Under today’s immigration rules, foreign students obtain L-1 visas to allow them to study in the US. After graduation, L-1 visa holders can use the popular Optional Practical Training (OPT) process to work at a domestic employer for up to 24 months. While the L-1 visa is designed to be a temporary process for education and training of foreign students, the H-1B visa provides a more lasting legal status to foreign workers with an employer willing to sponsor them. The sponsoring employer must apply for an H-1B visa, which typically lasts six years and can offer workers time to gain permanent residency through a green card.

What are the problems Congress is trying to address?

First, students educated in high-demand fields at America’s top universities are often forced to return to their home country after starting their careers in the US. This form of ‘brain drain’ results in entrepreneurs starting a business in Europe or Asia, rather than in the US. Policymakers have cited other nations’ expedited permanent residency processes as a model for keeping the best and brightest.

In addition, the demand for high-skilled workers in the Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) fields has greatly outpaced the number of visas available each year. On April 1 of each year, the government opens the H-1B visa application process. This year, the 85,000 open slots for initial H-1B visas were filled within a single week. Policy solutions for this issue involve establishing a fluctuating annual cap on visas, significantly above the current level.

At the same time, increasing the cap on visas for highly skilled workers would ignore one of the current system’s most controversial problems. Last year, five information technology staffing corporations attained over 20% of all H-1B visas, prompting concerns that visas are facilitating the outsourcing of US jobs to low-wage, temporary immigrants. Critics highlight that the low salaries paid to these temporary workers have driven down salaries for other US technology workers and undermined the value of the H-1B program. Proposals in this area focus on reforming the visa application process to allow prioritization of certain applications and expanding wage rules to promote increased compensation.

Key Facts

Links to Other Resources

• Congressional Research Service (CRS) – Immigration of Foreign Nationals with STEM Degrees (R42530)

• Harvard Business School – The Supply Side of Innovation: H-1B Visa Reforms & US Ethnic Invention

• US Chamber of Commerce – Regaining America’s Competitive Advantage

• US Chamber of Commerce – The Human Capital Imperative: Bringing More Minds to America

• The Brookings Institute – Better Align H-1B Visa Fee Revenues to Local Workforce Needs

• National Foundation for American Policy – Still Waiting: Green Card Problems Persist for High Skill Immigrants

• National Foundation for American Policy – Analysis: Data Reveal High Denial Rates for L-1 and H-1B Petitions at US Citizenship and Immigration Services

• Government Accountability Office (GAO) – H-1B Visa Program: Reforms Are Needed to Minimize the Risks and Costs of the Current Program

It seems like ages since the passionate, months-long presidential campaign fought largely over how to help the middle class and rev up job creation. Since then, Congress has allowed across-the-board budget cuts that are creating across-the-board hardships and shrinking the gross domestic product. House Republicans have  proposed a budget that decimates the federal government. Obama gave a State of the Union address about how he would build the economy, but he hasn’t sustained that focus. He held a press conference this week that made a lot of news, none of it related to what probably will be a disappointing April jobs report Friday.

The gulf between the 1 percent and the 99 percent, meanwhile, is as gaping as ever. “The CEO of an S&P 500 Index company made, on average, 354 times the average wage of a rank-and-file U.S. worker in 2012,” the AFL-CIO reports. The dysfunction in Washington is, if anything, worse than ever. Sen. Pat Toomey told newspaper editors in Norristown, Pa., this week that expanded gun background checks failed because some of his fellow Republicans “did not want to be seen helping the president do something he wanted to get done, just because the president wanted to do it.”

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The Treasury Department says it could begin decreasing the size of some of its debt auctions in coming months based on an improving deficit situation that will allow it to pay back some of the U.S. debt.

Treasury said Wednesday for the current April-June quarter it plans to pay down $35 billion of the national debt, the first time it has reduced the debt in six years.

But the improvement is temporary and the risk of a fiscal crisis later this year remains. Treasury officials said Wednesday that if Congress has not raised the debt ceiling by May 19, they would begin employing measures they normally use to avert a default, such as tapping government employee pension funds.

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