Senate Republicans Fail to Reach Consensus on Alternative to Cuts

Senate Republicans emerged from a policy meeting Tuesday deeply divided over what they should offer to replace or mitigate across-the-board spending cuts scheduled to hit Friday, probably postponing a showdown in the Senate on the parties’ two approaches.

Republican leaders had hoped their 45 members would unite around legislation that would give the Obama administration flexibility in implementing the cuts, allowing department and agency heads to spare the most critical federal programs. That would have set up votes Wednesday on a Republican and a Democratic approach to the budget cuts ahead of the March 1 deadline.

Instead, some Republicans protested that such flexibility would give President Obama far too much power. Others said they still wanted the party to at least try to stop the cuts, known as the sequester.

“I would be happy to give the president more flexibility and rely on agency heads to apportion this amount of spending reduction in a different way than the sequester envisioned,” said Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader. “There are some members of our conference who are suspicious the administration â€" taking advantage of such flexibility â€" would seek to punish their political enemies.”

Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, said proponents of the flexibility legislation added a provision that would allow Congress to disapprove of the shifts if they were particula! rly suspect. But, he said, for senators most worried about the magnitude of cuts â€" especially to defense â€" changing the way they are apportioned is pointless.

“I don’t care how flexible you want to be,” he said. “The top line numbers don’t add up to me on defense.”

The strife was striking because Senate Republicans have been able to remain remarkably united in the minority. Senator Bob Corker, Republican of Tennessee and an advocate of the flexibility legislation, said heated back-room discussions were all the more strange because whatever Republicans put forward would have little chance for winning the 60 votes that will be necessary for passage.

“I’ve never seen so much passion around something that’s not going to happen in my life,” he quipped.

It came on the same day House Speaker John A. Boehner said he would do nothing to mitigate thecuts “before the Senate gets off their ass and begins to do something.”

Stuck, Mr. McConnell suggested multiple votes later this week on a variety of Republican approaches to the pending cuts. But Democrats are largely united around one $110 billion package that would replace this year’s cuts with tax increases on income over $1 million, cuts to farm subsidies, and cuts to defense in 2014. Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, flatly rejected Mr. McConnell’s request.

“The agreement was we will have a bill, they will have a bill,” he said.

Follow Jonathan Weisman on Twitter at @jonathanweisman.

House Republican Expresses Support for Guest-Worker Program

Representative Robert Goodlatte, Republican of Virginia, appeared willing to carve out a sliver of middle ground on Tuesday in the debate over the future of the nation’s immigration system, offering up the possibility of a guest worker program as a trial case for how the country handles both legal and illegal immigration.

At a House Judiciary subcommittee hearing on the topic of agricultural workers, Mr. Goodlatte, the chairman of the full committee, said that he could support a measure that would offer at least temporary legalization for illegal immigrants who are currently in the country working in the agriculture industry.

“A guest worker program should help farmers who are willing to pay a fair wage for law-abiding, dependable workers â€" not punish them,” Mr. Goodlatte said. “And for this reason I support replacing the H-2A program and implementing new policies that will bring our illegal agricultural workers out of the shadows, as a first step in the process of overhauling our naion’s immigration system.”

An H-2A visa allows workers into the country to perform temporary or seasonal agricultural work. As Mr. Goodlatte acknowledged, the vast majority of farmworkers in the United States â€" as much as 70 percent of the farm labor force, according to growers’ groups - are immigrants here illegally.

Mr. Goodlatte, a former immigration lawyer, has previously taken a hardline stance on an immigration overhaul, opposing a pathway to citizenship for the 11 million immigrants already in the country illegally. But he has also said he is open to finding some middle ground between deportation and full citizenship.

The agriculture guest worker program, he implied on Tuesday, could be a first step.

“Addressing the complex labor issues of the relatively small agriculture sector can help us understand how we can build our broader immigration laws and enforcement mechanisms in order to enhance the U.S. economy and make our immigra! tion laws more efficient and fair for all involved,” he said.

Visas for lower-skilled workers have proved a divisive issue in past immigration debates, pitting the business community â€" which favors allowing guest workers into the country to help employers fulfill their labor needs â€" against the labor community, which worries that immigrant workers could depress wages and take away jobs from Americans. But last week, labor and business groups jointly called for a visa system that would meet labor market demands while protecting American workers.

The tone of Tuesday’s subcommittee hearing was far less heated than a full-committee hearing on broad immigration proposals earlier this month, and several members expressed optimism that, at least on this topic, an agreement could be reached.

Still, some House Republicans remained hesitant about the logistics of eforming the temporary worker program. Representative Lamar Smith, Republican of Texas, said that a “true” guest worker program would have to be a “short” guest worker program, seeming to rule out the possibility of any form of legalization for the workers. And Representative Steve King, Republican of Iowa, suggested a program that would “bond” workers; employers, he explained, would be forced to post a bond of sorts â€" much like the bond system in criminal court â€" to ensure that their workers would ultimately return home.

“I’m going to guess from the look on your face that you haven’t discussed that,” Mr. King said, shortly after making the suggestion.

On Wednesday, the subcommittee is set to look at the record of the E-Verify program, the current tool to help employers determine the legal status of newly hired workers.

Follow Ashley Parker on Twitter at @AshleyRParker.

App Smart Extra: More Slide Show Apps

Last week in App Smart I talked about the many apps that promise to turn photos from your smartphone or tablet’s digital photo album into an attractive photo slide show. These apps make looking at digital photos of a vacation, or perhaps an event like a wedding, into the modern equivalent of flipping through a photo album.

On iOS, one powerful app for creating dynamic photo slide shows is ProShow (free on iTunes). The interface is easy to use, and the app tries to do much of the fiddly stuff involved in creating a new slide show by offering you themes. These themes automatically adjust settings like special effects between slides and background images. You can manually change these settings later if you prefer. The app can even include video clips. The app does require thatyou sign up for the company’s services, free, but this minor inconvenience gives you access to its Web site. There you can edit your slide shows and also view them online â€" a great option for sharing your slide show efforts with friends.

One neat option for Android is the $1 app Slideshow 5000. This app creates an unusual kind of slide show: the photos look as if they are being tossed onto a table while a camera pans above the table’s surface. Each photo is animated as if it were really falling, and even casts a shadow. You can adjust the background image and turn each of your images into a faux Polaroid snap, and it’s easy to select the photos you want. You can even turn the photo slide show into your device’s live Android wallpaper. But the show it produces is more for casual fun; it’s not really ideal for sharing treasured memories.

A simpler option fo! r Android is the free app Slideshow Bob. This app is limited to showing photos from folders on your device, and you can’t organize them inside the app because you’re limited to sorting the photos by parameters like date or title. It does, however, have some transition options, and when it’s displaying the slide shows, it does so elegantly.

Many apps for smartphones and tablets can create photo slide shows, but their quality varies widely. I found it hard to find sophisticated apps that offer a lot of slide show control on Android devices. Luckily, many have a free or “lite” edition, meaning you could try out several before you buy.

Quick call: Lego Galaxy Squad Bug Battle is a new free game for iOS devices. It’s a 2-D scrolling space shooter that combines all the gaming fun of this genre with Lego’ cute imagery. The mission is to save humans by squashing the alien bugs. It will keep you amused when you have the odd five minutes to spare.

Measuring Your Health With Jawbone’s Up

The Up band, made by Jawbone, is an electronic bracelet that helps you log your activities, eating and rest, and it can record an awful lot of data. But the more detailed the data you want, the more work you’ll have to do to get it.

Up, costing $130, is the technological cousin of devices like the Striiv, Fitbit, and Fit Link, among others, which range in list price from $70 to $150. The idea is that measuring your activities, what you eat and how much you sleep will help you develop a healthier lifestyle and stick to it.

The Up bnd is available in seven colors and is worn loosely on the wrist. Initially it got in the way when I typed, but I got used to sliding it up my sleeve at the keyboard.

It has one feature not found in the others mentioned above â€" a vibration motor. You can set the band to remind you with a vibration to get up and walk around if you’ve been at the desk too long. Or set it as an alarm to buzz you awake in the morning.

The food logging also worked quite well for me, The bar-code scanner correctly recorded all of the food I tried  â€" often not the case with other devices â€" but as with any food log, if you want precision, you have to type in every ingredient in a meal. It can take longer to enter what you ate than to eat it.

Also, as with all these kinds of devices, it can recognize and count your steps, but unlike some of the others, the Up band cannot tell the difference between walking, running or going up stairs. Exercise like bicycling or weight lifting has to be manually ! entered.

To monitor your sleep, you have to remember to press a button that sets the band to sleep mode; I sometimes forgot to do this. You switch back when you wake, although after 25 or so steps, Up will change to wake mode itself.

The social component lets you post selected statistics to Facebook and Twitter, or share privately with other Up users you pick. The camaraderie (or competition) is a big help in achieving a goal.

Plug the band into an iPhone with the Up app to see colorful charts of your progress, share results and see suggestions based on your performance. The band lasts about 10 days on a charge and can even be worn in the shower, though not while swimming.

The Up band is not really for the devoted athlete, and it’s not quite as simple as some other devices, but for the modestly active who would like to be more so, the Up band can keep track when you make tracks.

From Boehner, a Salty Demand That the Senate Act on Spending Cuts

Speaker John A. Boehner said in no uncertain terms Tuesday morning that he expected the Senate to pass some sort of alternative to the $85 billion in across-the-board spending cuts set to go into effect on Friday before the House would take any more action.

Speaking at a news conference at the Republican National Committee headquarters and referring to the two alternative measures that House Republicans passed in the previous Congress, Mr. Boehner said, “We should not have to move a third bill before the Senate gets off their ass and begins to do something.”

An aide to Mr. Boehner said that he had used similar salty language â€" arguing that the House could not be expected to move on the budget cuts until the Senate got off its butt â€" at a private meeting with his conference earlier in the morning, and had liked the phrase so much he repeated it, with the cameras running.

In reply, Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, said: “I think heshould understand who is sitting on his posterior. We’re working to pass something. The speaker’s doing nothing to try to pass anything.”

On Wednesday, the Senate is supposed to vote on two competing alternative budget packages â€" one from the Democrats, one from the Republicans â€" though neither is expected to pass.

Mr. Boehner again said that he would not give in to the administration’s demand that a deficit reduction package contain additional revenue in addition to the spending cuts, and he said repeatedly that it was time for President Obama and the Senate, which is controlled by Democrats, to act.

“The president has been traveling all over the country, today going down to Newport News in order to use our military men and women as a prop in yet another campaign rally to support his tax hikes,” he said. “It’s time to focus on the real problem here in Washington, and that is spending.”

Mr. Boehner added: “The president’s been going all over the count! ry, holding rallies, instead of sitting down with Senate leaders to try to force an agreement over there in order to move a bill.”

Follow Ashley Parker on Twitter at @AshleyRParker.

Q&A: Staying Safe From Java Threats

Q.

I hear lots of scary stuff about hackers getting into computers thru Java. What do I need to do to make my Mac and PC safe Any worries about tablets

A.

Java is a computing platform with its own programming language that is used in many games, business applications and other utilities. It runs on more than 850 million computers worldwide and is used often by Web browsers. Recent attacks on Apple and Facebook used a flaw in the Java Web browser plug-in to infect computers with malicious software when visiting certain sites, and the Department of Homeland Security even issued a warning about Java back in January.

Computers running Windows, Mac OS X and Linux are most at risk. Tablets running systems like Android and iOS are not generally affected; mobile browsers havea setting for the JavaScript programming language, but JavaScript is basically unrelated to Java and its not subject to the current malware issues.

Disabling Java in your Web browser should protect your computer from the recent types of security threats, although you may not be able to play certain games or use Java-dependent applications. Oracle, which develops Java, has instructions for disabling Java in several browsers on Windows, Mac and Linux systems. Independent security sites, like Krebs on Security and Sophos, have add! itional information.

Apple released its own Mac OS X update to deal with the Java problem on Feb. 19, and the Macworld site has an article on going beyond the browser plug-in and removing Java altogether. Oracle has instructions for uninstalling Java completely on a Windows system, as well as on a Mac.

The Early Word: Plan C

In Today’s Times

• Congressional Republicans have hatched a plan that they say could protect the most vital programs from the automatic budget cuts that take effect Friday, while shifting more of the political fallout to President Obama, Jonathan Weisman and Michael D. Shear report.  Though the White House vigorously opposes their plan, it is dividing Democrats who are from the states facing the deepest cuts.

• The mandatory spending cuts scheduled to begin on Friday are already affecting operations at many of the nation’s national parks and wildlife refuges, John M. Broder reports. Dire predictions from Ken Salazar, the interior secretary, are part of a concerted administration effort to pressur Congress into canceling the automatic cuts.

• The Senate is scheduled to vote Tuesday on whether to consider the embattled nomination of Chuck Hagel as defense secretary, though it remained unclear just how many more obstacles Republicans were willing to throw in his path, Jeremy W. Peters reports.

• Barely moments after Michelle Obama announced the winner for best picture from the White House at Sunday night’s Academy Awards, the question of whether it was proper or dignified or awesome for the first lady of the United States to open the same envelopes as Hollywood stars disintegrated into a predictably partisan rhubarb, Jennifer Steinhauer reports.

• Dozens of prominent Republicans have signed a legal brief arguin! g that gay people have a constitutional right to marry, Sheryl Gay Stolberg reports. That position reflects the continuing civil war in the party since the November 2012 election.

Around the Web

• Representative Steve Stockman, Republican of Texas, is accusing the White House of creating a fraudulent gun control campaign after he suspected some Twitter messages he had received from constituents were actually from fake accounts, The Hill reports.

• One of the news agencies in Iran edited a picture of Michelle Obama announcing a winner at Sunday’s Academy Awards so that her dress was more modest, Radio ree Europe reports.

Happenings in Washington

• Mr. Obama on Tuesday will visit a shipbuilding company in Newport News, Va., that supplies equipment for the Navy. He is expected to highlight the impact automatic budget cuts will have on businesses like that one.

• Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. will meet with retired military officials in the White House to discuss the administration’s proposals to reduce gun violence.