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Despite Sen. Lindsey Graham's optimism regarding a deal on immigration being passed by Congress, now that labor and the Chamber of Commerce have resolved a dispute over a low-skilled worker program, I'll believe they're going to get something done when I see the House actually vote for it.

Graham: Immigration reform deal could be ‘rolled out next week’:

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C), one of the bipartisan “Gang of Eight” senators working on an immigration-reform bill, said Sunday the group had agreed on a deal to be unveiled soon and that he was confident the bill would eventually be signed into law by President Obama.

“We’ve got a deal,” said Graham on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “2013 I hope will be the year we pass bipartisan immigration reform, signed into law.”

Graham said lawmakers still needed to finish writing the legislation.

“It has to be drafted, it will be rolled out next week,” he said.

The bipartisan group first unveiled their framework in January and has been negotiating over the details, including a path to citizenship and tougher border security measures.

There is growing momentum on Capitol Hill to pass immigration reform this year, with a bipartisan House group also working on unveiling their own proposal, which has already secured the general support of leaders from both parties. [...]

“I believe it will pass the House because it secures our borders and controls who gets a job,” Graham said Sunday of the forthcoming Senate plan. “I think it will pass both houses, we’re going to need the president’s support. I’m proud of the work product and look forward to rolling it out.” [...]

“Conceptually we have an agreement between business and labor and between ourselves,” Graham said. “As to the 11 million [existing illegal immigrants], they will have a pathway to citizenship but it will be earned, it will be long, it will be hard, but I think it is fair.”

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As Think Progress noted, Republicans immediately shot down President Obama's proposal to increase the minimum wage to $9 per hour during his State of the Union address, claiming that it would harm job growth and make it harder for small businesses to hire. None of that is true of course, but that's not going to stop them from looking out for campaign donors like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Restaurant Association -- both of whom are against the proposal. Guess they want to keep that cheap labor coming!

Wingnut Rep. Marsha Blackburn however, had a different take on why it's acceptable to pay Americans starvation wages, and accidentally shot a big hole in her own talking point. Don't expect her to retract what she said if she's asked about it:

OOPS: GOP Rep. Inadvertently Makes The Case For Nearly Doubling The Minimum Wage:

Tennessee Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R) chose a different reason to oppose the proposal today. A stronger minimum wage, Blackburn said, would negatively affect the ability of young workers to enter the workforce as teenagers, and would prevent them from learning responsibility like she did when she was a teenage retail employee making a seemingly-measly $2.15 an hour in Mississippi:

BLACKBURN: What we’re hearing from moms and from school teachers is that there needs to be a lower entry level, so that you can get 16-, 17-, 18-year-olds into the process. Chuck, I remember my first job, when I was working in a retail store, down there, growing up in Laurel, Mississippi. I was making like $2.15 an hour. And I was taught how to responsibly handle those customer interactions. And I appreciated that opportunity.

Making $2.15 an hour certainly lower than today’s minimum wage, which federal law mandates must be at least $7.25 an hour. But what Blackburn didn’t realize is that she accidentally undermined her own argument, since the value of the dollar has changed immensely since her teenage years. Blackburn was born in 1952, so she likely took that retail job at some point between 1968 and 1970. And according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ inflation calculator, the $2.15 an hour Blackburn made then is worth somewhere between $12.72 and $14.18 an hour in today’s dollars, depending on which year she started.

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From Fox's Your World With Neil Cavuto, host Cavuto and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's Tom Donohue decided to have themselves a pity party about Donohue not being invited to a meeting at the White House this Tuesday. Never mind the fact that Donohue and his organization spent boatloads of money trying to make sure President Obama was not reelected. Donahue is located just across the street! How dare the administration snub him when he had such a short walk to get there, if he were invited to attend!

Does anyone think that any host on Fox would be asking MoveOn, or Planned Parenthood, or the heads of any unions in the United States why a president Mitt Romney, if we were unfortunate enough to have him elected, wasn't willing to meet with them immediately after the election and answer to them what he's going to do about their demands?

I'm not in the mood to try to transcribe this nonsense, but their interview can be summed up with a few points. One, Tom Donohue and his organization do not represent small businesses or even just businesses in the United States and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce should not be confused with actual Chamber of Commerce groups at a local level, which do actually represent local interests and many small businesses. If anyone wasn't already sure of that, all you have to do is listen to the pitch Donohue was making here for big oil and the natural gas industry as the solution to our employment problems.

And when asked if raising taxes on the wealthy will be damaging to our economy, Donahue naturally agrees and calls it a “big mistake” to let the Bush era tax cuts which were already extended expire. And of course he wants to see our social safety nets cut and the corporate tax rates lowered. Because heaven forbid we haven't had quite enough income disparity in the United States and need just a little more money moved from the pockets of the 99 percent to the 1 percent.

And last but not least, Donahue does what we see most Republicans doing these days, which is conflating “small businesses” who don't have a lot of employees, like hedge funds, with the average real small business out there that won't see much change, if any, if the tax cuts for those making over $250,000 in taxable income a year are allowed to expire.

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Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani says that if President Barack Obama's health care reform law is going to force insurance companies to cover contraception then "it's only fair" that men are provided with pills to treat erectile dysfunction.

Speaking to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce earlier this week, the surrogate for Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney hinted at the controversy over the Obama's administration's mandate that all health insurance cover contraception for women and warned that the "commissars in Washington" could expand coverage even further in the future.

"They get to write the list of what is legally sufficient health insurance," he explained. "I hate to bring this up because I don't think Gov. Romney would like me to bring this up, but I will. This is what made health care in Massachusetts three times more expensive than people thought. Because when they sat down to define health insurance, everybody added everything to the list and the cost of health insurance went way up."

"That's going to happen on a national level," Giuliani continued. "And you know an Obama appointed commission is going to cover everything. If you cover condoms, I mean, you've got to cover everything, right?"

"If you cover condoms, you should cover Viagra. It's only fair."

In fact, most insurance companies -- including plans offered by Catholic institutions -- began covering Viagra as soon it became available in 1998.

(h/t: The Blaze)

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Fox's Eric Bolling and one of their supposed "straight news reporters" Steve Centanni covered some of the latest with the protests going on around the country with the Occupy Wall Street movement, and both of them were apparently very perplexed as to why some of those protesters would want to show up at the doors of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

BOLLING: An anti-capitalist protest just wrapping up in D.C. but it's where they're protesting that's raising some eyebrows. Steve Centanni is in D.C. with the latest. Steve.

CENTANNI: I'm right in front of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and what triggered this protest today is a huge sign on the front of a building. I'll ask you to pan up and you can take a look. Jobs. Well of course they support jobs, but the protesters say, they're creating the wrong kind of jobs and not giving opportunities to enough people.

The Fox “reporter” just couldn't seem to wrap his brain around the idea that there could be protesters out there who don't like what the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is doing and what their policies are and the fact that the Chamber said they supported President Obama's jobs bill, as though that single issue is a reason to either have disagreements with a group or want to show support for them.

Fox's resident hack and Glenn Beck wanna' be Eric Bolling went so far as to paint the protests as "taking on small business", pretending that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce actually cares about small businesses.

As I've already noted here, Think Progress has done some great reporting on the Chamber and just who they represent and it's not small business. Sadly what's worse yet is they really don't even care about American businesses or their workers. Local Chambers of Commerce, do look out for small businesses. The national group, not so much. They're looking out for the big guys and too often international interests instead of national ones.

For a little reminder of that here's Keith Olbermann talking to Think Progress' Faiz Shakir about that topic in October of last year -- Think Progress' Faiz Shakir on US Chamber of Commerce Foreign Funding.

But over at Fox, Bolling and someone they pass off as one of their straight "news reporters" and not someone who does opinion is on there carrying water for a group that wants to do exactly what these Occupy Wall Street protesters are marching against, which is looking out for the interests of the wealthiest 1% that line their pockets while most of the country continues to have its standard of living decline.

Tools like Eric Bolling are being paid a healthy salary by the likes or Rupert Murdoch to try to get the electorate to vote against their own economic interests and to diminish the fact that there are a lot of average citizens just fed up with what's going on and to paint them as being uninformed. I'd say it's likely the opposite is true if they realized that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is not a friend to the working class in the United States or to small business, and that protesting their headquarters is very appropriate given who the U.S. Chamber is actually looking out for.