(CNN) - After repeatedly pinning the president for the unemployment level, which now sits at 8.1%, Mitt Romney pledged he could cut the rate by two points if he makes it to the White House.

"I can tell you that over a period of four years, by virtue of the policies that we'd put in place, we'd get the unemployment rate down to 6%, and perhaps a little lower," the presumptive GOP nominee said in a TIME interview published Wednesday.
FULL POST

The CNN Washington Bureau’s morning speed read of the top stories making news from around the country and the world.

WASHINGTON/POLITICAL:

CNN: Some Democrats see immigration inaction as expedient, Rubio says
The congressional impasse on immigration may be a political calculation by some Democrats, Sen. Marco Rubio said in a television appearance on Wednesday. "I think there are some in the Democratic Party – not all – but I think there are some people in the Democratic Party that think that the immigration issue is more valuable to them unsolved," the first term Florida senator said on Fox News.

CNN: Romney promises to bring unemployment down to 6%
After repeatedly pinning the president for the unemployment level, which now sits at 8.1%, Mitt Romney pledged he could cut the rate by two points if he makes it to the White House. "I can tell you that over a period of four years, by virtue of the policies that we'd put in place, we'd get the unemployment rate down to 6%, and perhaps a little lower," the presumptive GOP nominee said in a TIME interview published Wednesday.

FULL POST

(CNN) - The congressional impasse on immigration may be a political calculation by some Democrats, Sen. Marco Rubio said in a television appearance on Wednesday.

"I think there are some in the Democratic Party - not all - but I think there are some people in the Democratic Party that think that the immigration issue is more valuable to them unsolved," the first term Florida senator said on Fox News. "That it gives them something to talk about, that they can go back to Hispanic communities and make unrealistic promises every two years and win votes.”
FULL POST

(CNN) – The Massachusetts race for a U.S. Senate seat remains deadlocked between Sen. Scott Brown, the incumbent Republican, and Democrat Elizabeth Warren, a poll released Wednesday showed.

Brown had a one-point advantage over Warren, though the 48% and 47% they scored, respectively, is within the Suffolk University/7News poll’s sampling error of plus or minus four points.
FULL POST

(CNN) - Jack Welch, the former CEO of GE and a supporter of GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney, defended Romney's field of private equity in a Wednesday interview on CNN's "Piers Morgan Tonight."

"You take a dead carcass and put oxygen in it, and keep it alive, that's what private equity does," Welch said. "It is a big job creator? No. But does it keep jobs? Yes."

(CNN) - She took a baseball bat to a piñata bearing the likeness of South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, but when asked about the swings on Thursday, Donna Dewitt said she had no "regrets," and that "it could have been any face on that piñata."

"I certainly didn't have any hostilities so it wasn't intended to be hostile," she said Wednesday on CNN's "John King, USA." "My husband and I have been married 44 years. There are times you could have probably put his face on it, and he feels the same way about me. It was a piñata."
FULL POST

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (CNN) - Mitt Romney met with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell during a quick swing through the nation's capital Wednesday, a campaign aide confirmed.

The campaign previously characterized Romney's afternoon meetings as "private."
FULL POST

(CNN) - While his boss has seen his approval ratings fluctuate during their first three years in office, Joe Biden's approval as vice president had, until Wednesday, outpaced his disapproval.

Those scales tipped - though slightly – in a poll released Tuesday, which showed 45% disapproved of and 42% approved of his tenure, although the three-point difference is well within the survey's sampling error.
FULL POST

CNN's GUT CHECK | for May 23, 2012 | 5 p.m.
- n. a pause to assess the state, progress or condition of the political news cycle

BREAKING: Colin Powell sides with President Obama on same-sex marriage in interview with Wolf Blitzer on CNN’s “The Situation Room".

BLITZER: You were chairman of the Joint Chiefs when you installed don’t ask, don’t tell, but what about gay marriage? Are you with the president on this?

POWELL: I have no problem with it. And it was the Congress that imposed don’t ask, don’t tell. It was certainly my position and my recommendation to get us out of an even worse outcome if you recall. But, as I have thought about gay marriage I know a lot of friends who are individually gay but are in partnerships with a loved one and they are as stable a family as my family is. And they raise children. So I don’t see any reason not to say that they should be able to get married under the laws of their state or the laws of the country. … In terms of the legal matter of creating a contract between two people that is called marriage and allowing them to live together with the protection of law – it seems to me is the way we should be moving in this country. And so, I support the president’s decision and I think most Americans increasingly understand that times have changed just like they changed between gays in the military and when I was able to support removing that barrier to service. So, I hope everybody will just carefully look at this. And I understand the religious objections to it but at the same time we are a country that is open to diversity and change and my experience with many of my gay and lesbian friends is that they form unions as strong as any other unions I have seen and raise children that are good strong children and are either heterosexual or homosexual or lesbian depending on themselves, not because their parents happen to be.

FULL POST

(CNN) – In a speech blasting partisanship on Wednesday, Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida warned the current political climate was impeding public discourse and squashing the idea of American exceptionalism.

Though he didn't mention President Barack Obama by name, the junior senator made a veiled swipe at Obama's 2008 campaign theme of "hope" and "change," saying the last few years have seen anything but such visions.
FULL POST

(CNN) - Sen. John McCain, the 2008 Republican presidential nominee, recalled his own vice presidential selection process when asked Wednesday by CNN Chief National Correspondent John King who this year's presumptive GOP nominee, Mitt Romney, might choose as his running mate.

Watch “John King, USA” at 6pm on CNN for the full interview with Sen. John McCain.