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A new term may have been coined today on Capitol Hill: "gaggle bombing."

Ahead of President Obama's executive action on immigration, Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, was a hot interview Wednesday afternoon. He has been known to say inflammatory things on the topic of immigration. And there was this awkward interaction with young immigration activists earlier this year at an event in his district.

Reporters gathered around King, just off the House floor, to get his thoughts on the president's expected action (he thinks it is likely unconstitutional and that the House should pass a resolution condemning it before possibly trying to pull funding from any programs Obama would create). This clump of reporters is called a scrum or a gaggle.

So what happened next can only be described as a "gaggle bombing." Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., walked up while a reporter was asking a question, put her arms around King and said: "Don't believe a thing he says. He's totally for amnesty. In fact, he called up the president and said 'Barack, please, please, would you do the executive amnesty? I've been beggin' ya.' "

Laughing, King kept the joke going: "And I would let anybody come into this country that wanted to come in, provided we could deport a liberal for each one," said King, tongue fully in cheek.

With the Louisiana Senate runoff driving votes in both chambers of Congress on the Keystone XL pipeline, here's a question: How many of those jobs will actually be in Louisiana?

The answer: zero.

"I don't think it goes through that state," laughed Sean Sweeney, a Cornell University researcher who co-authored a 2012 report that questioned many of the justifications for the project. "This is less about jobs numbers than it is about advancing the fossil fuel industry's agenda."

Keystone proponents include both Lousiana's incumbent Sen. Mary Landrieu and GOP challenger Rep. Bill Cassidy. Cassidy's bill passed the House easily on Friday. Landrieu's version is scheduled for a Senate vote Tuesday evening.

Both argue that finishing the remaining 1,179-mile section of the pipeline from the oil sands of Alberta, Canada, to Steele City, Neb., will create 42,000 new jobs nationally. That figure is cited by the State Department, but it may be misleading out of context.

The State Department's Final Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement on the Keystone XL pipeline defines a job as lasting for only one year. United States Department of State hide caption

itoggle caption United States Department of State

The State Department's final environmental impact report earlier this year found the project would support 42,100 jobs, but it defined those jobs as lasting just one year. In other words, there would be only 21,050 jobs that last the entirety of the two-year construction period — and the majority of those are not construction jobs (there would be no more than 1,950 of those in each of the two years) but rather are "induced" by construction workers spending their earnings on goods and services in the area.

As far as permanent jobs to operate the pipeline, there would be a total of 35 of those, according to the State Department report.

Ian Goodman, an energy industry consultant who co-authored the Cornell report, said it's possible Louisiana residents could benefit. "Louisiana has a big oil and gas sector. It is conceivable that some of those pipeline workers could come from Louisiana," he said.

That number, though, is not likely to be large, he said. "We're talking about tiny numbers here. ... A rounding-off error. You're not going to notice it," he said.

So why, then, all the Louisiana-based attention on Keystone by and for Landrieu and Cassidy?

"This is mostly symbolic," said Edward Chervenak, director of the Survey Research Center at the University of New Orleans. "This is an oil and gas state, so any vote that supports the industry would tend to go over well. They're both trying to show how much clout they have."

Sen. Mary Landrieu

Keystone XL Pipeline

The official in charge of quality for Takata Corp. apologized today for the defects in the air bags made by his company that have been linked to five deaths and dozens of injuries.

"We are deeply sorry about each of the reported instances in which a Takata air bag has not performed as designed and the driver or passenger had suffered personal injuries or death," Hiroshi Shimizu, senior vice president of quality for Takata, told the Senate Commerce Committee.

Takata air bags can inflate with too much force, sending metal shrapnel through the vehicle. The New York Times reported today that Takata's switch to a cheaper air bag propellant in 1998 is at the center of the crisis.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration wants Takata to issue a nationwide recall of its air bags. But the company says it has found the inflator ruptures only in high-humidity parts of the country such as Florida.

BMW, Chrysler, Ford, General Motors, Honda, Mazda, Mitsubishi, Nissan, Subaru and Toyota all use the inflators that are the target of the recall. More than 14 million recalls have been issued worldwide.

As we noted on Tuesday, the long-running problems with Takata's air bags were first spotted in 2004. The company has hired Andrew Levander, a prominent New York defense lawyer, to deal with a criminal investigation into its actions.

Here's more from The Wall Street Journal: "Analysts say that even if NHTSA's additional recalls are implemented, Takata has ample cash reserves and won't be at immediate financial risk. But they also say it is hard to quantify potentially bigger risks, such as costs stemming from class-action suits, damage to Takata's reputation or the possibility of yet more recalls."

Takata

Republicans in Congress are warning President Obama against acting alone on immigration, hours ahead of a planned announcement by the president that could provide temporary relief to some of the 12 million immigrants in the country illegally.

Republicans say any unilateral action on immigration by the president would mean there is no chance of passing a comprehensive immigration overhaul in Congress.

"One of the saddest parts about what the president is going to do is he will poison the well and make it much, much harder if not impossible for us to make serious progress on our broken immigration system," Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said Wednesday.

Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla., says the president through his planned executive action, is trying to "provoke" Republicans into battle.

"The smart thing is to find another way to deal with the president because he's trying to pick a bar fight and start one and that's too bad," Cole says.

The standoff comes as the government's budget authority is due to expire at midnight on Dec. 11. Republicans and Democrats on the appropriation committees are negotiating a spending bill that would keep the government running until the end of next September.

Republicans say they are not discussing another government shutdown, but NPR's Brakkton Booker tells our Newscast team that they are exploring options to block Obama, including stripping away the funding that would go toward the executive orders on immigration.

Obama, in a speech to the nation at 8 p.m. today, is expected to announce his steps to provide temporary relief to some immigrants living in the U.S. illegally. He also plans to address the issue Friday during remarks at a Las Vegas school, the site of a speech two years ago in which he called on Congress to pass comprehensive immigration legislation. Within five months of that speech, the Senate did just that – but the plan died in the GOP-controlled House.

You can listen to more of NPR's coverage on immigration here:

NPR's Scott Horsley On President's Plan

4 min 24 sec

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NPR's Tamara Keith On "Morning Edition"

3 min 26 sec

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