WASHINGTON — Taking a pass on reining in government growth, President Barack Obama unveiled a record $3.8 trillion election-year budget plan Monday, calling for stimulus-style spending on roads and schools and tax hikes on the wealthy to help pay the costs. The ideas landed with a thud on Capitol Hill.
WASHINGTON — Congress passed a massive $662 billion defense bill Thursday after months of wrangling over how to handle captured terror suspects without violating Americans’ constitutional rights. A last-minute compromise produced a truce, but lawmakers said the fight is not yet over.
WASHINGTON — Democrats backed away from their demand for higher taxes on millionaires as part of legislation to extend Social Security tax cuts for most Americans on Wednesday as Congress struggled to clear critical year-end bills without triggering a partial government shutdown.
WASHINGTON — The Democratic-controlled Senate moved methodically Thursday to complete a massive defense bill that would deny suspected terrorists, even U.S. citizens seized within the nation’s borders, the right to trial and subject them to indefinite detention.
WASHINGTON (AP) — A major donor to President Barack Obama discussed with White House officials a solar energy company that received a half-billion dollar federal loan and later went bankrupt, newly released emails show.
WASHINGTON — The global output of heat-trapping carbon dioxide jumped by the biggest amount on record, the U.S. Department of Energy calculated, a sign of how feeble the world’s efforts are at slowing man-made global warming. The new figures for 2010 mean that levels of greenhouse gases are higher than the worst case scenario outlined by climate experts just four years ago.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Republicans Mitt Romney and Rick Perry are neck and neck in filling their presidential campaign coffers after a summer of strong fundraising amid voter anger over jobs and the economy. They’re pulling in big bucks — $30 million combined — though not nearly as big as the man they hope to replace in the White House.
WASHINGTON — How many government bureaucrats does it take to screw in a light bulb? A lot of House Republicans think the answer should be “none.” They say the government should just stay out of it. To them, those newfangled curly fluorescent light bulbs are the last straw, another example of an overreaching government that’s forcing people to buy health insurance, prodding them to get more fuel-efficient cars and sticking its nose into too many places it doesn’t belong.