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Outspent but hardly outgunned, online and high-tech companies triggered an avalanche of Internet clicks to force Congress to shelve legislation that would curb online piracy. They outmaneuvered the entertainment industry and other old guard business interests, leaving them bitter and befuddled.
With television lights glaring, 20 lawmakers will gather next week to revisit the fight that consumed Congress before Christmas over renewing a Social Security payroll tax cut and unemployment benefits.
Congress is damaging the Internal Revenue Service by shortchanging its budget, making it harder for the agency to help taxpayers, detect fraud and bolster revenue collection even as budget deficits surge, a government watchdog said Wednesday.
Mitt Romney performed strongly among conservatives and won decisive backing from voters worried about the economy and eager to vanquish President Barack Obama in this fall's elections, propelling him to victory in Tuesday's New Hampshire primary, exit polls of voters showed.
The Constitution lets presidents make temporary appointments while the Senate is in recess but does not specify what a recess is or how long one must last before that power can be exercised.
Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney won strong support Tuesday from Republicans seeking a candidate who can topple President Barack Obama in November's elections and from those most concerned about the weak economy, according to an entrance poll of GOP voters attending Iowa's presidential caucuses.
If President Barack Obama, the House and the Senate all want to extend a Social Security payroll tax cut and jobless benefits through next year, why are they fighting so bitterly over doing it?
Who is paying for the two-month extension of the payroll tax cut working its way through Congress? The cost is being dropped in the laps of most people who buy homes or refinance beginning next year.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid says congressional bargainers are preparing a two-month extension of the payroll tax cut and expiring jobless benefits as a fallback plan in case negotiations on a yearlong package don't succeed.
Partisan to the core, Congress careened toward a holiday-season standoff Monday on legislation to prevent a Social Security payroll tax increase for 160 million workers on Jan. 1.
Shifting from confrontation to cooperation, Senate leaders of both parties expressed optimism Thursday that agreement was near on extending this year's payroll tax cut, renewing unemployment benefits and averting a federal shutdown.
Congressional negotiations over a bill extending a payroll tax cut and unemployment benefits can begin as soon the Senate rejects a version the House approved despite a White House veto threat, the Senate's top Democrat said Wednesday.
A Republican payroll tax cut bill that sailed through the House despite a White House veto threat is dead on arrival in the Senate, and it will soon be time for talks on a final package, the Senate's top Democrat says.
House Republicans unveiled a bill Friday renewing the Social Security payroll tax cut and extending but trimming unemployment benefits but barreled toward a showdown with President Barack Obama by including language jumpstarting work on a controversial oil pipeline.
President Barack Obama vowed to delay Congress' year-end vacation as well as his own Thursday for "as long as it takes" to extend Social Security payroll tax cuts and long-term jobless benefits, his second challenge in as many days to conservative Republicans.
Congress' failed deficit-cutting supercommittee has faded away, but the pressure on lawmakers to quickly confront a stack of expensive economic issues is only growing.
On Veterans Day eve, an uncharacteristically unified Senate emphatically passed a bill to help unemployed veterans and government contractors that includes the first, small slivers of President Barack Obama's jobs agenda that he is likely to sign into law.
House GOP leaders say the latest unemployment numbers show it's time for the Democratic-led Senate to begin approving jobs-related bills that the Republican-run House has passed.
It will be hard for Republicans to attain their goal of lowering the top corporate tax rate to 25 percent if they want to pay for it solely by eliminating business tax breaks, a preliminary report by Congress' nonpartisan revenue scorekeeper suggested Wednesday.
The House voted in near lockstep Thursday to repeal a law aimed at compelling government contractors to pay all their taxes, sparking squabbling over which party was doing the most to create jobs but leaving economists underwhelmed that much of anything had been achieved.
The Senate voted Thursday to approve President Barack Obama's nomination of former utility executive John Bryson to head the Commerce Department, easily overcoming conservatives' objections that his pro-environmental views made him unsuited for the job.
Legislation that would trim hundreds of millions of dollars from the Internal Revenue Service budget would force significant cuts in the services it provides taxpayers and cost the government $4 billion annually in lost revenue, the agency warned Congress on Monday.
Conservative senators are urging the debt-cutting supercommittee to raise the eligibility age for Medicare and require many retirees to pay more. The top Senate Republican on defense is endorsing some of President Barack Obama's proposed benefit curbs for the military. Even farm state lawmakers are offering cuts to agriculture subsidies and food programs.
House Democrats are advising Congress' supercommittee to create jobs, raise revenues and avoid damaging cuts to crucial public works, education and health programs as the panel searches for ways to curb the government's growing debt.
House Democrats are telling Congress' supercommittee that its efforts to control the national debt must include job creation and higher revenues while avoiding damaging cuts to domestic and defense programs.
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