Headline News
November 12, 2012
In the 1962 film “The Manchurian Candidate,” Staff Sergeant Raymond Shaw is brainwashed into becoming an unwitting accomplice for an international communist conspiracy. Shaw, a good man and a patriot, is conditioned into taking actions that advance a cause that he does not support.
Over the past two election cycles, Republican primary voters in several states have been subject to the Manchurian Candidate treatment — helping to hand at least five U.S. Senate seats, and control of the Senate, to the Democratic Party.
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October 18, 2012
One of the feats of President Obama's re-election campaign is its ability to describe his record in a way that bears little or no relation to the reality of the last four years. Exhibit A is Mr. Obama's riff on energy at Tuesday night's debate, when he all but ran to the right of Mitt Romney, and maybe Sarah Palin.
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October 18, 2012
Nafis considered several targets for his attack, including the New York Stock Exchange and a high-ranking government official, whom the U.S. official identified as Obama. In the end, the criminal complaint said, Nafis decided to focus on the Federal Reserve Bank in lower Manhattan, which stands like a limestone and sandstone fortress atop what is believed to be one of the world's largest stockpiles of gold.
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October 17, 2012
The U.S. Supreme Court (on 10/16/12) declined to hear Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted’s appeal of a decision allowing early voting the weekend and Monday prior to the Nov. 6 election.
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October 11, 2012
At Wednesday's House oversight hearings into the attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Libya, Democrats protested loudly about a GOP political witch hunt. If only such alleged partisanship were always so educational. The Congressional investigation has in a few hours brought greater clarity about what happened before, during and after the events of 9/11/12 than the Obama Administration has provided in a month.
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October 3, 2012
BENGHAZI, Libya — More than three weeks after attacks in this city killed the U.S. ambassador to Libya and three other Americans, sensitive documents remained only loosely secured in the remains of the U.S. mission here on Wednesday, offering visitors easy access to delicate details about American operations in Libya.
Documents detailing weapons collection efforts, emergency evacuation protocols, the full internal itinerary of Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens’s trip and the personnel records of Libyans who were contracted to secure the mission were among the items scattered across the floors of the looted compound when a Washington Post reporter and a translator visited Wednesday.
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October 2, 2012
More than three dozen states could be unprepared or unwilling to set up the insurance marketplaces called for under the 2010 health-care law, leaving at least part of the task up to the federal government, according to a new report.
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September 28, 2012
Justino Mora had been checking his e-mail several times a day for weeks to see if there was any word from a federal immigration agency on his application for a reprieve from deportation.
Mr. Mora, who was born in Mexico but has been living illegally in California since he was 11, was one of the first immigrants to send in his supporting documents for a new program that started on Aug. 15. But he was still stunned on Tuesday when he received a new message from the agency, containing one crucial word: “Approved.” Mr. Mora is one of the first immigrants nationwide to receive approval for a two-year deferral of deportation under the program, which President Obama announced in June. As of Thursday the agency, United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, had received more than 100,000 applications, officials said, with more than 63,000 in the last stages of review. But so far the agency has confirmed only 29 approvals.
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September 28, 2012
On his first full day in office, President Barack Obama ordered federal officials to "usher in a new era of open government" and "act promptly" to make information public.
As Obama nears the end of his term, his administration hasn't met those goals, failing to follow the requirements of the Freedom of Information Act, according to an analysis of open-government requests filed by Bloomberg News.
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September 25, 2012
U.S. Rep. Steven C. LaTourette today announced that Trumbull County will receive $250K in ARC funding for Kermont Heights sanitary sewer improvements. LaTourette was instrumental in getting Trumbull, Ashtabula and Mahoning counties added to the ARC. The sewers will start on State Route 7 and 17,055 linear feet of sanitary line will benefit 157 households, three churches, and five businesses.
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September 24, 2012
U.S. Rep. Steven C LaTourette (OH-14) today announced that his office will host an annual Military Academy Information Day on Sept. 29.
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September 11, 2012
The note is just five words and two numbers. Randy Scott scrawled these five words and two numbers on a piece of paper on Sept. 11, 2001, while at work at Euro Brokers Inc. in the World Trade Center.
But if a picture is worth a thousand words, these five words and two numbers have changed the picture completely for Scott's family
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August 24, 2012
The Congressional Budget Office report is — it’s a pretty dire warning about what this nation faces, and yet I didn’t hear the president mention it yesterday. Is there a reason why?
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August 24, 2012
The construction of the second new Inner Belt Bridge is back on track for completion by 2016.
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June 13, 2012
EAST LIVERPOOL, Ohio - Not that long ago, this little Ohio River town could call itself the pottery capital of the nation. Some four dozen pottery factories here "set America's table," as the locals liked to boast, churning out everything from fine china to chamber pots and employing a large majority of the work force.
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June 13, 2012
The U.S. Department of Energy said Wednesday morning it would put $280 million into a struggling uranium centrifuge project in southern Ohio. The research-and-development phase of the project would create 1,000 jobs.
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June 6, 2012
WASHINGTON (AP) -- In the wake of an alarmingly weak jobs report last week, President Barack Obama and lawmakers in both parties find themselves possessing few if any realistic options for jolting the economy out of its doldrums before Election Day.
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June 6, 2012
TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. - Michigan authorities have charged a man with 12 counts of selling live Asian carp in violation of a state law meant to prevent the spread of invasive species.
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June 5, 2012
The amount of federal debt held by the public is projected later this year to surpass 70 percent of the nation's annual economic output, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said Tuesday in a report that spotlighted the stark choices policymakers face on taxation and government spending.
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June 1, 2012
The U.S. economy suddenly looks a lot weaker.
Only 69,000 jobs were added in May, the fewest in a year, and the unemployment rate rose from 8.1 percent to 8.2 percent
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May 23, 2012
Tax hikes and spending cuts set to take effect in January would suck $607 billion out of the economy next year, plunging the nation at least briefly back into recession, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said Tuesday.
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May 17, 2012
If Republican and Democratic leaders want to avoid a reprise of last year's nasty showdown over raising the federal debt limit, they are not off to a good start.
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May 16, 2012
The Senate defeated five budget proposals offered by Republicans today, as the GOP sought to hammer Democrats for not producing a budget resolution this year and for not putting one on the Senate floor in the previous two years.
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May 1, 2012
(CBS News) Five alleged anarchists have been arrested after a months-long sting operation, charged with plotting to blow up a bridge in the Cleveland area, the FBI announced today.
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April 30, 2012
A controversial anti-obesity “slush fund” under Obamacare was used in Nashville, Tennessee to spay dogs and cats. The reasoning: stray dogs scare people from exercising outdoors.
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April 24, 2012
The Department of Veterans Affairs has greatly overstated how quickly it provides mental-health care for veterans, according to an inspector general’s report released Monday.
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April 24, 2012
The budget outlook for Social Security is getting dimmer, the U.S. government said, with its primary trust fund now projected to run dry three years sooner than anticipated.
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April 10, 2012
WASHINGTON — Reigniting a debate about the bottom line for President Barack Obama’s health care law, a leading conservative economist estimates in a study to be released Tuesday that the overhaul will add at least $340 billion to the deficit, not reduce it.
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April 4, 2012
One of the surest ways to lose all hope that Congress will ever solve the nation's toughest problems is to watch the annual debate over the federal budget, which took place in the House last week.
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April 4, 2012
WASHINGTON — As the House moved toward a vote last week on a bipartisan budget plan modeled on the deficit reduction blueprint of a White House commission, Washington’s conservative and liberal influence machines swung into action.
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March 30, 2012
WASHINGTON – The fate of President Obama's landmark health care law likely will be decided Friday in an oak-paneled conference room adjoining the chambers of Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts.
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March 30, 2012
Congress dug itself out of a hole of its own creation by clearing a transportation extension Thursday, but not before generating a lot of hot air — and heartburn for people with a stake in transportation programs.
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March 29, 2012
Simpson-Bowles is still the top bipartisan budget deal out there - and Congress may need it when it faces a showdown in December over the expiring Bush tax cuts and mandated spending cuts.
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March 28, 2012
The House could vote for the first time this week on a bipartisan deficit-cutting plan, modeled on the suggestions of a presidential commission chaired by former senator Alan Simpson (R-Wyo.) and former White House official Erskine Bowles, that calls for both spending cuts and new tax revenue.
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March 28, 2012
The House floor today will become the Baskin-Robbins of budgets: Every political persuasion has its own flavor.
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March 27, 2012
WASHINGTON—A bipartisan group of House lawmakers, bucking Democratic and Republican leaders, is moving to propose a broad plan that would aim to reduce the federal budget deficit by more than $4 trillion over 10 years through a combination of spending cuts and tax increases.
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March 27, 2012
A bipartisan group of lawmakers in the House will offer a budget plan Thursday based on the recommendations of President Obama's fiscal commission.
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March 26, 2012
The Supreme Court begins its constitutional review of the health-care overhaul law Monday with a fundamental question: Is the court barred from making such a decision at this time?
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March 26, 2012
WASHINGTON—In taking up President Barack Obama's health overhaul Monday, the Supreme Court wades into an issue that not only could sway this fall's elections but also could help define for generations what Congress is and isn't entitled to do.
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March 19, 2012
(Cleveland)- Congressman Steve LaTourette and Congresswoman Marcia Fudge have come together to try and get rid of some of the vacant and abandoned homes in northeast Ohio.
LaTourette and Fudge introduced legislation called "Restore our Neighborhood Act of 2012" during a press conference Monday afternoon at E.69th north of Union Avenue.
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March 14, 2012
Fifteen of the nation's 19 largest banks passed federal regulators' so-called stress tests, including KeyCorp, Fifth Third and PNC, the Federal Reserve said Tuesday.
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March 12, 2012
When Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. takes his usual center seat on the Supreme Court bench on March 26, he will begin presiding over an extraordinary three days of arguments that will determine the fate of President Obama’s sweeping health care law.
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March 12, 2012
The Taliban vowed Monday to take revenge for the killing of at least 16 Afghan civilians by a rogue American soldier, and the nation’s parliament said people “have run out of patience” with foreign forces.
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February 6, 2012
The U.S. is the closest it has been in almost 20 years to achieving energy self-sufficiency, a goal the nation has been pursuing since the 1973 Arab oil embargo triggered a recession and led to lines at gasoline stations.
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February 1, 2012
President Obama's pledge to cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term will fall short, according to the latest economic outlook released Tuesday by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office.
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February 1, 2012
Building permanent barriers in Chicago’s canals and waterways could block the voracious Asian carp from invading Lake Erie, according to a report released yesterday, but they would take years to put up and cost taxpayers more than $3 billion.
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January 17, 2012
When the House gaveled out for the year last month, lawmakers from both parties quickly made for the exits, eager to put one of the ugliest sessions in recent memory behind them.
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January 6, 2012
U.S. employers added more workers to payrolls than forecast in December and the jobless rate declined to an almost three-year low, showing that the labor market gained momentum heading into 2012.
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December 16, 2011
WASHINGTON -- The Securities and Exchange Commission has brought civil fraud charges against six former top executives at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, saying they misled the government and taxpayers about risky subprime mortgages the mortgage giants held during the housing bust.
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December 15, 2011
BAGHDAD — Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta paid solemn tribute on Thursday to an “independent, free and sovereign Iraq” and declared the official end to the Iraq war, formally wrapping up the U.S. military’s mission in the country after almost nine years.
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December 14, 2011
The Republican plan, authored by the Senate Finance Committee's top Republican, Orrin Hatch of Utah, failed on a straight party-line 47-53 vote, falling 20 votes shy of the two-thirds threshold required to change the Constitution.
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December 14, 2011
A federal agency on Tuesday called for a ban on all cellphone use by drivers — the most far-reaching such recommendation to date — saying its decision was based on a decade of investigations into distraction-related accidents, as well as growing concerns that powerful mobile devices are giving drivers even more reasons to look away from the road.
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December 2, 2011
WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. unemployment rate fell last month to its lowest level in more than 2½ years. More of the unemployed either found jobs or gave up looking and were no longer counted as unemployed.
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November 28, 2011
The Federal Reserve and the big banks fought for more than two years to keep details of the largest bailout in U.S. history a secret. Now, the rest of the world can see what it was missing.
The Fed didn’t tell anyone which banks were in trouble so deep they required a combined $1.2 trillion on Dec. 5, 2008, their single neediest day. Bankers didn’t mention that they took tens of billions of dollars in emergency loans at the same time they were assuring investors their firms were healthy. And no one calculated until now that banks reaped an estimated $13 billion of income by taking advantage of the Fed’s below-market rates, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its January issue.
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November 28, 2011
So far, only Steve LaTourette is inspiring any confidence among Northeast Ohio's congressional delegation as citizens fumed last week over the latest fiasco to come out of the nation's capital.
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November 18, 2011
Count Steve LaTourette as the one Ohio member of the U.S. House with the good sense to sign a letter calling on the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction to “go big” in pursuing fiscal discipline. The Bainbridge Township Republican joined a bipartisan collection of 100 colleagues in urging the supercommittee to put all options on the table, including tax increases.
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November 17, 2011
The Transportation Security Administration is a bloated agency plagued by significant problems, says a congressional report released Wednesday on the 10th anniversary of the agency's creation. But an agency spokesman called the report a disservice to the workers.
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November 15, 2011
It required a big deed to mark the big deal. Officials on Monday signed a ceremonial poster-sized deed to mark the transfer of 578 undeveloped acres from Blossom Music Center to the Cuyahoga Valley National Park.
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November 15, 2011
The Obama administration urged officers of the struggling solar company Solyndra to postpone announcing planned layoffs until after the November 2010 midterm elections, newly released e-mails show.
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November 9, 2011
The case is shaping up to be the most contentious at the Supreme Court in more than a decade, but everyone involved agrees at least on one point: They need to know as soon as possible whether the new health-care law is constitutional.
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November 3, 2011
A group of 40 House Republicans for the first time Wednesday encouraged Congress’s deficit reduction committee to explore new revenue as part of a broad deal that would make a major dent in the nation’s debt, joining 60 Democrats in a rare bipartisan effort to urge the “supercommittee” to reach a big deal that could also include entitlement cuts.
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November 2, 2011
A bipartisan group of 100 House Republicans and Democrats is urging the super committee to "go big," and put aside fights over taxes increases and entitlement cuts and come together on a $4 trillion deal to reduce the nation's deficit.
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October 30, 2011
Though manufacturing isn't what it once was in Cleveland, one out of every nine employed Cleveland residents still works in the manufacturing industry, new Census estimates show.
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October 28, 2011
Political dysfunction is often blamed for Congress’s inability to curb the U.S. budget deficit. An even bigger obstacle may be the American public.
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October 28, 2011
Within hours of its debut, the federal government’s ballyhooed new jobs board was on the fritz: USAJobs crashed repeatedly, error messages popped up over and over, résumés disappeared, passwords were obliterated.
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October 27, 2011
The Obama administration's proposal to provide relief to student loan borrowers could reduce payments for some college graduates, but the plan won't do anything for borrowers with the most expensive types of student loans, analysts say.
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October 26, 2011
A new Pentagon audit resolves a lingering Iraq-war mystery, concluding that $6.6 billion of U.S.-controlled reconstruction money was transferred to the Central Bank of Iraq, not lost or stolen.
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October 26, 2011
The State Department has bought more than $70,000 worth of books authored by President Obama, sending out copies as Christmas gratuities and stocking “key libraries” around the world with “Dreams From My Father” more than a decade after its release.
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October 25, 2011
The restive House Republican freshman class got an early sign of the depth of institutional knowledge possessed by Rep. Steven LaTourette.
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October 24, 2011
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has warned against giving flu shots with needle-free injectors.
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October 20, 2011
More than 2 million taxpayers - including some prisoners claiming students as dependents - apparently wrongly collected $3.2 billion in college tax credits last year, according to a report issued Thursday by a federal investigator.
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October 19, 2011
Students and workers seeking retraining are borrowing extraordinary amounts of money through federal loan programs, potentially putting a huge burden on the backs of young people looking for jobs
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October 19, 2011
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration moved Tuesday to roll back numerous rules that apply to hospitals and other health care providers after concluding that the standards were obsolete or overly burdensome to the industry.
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October 18, 2011
WASHINGTON — Social Security recipients will get a raise in January — their first increase in benefits since 2009. Experts project the increase will be about 3.5 percent, and on Wednesday, about 55 million beneficiaries will find out for sure.
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October 13, 2011
The first rule of the supercommittee: Its members don’t talk about the supercommittee.
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October 13, 2011
On Tuesday evening, a landmark jobs proposal from a Democratic president came before the Democratic-controlled Senate. There were 50 votes for it and 49 votes against it.
And it failed.
Just as everybody expected.
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October 7, 2011
WASHINGTON – In challenging Republicans to get behind his jobs bill Thursday, President Obama argued Republicans have supported his proposals before, demanded that they explain themselves if they oppose him, and challenged others to come up with a plan of their own. The rhetoric in the president's quick-moving press conference dodged some facts and left some evidence in the dust.
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October 7, 2011
Dan Tolleson, a researcher and writer with a Ph.D. in politics, has been out of work since 2009, except for brief stints as a driver. Still, he opposes President Obama's call for Congress to renew extensions on unemployment benefits.
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October 7, 2011
Hiring picked up moderately in September as employers added 103,000 jobs, the government said Friday, easing fears among economists that the nation was hurtling toward another recession.
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October 5, 2011
The Federal Reserve is prepared to take further steps to help an economy that is "close to faltering," Fed chairman Ben Bernanke said on Tuesday in his bleakest assessment yet of the fragile U.S. recovery.
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October 5, 2011
U.S. employers announced the most job cuts in more than two years in September, led by planned reductions at Bank of America Corp. (BAC) and in the military.
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September 28, 2011
WASHINGTON – The third threatened government shutdown this year was narrowly averted. Congress' deficit "supercommittee" is apparently on a track to nowhere. And there has been contentious debate but little action on the proposals to help the jobless.
Can this government be fixed?
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September 28, 2011
Major health insurance companies have been charging sharply higher premiums this year, outstripping any growth in workers’ wages and creating more uncertainty for the Obama administration and employers who are struggling to drive down an unrelenting rise in medical costs.
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September 27, 2011
The Senate reached a bipartisan spending agreement on Monday to avert a government shutdown, sidestepping a bitter impasse over disaster financing after federal authorities said they could most likely squeak through the rest of this week with the $114 million they had on hand.
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September 27, 2011
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner didn't dispute a Harvard economist's estimate that each job in the White House's jobs plan would cost $200,000, but said the pricetag is the wrong way to measure the bill's worth.
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September 25, 2011
With time running out, Congress returns Monday to try to pass a short-term funding measure to avert a government shutdown and avoid yet another market-rattling showdown over the federal budget.
The Democratic-led Senate, which on Friday blocked a GOP House measure to fund the government through Nov. 18, will vote late Monday on its own version of the bill.
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September 24, 2011
Even if Congress heeds President Barack Obama's demands to "pass this bill right away" and enacts his jobs and tax plan in its entirety, the unemployment rate probably still would hover in nosebleed territory for at least three more years.
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September 23, 2011
The federal government has doled out more than $600 million in benefit payments to dead people over the past five years, a watchdog report says.
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September 22, 2011
A presidential visit is a big deal, but will it actually guarantee funding for the aged and overused Brent Spence Bridge?
Not really, say transportation experts and highway officials.
That's not how highway funding works. When you consider the partisan bickering over the president's jobs bill and the stalled federal transportation bill, the bridge looks no closer to getting the $2.4 billion needed to replace it than before it caught the White House's attention.
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September 21, 2011
WASHINGTON — The Justice Department on Tuesday came under criticism for “extravagant and potentially wasteful” spending on conferences at the end of the Bush administration and early in the Obama administration, including paying $16 per muffin and $8 per eight-ounce cup of coffee at certain events.
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September 20, 2011
President Obama’s budget director said Monday that the president’s new deficit-reduction plan would impose “a lot of pain,” and that is clearly true of White House proposals to cut $320 billion from projected spending on Medicare and Medicaid in the coming decade.
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September 6, 2011
U.S. Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe on Tuesday will ask Congress to take drastic measures to prevent the Postal Service from becoming insolvent and going out of business as early as this year.
Never before has the Postal Service been in such dire straits: the agency is so low on cash that it may not be able to make a $5.5 billion payment due this month for retirees and could have to shut down entirely this winter unless Congress takes emergency action, reports the New York Times.
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September 2, 2011
WASHINGTON -- Employers stopped adding jobs in August, an alarming setback for an economy that has struggled to grow and might be at risk of another recession.
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August 24, 2011
On the 48th anniversary of the "I Have a Dream" speech, a towering memorial will honor the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. as a man of peace among the many monuments to wars and presidents in the nation's capital. The road to this weekend's dedication, however, has run through hurdles of all kinds — not unlike the long struggle over King's legacy itself.
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August 15, 2011
Barely two years after the financial crisis ended, Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke were back at it about a week ago. They were working the weekend phones with their counterparts in Europe, urging them to use overwhelming force to contain the continent’s spreading debt crisis, which was unnerving markets on both sides of the Atlantic.
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August 13, 2011
Ohio’s excuse of a poor state economy as the reason why it has so few welfare recipients working or training for a job didn’t fly with federal regulators.
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August 5, 2011
The headlines are doubtless crediting Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker John Boehner with reaching an agreement to return the Federal Aviation Administration to full operation, put nearly 75,000 people back to work, keep 250 construction projects -- three in Cleveland -- moving forward and allow the government to collect $30 million a day in ticket taxes. But credit Rep. Steve LaTourette with an assist. Maybe a big one.
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July 22, 2011
Unemployment rates rose in more than half of U.S. states in June, evidence that slower hiring is affecting many parts of the country.
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July 20, 2011
In 2011 each American will give NASA about $60 — the sun, the moon, and the stars for less than the price of a month of basic cable.
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July 15, 2011
So the credit-rating agencies that helped to create the financial crisis that led to a deep recession are now warning that the U.S. could lose the AAA rating it has had since 1917. As painfully ironic as this is, there's no benefit in shooting the messengers. The real culprit is the U.S. political class, especially the President who has presided over this historic collapse of fiscal credibility.
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July 13, 2011
It is three years before most of the new health-care law kicks in, but already some of America's largest employers are peppering the Internal Revenue Service with concerns that making the changes will be far more complex than they anticipated.
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July 8, 2011
The Environmental Protection Agency announced Thursday that it finalized rules that compel 28 states and the District to curb air pollution that travels across states by wind and weather, the first in a series of federal restrictions aimed at improving the air Americans breathe.
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July 7, 2011
Federal regulations are designed to protect workers, the public and the environment from unsafe or unfair business practices. But they can sometimes have the unintended consequence of stifling growth.
According to research released last year from the Small Business Administration's Office of Advocacy, it costs about $2,830 more for firms with less than 20 employees than those with 500 or more employees to comply with government regulations on a per-employee basis. In specific areas such as tax and environmental compliance, firms with 20 to 499 employees also pay significantly more than large firms.
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July 6, 2011
Many big public companies are likely to report strong second-quarter profits, but that isn't the story on Main Street, where small businesses are grappling with jittery customers, rising costs and tight credit.
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June 28, 2011
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is prosecuting fewer cases in which people are accused of defrauding government benefits programs, even as the number of Americans seeking federal aid has ballooned to record levels, a USA TODAY analysis found.
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June 28, 2011
The Obama administration may require auto makers to roughly double the average fuel economy of their car and light truck fleets from current levels to 56.2 miles per gallon by 2025.
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June 27, 2011
As the U.S. wrestles with rising health expenses, one group of patients stands out for government-paid care that is both ultra-costly and plagued with problems. They are the people who receive both Medicare, the program for those 65 and older or disabled, and Medicaid, the one for the poor. Statistics on these 9.7 million "dual eligibles" are stark.
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June 27, 2011
WASHINGTON — Alarmed by a shortage of primary care doctors, Obama administration officials are recruiting a team of “mystery shoppers” to pose as patients, call doctors’ offices and request appointments to see how difficult it is for people to get care when they need it.
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June 22, 2011
WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama's health care law would let several million middle-class people get nearly free insurance meant for the poor, a twist government number crunchers say they discovered only after the complex bill was signed.
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June 17, 2011
....the Fannie Mae scandal is the most important political scandal since Watergate. It helped sink the American economy. It has cost taxpayers about $153 billion, so far. It indicts patterns of behavior that are considered normal and respectable in Washington.
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June 16, 2011
The Obama administration intensified a crackdown on employers of illegal immigrants, notifying another 1,000 companies in all 50 states Wednesday the government plans to inspect their hiring records.
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June 13, 2011
President Obama's jobs council will make its first recommendations today on lifting hiring and strengthening the economy. Too bad the message doesn't seem to be reaching the Administration's regulators, in particular the Environmental Protection Agency.
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June 13, 2011
U.S. Defense officials still cannot say what happened to $6.6 billion, sent by the planeload in cash and intended for Iraq's reconstruction after the start of the war.
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June 7, 2011
Despite a pact to keep outsiders from collecting water from the Great Lakes, the agreement doesn't stop cities and businesses from draining billions of gallons each day from Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie and Ontario.
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June 7, 2011
The government added $5.3 trillion in new financial obligations in 2010, largely for retirement programs such as Medicare and Social Security. That brings to a record $61.6 trillion the total of financial promises not paid for.
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May 25, 2011
Was President Kennedy a dreamer, a visionary, or simply politically astute? We may never know, but he had the courage to make that bold proposal 50 years ago Wednesday. The Soviet Union's Yuri Gagarin had completed an orbit of the Earth the previous month and electrified the world. The United States had taken only one human, Alan Shepard, above 100 miles altitude and none into orbit. Americans, embarrassed by the successes of our Cold War adversary, were eager to demonstrate that we too were capable of great achievements in space.
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May 24, 2011
A Senate panel on Tuesday will examine how more than $24 billion in stimulus funds went to contractors or organizations that owe the federal government millions in back taxes.
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May 20, 2011
The Obama administration has scrapped a proposal to assign new passenger cars a letter grade from A to D based on their fuel efficiency, according to people familiar with the matter.
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May 20, 2011
WASHINGTON — Alarmed at soaring premiums and profits in the health insurance industry, the Obama administration demanded on Thursday that insurers justify proposed rate increases of more than 10 percent, starting in September.
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May 11, 2011
RICHMOND, Virginia -- Lawyers for President Barack Obama go to court on Tuesday to try to save the cornerstone of his healthcare overhaul, arguing that the requirement for Americans to buy insurance is constitutional.
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May 11, 2011
Democrats Oppose Spending Cap Plan
The White House and Senate Democratic leaders, worried that a proposal to cap federal spending could gain traction in Congress, have mounted a drive to discredit the idea.
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May 6, 2011
U.S. manufacturing companies, long known for layoffs and shipping jobs overseas, now find themselves in a very different position: scrambling for scarce talent at home.
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May 3, 2011
As two Black Hawk helicopters packed with American special forces skimmed their way across a moonless sky toward Osama bin Laden's lair, the mission's planners still weren't even sure their target lived there.
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May 3, 2011
For years, the agonizing search for Osama bin Laden kept coming up empty. Then last July, Pakistanis working for the Central Intelligence Agency drove up behind a white Suzuki navigating the bustling streets near Peshawar, Pakistan, and wrote down the car's license plate.
The man in the car was Bin Laden's most trusted courier, and over the next month C.I.A. operatives would track him throughout central Pakistan. Ultimately, administration officials said, he led them to a sprawling compound at the end of a long dirt road and surrounded by tall security fences in a wealthy hamlet 35 miles from the Pakistani capital.
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May 2, 2011
Osama bin Laden was buried at sea Monday after U.S. forces raided his well-appointed hideout in Pakistan, shot him in a firefight and spirited his body out of the country aboard a helicopter, U.S. officials said.
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April 19, 2011
The House, led by Speaker John Boehner, has had the most roll-call votes at this point since 1995.
The Senate has had fewer votes, 68, than any time since 1997.
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April 19, 2011
The divide between Republicans and Democrats in Congress over combating the nation's debt was spotlighted by Standard & Poor's lowering of the U.S. credit outlook to "negative," with each side saying the change bolstered their competing arguments.
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April 14, 2011
How President Obama’s framework for reducing federal budget deficits compares with other proposals:
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April 14, 2011
Some conservatives were taken aback by the AP's report yesterday that the continuing resolution (CR) that cuts $38 billion will only reduce this fiscal year's deficit--i.e. reduce total outlays through September 30--by $352 million.
Is the CR a sham? Nope, not really.
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April 12, 2011
WASHINGTON — Most home buyers put down less than 20 percent when they take out a mortgage, a sign of how hard it has become to scrape together enough cash to purchase a house.
Prospective home buyers may soon face a rude awakening.
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April 11, 2011
As a government shutdown loomed the afternoon of April 8, Mike Simpson, a powerful appropriations "cardinal," was asked about his role in the ongoing talks to reach a spending deal and avert a budgetary crisis. Simpson, who chairs the House Interior-Environment spending subcommittee, made it clear that he was not in the room. "This is Harry Reid, John A. Boehner and President Obama," the Idaho Republican said.
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April 2, 2011
Chain restaurants, convenience stores, concession stands and vending machines would soon have to display calorie information for the food products they sell under rules proposed Friday by the Food and Drug Administration.
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March 30, 2011
Two and a half years ago, Congress passed the legislation that bailed out the country’s banks. The government has declared its mission accomplished, calling the program remarkably effective “by any objective measure.” On my last day as the special inspector general of the bailout program, I regret to say that I strongly disagree. The bank bailout, more formally called the Troubled Asset Relief Program, failed to meet some of its most important goals.
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March 29, 2011
As you know, President Obama addressed the nation last night about the strategy in Libya. The editorial boards of many newspapers weighed in on the speech. This is a chance to see how the speech was received across the country.
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March 22, 2011
The federal government is exploring the possibility of using a credit rating giant like Equifax to verify the identity of American workers, a move that could make it far more difficult for undocumented immigrants to get work using stolen Social Security numbers.
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March 22, 2011
CAGUAS, Puerto Rico—This mountainside town is home to a picturesque cathedral, a tobacco museum and a Wal-Mart Supercenter. Another defining feature: Caguas's 00725 zip code has more people who receive a disability check than any other in the U.S.
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March 18, 2011
The U.S. government, signaling distrust of reports from Japan about the nuclear crisis there, moved Thursday to evacuate U.S. citizens and set up its own channels of information—a step echoed by some American companies that laid plans to trim their operations in the stricken country.
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March 17, 2011
After being granted three weeks to cut what has been an elusive budget deal, Speaker John A. Boehner is navigating the uncharted territory between legislative pragmatism and Tea Party zeal.
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March 9, 2011
Patients are demanding doctors' orders for over-the-counter products because of a provision in the health-care overhaul that slipped past nearly everyone's radar. It says people who want a tax break to buy such items with what's known as flexible-spending accounts need to get a prescription first.
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March 7, 2011
The Obama Administration has quietly issued another 126 waivers to one provision of the Obama health law, putting the total number of waivers now at over one thousand.
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March 3, 2011
Medicaid, which is jointly funded by states and the federal government, now provides health insurance to 53 million poor Americans. Starting in 2014, the law will require states to open eligibility to an anticipated 20 million more people with slightly higher incomes.
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March 2, 2011
Just one in four of the 2.7 million homeowners who sought to participate in the Obama administration's signature mortgage assistance program have succeeded in getting their monthly payments reduced.
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March 2, 2011
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke says a plan from House Republicans to cut $61 billion in spending this year would not harm economic growth.
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March 1, 2011
The U.S. government has 15 different agencies overseeing food-safety laws, more than 20 separate programs to help the homeless and 80 programs for economic development.
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February 23, 2011
Most Democrats want the government to pay for public broadcasting. Most Republicans want the government to sponsor NASCAR.
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February 23, 2011
The risk of a U.S. government shutdown eased on Tuesday after a top Republican backed a stopgap measure to keep programs funded beyond March 4. The White House also expressed confidence that the two parties can agree to keep the government going and avoid a political standoff that could unsettle financial markets and risk mass government layoffs.
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February 15, 2011
Atop the list of possible gavel holders are Reps. Mac Thornberry (Texas), Steven LaTourette (Ohio), Candice Miller (Mich.) and Shelley Moore Capito (W.Va.).
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February 14, 2011
The House Ways and Means Committee will mark up on Thursday a bill to repeal the 1099 provision included in the healthcare law.
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February 11, 2011
CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf told the House Budget Committee on Thursday that the health care law will reduce employment by 0.5 percent by 2021 because some people will no longer have to work just to afford health insurance.
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February 9, 2011
The federal government spends $18 billion a year on 47 separate job training programs run by nine different agencies. All but three programs overlap with others to provide the same services to the same population, according to a government report to be released today.
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February 8, 2011
When Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) asked businesses for their gripes about government regulations, he received detailed dossiers from some of K Street’s heaviest hitters, such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. He also got a two-page missive from Captain Steve Papen, who owns Fintastic Fishing Charters in St. Petersburg, Fla.
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February 8, 2011
Bill O'Reilly's Fox interview with President Obama on Sunday was fascinating, and not merely because Mr. Obama made clear he's an ardent fan of these pages. What really caught our attention was the President's claim that "I didn't raise taxes once. I lowered taxes over the last two years."
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February 4, 2011
The House Rules Committee on Tuesday will meet to mark up a resolution that instructs 10 House committees to review existing and pending regulations that are hurting job creation and economic growth.
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February 2, 2011
For months, progressives smugly labeled the legal challenges to ObamaCare as "silly" or even "frivolous." Today their confidence must be severely shaken.
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February 2, 2011
The U.S. Senate on Wednesday voted to roll back a controversial tax-reporting requirement that was part of the health-care overhaul, putting it a step closer to becoming law.
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January 31, 2011
Left unchanged, Medicaid will cost Ohio taxpayers an additional $1.6 billion next year. That's a 49 percent jump in the state's share of costs for the health-care program covering more than 2 million poor and disabled Ohioans.
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January 31, 2011
The Senate is known for being the most deliberative body in the world, but in the first month of 2011, the chamber hasn’t even bothered much with the deliberating part.
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