Here’s the question Americans should always be asking every member of Congress: who are you fighting for. Here’s who I’m fighting for: Billy Hull. Billy Hull is a retired coal miner with nearly 30 years working at the Peabody Coal Power Mine near Montrose, Missouri.

Senator Claire McCaskill, responding to what she has called troubling weaknesses in protections for whistle-blowers, has asked federal agencies to provide information on senior managers who may have retaliated against employees who reported wrongdoing.

Marty Hahne’s magic tricks don’t work in Washington. Hahne is the Springfield-area magician who became a media sensation a few years ago, when the Washington Post wrote about an obscure federal rule that required him to have a license and disaster plan for his rabbit, Casey, the furry star of his children’s magic shows.

The Senate Aging Committee has asked pharmaceutical giant Pfizer for information about soaring prices for the generic drug naloxone, used to reverse the effects of an opioid overdose. The drug's price rose from $45 for a set of 10 vials in 2009 to $263.88 in early 2014—an increase of almost 600 percent, before settling to $189.96, CNBC reported in September. "Drug overdoses are now the leading cause of accidental death in the United States, many related to misuse or abuse of prescription opioids," Senators Susan Collins and Claire McCaskill wrote in a letter to Pfizer CEO Ian Read dated Nov. 28, a copy of which was obtained by CNBC.

Alvin Sykes stayed up late Friday night listening to Congress take care of business before adjourning, but when he heard that the Senate would recess at 3 a.m. Saturday, he thought the chances for passing the Till Bill reauthorization were over this year. That wasn’t so, however. 

A $29.5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development will seek to revitalize an area of St. Louis just north of downtown. HUD Secretary Julian Castro was in St. Louis Monday to announce that the city is a recipient of a grant through the ``Choice Neighborhoods'' program. The money will be used to improve public housing, fund social services and increase education, job training and employment opportunities in the city's Near North Side neighborhood.

U.S. Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Julián Castro announced the winners of the prestigious Choice Neighborhoods Implementation Grant from one of very neighborhoods that will benefit from the award: the Near North Side in the City of St. Louis.

When Missourians sent me to the Senate, I made a promise that I’d use the skills I’d honed as a state auditor to make the federal government work better. To go after fraud and guard your tax dollars from waste. It hasn’t always made me the most popular member of my party, but I view that work — my legislation to abolish an outdated federal agency and my votes against sprawling “omnibus” spending bills, my investigations into fraud and my crackdown on contracting abuses — as a critical part of my job.

With an hour to spare before a government shutdown, the U.S. Senate approved a stopgap spending bill late Friday that allows coal workers in southern Illinois to keep their health coverage until April. Coverage for about 16,000 employees of now-bankrupt coal companies was set to run out at the end of the year. Coal state Democrats held up a vote on the bill because they wanted a longer benefits extension.

Congress has sent legislation to President Barack Obama's desk that would continue reviews of racially motivated killings in the civil rights era that are now cold cases. The legislation passed by voice vote at the end of the congressional session early Saturday. It would indefinitely extend a 2007 law that calls for a full accounting of race-based deaths, many of which had been closed for decades. The law expires next year.

THE Washington Post story detailing how the Pentagon tried to hide a damning internal report detailing its bloat and inefficiency betrays military values that emphasize honor and accountability. One Democratic senator, Claire McCaskill of Missouri, said if the Post report is true, "the Pentagon played Congress and the American public for fools." She said she would investigate in her role as the top Democrat on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee in the next Congress.

As Congress moves forward in trying to tie up the loose ends of its year, Missouri and Kansas lawmakers noted their success on Thursday in sending a defense funding bill to President Obama. The U.S. Senate passed the National Defense Authorization Act by a vote of 92 to 7.

Sen. Claire McCaskill said Friday she’ll vote against legislation to keep the government operating until April because it doesn’t have long-term provisions extending healthcare and pensions promised to coal miners and their families.

Just because an inquiry comes to a company from a Democratic member of Congress, whose party is in the minority, that doesn't mean it can safely be ignored or discounted, write authors Margaret Krawiec and T.J. Parnham of the Skadden firm.

Congress has passed and sent to President Obama for his expected signature S-795, expanding protections for contractor employees who make whistleblowing disclosures, which commonly involve issues involving federal employees and projects.

Congressional lawmakers cast their final votes Thursday to curb retaliation against service members who report sexual assault, sending the legislation to President Obama in one of their last bipartisan acts in an otherwise fraught year. The U.S. Senate passed the Military Retaliation Prevention Act as part of a broader defense authorization that defines the terms of fiscal year 2017 spending for the military and related activities.

U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill is vowing to get to the bottom of a buried internal study done by the Pentagon that exposed $125 billion in administrative waste in its business operations. The Washington Post says the Pentagon hid the findings, fearing that if Congress found out, it would be cause for slashing the defense budget.

A bill to strengthen protections for employees who blow the whistle on fraud, waste and mismanagement in government contracts has gained congressional approval and now will head to the president’s desk to be signed into law. The bill, sponsored by Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri, permanently expands whistleblower protections to nearly all contractors and subcontractors for the federal government, except for those who work in the intelligence community.

In another bipartisan achievement, this year's national defense bill will include a plan by U.S. Senators Claire McCaskill of Missouri and Joni Ernst of Iowa to further curb sexual assault in the military. McCaskill and Ernst - both members of the Senate Armed Services Committee - introduced the bipartisan Military Retaliation Prevention Act targeting stubbornly high rates of survivors who report that they have been retaliated against by their peers after coming forward.