Congress | featured news

Barack Obama will use a visit to a Chicago-area lab on Friday to call on Congress to set aside $2bn over the next decade to fund research into a next generation of electric cars. The White House said the Energy Security Trust, which Obama first proposed in his state of the union address, would use royalties from offshore oil and gas drilling in public waters and would not add to the deficit.

NRA head Wayne LaPierre offered another fiery critique of Congress's actions on gun control Friday, suggesting universal background checks and a federal gun registry are only meant to tax guns and confiscate them.

Republican U.S. Sen. Rob Portman is now supporting gay marriage and says his reversal on the issue began when he learned one of his sons is gay. Ohio's junior senator disclosed his change of heart in interviews with several Ohio newspapers and CNN. In an op-ed published Friday in The Columbus Dispatch, he said the decision came after a lot of thought.

A Senate panel has issued a scathing assessment of JPMorgan's $6.2 billion trading loss last year. The investigation found that bank officials ignored growing risks and hid losses from investors and federal regulators.

By a party line vote, a Senate panel has approved a ban on assault weapons, setting the legislation up for a vote next month in the full Senate. But the bill’s prospects are not bright, as the ban – authored by California Sen. Dianne Feinstein – faces strong opposition from the National Rifle Association and other groups who say it infringes on Second Amendment rights.

A divided Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday backed President Barack Obama's call to require criminal background checks for all gun buyers, yet it remained uncertain if it would become law.

The Senate on Thursday confirmed John Brennan as the Obama administration's next Central Intelligence Agency director, overcoming concerns expressed by Republicans and some Democrats about the administration's use of lethal drone strikes.

President Obama will have a bipartisan lunch on Thursday with Representative Paul D. Ryan, the Republican chairman of the House Budget Committee, and the panel’s senior Democrat, Representative Chris Van Hollen.

The House has approved legislation to prevent a government shutdown at the end of the month and give the Pentagon some relief from a cash crunch that's harming military readiness.

The House is taking its first step Wednesday to avoid a government shutdown, as Washington looks to forgo forcing a fiscal crisis this month and instead turns its attention to a more deliberate debate over long-term deficit reduction.