House Republicans | featured news

House Republicans are willing to give President Barack Obama a rare win, the chairman of the Education and Workforce Committee said Thursday in outlining a deal that would let college students avoid a costly hike on their student loans.

House Republicans are preparing for another showdown over the debt ceiling this summer. The House Ways and Means Committee passed a bill Wednesday to protect Social Security recipients and investors in Treasury bonds if the government hits the limit of its borrowing authority.

House Republicans unanimously voted down a measure Friday that would have raised the federal minimum wage, from its current $7.25 per hour to $10.10 by 2015. Six Democrats joined 227 Republicans in voting it down; 184 Democrats voted yes. The legislation was proposed as a last-minute amendment upon passage of the SKILLS Act, which reauthorizes a jobs training program. The procedural move, known as the motion to recommit, was invoked by Democrats with the instruction that the minimum wage amendment be tacked on to the SKILLS Act, an aide said.

House Republicans staked out what they cast as a middle-ground option, pushing an approach that could include legalization but not a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants.

The White House says a House Republican bill to extend the government's borrowing authority for three months still faces concerns in Congress but press secretary Jay Carney says that if it reaches President Barack Obama's desk, "he would not stand in the way of the bill becoming law.

Backing down from their hard-line stance, House Republicans said Friday that they would agree to lift the federal government’s statutory borrowing limit for three months, with a requirement that both chambers of Congress pass a budget in that time to clear the way for negotiations on long-term deficit reduction.

Obama told Jennifer Jacobs of the Register, "If the majority of the American people have said, 'This is the direction we need to go,' and the Republicans in Congress say, 'No, we're going to go in the exact opposite direction,' that's probably not going to leave them to keep that (congressional) majority too long."

First, obstruct any and all efforts to strengthen the economy, then exploit the economy’s weakness for political gain. If this strategy sounds cynical, that’s because it is. Yet it’s the G.O.P.’s best chance for victory in November.

The emerging legislation stands in sharp contrast to previous occasions when House Republicans used the leverage of a spending deadline to insist on deep spending cuts.