Spending Cuts | featured news

A federal shutdown looming Friday would stop processing of paper income tax filings to the IRS – at the height of tax season – and throw into question how cargo will be processed at the nation’s ports of entry and whether new claims for Social Security benefits will be authorized.

Struggling to avert a government shutdown, Republicans and Democrats each said Wednesday the other would be to blame if compromise talks on the budget fail to produce an agreement.

Congress and the White House veered toward a fiscal collision on Tuesday as the Obama administration rejected a short-term House Republican demand to cut $12 billion now in exchange for keeping the government open for one more week. At the same time, the Republicans’ budget chairman set forth a longer-range blueprint defining a new era of profoundly smaller government and steep tax cuts for corporations and individuals.

A Republican plan for the 2012 budget would cut more than $4 trillion over the next decade, more than even the president s debt commission proposed, with spending caps as well as changes in the Medicare and Medicaid health programs, its principal author said Sunday.

Sometimes in politics and legislation, whether you win is less important than how you win....

More than 250,000 people took to London's streets to protest the toughest spending cuts since World War II - one of the largest demonstrations since the Iraq war - as riot police clashed with a small groups. More than 200 people were arrested.

The House passed the second stopgap spending measure this month, funding the government for three more weeks while cutting $6 billion.

Senate leaders delayed until Wednesday consideration of a bill to fund the government through Sept. 30, as Democrats accused Republicans of reneging on an agreement to stage side-by-side votes on two competing plans to cut spending.

It sounds like a pretty good starting point for negotiations: The White House and Capitol Hill Democrats say they're ready to meet the GOP halfway in the latest round of budget talks, offering $50 billion in cuts compared with Republicans' proposed $100 billion worth of reductions....

In a bipartisan vote of 335 to 91, Congress passed a measure that cuts $4 billion in federal spending, but it is good only until March 18.