White House, Congress | featured news

The White House casts today's House Republican vote to repeal the health care law as a waste of time while Americans are hurting economically. "We do not need to refight the battles of two years ago, three years ago," said White House spokesman Jay Carney. "We need to help the American economy now." The GOP-run House is likely to support repeal of Obama's health law with a vote this afternoon. The repeal proposal would go nowhere in the Democratic-run Senate... Carney said that, by his count, this is the 33rd time that congressional Republicans have voted to repeal or defund health care. He says the GOP is engaged in "a quixotic effort to try and score political points.

The White House and House Republicans failed to reach a deal Tuesday to fend off a contempt vote against Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., all but assuring that the House will move forward.

First Read: The Senate failed to muster the necessary votes to confirm Richard Cordray, President Obama's nominee to lead the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

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Congress has passed free-trade agreements with Panama, South Korea and Colombia, overriding objections from liberal Democrats to advance a key priority for both the White House and congressional leaders.

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Rasmussen Reports returns from the field with what I think is the first poll about Occupy Wall Street. The buried lede: At the moment, the protesters who've been mocked on CNN and Fox News, accused of class warfare by Mitt Romney, and handled delicately by the White House, have... decent favorable ratings.

President Obama held up a newly printed copy of his $447 billion American Jobs Bill today at the White House and demanded that Congress "immediately" pass it "to put people back to work." "No games, no politics, no delays," Obama said during a Rose Garden ceremony featuring a variety of workers he said would benefit from the legislation. "I'm sending this bill to Congress today, and they ought to pass it immediately."

President Barack Obama will take to the Rose Garden on Monday to make a pitch for his jobs creation plan and announce he is sending it to Congress later that evening, the White House said.

In advance of Thursday’s White House meeting to resolve the stalemate in the debt talks, we've learned that Obama and Speaker Boehner share a goal to prove they can get a 'big' deal done.

President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden will meet Monday with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to discuss "the status of the negotiations to find common ground on a balanced approach to deficit reduction," according to the White House.

An unusual round of golf won't solve the Republican-Democratic budget battles, but it could lead to better relations between the White House and Congress. The president prefers a laid-back round on a Sunday morning.