Federal Deficit, House Of Representatives | featured news

Flush with re-election vigor, President Barack Obama on Friday will provide his first public comments on the upcoming negotiations with Congress on how to deal with pending tax hikes and spending cuts that create the so-called fiscal cliff facing the economy at the end of the year.

The House of Representatives on Tuesday passed a bill that puts the government on stable financial footing for six weeks but does nothing to resolve a battle over spending that is likely to flare again.

The legislation will finance the government for the first four days of October, until lawmakers return and can vote on a more ambitious seven-week spending bill.

Rep. John Fleming (R-LA) appeared on MSNBC with Chris Jansing this morning to attack President Obama’s new deficit reduction plan, which includes some tax increases on the wealthy. Taking up the typical GOP talking point, Fleming said raising taxes on wealthy “job creators” is a terrible idea that kills jobs because many of these people ...

Failure of Republican House leadership to pass a debt-reduction bill gives Democrats the edge, at least for now.

Rival Democratic and Republican plans to raise the government's borrowing ability have thrust Congress into a standoff just one week away from a potentially devastating debt crisis.

The Senate on Friday voted along party lines against the proposal to cut spending and raise the debt limit. President Obama pressed for compromise during a town hall meeting.

Top Republican lawmakers and the Obama administration’s budget director both predicted Sunday that an agreement would be reached before the federal government defaults on its debt in early August, but both sides continued to squabble over the details of competing proposals, offering little evidence that a deal was at hand.

President Obama said Friday Congress has a "unique opportunity to do something big" and stabilize the U.S. economy for decades by cutting deficits ...

Frustrations mounted in the continuing battle over the debt ceiling with Reid saying Cantor "shouldn't even be at the table." The comments come as credit-rating firms moved closer to an unprecedented downgrade of the U.S.'s debt.