Acting with striking unity, Congress on Thursday passed a $1 trillion spending bill to fund the government for the rest of the fiscal year, heading off a government-shutdown showdown and beginning to rearrange some of the sequester cuts.
Senators voted Wednesday to make the first significant changes to the budget sequesters, shifting money to keep slaughterhouse inspectors on the job full time but refusing to rearrange money to reopen the White House for public tours.
Maryland Sen. Barbara Mikulski is set to become the first woman to chair the prestigious Senate Appropriations Committee, a position left open this week by the death of Hawaii Sen. Daniel Inouye.
Senate President Pro Tempore Daniel K. Inouye, the chamber's senior member and a hero of World War II, died Monday of respiratory failure, leaving what his colleagues said was a giant hole in the fabric of the chamber.
Senate Democrats rejected a Republican effort to force defense contractors to send out notices of possible job layoffs four days before the election, calling the move politically driven and purely speculative based on looming spending cuts.
House Republicans on Tuesday unveiled legislation to get rid of AmeriCorps, the national service program, and cut off federal funding for National Public Radio, public television and Planned Parenthood.
The tea party Republican who sought former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords' seat in Congress has dropped out of the fall race, two days after losing a special election to serve out her term.
In a fresh warning to Pakistan, a Senate panel approved Tuesday a foreign aid budget for next year that slashes President Obama's request for assistance to Islamabad by more than half and threatens further reductions if it fails to open supply routes to NATO forces in Afghanistan.
Shrugging off widespread criticism of its college tuition cap proposal, the Obama administration mounted a public-relations blitz Monday to sell the plan to students and university leaders.
Pushed by budget hawks, the Senate Appropriations Committee has been searching in every nook and cranny for spending cuts, but it may have gone too far in calling for slashing nearly 8 percent from the budget of the government's chief watchdog next year.
House Republicans on a key spending committee have put some of President Obama's top health care and education priorities squarely in its crosshairs.
It's the most populous state in the union, with an economy larger than most countries and a former governor who is the former "Terminator." But when times are tough, California turns to the big guns, the mercenaries who give voice to the voiceless: Washington lobbyists.
A top Republican said Wednesday the GOP-controlled House will act quickly on any disaster-aid request by President Obama and that help for victims of Hurricane Irene and earlier disasters doesn't necessarily have to be paid for with spending cuts elsewhere in the budget.
The United States says it has seen no signs yet that North Korea is prepared to meet conditions for resuming multinational talks on nuclear disarmament.
A senior House Republican wants to hold the Obama administration accountable for what he says are violations of law limiting the sharing of space technology with China.
