By John Solomon
How the government's punishing of the exposure of official wrongdoing can linger for years
Independent voices from the TWT Communities
When the new Congress cranks up in January, there will be more women, many new faces and 11 fewer tea party-backed House Republicans from the class of 2010 who sought a second term.
A multiyear farm bill that has stalled in Congress could be part of a solution to avoid the looming "fiscal cliff" — if party leaders decide they need its spending cuts to count toward an overall deficit reduction package.
After an election campaign that featured jobs as a central issue, some of the nation's businesses have responded to President Obama's victory with a series of layoff announcements related to a variety of factors including the New Year's "fiscal cliff."
When longtime Democratic Sen. Kent Conrad announced last year he wouldn't seek re-election in 2012 as North Dakota's senior senator, Republicans smelled blood.
Off a dirt road a mile and a half from the nearest town, Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Heidi Heitkamp is standing in the loft of a barn, giving a campaign pitch heavy on personal appeal: She talks about her independent voice and a work ethic that she took to the state attorney general's office, all gleaned from a life firmly rooted in North Dakota.
President Obama leads polls in Virginia, Connecticut and Massachusetts but that has not yet translated into strong support for Democrats in those states' crucial Senate races.
Hustling to finish his wheat harvest, farmer Mark Nesheim was repairing his combine recently when his cellphone rang. The caller wanted to know if Mr. Nesheim would support Republican candidates in November, particularly the North Dakota GOP's Senate hopeful.
"Crony capitalism" has become a popular buzz phrase when speaking of the bailouts as American taxpayers struggle to make sense of the corrupt relationships that led to the financial crisis.
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said it's up to Congress to decide what to do with the health care law, and House Republicans are following his advice, forcing the chamber to vote Wednesday on repealing the entire package just weeks after the Supreme Court said it's constitutional.
Countrywide Financial Corp., the former mortgage lending giant whose subprime loans helped spark the country's foreclosure crisis, bought influence on Capitol Hill by giving discounted loans to lawmakers and key policymakers, according to a nearly four-year House-led investigation that wrapped up this week.
Freshman Republican Congressman Rick Berg has defeated Bismarck businessman Duane Sand in North Dakota U.S. Senate primary.
North Dakota's prosperity from an energy boom as the rest of the country slowly crawls out from under a collapsed economy is making a contest of a Senate race that Democrats had all but conceded.
This Sunday marks exactly three years since the Democratic majority in the Senate last passed a budget, on April 29, 2009. During that time, the federal government has spent $10.4 trillion and added another $4.5 trillion to our total debt.
April 29 will mark three years since Senate Democrats passed a budget. This dereliction of duty flagrantly violates the 1974 Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act.
In a stunning backtrack that virtually guarantees Congress for the third year will be unable to produce a budget, Senate Democrats' top budget writer Tuesday canceled this week's expected votes on a 2013 fiscal blueprint.
"I would hope we'd have one last attempt here to do what everyone knows needs to be done, which is the larger plan that really does stabilize the debt, and get us moving in the right direction," Mr. Conrad said. "We don't slam on the brakes here in a way that puts us back into recession."
Sen. Kent Conrad, a North Dakota Democrat who chairs the Senate budget committee and is a member of the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee, has said there is a growing willingness to at least consider including the farm bill in a solution to avoid the fiscal cliff.
