Federal Reserve policymakers on Wednesday kept the central bank’s benchmark short-term interest rate near zero, opting against the first increase since 2006 after determining the economy still isn’t strong enough to handle it.
Rising federal debt threatens to choke economic growth within a decade, beginning a death spiral that will sap revenue from government programs even as demands grow, forcing the government to borrow even more, Congress’ budget watchdog said in a frightening report Tuesday.
House Republicans are working to revive the trade bill squashed last week by Democrats led by Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.
The next 48 hours could determine whether Barack Obama’s presidency effectively has ended.
House lawmakers, concerned that President Obama’s tweaks to his strategy against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria won’t reverse the extremist group’s recent gains, are putting pressure on the administration to do more.
The House on Thursday just barely advance legislation that would provide President Obama with “fast track” trade negotiating powers, overcoming the opposition of almost every Democrat and a significant block of conservative Republicans.
House leaders, confident but not yet certain they have the support to pass sweeping trade legislation, are aiming to bring the package to a floor vote by the end of this week – even as they rush to resolve a last-minute hangup over how to pay for aid to displaced workers.
As Washington weighs new cybersecurity steps amid a public backlash over mass surveillance, U.S. tech companies warned President Barack Obama not to weaken increasingly sophisticated encryption systems designed to protect consumers’ privacy.
President Obama assaulted the nation’s top court and seemed to criticize the U.S. legal system as a whole Monday, with the former constitutional law professor declaring that the Supreme Court was wrong to even accept a challenge to his signature health care reform law and deriding the fact that an “individual district court judge” was able to derail his deportation amnesty.
Abortions have declined in states where new laws make it harder to have them – but they’ve also waned in states where abortion rights are protected, an Associated Press survey finds. Nearly everywhere, in red states and blue, abortions are down since 2010.
President Barack Obama is pushing a change in policy that will force faith-based charities to hire members of the LGBT community – despite their religious objections – if they want to remain eligible for federal funding.
There are signs that liberals are making a comeback – and not just because a socialist is running for president, gay marriage is spreading like wildfire and pot legalization is gaining acceptance.
The Obama administration is scrambling to reassure members of Congress about an impending nuclear deal with Iran amid a still growing controversy that has publicly pitted senior State Department and White officials against the New York Times and veteran D.C. reporters.
Most of the illegal immigrant criminals Homeland Security officials released from custody last year were discretionary, meaning the department could have kept them in detention but chose instead to let them onto the streets as their deportation cases moved through the system, according to new numbers from Congress.
U.S. government debt stands at $210 trillion, not the official $13.1 trillion, according to a new working paper published by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. That’s equivalent to $654,205 per person in the United States, 16 times higher than the current official level.
Congress approved sweeping changes Tuesday to surveillance laws enacted after the Sept. 11 attacks, eliminating the National Security Agency’s disputed bulk phone-records collection program and replacing it with a more restrictive measure to keep the records in phone companies’ hands.
President Barack Obama said his administration has restored the United States as the “the most respected country on earth,” during a town hall meeting with YSEALI Fellows, an exchange program for community leaders from ASEAN, The Association of Southeast Asian Nations.
The White House issued a proclamation by President Barack Obama calling on Americans to celebrate the ‘great diversity of the American people’ declaring June as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride Month.
The National Security Agency lost its authority at midnight to collect Americans’ phone records in bulk, after GOP Sen. Rand Paul stood in the way of extending the fiercely contested program in an extraordinary Sunday Senate session.
The government will not ask the Supreme Court to review a judge’s decision that put on hold President Barack Obama’s executive action on immigration, the Justice Department said Wednesday.