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<p>Congress gave final approval Thursday to a $1.1 trillion spending bill that eases the sharp budget cuts known at the sequester and guarantees that the nation will not endure another government shutdown until at least Oct. 1.</p> <p>After three years of politically bruising and economically damaging battles over the budget, the bipartisan agreement to fund federal agencies through the rest of the fiscal year passed with little fanfare.</p>

This week's spending-bill fight revealed deepening fractures within the GOP, spelling trouble for 2016. Imagine the ground is splitting open beneath your feet. The rocking plates of earth slowly spread apart, and you're left straddling both sides to keep from falling in. That is how some of the most publicly visible GOP lawmakers are feeling right now. They must choose whose side they're on: establishment Republicans or the far-right flank. Ultraconservative groups are furious over the omnibus appropriations package that coasted through the Republican-led House on Wednesday. The bill, which would fund the government for the rest of the...

WASHINGTON — The House voted overwhelmingly on Wednesday, 359 to 67, to approve a $1.1 trillion spending bill for the current fiscal year, shrugging off the angry threats of Tea Party activists and conservative groups whose power has ebbed as Congress has moved toward fiscal cooperation. The legislation, 1,582 pages in length and unveiled only two nights ago, embodies precisely what many House Republicans have railed against since the Tea Party movement began, a huge bill dropped in the cover of darkness and voted on before lawmakers could possibly have read it. The conservative political action committee Club for Growth...

The US financial aid designated for the Palestinian Authority (PA) is set to grow considerably in 2014 to $440 million, up from $426 million in 2013. The aid aims to bail out the PA, which in June was revealed to owe $4.2 billion in internal and external debt. Palestinian Liberation Organization’s (PLO) representative in Washington DC, Maen Erekat, reported the figure, saying the transfer was already agreed upon by Congress, but will be influenced by progress in the peace talks with Israel. The PA recently declared the talks have failed, and threatened diplomatic action against Israel. …

**SNIP** 3. Medicare and Medicaid Health care was been a huge issue in 2013, and Congress continues to grapple with how to fix the ailing benefits program. One thing that doesn’t help is the millions of dollars in waste uncovered in the programs. A December investigation found that Medicare payed $24 million for full vials of medicine, even when health care providers were only using part of the vial. It’s the kind of thing that happens often with the program, said Michael Cannon, director of health policy studies at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank. “This is endemic. This...

Last week the House passed the Ryan-Murray budget deal that inadvertently changed the benefits for service members who retired due to a disability or a service-related injury. This is not acceptable and was not the intention of either Chairman Ryan or Chairwoman Murray. I do not support changing the retirement benefits for disabled veterans, and today, I introduced a bill with House Veterans Affairs Chairman Jeff Miller (FL-01) that will ensure this COLA reduction does not impact service members who retired because of disability or a service-related injury. The bill I introduced will exempt: - All veterans who medically...

House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said Tuesday that the country doesn’t need to worry about another government shutdown in January when the current stopgap spending bill runs out. The government shutdown lasted for 16 days in October, after Republicans demanded that President Obama defund his signature healthcare law. To avoid another shutdown, Ryan said either he and Senate Budget Committee Chairwoman Patty Murray (D-Wash.) would strike a budget deal or Congress would pass a stopgap keeping existing spending levels. “Either of those two scenarios will prevail, and we will not have a government shutdown,” he said at the...

The No. 2 Democrat in the House said Tuesday that the top GOP negotiator on the budget is not interested in finding a compromise that would replace automatic budget cuts known as sequestration. Minority Whip Steny Hoyer of Maryland says that House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., is not engaging in “a serious effort to reach agreement” and hasn’t forwarded an offer to Democrats. …

When director Ivan Reitman made the movie "Stripes," he wasn't trying to predict the future. He was just trying to be funny. The vehicle for his humor was the EM-50 Urban Assault Vehicle, commandeered by a ragtag group of neophyte soldiers led by actor Bill Murray. It resembled a family Winnebago -- with a nice color scheme and user-friendly interior -- but came with bulletproof shields and flamethrowers. It was only a matter of time before everyone would want one. That dream finally came true for St. Cloud, Minn. -- population 66,000. Courtesy of the Department of Homeland Security, America's...

The establishment GOP has accepted progressivism’s central premise.Charles Krauthammer has come to my rescue. You see, I’ve been on the receiving end of some spirited reaction since asserting in last weekend’s column that what we commonly call the Republican establishment — i.e., not all individual Republicans but GOP leadership — “is more sympathetic to Obama’s case for the welfare state than to the Tea Party’s case for limited government and individual liberty.” The statement may have been provocative in the sense of expressing a truth that people on the political Right prefer not to talk about. But it was not...

(CNSNews.com) -The Utah National Guard has cancelled its order for $47,174 in mechanical bulls. CNSNews.com had reported the order on Monday in a story that was linked to the Drudge Report and cited on Fox News. A cancellation notice for the contract was posted on the General Services Administration (GSA) website at 9:32 AM Thursday. Press Information Officer Lt. Col. Hank McIntire of the Utah National Guard tells CNSNews.com there never really was a contract, “There were glitches in the contracting process. So, no contract was ever drawn up or consummated.” When asked if he could tell CNSNews.com what the...

Please note that the current debt limit is $16.699 trillion. Debt to the Penny Interestingly, the US Treasury website Debt to the Penny and Who Hold It shows the current public debt as 16,747,429,285,635.12 (the same as Nick shows in the above chart). Treasury Stops Updating National Debt You do not have to be a math genius to figure out that "debt to the penny" already exceeds the debt limit. I asked Nick about that and he replied ... Since mid-May, "debt to the penny" hasn't been rising. When they postponed raising the debt limit they stopped showing any increase...

LOS ANGELES – Funding for clinical cancer trials and other life-saving research under the National Institutes of Health was cut off in response to the government slimdown, but it looks like the cookie monster will still be knee-deep in chocolate chips (or is it carrots now?) According to the Daily Treasury Statement and first reported by CNS News, the administration dished out $445 million to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) on the first day of the slimdown, which means funds for the likes of PBS Newshour, NPR and “Sesame Street” are being spent before cancer research.

As the fifth day of the federal government shutdown began, members of the House came together in a moment of rare bipartisanship to pass a bill, by a vote of 407 to 0, approving back pay for furloughed government workers....

Fifty-seven House Democrats have broken ranks with Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Minority Whip Steny Hoyer to vote with Republicans to fund parts of the government like veterans programs, national parks and the National Institutes of Health. Sixteen of those Democrats voted for all six targeted appropriations bills, introduced at the behest of House Speaker John Boehner, including measures to fund the National Guard and Reserve, NIH, national parks, the District of Columbia and two separate votes for veterans programs. (The House of Representatives voted twice to restore funding for veterans programs, once Oct. 1 and a second time Oct....

The House of Representatives tried but failed to pass three emergency funding bills Tuesday, amid much political finger pointing by both parties in the wake of the potentially drawn out stalemate over the budget.

Republicans say the GOP-controlled House intends to pass legislation to reopen portions of the government, including national parks and processing of claims at the Department of Veterans Affairs. The House would also allow the government of Washington, D.C. to use its own taxpayer funds to provide services like garbage pickup, as well as keep D.C. employees on the job.

Republicans dig in on Day One of shutdown with plan to pass mini government spending bills BY SUSAN FERRECHIO | OCTOBER 1, 2013 AT 4:33 PM On Day One of the government shutdown, some thought House Speaker John Boehner would begin to lighten the GOP's demand to defund the new health care law. But he is instead digging in. The House plans a Tuesday evening vote on three mini spending bills that would re-open some parts of the government, including national parks. It's a move aimed at putting pressure on Senate Democrats, who have so far rejected nearly every spending...

Two Democratic members of the House voted with Republicans Friday to defund Obamacare and fund the government until the end of the year: Utah Rep. Jim Matheson and North Carolina Rep. Mike McIntyre. Matheson is the sole Democratic member of the Utah delegation, a state that Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney won with almost 73 percent of the vote. Matheson, on the other hand, eked out a win in 2012, beating former Saratoga Springs Mayor Mia Love in 2012 by fewer than 3,000 votes. Love has said she will challenge Matheson again in 2014. McIntyre’s race was even tighter: he...

House Republicans survived a key test vote Thursday on their plan to keep the government running while trying to halt the health care law, defying a veto threat from President Obama and inching closer to a shutdown showdown with Senate Democrats. Top Republicans say their party’s strategy is unlikely to succeed and not worth shutting down the government, but some rank-and-file lawmakers said they have to draw a line now and use the leverage of the spending bill to end the president’s signature achievement.