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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday passed a bill to fund government operations through Feb. 16 and avoid agency shutdowns this weekend when existing money expires.

GOP may increase IRS’s budget © Getty Images Republicans are weighing whether to increase the IRS’s funding so that the agency has more money to implement the new tax-cut law. GOP lawmakers were highly critical of the agency during the Obama administration, but now want to make sure that their signature legislative achievement is carried out effectively. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Friday that the administration is talking to Congress about providing the IRS with more money for implementation purposes. And GOP lawmakers have expressed an openness to a funding increase.

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The Trump administration has shut down a $13 billion federal spending plan to rebuild an Amtrak project between New York and New Jersey. According to a letter obtained by Crain’s New York Business, the administration called the deal proposed by former President Barack Obama — which would have been half paid for by the federal government — “non-existent.” “Your letter also references a non-existent '50/50' agreement between [the Department of Transportation], New York, and New Jersey. There is no such agreement," wrote Federal Transit Administration deputy administrator K. Jane Williams in a Friday letter. “We consider it unhelpful to reference...

Scientific studies used by the Obama administration to help justify tough environmental regulations are coming under intensifying scrutiny, with critics questioning their merit as the Trump EPA reverses or delays some of those rules. In one case, agencies determined the research used to prop up a ban on a particular pesticide was questionable. On another front, the Environmental Protection Agency never complied with a congressional subpoena for the data used to justify most Obama administration air quality rules. “EPA regulations are based on secret data developed in the 1990s,” Steve Milloy, who served on President Trump’s EPA transition team, told...

A recent news item involving UFOs has caught the public’s attention. A Navy pilot’s gun camera shows an unknown aerial object above the ocean near San Diego. It was performing aerial maneuvers not known to be possible by any U.S. technology. The pilot’s description of the object included the sensational phrase, "I can tell you, I think it was not from this world." The government’s interest in this sort of sighting is that there may be a national defense issue involved. If the reported objects are from a potentially hostile nation, let’s say China or Russia, then of course they...

Republicans this week managed to pass critical short-term spending bills without requiring any help from Democrats, an achievement that GOP lawmakers said will give them new leverage as they head into major spending negotiations next year. “The Democrats now know we can put up the votes if we need to,” Rep. Bill Flores, R-Texas, told the Washington Examiner. “So they can either play in the wilderness or sit down at the table like adults.” Past spending battles have often required compromise with House Democrats because the GOP could not round up enough support from conservative lawmakers seeking spending reductions or...

he House passed a short-term spending measure Thursday to avert a partial government shutdown at midnight Friday, and quickly voted on a separate $81 billion disaster relief bill to aid victims of recent hurricanes and wildfires. The Senate is expected to vote Thursday evening on the stopgap, which passed the House 231-188 and will push back delicate decisions on spending, immigration, health care and national security until Jan. 17.

If Congress fails to comprehensively reform Medicare, seniors will miss out on significant savings, and taxpayers will miss out on the opportunity to slow the program’s cost growth.In an interview with “Good Morning America” on Wednesday, House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) cast doubt on the prospect for comprehensive Medicare reform on the congressional agenda in 2018: “There are some provider issues that we may be addressing as you know. Some providers in the Medicare field in some cases are getting overpaid. We want to make sure that’s being dealt with. But as far as you’re talking about beneficiaries, we’re not...

WASHINGTON (AP) — House Republicans early Thursday unveiled a new, stripped-down spending bill to prevent a government shutdown this weekend and allow quarreling lawmakers to punt most of their unfinished business into the new year. The bill would stave off a government shutdown through Jan. 19 and permit lawmakers to head home for the holidays. It would delay battles over the budget and immigration into January, denying Democrats wins that they had hoped to score this year. Failure to pass the measure would trigger a government shutdown at midnight Friday, which would amount to a political pratfall just after the...

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act cuts rates for most tax brackets, substantially reduces business taxes, increases the standard deduction, and eliminates many tax loopholes and deductions. Congress passed historic, far-reaching tax reform legislation this week, and President Donald Trump is expected to sign it into law soon after some technical fixes. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act cuts rates for most tax brackets, substantially reduces corporate and small business taxes, increases the standard deduction for individuals and couples, and eliminates many tax loopholes and deductions.Since Republicans first rolled out their plan to implement tax reform, liberal pundits and Democrats...

Between the years of 2008 - 2012, three cases involving sexual harassment in offices of members of Congress were quietly settled and paid out a total of $115,000 in taxpayers' money in settlements, the House disclosed Tuesday. House Administration Committee Chairman Gregg Harper, R-Miss., made the revelation, after he received information on settlement and awards statistics from the Office of Compliance. This was part of his request from OOC for a breakdown of the $17 million total that has been paid by the congressional Office of Compliance account to settle the claims. Of the 15 claims in that time period...

When it comes to website design, the Obama White House was not known for doing so efficiently or cheaply. Those with long memories of insurance exchanges can attest to this. Apparently, this kind of profligacy extends to other web portals as well. And President Trump’s administration is going to save $3,000,000 by nuking the current design of Whitehouse.gov and unveiling a new one.

Americans were rightfully outraged when they learned that members of Congress had used taxpayer dollars to pay settlement claims to alleged victims of sexual harassment.They were even more outraged when they saw the numbers. The secret payouts for harassment claims, of which there have been more than 200, amounted to more than $17 million. There's no telling so far how much of that money went to silence sexual assault accusers.Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) is seeking to release the names of lawmakers who used this "hush fund." She's a co-sponsor of the Congressional Accountability and Hush Fund Elimination Act, which would...

WASHINGTON — An active-duty service member was to undergo gender transition surgery Tuesday in the first such procedure approved under a waiver allowing the Pentagon to pay for the operation, according to a Defense Department document. The patient is an infantry soldier who identifies as a woman, according to a source close to the service member. She got her Combat Infantry Badge in Operation Anaconda in Afghanistan in 2003, the source said. Vice Admiral Raquel Bono, head of the Defense Health Agency, which provides medical care to active-duty personnel, approved the waiver request for the surgery Monday, defense officials said....

The U.S. National Park Service almost spent nearly $100,000 of taxpayer dollars to honor the Black Panther Party, a group whose leadership killed law enforcement officers, and a group that the FBI acknowledged wanted to use violence and guerilla tactics to overthrow the United States Government.

The Fraternal Order of Police, the largest organization of sworn law enforcement officers with over 330,000 members, sent a letter to President Donald Trump last week expressing “outrage and shock” that the National Park Service would fund a project honoring the legacy of the Black Panther Party. “Mr. President, as far as we are concerned the only meaning they brought to any lives was grief to the families of their victims,” wrote Chuck Canterbury, the national president of the Fraternal Order of Police. “According to our research, members of this militant anti-American group murdered 16 law enforcement officers over the...

Real per capita federal spending has increased more than sevenfold since fiscal 1941, which concluded on June 30 of that year -- or about five months before the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. In fiscal 1941, real per capita federal spending was approximately $1,718. In fiscal 2017, which concluded at the end of September, it was about $12,239. Back in 1941, at the beginning of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's unprecedented third presidential term, the federal government spent $13,653,000,000, according to the White House Office of Management and Budget. Although that was a massive increase from the $4,598,000,000 the federal government had spent...

The Navajo Housing Authority (NHA) brags on its website that it is "the largest Indian housing authority in the country", managing 8,500 housing units across Navajo nation in the southwestern American states of Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico. The NHA is also probably the most wasteful and scandal-ridden governmental entity in the United States today. Multiple media reports, governmental audits, and one investigation by the Office of Senator John McCain (R – Ariz.) describe an agency that has received over $1.6 billion from the Department of Housing and Urban Development's Indian Housing Block Grant (IHBG) program, while delivering projects over-budget,...

Despite all of the left media complaints about how the GOP “hates science” and is slashing important funding, the Senate recently approved a two billion dollar increase in the budget for the National Institutes of Health (NIH). And given all the diseases running rampant, expanding work on cancer treatments and other advances, that’s probably a fair expenditure, right? That bump represents a 6% increase and brings their budget up to $36.1B. So what will they be doing with this newfound taxpayer largess? Are they finally on the trail of a cure for Alzheimer’s Disease? Sadly no, but they will be...