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House speaker John Boehner is set to sign an offer from Obama to accelerate negotiations. Republicans in the House of Representatives have capitulated in the showdown over the payroll tax, handing Barack Obama an important victory going into election year. Under pressure from other senior Republicans for blocking a bill that would extend tax cuts to millions of Americans, the House speaker, John Boehner, is backing away from his insistence that any deal must cover a full year. A deal agreed by Republicans and Democrats in the Senate on Saturday covers two months, to allow further negotiations in January. It...

(Washington, DC) -- Republican congressional leaders are reportedly agreeing to billions of dollars in revenue increases as federal deficit discussions continue. Republican Senator Jon Kyl announced the move today saying revenue increases don't necessarily mean tax hikes. On the Senate floor Kyl said, quote, "If the government sells something and gets revenue from it, that's revenue." He also suggested user fees for government services could provide additional revenue. He says all the revenue increases Republicans have agreed to amount to between 150 billion and 200 billion dollars.

The latest Golden State gift to America might be called the California triple whammy. It's an ongoing, ever-growing fiscal perfect storm that may be coming to a state near you. For Californians what follows is an explanation of how you've turned gold into dust. For out-of-staters, it's how to avoid triple whammy fever where you live. The first stage of the California triple whammy required spendaholics at government's helm running up perpetual double-digit, billion-dollar annual budget deficits papered over in the current year, to be fretted over in the next. Following close behind was an addictive need to issue billions...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - While Congress brawls over how to shrink a $1.6 trillion budget deficit this year, an even tougher battle has begun over cutting popular Social Security retirement benefits to achieve long-term savings. It's unclear whether Congress will be able to agree on how to reform the massive government pension program, which has provided a social safety net for the elderly since 1935. That in part will depend on whether President Barack Obama throws his weight behind a reform effort that politicians of all stripes fear could be full of political risks. While the president has invited a conversation...

CHAMPAIGN – Economist Douglas Holtz-Eakin said he's optimistic the United States can and will solve its problems. But the problems he outlined Thursday – many of them budgetary – are massive and daunting. Holtz-Eakin, director of the Congressional Budget Office from 2003 to 2005, advocated "ruthlessly pro-growth" policies during the annual Bazzani Lecture in Public Affairs on the University of Illinois campus. (snip) His recipe includes reforming Social Security by raising the retirement age for younger workers and putting Medicare and Medicaid "on a budget." Cuts must include defense, especially "legacy systems" that are no longer needed, he said. (snip)...

Key Republicans are embracing a major spending initiative outlined in President Obama's State of the Union address. Two top members of the House Transportation Committee said they will push the president's initiative seeking to give 80 percent of Americans access to high-speed rail over te course of the next 25 years. "I believe it's good for America to develop a high-speed rail corridor in the Northeast corridor," Rep. Bill Shuster (R-Pa.), the chairman of the railroad subcommittee, said according to the Connecticut Post. "It's a place we have to start, we have to accomplish it, because then I believe all...

"Thanks to the GOP takeover of the House, the odds of such legislation advancing have markedly increased. The new chairman of the House Judiciary committee is Lamar Smith of Texas, who previously introduced a data retention bill. Sensenbrenner, the new head of the Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security, had similar plans but never introduced legislation. (It's not purely a partisan issue: Rep. Diana DeGette, a Colorado Democrat, was the first to announce such a proposal.) Police and prosecutors are the biggest backers of data retention. FBI director Robert Mueller has said that forcing companies to store those records...