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Democrats put off votes to extend Bush tax cuts until after election By Alexander Bolton and Russell Berman - 09/23/10 06:49 PM ET A rift between centrist and liberal Democrats in both chambers of Congress has derailed plans for House and Senate votes on extending tax cuts before the election. Senior Senate Democrats said they plan to leave Washington by the end of next week without voting on an extension of the George W. Bush-era tax rates, which are set to expire at the end of the year. A spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) announced the decision...

California Congressman Darrell Issa is one of the most conservative Republican members of the House Judiciary Committee. So it should come as no surprise that he offered an appropriately cautious and responsible solution for the constitutional conflict created when members of the Bush administration ordered federal agents to raid the Capitol Hill office of a sitting member of Congress. "We have the power to impeach the attorney general," Issa told Tuesday's Judiciary Committee hearing titled "Reckless Justice: Did the Saturday Night Raid of Congress Trample the Constitution?"Much of the Washington press corps, which maintains a familiarity with the Constitution...

In a bid to bypass critics, the Senate will pass the plan and then merge it with a House bill, observers say. Washington - Republican leaders will try to pass President Bush's controversial guest-worker proposal without putting it to a direct vote in the House. Observers say the new GOP strategy that begins today is for the House to deal only with the more politically palatable issue of increasing border security and clamping down on employers. Republican leaders then will let the Senate pass some form of a guest-worker plan. After that vote, senators and House members will merge the...

Guest-worker plan to top Monday agenda Hoping to straddle a fracture in the Republican Party, President Bush is due in Tucson on Monday to promote his border and immigration policies. The 2:40 p.m. speech at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base is the president's only scheduled stop here. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff are expected to appear with the president at D-M. With the backing of businesses who need foreign employees, Bush is pushing a guest-worker program that would let undocumented workers obtain three-year work visas. Workers could extend that for another three years, but would then...