The White House refused to say Tuesday whether President Barack Obama would sign into law an extension of payroll tax cuts that is not paid for, as the top Senate Republican predicted lawmakers eventually would reach an agreement to prevent taxes from increasing on 160 million Americans.

Pounding away with executive actions, the White House is laying out new steps to cut fraud in Medicare and Medicaid, keeping up its campaign of acting without Congress as President Barack Obama tends to diplomacy and relaxation far from Washington.

Confronting an economy in peril, President Barack Obama unveiled a larger-than-expected $450 billion plan Thursday night to boost jobs and put cash in the pockets of dispirited Americans, urging Republican skeptics to embrace an approach heavy on the tax cuts they traditionally love. With millions of voters watching and skeptical...

Facing a frustrated public and a skeptical Congress, President Barack Obama will pitch at least $300 billion in jobs proposals aimed at getting Americans back to work quickly and forcing Republicans to take a share of the responsibility for solving the country's economic woes.

Under fire in a nation desperate for jobs, President Barack Obama will soon announce a broad package of tax cuts, construction work and help for the millions of Americans who have been unemployed for months, a White House official said Wednesday.

Seeking a jolt for the economy, President Barack Obama will lay out new ideas for speeding up job growth and helping the struggling poor and middle class in a major speech in early September, a senior administration official told The Associated Press.

With bipartisan debt-limit talks deadlocked, House Republicans and Senate Democrats readied rival emergency fallback plans Sunday in hopes of reassuring world financial markets the U.S. government will avoid an unprecedented default.

Running out of time, President Barack Obama called Democratic and Republican leaders back to the White House on Wednesday for separate, bottom-line negotiations on how to prevent a disastrous government default — and perhaps cut staggering federal deficits as well.