Republicans are calling it "Taxmageddon," the big tax increase awaiting nearly every American family at the end of the year, when a long list of tax cuts are scheduled to expire unless Congress acts.

Mitt Romney has swept all the delegates in the Kentucky and Arkansas primaries, putting him within one win of claiming the Republican nomination for president.

An aging population and an economy that has been slow to rebound are straining the long-term finances of Social Security and Medicare, the government's two largest benefit programs.

That didn't last long. About 55 million Social Security recipients will get their first increase in benefits next year since 2009 a 3.6 percent raise. But higher Medicare premiums could erase part of it.

Struggling to deliver the big jobs package proposed by President Barack Obama, Senate Democrats are using the issue to force Republican senators to vote on tax increases for millionaires, picking up on a White House theme that the nation's wealthiest Americans aren't paying their fair share.

The Internal Revenue Service is offering a break to employers who come clean about wrongly classifying workers as independent contractors to avoid paying federal payroll taxes, the agency announced Wednesday.

Most of the top Republicans running for president are embracing plans to partially privatize Social Security, reviving a contentious issue that fizzled under President George W. Bush after Democrats relentlessly attacked it.

Typical workers would get an extra $1,500 in their paychecks next year under a plan by President Barack Obama to expand a payroll tax cut that is scheduled expire at the end of the year. Higher paid workers would get more, and businesses would get tax breaks, too.