A new government study says that federal health care and retirement programs threaten to overwhelm the federal budget and harm the economy in coming decades unless Washington finds the political will to restrain their inexorable growth.

GOP leaders eager to avoid blame for a possible government shutdown next month appear confounded by conservatives' passion for using fast-approaching deadlines to derail the implementation of President Barack Obama's health care law.

A new study predicts the United States could default on its obligations as early as Oct. 18 if Washington fails to agree on legislation to raise the government's borrowing cap.

The GOP-controlled House voted Thursday to reject President Barack Obama's policy to end deportation of hundreds of thousands of immigrants in the country illegally who were brought to the United States as children.

The budget deficit for the current year is projected to come in well below what was estimated just a few months ago.

The Republican-controlled House is moving to put U.S. bondholders and people on Social Security at the front of the line to be paid if the government hits its borrowing limit and is unable to meet all of its obligations.

The chairmen of President Barack Obama's 2010 fiscal commission are wading back into Washington's budget wars with a revised, somewhat milder plan to rein in intractable federal deficits.

Ideas like higher pension contributions for federal workers are the hardy perennials of Obama's budgets, reprised year after year, along with more widely known proposals like taxing oil companies and the rich. Many of the ideas have been seen as candidates for inclusion in broader deficit deals that have never...