The end game at hand, the White House and Senate leaders launched a final attempt at compromise Friday night in hopes of preventing a toxic blend of middle-class tax increases and spending cuts from taking effect at the turn of the new year.

President Barack Obama returned to the White House on Thursday from a vacation shortened by government gridlock while Democrats and Republicans snarled across a partisan divide and showed no sign of compromise to avoid year-end tax increases and spending cuts.

Congressional officials said Wednesday they knew of no significant strides toward a compromise over a long Christmas weekend, and no negotiations have been set.

Republican House Speaker John Boehner is offering to let taxes rise on wealthy Americans' investment income and dividends as part of a deal to avert the "fiscal cliff," officials said Monday amid signs that President Barack Obama is ready to make a key concession of his own in urgent, high-level...

A year-end deadline approaching, quiet negotiations to avoid an economy-rattling "fiscal cliff" yielded no tangible signs of progress on Monday as Republicans pressed President Barack Obama to volunteer spending cuts he will support while the White House insisted the GOP endorse higher tax rates on upper incomes.

Primed for a showdown, President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney left their practice sessions behind Wednesday for a prime-time debate before millions with the power to settle the race for the White House in tough economic times.

President Barack Obama cast Mitt Romney on Thursday as an out-of-touch challenger for the White House and an advocate of education cuts that could cause teacher strikes to spread from Chicago to other cities.

President Barack Obama inherited a wreck of an economy, "put a floor under the crash" and laid the foundation for millions of good new jobs, former President Bill Clinton said Wednesday night in a Democratic National Convention appeal aimed directly at reassuring millions of voters struggling to get by in...