In an effort to create more jobs and improve transportation, the Obama administration announced a new "Use It or Lose It" program Friday, making nearly $500 million in unspent earmarks available for states to use on so-called "shovel ready" infrastructure projects.
If you have lived a happy, normal, American life, you have probably never heard of something so tedious and alien as a Miscellaneous Tariff Bill. I envy you. But strange as it sounds, the obscure MTB is at the heart of a very small -- but very significant -- fight for American freedom.
Well over a year after Congress voluntarily imposed a ban on pork barrel spending, the number and cost of earmarks have dropped dramatically, a report said Tuesday -- but the snouts are not out of the trough altogether.
Rick Santorum found that his position at the top of polls made him the biggest target in Wednesday's CNN Republican presidential debate, possibly the last of the GOP primary and caucus campaign.
Rick Santorum leads polls as GOP candidates take to the stage in the CNN debate in Arizona.
Mitt Romney rails against what he calls President Obama's "religious intolerance" in Wednesday's CNN debate in Arizona.
The four GOP presidential candidates had one last chance to state their case in front of the nation before Tuesday's primaries in Arizona and Michigan. Did one candidate stand out from the rest? Here are five things we learned from the CNN Arizona Republican Presidential Debate.
Aiming to restore voters' faith in Congress, the Senate overwhelmingly approved a bill Thursday that makes clear it's illegal for members of Congress, their staffs and many executive-branch employees to trade stocks and other securities based on inside information learned on the job.
Peter Schweizer, "Throw Them All Out" author, explains insider trading by members of Congress and the pending Senate bill.
Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich and their surrogates exchanged harsh attacks Wednesday as a new poll showed them in a statistical dead heat in Florida six days before the Sunshine State's primary in the Republican presidential race.
Tom Foreman explores whether President Obama kept his 2011 promise to change the way Washington does business.
A winter storm slammed the East Coast all the way from Maine down to D.C., leaving massive drifts of snow and skull-cracking cold. Power grids collapsed. Citizens wrapped themselves in layers of fleece like the townsfolk from "Dr. Zhivago."
GOP frontrunner Mitt Romney's campaign stepped up its criticism of conservative challenger Rick Santorum on Friday, continuing to hit the former Pennsylvania senator on his spending record while in Congress.
Sen. John McCain mistakenly mentions Romney's name when he meant to say "Gingrich" at a rally in South Carolina.
With GOP presidential front-runner Mitt Romney feeling comfortable enough to campaign in South Carolina, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum on Thursday scoured New Hampshire for votes and hammered away at each other's congressional record.
From Mitt Romney's apparent growing confidence to Newt Gingrich's fading expectations, to Rick Santorum's coming under increased scrutiny, there's a new political reality in the Hawkeye State with just four days to go until the Iowa caucuses.
The debate in Congress this week about whether to pay for extending the payroll tax cut by imposing a new tax on millionaires will have nothing to do with solving our nation's economic challenges and everything to do with election-year politics. Senate Democratic leaders have already signaled they will use the debate as a purely partisan exercise designed to embarrass Republicans into opposing tax cuts for the poor while defending tax cuts for the rich.
A year after Congress voluntarily agreed to give up earmarks -- pork barrel spending projects critics say cost too much and may have an outsized influence on some lawmakers -- the special-interest provisions have crept slowly back into legislation, two senators warned on Wednesday.
CNN's Drew Griffin is sifting through close to 24,000 pages of Sarah Palin's e-mails from when she was governor.
Thousands of pages of e-mail from former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's administration range from the mundane details of governing to efforts to crack down on state news leaks and push back against critics.
The defense bill that just passed the House of Representatives includes a back-door fund that lets individual members of Congress funnel millions of dollars into projects of their choosing.
Has Congress found a way to get around their self-imposed ban on earmarks? CNN's Dana Bash reports.
Steve Ellis is Vice President at Taxpayers for Common Sense, a nonpartisan budget watchdog.
Feuding lawmakers have found another small chunk of the federal budget they agree can be cut.
Last summer President Obama promised to call the bluff of anyone who talks a good game on reducing the national debt but doesn't act.
How important is the federal deficit?
Once again, Congress is facing intense deadline pressure to pass a spending bill to fund the federal government.
It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas in Washington. Call it bipartisanship, political necessity or a burning desire to get home for the holidays.
In a dramatic twist played out on the floor of the Senate, Majority Leader Harry Reid conceded Thursday night he lacked the votes to bring up a $1.1 trillion spending bill designed to fund the federal government for the rest of the current fiscal year.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid yanked a pork-laden spending bill Thursday, citing the sudden loss of GOP support.
With time running out on the government's authority to spend money, the Senate is expected to vote this week on a $1.1 trillion bill that would settle the issue for the rest of the fiscal year.
Senate Majority leader Harry Reid says there is still alot of work to do before Congress breaks for the holidays.
Critics are blasting a new omnibus bill that contains billions in earmarks. CNN's Anderson Cooper reports.
Two prominent Republicans vowed Wednesday to vote against the $1.1 trillion spending bill, citing concerns over pork-laden pet projects, although millions of dollars of earmarks in the bill were requested by the two senators.
There's more than meets the eye in the tax cut bill before Congress -- it's not just a push to let the Bush tax cuts remain in place.
The Senate voted Tuesday against taking up a measure that would have imposed a two-year ban on legislative earmarks, a practice that critics have called an example of wasteful spending.
House Republicans agreed Thursday to continue their ban on requesting earmarks in the upcoming session of Congress.
CNN's John Roberts explains earmarks and the push by politicians to eliminate them.
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