US Politics News

It was an unusual way for the IRS to deliver bad news, even in a town known for its selective leaks, Friday-night news dumps and wag-the-dog distractions: the now-infamous planted question.

The IRS targeting Tea Party groups and other conservative-leaning political organizations has reignited calls for reform and the argument among Capitol Hill Republicans that the federal government has become too big and out of control.

Senate Republicans joined their House colleagues in calling on a government watchdog agency to investigate Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius soliciting donations from companies her agency might regulate -- part of an effort to sign up uninsured Americans for ObamaCare.

Republican attempts to turn the row over the IRS into a scandal engulfing the White House fizzled on Friday when the ousted head of the agency delivered a public apology at a congressional heading into the affair.

In a boost for President Barack Obama's healthcare reform law, two states in the Northwest said on Friday that insurance companies submitted applications to sell policies on the states' health insurance exchanges at rates well below what some insurance executives had predicted.

The outgoing IRS commissioner claimed Friday that his agency's practice of singling out conservative groups for extra scrutiny was "foolish" and "horrible" -- but not illegal.

Prospects for passage of a major immigration bill improved on Thursday when a bipartisan group of lawmakers in the House of Representatives declared they had reached a tentative deal, resolving disputes that had threatened to torpedo negotiations.

The Internal Revenue Service has not resolved the issues that led it to improperly subject Tea Party and other conservative groups to extra scrutiny, the agency's chief watchdog says.

On Thursday, McConnell found himself flanked by tea-party-backed Bachmann, left, and King at a news conference outside the Capitol.

The unfolding scandal over the agency improperly targeting conservative groups is forcing the chief tax writers in Congress to shift attention away from the comprehensive tax code overhaul they've been aggressively pursuing.

President Obama said Thursday he is naming a trusted White House budget official, Daniel Werfel, to serve as his new acting IRS commissioner.

A burgeoning sex-abuse scandal in the military is emerging as a true test of whether the Pentagon can change its culture, stamp out a rampant ill and drag itself into the modern age.

Republican Sen. John McCain claims the embattled regime of Bashar al-Assad may have turned the tide in the bloody civil war which so far has claimed nearly 100,000 lives.

President Barack Obama will meet with Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and other leaders of the U.S. military on Thursday to discuss their efforts to stop sexual assaults in the armed forces, a White House spokeswoman said.

It looks like President Obama is on the counter-attack against Republicans claiming scandal and some Democrats who say the administration's response has been too tepid.

The U.S. Senate on Wednesday confirmed Marilyn Tavenner, a former nurse and hospital company executive, as the first full-fledged administrator for the Medicare and Medicaid healthcare programs since 2006.

A Republican-controlled panel in the U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday approved the biggest cuts in food stamps for the poor in a generation and a potentially expensive expansion of federally subsidized crop insurance.

President Obama announced Wednesday that acting IRS Commissioner Steven Miller has resigned in the wake of the agency scandal in which conservative groups were targeted.

Attorney General Eric Holder said Tuesday the Justice Department has opened a criminal probe of the Internal Revenue Service's treatment of tea-party groups, while an investigative report blamed the agency's managers for allowing the practices to continue for more than 18 months.

Indiana Tea Party group applied for tax exempt status and was asked for information about its political activities and list of contributors and now its leader wonders if it was improperly targeted.