The Republicans: Sloganeers to supremos

Maneuvered into a political corner, House Republicans abandoned demands for changes in emergency legislation to prevent widespread tax increases and painful across-the-board spending cuts and cleared the way for a final, climactic New Year’s night vote.

Club for Growth, a conservatives grassroots organization feared by most Republicans, has given the GOP the green light to vote for the House debt ceiling bill Wednesday. 

The "No Budget, No Pay" provision that GOP leaders insisted be part of a debt ceiling suspension could backfire on House Republicans, according to crucial new information from POLITICO's Ben White. The move was largely interpreted as a way to force Senate Democrats' hand on a budget.

WASHINGTON – The White House release of some 100 pages of emails and notes about the deadly attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, last year has failed to satisfy congressional Republicans, who are demanding more information.

WASHINGTON — Staking out his ground ahead of a fiscal deadline, President Barack Obama lashed out against Republicans, saying they are unwilling to raise taxes to reduce deficits and warning that the jobs of essential government workers, from teachers to emergency responders, are on the line. Obama spoke as a March 1 deadline for automatic across-the-board spending cuts approached and with Republicans and Democrats in an apparent stalemate over how to avoid them.

Senate aides confirmed Friday that Republicans are coalescing around an alternative to the sequester that would keep the lower spending levels in place, but give federal agencies greater flexibility to determine where the cuts are implemented.