Barack Obama, Senate | featured news

House and Senate Republican leaders told President Barack Obama Thursday that they will refuse to nominate candidates to serve on an advisory board that is to play a role in holding down Medicare costs under the new health care act.

Investigators haven't found any ricin in the house of a man accused of mailing poisoned letters.

Federal agents arrested a Mississippi man suspected of sending letters that showed evidence of ricin in initial testing to President Obama and a Republican senator, according to two officials.

The Senate has rejected a bipartisan effort to expand federal background checks to more firearms buyers in a crucial showdown over gun control. Today's vote was a jarring blow to the drive to curb firearms sparked by December's massacre of children and staff at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn. President Barack Obama made broadened background checks the centerpiece of his gun control proposals.

The U.S. Senate voted on Thursday to overcome a Republican-led filibuster against tougher gun laws, clearing the way for a major congressional debate on a package of proposals sought by President Barack Obama in the aftermath of the Connecticut school massacre.

South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham on Sunday became the first prominent Republican to publicly praise, however lukewarmly, the budget proposal the White House outlined last week. Graham said that while he believes President Barack Obama's plan is overall bad for the economy, "there are nuggets of his budget that I think are optimistic," and that could set the stage for a broad bargain to put the nation's finances on a stronger footing. He was speaking on NBC's "Meet the Press" program.

A divided Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday backed President Barack Obama's call to require criminal background checks for all gun buyers, yet it remained uncertain if it would become law.

President Barack Obama will make a rare trip to Capitol Hill next week to meet with Senate Republicans as he grapples for new ways to break through Washington's partisan logjam.

Senator Carl Levin, chairman of the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee, plans to seek a vote on Chuck Hagel's nomination as President Barack Obama's new secretary of defense during a meeting on Tuesday afternoon, the committee said on Monday.

A leading Republican senator is threatening to hold up Senate confirmation of President Obama's nominees to lead the Defense Department and the CIA until the White House provides more answers about the deadly Sept. 11 attack against a U.S. diplomatic facility in Benghazi, Libya.