Senate, Health Care | 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.

The ads have hit hard: In one, Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown is slammed as an out-of-touch politician who saddled his state's manufacturers with higher taxes by voting for President Obama's health care law. In another, he is savaged for his "failed record on energy."

"For us to have the numbers in the Senate and House and White House isn't going to be as easy as everybody thinks," Rooney said after the high court decision Friday. "It's great to be optimistic, but in an election a lot of things have to go your way. 2012 would have to be like 2010 and then some."

There's a lot of anxiety these days as we wait for the U.S. Supreme Court to issue its decision on President Obama's health care law. Apparently, Senate candidate Richard Mourdock wanted to be ready. The Indiana Republican's campaign yesterday uploaded videos to YouTube of his different reactions to the decision, including cheering the law's demise. The videos were taken down.

The Republican-led House of Representatives passed legislation that would repeal President Barack Obama's landmark healthcare reform law on Wednesday in a mostly symbolic move likely to be scuttled in the Senate.

The Senate's Republican leader says congressional lawmakers can and should vote to repeal President Barack Obama's health care law, repeatedly if necessary.

Alaska Senate candidate Joe Miller says his family benefited from Medicaid and a state-run health care program for low-income children and pregnant women.Miller previously acknowledged receiving federal farm subsidies for land he owned in Kansas in the 1990s, as well as low-income hunting and fishing licenses for him and his wife in Alaska.As a conservative candidate, he's criticized certain entitlement programs. Sitting Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who's running for re-election as a write-in candidate against him, called Miller a hypocrite.

After a week of partisan wrangling, the Senate on Friday passed legislation to spare doctors a 21 percent cut in Medicare payments looming for months. But the last-ditch effort came too late.

Two minor violations of reconciliation rules will force the Senate to change the bill and ship it back to the House for final passage.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell promises to do "everything in our power" to oppose the legislation.