Barack Obama, Congress | featured news

Fox's Bill O'Reilly criticizes Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann for her comments on President Obama's White House perks.

The wrangling of President Barack Obama and congressional Republicans over the federal budget underscores a clash of core philosophies about how the economy works that supersedes any skirmish on taxes or spending cuts.

Barack Obama will use a visit to a Chicago-area lab on Friday to call on Congress to set aside $2bn over the next decade to fund research into a next generation of electric cars. The White House said the Energy Security Trust, which Obama first proposed in his state of the union address, would use royalties from offshore oil and gas drilling in public waters and would not add to the deficit.

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 Obama will have a bipartisan lunch on Thursday with Representative Paul D. Ryan, the Republican chairman of the House Budget Committee, and the panel’s senior Democrat, Representative Chris Van Hollen.

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.

After their fifth budget battle in the past two years and after the sequester cuts went into effect on Friday, both sides seemed to wave the white flag and declare a political truce -- for now. President Obama, during his press conference on Friday, suggested little appetite for a showdown over government operations, which will expire later this month. “If the bill that arrives on my desk is reflective of the commitments that we’ve previously made, then obviously I would sign it because I want to make sure that we keep on doing what we need to do for the American people.”

He's not a dictator and won't entertain the idea of a "Jedi mind meld" with opponents. There's no "secret formula or special sauce" he can slip foes to make them see things his way. And not to worry, he says, the situation may look dire but won't be an "apocalypse."

Speaking after meeting with congressional leaders, President Barack Obama said Friday the budget cuts slated to go into effect today are the "choice" of Republicans who stonewalled any compromise to avert them.

John Sutter says studies show kids who had preschool fare better on many fronts than kids who did not. Congress should support Obama's push for preschool for all kids.