Budget Deficit, Federal Budget | featured news

The spending deal to avoid a government shutdown had been agreed to last Friday, but the details of the $39 billion in cuts were not released until Tuesday.

The White House on Monday urged Republicans not to tie an increase in the U.S. debt ceiling to spending cuts and admitted that President Barack Obama's own vote against an increase in 2006 was a "mistake".

With a partial government shutdown just minutes away, President Obama and congressional leaders reached a tentative deal Friday night to cut ...

Garbage will pile up in the streets of the capital, the Statue of Liberty will close and families of soldiers at war could struggle to pay the bills if Congress fails to reach a budget deal and the government shuts down this weekend.

With a midnight deadline looming, the White House and Congress scrambled on Friday to break a budget impasse that threatens to shut down the U.S. government and idle hundreds of thousands of federal workers.

A federal shutdown looming Friday would stop processing of paper income tax filings to the IRS – at the height of tax season – and throw into question how cargo will be processed at the nation’s ports of entry and whether new claims for Social Security benefits will be authorized.

Struggling to avert a government shutdown, Republicans and Democrats each said Wednesday the other would be to blame if compromise talks on the budget fail to produce an agreement.

Congress and the White House veered toward a fiscal collision on Tuesday as the Obama administration rejected a short-term House Republican demand to cut $12 billion now in exchange for keeping the government open for one more week. At the same time, the Republicans’ budget chairman set forth a longer-range blueprint defining a new era of profoundly smaller government and steep tax cuts for corporations and individuals.

A Republican plan for the 2012 budget would cut more than $4 trillion over the next decade, more than even the president s debt commission proposed, with spending caps as well as changes in the Medicare and Medicaid health programs, its principal author said Sunday.

President Obama wants more control over the country's budget, and plans to ask Congress for it this week.