u s congress
- Maryland's sole Republican in Congress on Wednesday announced he is endorsing GOP presidential candidate Ben Carson, a fellow physician who is trailing badly in polls.
- President Barack Obama sent his final federal budget proposal to Congress on Tuesday, a $4.1 trillion spending package that calls for increased investments in cybersecurity, cancer research, opioid addiction and other Maryland priorities.
- A former mayor of Salisbury is expected to launch an uphill campaign for Congress on Tuesday, hoping to unseat incumbent Rep. Andy Harris, the state's only Republican in Washington.
- Congress has largely become a finger-wagging bystander. It's great at expressing outrage. But when it comes to the messy work of legislating, it's fallen down on the job.
- Harford County Executive Barry Glassman, a former state lawmaker who briefly flirted with a run for the Republican nomination for Senate, has announced he will forgo a campaign in favor of remaining in his current job.
- WASHINGTON – In his final State of the Union address President Barack Obama on Tuesday offered a broad vision for his final year in office and suggested America needs to "fix our politics" to realize a future that transcends the partisan bickering that has dominated much of his presidency.
- So how does one gauge the state of the union? Certainly not by watching or reading between the lines of the annual address of the President of the United States before a heralded gathering of both houses of Congress and members of the United States Supreme Court.
- Congress' refusal to curb gun sales is a national disgrace
- WASHINGTON — Maryland already has some of the tightest restrictions on gun sales in the nation, but gun control advocates on Monday said President Barack Obama's expected executive actions may address an outstanding issue: Weapons trafficked in to Baltimore from other states.
- WASHINGTON — Dozens of former foreign service workers and their families who were held or killed overseas — including the 53 hostages captured in Iran nearly four decades ago — will be compensated for their ordeals as part of the massive federal spending legislation President Barack Obama signed last month
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- The $1.1 trillion spending bill congressional leaders unveiled early Wednesday includes $390 million to begin work on a new headquarters for the Federal Bureau of Investigation – a coup for a Maryland lawmaker likely making her last mark on federal funding.
- International climate change accord offers an historic opportunity — but no guarantee of success
- Capitol Hill is back on the budgetary brink thanks to the usual suspect — a bunch of highly partisan, deal-breaking riders
- Robert Reich: We should take away the benefits of corporate citizenship from any company that deserts America.
- A grass-roots campaign aims to force gun manufacturers to step up on public safety.
- What's lost in all of this political posturing and cowardice is that, at heart, this is not our war to fight. It is Islam's war, and the Allah-fearing Islamic nations must be the ones to take on radical Islamists who espouse a perverted interpretation of the Quran.
- Martin O'Malley emerged from a meeting with House Democrats on Tuesday with barbed criticism for his opponents, but no more confidence he would earn the support from other members of Congress in his long-shot bid for the Democratic presidential nomination.
- The Pentagon's glitch-prone, $2.7-billion system of radar-equipped blimps — designed to safeguard the nation's capital against cruise missiles and other airborne threats — has long been a source of frustration to military leaders. A month ago, it became a punch line.
- WASHINGTON — Congress has failed for years to overhaul the U.S. Postal Service, but a new poll Tuesday suggests there is bipartisan support nationally and in Maryland for a handful of well-worn solutions.
- Former Montgomery County Council president Valerie Ervin, who was briefly a candidate for Congress this year, announced Friday she is endorsing Rep. Donna F. Edwards' campaign for Senate.
- President Obama should not leave office without closing Guantanamo.
- It wasn't until the wee hours of Friday morning that Congress finally passed a two-year deal that staves off harsh spending reductions and averts a credit default, setting aside most of the big fights over the federal budget for the remainder of President Obama's term.
- Arthur Randolph spent a year in the Army and had "a couple of close calls" in Vietnam. But when he made it back, he decided he wasn't done serving.
- A congressional committee studying allegations that VA leaders plotted to get cushy jobs and big relocation payouts took the rare step Wednesday of issuing subpoenas to compel Antione Waller, the head of Baltimore's VA benefits office, and other officials to testify.
- Washington must change how it calculates Social Security and Medicare benefits
- General Assembly leaders assured Maryland's business community Tuesday that while Democrats and Republicans may disagree vigorously on issues, Annapolis is not Washington and the state legislature does not resemble a "dysfunctional" Congress.
- The turmoil over who will be the next speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives is only the latest sign of an institution noted for arguing instead of governing. But the political fights that are becoming a regular occurrence in Congress in recent years, most notably whether to shut down the government, are because of process, not personalities.
- Republican struggles to find a House speaker could raise odds of an eventual government shutdown
- Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake said Wednesday the city was not as prepared as it should have been for the April riots and said her administration is taking additional steps to ready itself ahead of the trials of the six police officers charged in the arrest and death of Freddie Gray.
- While Congress is keen on the idea of ignoring spending limits for the benefit of the Pentagon, it can't seem to find a way to fund domestic spending on such items as roads, bridges, education and health care. Any extra spending in those areas require cuts in other areas according to Republicans; a rule they ignored for defense spending.
- The former manager of the Clinton administration's effort to reinvent government is calling on Congress to break up the U.S. Postal Service into two separate organizations — one public and one private.
- President Obama's weariness in condemning the latest mass shooting reflects how common such incidents have become and how predictable are our responses.
- Congress is expected to narrowly avoid a shutdown of the federal government on Wednesday — hours before the deadline — as lawmakers set up an even more intractable fight over spending at the end of the year.
- Rep. Donna Edwards' campaign for Senate is launching a web video Monday that chastises Congress for its latest budget brinksmanship, and also criticizes her opponent for "gaming out a partisan advantage" on the issue.
- Pope Francis may speak to the political issues of the day, but his conclusions of faith cannot be substituted for secular conclusions of law.
- Giant high-tech blimps deployed east of Baltimore were developed to provide an early warning if the nation were ever attacked with cruise missiles, drones or other low-flying weapons. But after 17 years of research and $2.7 billion spent by the Pentagon, the system known as JLENS doesn't work as envisioned.
- Pope Francis urged the country to set aside partisan divisions and focus instead on hope and healing in a historic address to Congress on Thursday that briefly suspended political rancor in the nation's capital.
- The Rev. Jamal H. Bryant, the influential Baltimore pastor who announced his candidacy for Congress last week, is set to drop out of the contest on Wednesday, multiple sources with knowledge of his decision told The Baltimore Sun.
- WASHINGTON -- Pope Francis will arrive in the United States on Tuesday amid raging partisan debates in Congress over abortion, immigration and climate change, giving him an extraordinary platform from which to influence -- and roil -- lawmakers of both parties.
- The political gridlock in the House and Senate means Congress may end up not voting at all on Obama administration's most important foreign policy initiative
- Trump, Bush and Obama have something in common — opposition to tax loophole that benefits hedge fund managers — so why is it so hard to kill?
- Impasse over Planned Parenthood funding threatens another government shutdown and GOP political suicide mission
- The leaders of the two largest unions for federal employees are bracing for fights in the coming months with a "very hostile" Congress over pay, benefits and job security.
- Rep. John Sarbanes said Monday he will support the pending nuclear agreement with Iran, arguing that the plan will be "effective in pulling Iran back from the threshold of becoming a nuclear weapon state."
- President Barack Obama may have secured Congressional support for his Iran deal — thanks to Sen. Barbara Mikulski — but Baltimore-area Jewish organizations opposed to the agreement are still fighting to convince other Maryland lawmakers to follow Sen. Ben Cardin's lead and vote "no."
- Lawmakers return to Capitol Hill this week for a whirlwind session that will bring votes on Iran and government funding amid an unwieldy presidential election that threatens to amplify partisan bickering and complicate everything else.
- Sen. Ben Cardin, the top-ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said Friday he will oppose the pending nuclear agreement with Iran, joining a minority of Democrats in a position that has already been defeated.
- Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski of Maryland announced her support Wednesday for the pending nuclear agreement with Iran, becoming the last vote President Barack Obama needed to ensure he can sustain a veto if Congress rejects the controversial pact later this month.