The government shutdown entered its second week with no end in sight and ominous signs that the United States was closer to the first default in the nation's history as Speaker John Boehner ruled out any measure to boost borrowing authority without concessions from President Barack Obama.
Tea party conservative Sen. Ted Cruz on Tuesday vowed to speak in opposition to President Barack Obama's health care law until he's "no longer able to stand."
After a day of heated rhetoric, the House voted largely along party lines, 264-161, to delay by one year the so-called employer mandate of the Affordable Care Act.
Congress returned Monday to potentially incendiary fights over nominations, unresolved disputes over student loans and the farm bill, and the uncertainty of whether lawmakers have the political will to rewrite the nation's immigration laws.
The White House is threatening a veto of the House version of the defense policy bill over limits it places on President Barack Obama's authority to handle terror suspects at the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
The loud, insistent calls in Washington to rein in the rising costs of Social Security and Medicare ignore a major and expensive entitlement program the military's health care system.
Congress is ushering in the new and the old dozens of eager freshmen determined to change Washington and the harsh reality of another stretch of bitterly divided government.
A barrage of negative ads, more than $2 billion in spending and endless campaign stops all come down to this: Americans likely will elect a Congress as divided as the one they've been ranting about for two years.
When the results are counted this Tuesday, Americans will have resoundingly rehired a big majority of the House and Senate despite railing for months about an ineffective, bitterly divided Congress.