Broker Regulation

The Republican-controlled House pushed ahead Thursday with a bill that would raise taxes on people earning over $1 million a year as hopes faded for a pre-Christmas deal between President Barack Obama and Speaker John Boehner to avert the so-called fiscal cliff.

After the polls defied the pols, and the country re-elected the president, the hand-wringing began about the end of the modern-day Republican Party. But the Democrats should be worried, too.

President Barack Obama's offer to slow the growth of Social Security benefits would force fellow Democrats in Congress to abandon promises to shield the massive retirement and disability program from cuts as part of negotiations to avoid the year-end fiscal cliff.

Federal investigators say Medicare paid an average of $919 for back braces that cost suppliers $191 apiece, providing a window on how wasteful spending drives up health care costs.

The White House threatened Wednesday to veto House Speaker John Boehner's backup plan for averting the "fiscal cliff," saying it was time for Republicans to stop political posturing and continue trying to reach a compromise deficit-cutting package.

The nation's largest teachers' pension fund announced Tuesday that it was reviewing all its firearms holdings after one investment with ties to last week's Connecticut school massacre slipped through the pension's own ethics review.