WASHINGTON -- Rep. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) on Wednesday offered legislative language that would "automatically" punish family members of people who violate U.S. sanctions against Iran, levying sentences of up to 20 years in prison.

The provision was introduced as an amendment to the Nuclear Iran Prevention Act...

WASHINGTON -- The Obama administration is seeking to curb efforts to exempt the world's poorest countries from expansive trade rules that would substantially increase the price of life-saving medicine and other products.

The regulations would extend intellectual property rules currently used in developed countries to a few dozen nations...

WASHINGTON -- Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Sunday conceded that there is no evidence that President Barack Obama or the White House were involved in the IRS' targeting of groups affiliated with the tea party. The acknowledgement follows a week of strong insinuations that the White House used...

WASHINGTON -- Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Sunday appeared to defend the Obama administration's controversial leak investigation into the Associated Press -- an inquiry that sparked outrage after the Department of Justice subpoenaed personal and work telephone records for at least 20 of the news organization's reporters and...

WASHINGTON -- Karl Rove on Sunday defended his group Crossroads GPS, a 501(c)4 non-profit organization, against charges that it improperly benefited from a tax exemption intended for social welfare organizations.

Rove said liberal organizations had first exploited the loophole, which has garnered attention in the wake of news the IRS...

WASHINGTON -- Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said Sunday that he does not know whether President Barack Obama intentionally misled the public about the nature of the September 2012 attack in Benghazi, Libya, backtracking from previous comments that the administration had engaged in a "cover-up."

"What we now know from congressional...

WASHINGTON -- The Obama administration asked Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) Wednesday morning to reintroduce legislation that would help reporters protect the identity of their sources from federal officials, a White House official told The Huffington Post.

The scope of the bill and how effective it would be remains unclear, however,...

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron on Monday pledged to pursue a broad trade agreement between the U.S. and European Union, amid growing domestic unrest with the Obama administration's plans to include new political powers for corporations in the deal.

Negotiations have not...

WASHINGTON -- Just one day after Treasury Secretary Jack Lew wrote a letter urging lawmakers to reject a slate of Wall Street deregulation measures, nearly two dozen Democrats joined Republicans to approve the package in the House Financial Services Committee.

The legislation would repeal several sections of the...

WASHINGTON -- Companies in the Fix the Debt coalition, which advocates for federal austerity policies, qualified for $1 billion or more in tax breaks tied to executive pay packages from 2009 to 2011, according to a new report by the liberal think tanks Institute for Policy Studies and...

WASHINGTON -- The Obama administration placed India on a special trade blacklist Wednesday, a move some public health advocates said was retaliation for the country allowing generic versions of expensive drugs preferred by the U.S. government.

The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative objected to aspects of India's patent system...

WASHINGTON -- Special IRS amnesty programs for illegal offshore tax evasion have brought billions of dollars to the U.S. government and opened a wealth of new information about criminal tax fraud for investigators, according to a new report by the Government Accountability Office. But paltry IRS funding --...

WASHINGTON -- Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) said Thursday that President Barack Obama and the U.S. Treasury Department were "wrong" to claim that the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform law ended the too-big-to-fail problem and the threat of future bank bailouts.

"They're wrong," Brown said during an interview on HuffPost Live, when...

WASHINGTON -- More than five years since the start of the Great Recession, unemployment remains a major economic problem in the United States, with long-term unemployment among its most stubborn aspects.

Nobody told Congress.

A hearing Thursday on long-term unemployment held before the 19-member Joint Economic Committee began with just...

Goldman Sachs economists predicted on Friday that the federal budget deficit will shrink over the next few years by more than previously projected.

After beginning the year expecting a $900 billion deficit for 2013, Goldman's economic team, lead by Jan Hatzius, has now cut the figure twice, this time to...

WASHINGTON -- The House of Representatives passed a broad cybersecurity bill Thursday that allows corporations to share customers' personal data with other firms and the U.S. government, even in cases in which a company has a signed contract explicitly vowing not to do so.

The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection...

WASHINGTON -- Former Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown on Sunday declined to comment about rumors that he may run for the U.S. Senate in New Hampshire in 2014, but Republican strategist Karl Rove appeared enthusiastic about the possibility of a Brown candidacy.

During an appearance on "Fox News Sunday," host Chris...

WASHINGTON -- Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) said Sunday that he does not support expanding criminal background checks for the purchase of firearms, arguing that such laws will not catch those who choose to violate the law. In the process, however, he appeared to acknowledge a logical glitch in the oft-stated...

WASHINGTON -- Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) suggested Sunday that the bipartisan immigration reform currently being negotiated by eight senators would not constitute "amnesty" because the path to legal status it proposes would be more onerous than the standards under current law.

"They don't qualify for any federal benefits --...

WASHINGTON -- Momentum to break up the nation's largest banks is building quickly on Capitol Hill, just weeks after a unanimous, symbolic vote in the Senate to end taxpayer subsidies to Wall Street. The latest sign of this swift and unexpected shift in the political wind came Monday...