SOCIAL SECURITY

A deal to renew a payroll tax cut for 160 million U.S. workers through 2012 headed on Thursday toward congressional approval as Democratic and Republican leaders rallied support for the bipartisan agreement.

Top Republican lawmakers on Sunday said they expect to forge a deal with Democrats to extend the payroll tax cut before it expires at the end of February but offered no specifics on how they would pay for it.

House Speaker John Boehner, hoping to spare fellow Republicans a second embarrassing defeat over payroll tax cuts, is prepared to navigate around rebellious Tea Party-aligned lawmakers to get a deal, according to congressional aides.

Iowa and New Hampshire, which have been flocked by GOP candidates who insist the federal government is wasteful with its spending, have both benefited enormously from federal programs.

Though he continues to lag in national polls, Rick Perry is launching a massive comeback effort in Iowa, which will hold the nation's first caucuses on Jan. 3. Here is an overview of his positions.

In a letter sent to the U.S. House of Representatives on Monday, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops said lawmakers have a moral obligation to ensure unemployed Americans and their families are able to support themselves in an economy that has not been conductive to job growth.

Since the 1960s, the United States has spent $16 trillion on the welfare state. This unfathomable price tag is more than our entire national debt, which just recently reached $15 trillion. With social welfare expenditure at about 35 percent of GDP, the obvious question is: Are the benefits outweighing the astronomical costs we pay?

House Republicans will roll out their version of the payroll tax cut extension and likely pass it Tuesday the lower chamber. The bill promises to depart wildly from past offerings by both parties in the Senate and brings up the difficult task of bridging a sizable gap between the two.

Democratic and Republican lawmakers skirmished on Friday over plans to extend a payroll-tax cut seen as crucial to a fragile U.S. economic recovery, but aides predicted a last-minute deal.

The White House unveiled a countdown clock this week, tick-tocking away the days, hours, minutes and seconds to a December 31 deadline for extending and expanding the payroll tax cut. It's a doomsday-style reminder that taxes will jump for an estimated 160 million Americans on January 1 if Congress doesn't act.

The long shadow of Occupy Wall Street fell across the New York Legislature Tuesday, when its leaders and Gov. Andrew Cuomo agreed to changes to New York State's income tax, which will cut rates for many in the middle class, while adding a new bracket for those making over $2 million a year. And we, the middle class, owe that rag-tag group of small-d democrats our gratitude.

Occupy Wall Street is the sharp tip of the spear, the Seal Team 6, that has driven the first hole in the unbroken line of Grover Norquist's famed anti-tax, pro-elite movement--and its so-called pledge. OWS has already done its work, already changed the public debate.

To most Republicans in Congress, it is a given that any deficit-reduction deal would have to include cuts to entitlement programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. According to a newly released survey, however, Republican voters in four key early-voting states disagree.

At the CNBC Republican presidential candidates' debate on Wednesday, Rick Perry could only remember two of the three federal agencies he would eliminate as president. It was a potentially game-changing gaffe, but it is missing from the official CNBC transcript of the debate.

Six members of the budget deficit super committee have formed a mini-group in an effort to iron-out a deal that just barely meets or slightly surpasses the committee's $1.2 trillion deficit reduction goal.

Republicans in Congress are calling for $2.2 trillion in deficit-reduction, including significant cuts to healthcare programs for the elderly and poor along with tax changes that they argue would boost the economy, congressional aides said on Thursday.

Between 1979 and 2007, the richest 1 percent of Americans saw inflation-adjusted, after-tax income surge 275 percent, while low and middle-income Americans saw their income grow by only a fraction.

For the first time since 2009, Social Security benefits will get a cost-of-living adjustment, or COLA, that could be as much as a 3.5 percent increase.

The American Association of Retired Person (AARP) is not politically subtle regarding its latest t.v. advertising campaign -- it says, in so many words -- Congressman or Congresswoman: if you cut benefits from Social Security or Medicare -- you'll be voted out of public office.

Newt Gingrich's Contract With America gets an update from the 1994 agreement that launched a Republican takeover of Congress.

Can Congress increase the income tax on the wealthy? It can if the latest Bloomberg Poll is any indicator -- global investors overwhelming support President Barack Obama's proposed tax increase on adults with adjusted gross incomes of $1 million or more annually.