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WASHINGTON—Congressman Blake Farenthold (R-TX27), Chairman of the House Oversight Subcommittee on the Federal Workforce, introduced the Protecting America’s Civilian Employees (PACE) Act to keep America’s federal employees from facing furloughs due to sequestration cuts. The PACE Act requires the Office of Management and Budget to submit a report to Congress indicating how to most efficiently transfer funds within agencies and departments for fiscal year 2013 to avoid all furloughs or reductions in America’s federal workforce. “Our federal workforce needs to be operating at 100%. They should not be punished because the President, Harry Reid and the Senate Democrats failed to...

WASHINGTON – House Republican leaders abruptly pulled their fallback tax bill from the floor Thursday night, conceding that they did not have the votes to pass it. “The House did not take up the tax measure today because it did not have sufficient support from our members to pass,” Speaker John A. Boehner said in a statement. “Now it is up to the president to work with Senator Reid on legislation to avert the fiscal cliff.” The decision was a major setback for the speaker, who was pushing his so-called Plan B to prevent lower tax rates from expiring on...

MESA, Ariz. (AP) —Once bitter rivals for the presidency, Mitt Romney and John McCain campaigned together as friends on Friday, one gearing up for a likely presidential bid and the other fighting to hold onto his seat in the U.S. Senate. The two Republicans fielded questions from a largely supportive audience of several hundred people, touching on issues including immigration and the environment while heaping criticism on President Barack Obama. Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, battled with McCain in 2008 for the Republican nomination for president, then aggressively campaigned for McCain in the general election. He has endorsed the Arizona...

House Republicans picked John Boehner Friday to serve as minority leader when Democrats take control of Congress for the first time in 12 years in January. Boehner defeated Rep. Mike Pence of Indiana in a closed-door election among colleagues. The Ohio winner was expected to speak after elections for other leadership positions concluded. Boehner received 168 votes, Pence 27 and Rep. Joe Barton of Texas won 1 vote.

<p>The Senate's most powerful Republican plans to buck his party's anti-tax orthodoxy and propose a record tax-increase package that is more sweeping and richer than the $1 billion plan advanced by Gov. Mark R. Warner, a Democrat.</p> <p>Sources report that Sen. John H. Chichester, R-Stafford, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, wants the General Assembly to raise the sales tax a full percentage point, to 5.5 percent on the dollar, as well as boost taxes for affluent Virginians by adding at least one bracket to the income tax tables.</p>