Jim Abrams Posts

The House bill, named the "Helping Sick Americans Now Act," would prop up a faltering program that helps people with pre-existing conditions get insurance, doing so by taking money away from the 2010 law's main prevention fund.

Rep. Don Young, the gruff Republican veteran who represents the entire state of Alaska, issued an apology after referring to Hispanic migrant workers as "wetbacks."

The 79-year-old Young, the second-most senior Republican in the House, issued a statement late Thursday saying he "meant no disrespect" in using the derogatory term to describe the workers on his father's farm in central California, where he grew up.

By a robust bipartisan majority, the Senate voted Tuesday to renew the Violence Against Women Act with new assurances that gays and lesbians, immigrants and Native American women will have equal access to the act's anti-domestic violence programs.

The 78-22 Senate vote to reauthorize the two-decade-old act that has shielded millions of women from abuse and helped reduce national rates of domestic violence turns the focus to the House, where Republican leaders are working to come up with their own version.

"There is no plan B. There is no backup plan," White House spokesman Jay Carney said Wednesday. "There is no alternative to Congress raising the debt ceiling."

A Democrat, Mikulski was first elected to the Senate in 1986 after serving 10 years in the House. Last year, she became the longest-serving woman in Senate history. Mikulski would have been in line to take over the Intelligence Committee had Leahy moved to Appropriations. That would have allowed Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., who now heads the intelligence panel, to take over the Judiciary Committee.

House Republicans still smarting from their poor showing among Hispanics in the presidential election are planning a vote next week on immigration legislation that would both expand visas for foreign science and technology students and make it easier for those with green cards to bring their immediate families to the U.S.