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Articles by Paige Winfield Cunningham

Rep. W. Todd Akin, Missouri Republican, is under heavy pressure from his own political party to quit the race for the U.S. Senate after insensitive remarks he made regarding rape and abortion. (Associated Press)

GOP tries 
to oust 
Akin 
after rape 
remarks

Top Republicans on Monday backed away from their Senate candidate in Missouri and party leaders threatened to revoke financial support if he doesn't withdraw from the race after his comments about rape and abortion, but Rep. W. Todd Akin insisted he is in to stay.

August 20, 2012
U.S. Sen. Scott P. Brown, Massachusetts Republican, says he is trying to keep taxes low to help businesses grow, while portraying Democratic challenger Elizabeth Warren as a "jobs destroyer" who favors a heavier tax burden. But he has sided with Democrats, too, while in Washington. (Associated Press)

Mass. Sen. Brown tries 
to straddle 
allegiance

Persuading Massachusetts voters to elect a Republican to a full U.S. Senate term isn't easy, and it has left Sen. Scott P. Brown blazing a lonely trail in Washington, where he's spent much of the year voting with Democrats — or bucking both parties altogether.

August 19, 2012
President Obama, first lady Michelle Obama and their daughters, Sasha and Malia, walk from the White House to attend services at a nearby church on Sunday. The president and Mitt Romney are facing off over Medicare on the campaign trail. (Associated Press)

Medicare now focal point of Obama-Romney debate

The Romney and Obama campaigns — both convinced that their man is more trustworthy with the future of Medicare — ramped up the debate this weekend, with operatives trading prickly barbs, the president dismissing Republican plans as "snake oil" and Paul Ryan bringing his 78-year-old mother into the fracas.

August 19, 2012
Sen. Claire McCaskill, Missouri Democrat (Associated Press)

McCaskill waits for GOP foe in Missouri

Three Republicans hungrily eyeing Claire McCaskill's Missouri Senate seat have spent the past few months trying to tarnish each other's conservative credentials while polishing their own — a tactic that's designed to appeal to Tuesday's primary voters but one that could hurt the party's chances against the vulnerable freshman Democrat in November.

August 6, 2012
**FILE** Rep. Steny H. Hoyer, Maryland Democrat, speaks during a health-care-reform town-hall meeting in Waldorf, Md., on Tuesday, Sept. 1, 2009. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

Lawmakers leaving with work undone

As lawmakers head to the exits for a monthlong summer vacation that begins Friday, Congress doesn't face any deadlines like last August's debt-ceiling drama. But members are still leaving behind a long checklist of work undone.

August 1, 2012
**FILE** North Carolina Gov. Bev Perdue (left) and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius watch a pediatric primary care scenario before Sebelius announced that Duke Hospital would be one of five hospitals selected to participate in a new initiative to train more advanced practice registered nurses on July 30, 2012, at Duke University School of Nursing in Durham, N.C. (Associated Press/The Herald-Sun)

As birth control mandate kicks in, legal fight continues

The health care law's contraceptive mandate officially kicks in Wednesday, meaning most businesses will have to make sure their insurance plans cover birth control — including those run by owners who personally believe birth control is immoral.

July 31, 2012
**FILE** Attorney General Eric Holder speaks in the Cabinet Room of the White House, Thursday, July 26, 2012, where he announced the formation of a public-private partnership to fight fraud in the health care system. (Associated Press)

Medicare scams spur new approach

Aiming to crack down on fraudulent health care claims that cost the government tens of billions of dollars each year, the Obama administration said Thursday it will begin mutually sharing claims information with private health insurers to try to spot fraud.

July 26, 2012
**FILE** House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, California Republican (Associated Press)

House GOP members berate administration over Medicare bonuses

House Republicans berated the Obama administration Wednesday over a Medicare bonus program deemed wasteful by federal investigators, accusing top health officials of trying to pump extra money into the Medicare Advantage program ahead of the president's bid for re-election.

July 25, 2012
**FILE** President Obama speaks July 23, 2012, during at a campaign stop in Oakland, Calif. (Associated Press)

CBO: Lower costs, fewer covered after court ruling on Obama health law

Last month's Supreme Court ruling that states can refuse to expand Medicaid under President Obama's health care law means 3 million fewer people will have health coverage — but will end up saving the federal government $84 billion because it will no longer have to pay for them, according to the latest estimate Tuesday from Congress' official scorekeeper.

July 24, 2012
House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy, California Republican (Associated Press)

Rampage unlikely to prompt Hill action on gun-control laws

Lawmakers returning to Washington for the first time after last week's deadly movie-theater shooting mourned the victims, but there seemed little indication Congress is ready to take gun control off the back burner, where it's been sitting for more than a decade as Congress passed a handful of minor laws that mostly expanded access to firearms.

July 23, 2012
Colorado Gov. Jon Hickenlooper talks during a news conference at the Century 16 theatre east of the Aurora Mall in Aurora, Colo., on Friday, July 20, 2012. A gunman in a gas mask hurled a gas canister and opened fire in the sold-out theater during a midnight showing of the new Batman movie Friday. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)

Shootings renew fire at gun-law adequacy

As the country continued to mourn in the wake of last week's Colorado shooting — and President Obama planning to visit victims' families on Sunday — lawmakers reignited debates about whether stricter gun control laws would have prevented the movie theater massacre that left a dozen dead.

July 22, 2012
“Right now there are more unanswered questions than there are answered questions with regard to how the sequester will work and where the cuts will come from,” House Speaker John A. Boehner said Thursday. (Associated Press)

House-passed bill ignores defense cuts

Passing annual spending bills was once a routine part of business on Capitol Hill, but the House only highlighted Congress' ongoing dysfunction when it passed a defense plan on Thursday that is certain to be blocked by Senate Democrats and ignores deep cuts to the Pentagon slated for next year.

July 19, 2012
President Obama walks onstage to speak on Tuesday, July 17, 2012, at a fundraiser at the Austin Music Hall in Austin, Texas. (Associated Press)

College joins Catholics on contraception challenge

Two federal judges have dismissed several challenges this week to President Obama’s contraception mandate, but the embattled requirement gained another legal opponent Wednesday when Wheaton College, one of the nation’s leading evangelical colleges, said it is going to court.

July 18, 2012
Former Vice President Dick Cheney, who also served five terms as Wyoming’s representative in the U.S. House, returns to Capitol Hill on Tuesday to meet with Senate Republican leaders at a political strategy luncheon. He is accompanied by Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming (left), the Republican Policy Committee chairman. (Associated Press)

Cheney huddles with GOP strategists

Republicans welcomed former Vice President Dick Cheney to Capitol Hill on Tuesday as they ramped up their battles with Democrats over next year's spending, with parties at odds over extending the Bush tax cuts and allowing dramatic spending reductions to kick in January.

July 17, 2012
President Obama’s Affordable Care Act is as healthy as ever as a campaign issue. Both Republicans and Democrats are using it to their fullest.

Both parties wield health care law to their advantage

Far from ending the debate over President Obama's health care law, last month's Supreme Court ruling has only stoked the partisan battle over the issue, with both parties taking to the airwaves and the Internet to try to frame the landmark decision ahead of November's elections.

July 16, 2012
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, California Democrat, is flanked by House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer of Maryland (left) and House Assistant Minority Leader James Clyburn of South Carolina after the House voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act. The Democrats appeared with supporters of the law who talked about how it has helped them. (Associated Press)

GOP gets Democrat support in bid to kill health law

The House voted Wednesday to repeal all of President Obama's health care law, acting where the Supreme Court declined to, in a vote that both sides said is doomed to fail in the Senate but was designed to lay the groundwork for voters to have a final say in November's elections.

July 11, 2012
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (center), Virginia Republican, walks July 11, 2012, from the House floor on Capitol Hill as he manages the vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act. (Associated Press)

House votes to repeal Obama’s health care law

The House voted to repeal all of President Obama's health care overhaul on Wednesday in a display of political theater by Republicans who have vowed to keep it central in their efforts to win control of the White House and Senate this fall, as Democrats fiercely defended the law's most popular provisions, arguing that it's already protecting average Americans.

July 11, 2012