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No Plan B on birthright citizenship order: Read more in Alex Swoyer's 'Seen, Heard & Whispered'

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Articles by Stephen Dinan

Medicaid work in 11 states sent oversea; privacy worries raised

Eleven states ship some of their Medicaid administrative work to foreign countries, including nine that have no specific protections in law to make sure private health information isn't sent overseas, according to an inspector general's audit released Monday that raises potentially thorny questions about the policy.

April 14, 2014
FILE - This March 4, 2014 file photo shows copies of President Barack Obama’s proposed fiscal 2015 budget set out for distribution on Capitol Hill in Washington. The Congressional Budget Office releases its analysis of President Barack Obama's 2015 budget proposal, including the effects of the insurance coverage provisions of the health law, along with updated 10-year projections of federal spending, revenues and deficits. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)

Obamacare costs drop, helps improve deficit picture

Obamacare will be cheaper than initially predicted because the plans health insurers are offering through the exchanges are not as generous as those most Americans get through their jobs, according to a new analysis Monday by the Congressional Budget Office.

April 14, 2014
** FILE ** In this May 22, 2013, file photo, then Internal Revenue Service official Lois Lerner refuses to answer questions as the House Oversight Committee holds a hearing to investigate the extra scrutiny the IRS gave tea party and other conservative groups that applied for tax-exempt status, on Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)

Contempt: Oversight committee votes to cite IRS’s Lerner

The House Oversight Committee voted along party lines Thursday to cite Lois G. Lerner for contempt of Congress, rejecting Democrats’ comparisons to McCarthy-style tactics in the 1950s and saying Congress has a right to get information about Ms. Lerner’s role in the IRS’s tea-party targeting scandal.

April 10, 2014
FILE - House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., goes before the House Rules Committee for final work on his budget to fund the government in fiscal year 2015, at the Capitol in Washington, in this April 7, 2014 file photo. The plan being considered Thursday April 10, 2014 is a nonbinding framework aimed more at engaging GOP voters than rival Democrats. The budget plan from Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., revives a now-familiar list of spending cuts to promise balance, including $2.1 trillion over 10 years in health care subsidies and coverage under the Affordable Care Act; $732 billion in cuts to Medicaid and other health care programs; and almost $1 trillion in cuts to other benefit programs like food stamps, Pell Grants and farm subsidies. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)

House clears GOP budget in relatively easy vote

House Republicans pushed their 2015 budget through on Thursday, adopting a plan that holds steady on taxes but calls for deep spending cuts to bring the budget into balance by 2024.

April 10, 2014
Cynthia Diaz, 18, from Arizona, is senn outside the White House on Tuesday April 8,2014. She was there with a group of immigrant activists to protest deportations. Cynthia's mother was deported in 2011 and crossed back into the US from Mexico this March, and is now being detained in Arizona. Cynthia, a US citizen, says she'll go on hunger strike to pressure Obama to lay off the deportations. (AP Photo/The Tampa Bay Times, Alex Leary)

Few women deported from U.S.

Almost all immigrants deported by the federal government are men, and more than three-quarters of them are in their 20s and 30s, according to a new report Thursday that gives the clearest look yet at who immigration agents are removing from the country.

April 10, 2014
Rep. Jackie Speier, California Democrat. (Associated Press) ** FILE **

Improper disability pay may be from review backlog

As many as one-fifth of all those receiving Social Security disability probably don't deserve the benefits, the president of the association for disability examiners told Congress on Wednesday, as lawmakers searched for ways to cut down on fraud in the fast-growing Social Security disability caseload.

April 9, 2014
**FILE** House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (right), California Republican, with the committee's ranking member, Rep. Elijah Cummings, Maryland Democrat, continues his probe of whether tea party groups were improperly targeted for increased scrutiny by the Internal Revenue Service as the panel questions IRS Commissioner John Koskinen on March 26, 2014, during a hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington. (Associated Press)

Issa: IRS worked with Democrats to attack tea party group True the Vote

House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell E. Issa on Wednesday accused his Democratic counterpart, Rep. Elijah E. Cummings, of colluding with the IRS to attack one of the tea party groups that was targeted by the tax agency for intrusive scrutiny and long delays.

April 9, 2014
** FILE ** In this Friday, March 22, 2013, file photo, the exterior of the Internal Revenue Service building in Washington, is shown. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File)

Dallas IRS office plastered with pro-Obama stickers, screensavers

Even as the IRS faces growing heat over Lois G. Lerner and the tea party targeting scandal, a government watchdog said Wednesday it's pursuing cases against three other tax agency employees and offices suspected of illegal political activity in support of President Obama and fellow Democrats.

April 9, 2014
** FILE ** Illegal immigrants have been the focus of much debate. (Associated Press)

Deportations down again; pace is lowest of Obama presidency

The Obama administration deported its 2 millionth immigrant sometime Wednesday, according to projections by The Washington Times that also showed agents are on pace this year to remove the fewest number of immigrants of President Obama's tenure.

April 9, 2014
Lois G. Lerner

Handling of former IRS employee Lois Lerner makes lawyers cringe

As the House prepares for several key votes on former Internal Revenue Service employee Lois G. Lerner and potential legal action, analysts say she and her attorney have mishandled their case by picking and choosing when they want to talk, and to whom they are willing to talk.

April 7, 2014
This photo taken Nov. 25, 2013 shows microbiologist Heather Carleton pulling up results of Listeria bacteria DNA while demonstrating a whole-genome sequencing machine called a MiSeq in a foodborne disease outbreak lab at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. The nation's disease detectives are beginning a program to try to outsmart outbreaks by routinely decoding the DNA of deadly bacteria and viruses. The initial target: Listeria, a kind of bacteria that's the third-leading cause of death from food poisoning, and one that's especially dangerous to pregnant women. Already, the technology has helped to solve a small listeria outbreak that killed one person in California and sickened seven others in Maryland.(AP Photo/David Goldman)

Businesses ask Congress for more ‘high-tech’ visas

It took less than a week for businesses to apply for all 85,000 specialty visas under the government's H-1B program, which is generally used to bring high-tech workers into the country, and the quick pace could be the spark that reignites the immigration debate in Congress this year.

April 7, 2014
Rep. Kyrsten Sinema, Arizona Democrat, applauded Congress' bipartisan effort to reverse the planned cuts to Medicare Advantage payments. (Associated Press)

Medicare will see boost, not cuts, in 2014

Bowing to intense election-year pressure from both Democrats and Republicans, the Obama administration reversed course Monday and said that rather than cutting Medicare Advantage payments, it will actually boost them next year.

April 7, 2014