WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Senate is under the gun to pass a transportation bill that would rev up road construction and create or save millions of jobs.

But in the month since the chamber started considering the bill, it has faced gridlock worse than a Los Angeles freeway at rush hour. Feuding parties loaded up the highway bill with more than 100 amendments covering everything from birth control to foreign money laundering. After weeks of partisan squabbling, passage remains uncertain. At one point, Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid vented a common frustration. “I don’t know why everything we do has to be a fight,” he said. “Not a disagreement, a fight.” The Senate, long described as the “world’s greatest deliberative body,” for two centuries stood as an elite and powerful chamber that offered a reasoned counterpart to the larger, more impulsive House of Representatives.

WASHINGTON, March 8 (Reuters) – The U.S. Senate is
under the gun to pass a transportation bill that would rev up
road construction and create or save millions of jobs.

But in the month since the chamber started considering the
bill, it has faced gridlock worse than a Los Angeles freeway at
rush hour. Feuding parties loaded up the highway bill with more
than 100 amendments covering everything from birth control to
foreign money laundering. After weeks of partisan squabbling,
passage remains uncertain.

WASHINGTON, March 1 (Reuters) – The
Democratic-controlled U.S. Senate on Thursday rejected a
Republican challenge to President Barack Obama’s policy
requiring health insurance coverage for contraceptives in an
election-year vote that broke largely along party lines.

Senators voted 51-48 to set aside a measure from Republican
Roy Blunt that would have exempted religiously affiliated
institutions including Roman Catholic hospitals, universities
and charities from a rule requiring free insurance coverage for
women’s birth control drugs and devices.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The top Democrat in the Senate on Thursday denounced as “an extreme ideological amendment” a Republican-backed measure that would reverse President Barack Obama’s policy requiring health insurance coverage for contraceptives.

The Senate was poised for an election-year vote on the measure introduced by Republican Senator Roy Blunt as an amendment to an unrelated highway bill. Republicans are presenting a religious liberty argument that could resonate with Roman Catholics and other social conservatives.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Senator Olympia Snowe, one of the few remaining Republican moderates in Congress, stunned both parties on Tuesday by announcing she will not seek re-election for a fourth six-year term in November, complaining of partisan gridlock.

The Maine senator’s decision was all the more surprising because of her strong re-election prospects. It complicates the Republican effort to wrest control of the Senate from President Barack Obama’s Democrats in November elections.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Senator Olympia Snowe, one of the few remaining Republican moderates in Congress, stunned both parties on Tuesday by announcing she will not seek re-election for a fourth six-year term in November, complaining of partisan gridlock.

Her surprise decision complicates Republican efforts to win control of the Senate from President Barack Obama’s Democrats in the November congressional elections.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Senator Olympia Snowe, one of the few remaining Republican moderates in Congress, stunned both parties on Tuesday by announcing she will not seek re-election for a fourth six-year term in November, citing partisan gridlock.

Her surprise decision complicates Republican efforts to win control of the Senate from President Barack Obama’s Democrats in the November congressional elections.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Tucked in his left breast-coat pocket where he can pull it out to wave before TV cameras is ammunition that House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner believes his Republicans can use to achieve victory in the November 6 elections.

It is a four-by-eight-inch card detailing more than two dozen “jobs bills” passed by the Republican-led House last year. They are now bottled up by Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid, one of President Barack Obama’s top allies on Capitol Hill.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – When is legislation put up for a vote but never expected to become law?

Answer: When it’s in Congress, where an increasing number of purely symbolic votes are expected this election year as a divided Congress tries to make points with voters.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – John Boehner says he learned how to deal with all sorts of people working as a boy in his dad’s bar. That skill came in handy this week in Congress, but not all left happy.

With his willingness to bargain, the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives won passage on Friday of the economically important payroll tax-cut extension. But he lost a hefty block of Republicans who may end up determining his political fate.