Repeal

The Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday approved a bill that would repeal the Defense of Marriage Act, the 15-year-old law that prohibits the federal government from recognizing legally married same-sex couples. The new legislation, written by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), is called the Respect for Marriage Act.   "There are 131,000 legally married, same-sex couples in this country who are denied more than 1,100 federal rights and protections because of this discriminatory law," Feinstein said.  "I don't know how long the battle for full equality will take, but we are on the cusp of change, and today's historic vote in the committee is an important step forward.

WASHINGTON - Amid speculation that the Federal Reserve soon might start scaling back its stimulus efforts, the International Monetary Fund cautioned that a pullback before next year could hurt economies worldwide. Highlighting its concern Friday, the IMF lowered its forecast for U.S. economic growth next year to 2.7% from an earlier projection of 3%. The IMF also criticized U.S. fiscal policy, calling for the repeal of the automatic federal spending cuts, known as the sequester, and urging lawmakers to act promptly to raise the nation's debt limit.

?In their campaign to repeal the healthcare overhaul President Obama signed last year, Republicans have leveled two sweeping critiques of the new law: its impact on the job market and on the federal budget deficit. Here is a run-down of how some of the rhetoric matches up with reality. Why do Republicans say the law will "kill" jobs? Many businesses will face new regulations, including rules dictating that their health plans eliminate lifetime limits, wave co-pays for preventive care and allow parents to keep children up to age 26 on their policies.

A bipartisan bill introduced in the House calls for a review of state laws that criminalize behavior by people with HIV, including many laws that seem anachronistic or inappropriate given what has been learned during the last three decades about the transmission and treatment of the virus that causes AIDS. The bill should be passed. The Repeal HIV Discrimination Act of 2013, introduced by Reps. Barbara Lee (D-Oakland) and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), would not by itself repeal any state laws.

Waste, fraud and abuse — also known as California's death penalty. It's a colossal waste of money for arguably the state's most inefficient program. California has spent an estimated $4 billion to administer capital punishment over the past 33 years and executed only 13 people. That's about $308 million per execution. It's a shameless fraud on the public. Californians have consistently supported the death penalty and been led to believe that it exists. It really doesn't.

Connecticut has become the 17th state to repeal the death penalty, with lawmakers voting 86-62 on the measure after a marathon debate that stretched into the night and revived memories of some of the state's most heinous crimes. Gov. Dannel Malloy has said he will sign the bill, which passed the House on Wednesday night, six days after the Senate approved it . The bill replaces capital punishment with life in prison without the possibility of parole, but it only applies to future cases and has no effect on the 11 men on death row in Connecticut.

WASHINGTON -- House Republican leaders set a vote in two weeks to repeal the nation's healthcare law -- a largely symbolic act that is not be expected to go anywhere in the Democratic-led Senate. House Minority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) said the vote will be July 11. "The House will once again vote to repeal ObamaCare," the leader said in a tweet. House Republicans already voted to get rid of the law in one of their first acts after taking the majority in 2011. They had promised another vote after the Supreme Court decision.

President Obama endorsed a bill Tuesday that would repeal the Defense of Marriage Act, a 15-year-old law denying federal benefits for same-sex couples.  "The president has long called for a legislative repeal of the so-called Defense of Marriage Act, which continues to have a real impact on the lives of real people - our families, friends and neighbors,” said White House spokesman Shin Inouye. DOMA, passed by Congress in 1996 and signed into law by President Clinton, defines marriage as a legal union between one man and one woman.

WASHINGTON - For the 33rd time, House Republicans steered passage of legislation taking aim at the nation's new healthcare law - this time in a largely symbolic vote to repeal it. The two-day floor debate was orchestrated by GOP leaders to rev up voters before the November election, tapping into the deep divisions that remain over the plan two years after President Obama's signature domestic achievement became law. Americans continue to...

The New Hampshire House of Representatives has rejected a bill to repeal the state's 2-year-old law allowing same-sex marriage, dealing a blow to activists who had hoped to make the Legislature the first in the country to repeal a gay marriage law. Lawmakers in the House voted 211 to 116 against the bill, which would have repealed gay marriage and replaced it with a preexisting civil unions law, according to the Associated Press. It also would have made the issue a nonbinding question on the November ballot.

Abel Maldonado was a young Latino rancher and fresh-faced state lawmaker when he addressed the Republican National Convention in 2000 and was hailed as the GOP's future. Nine years later, he parlayed his deciding vote on tax increases into an appointment as lieutenant governor, albeit for a brief stay. He lost a bid to remain in that job in 2010, and was defeated in a run for Congress last year. But he jumped back onto center stage this month with a brash campaign to repeal Gov. Jerry Brown's corrections policy known as realignment.

The chief drawback of a law as complex as the Affordable Care Act, the health insurance reform measure passed in 2010, is that it provides self-interested opponents a multitude of places to stick a wedge in and hammer away. But you'd be hard-pressed to find a campaign against the ACA as narrow-minded and dishonest as the one mounted by medical device manufacturers. This industry, which encompasses makers of everything from tongue depressors to MRI machines, has been grousing from the outset about an excise tax of 2.3% the act imposes on sales of its products.

WASHINGTON - As Republican leaders try to woo Latino voters with a new openness to legal status for the nation's illegal immigrants, the party remains at odds with America's fastest-growing ethnic community on another key issue: healthcare. Latinos, who have the lowest rates of health coverage in the country, are among the strongest backers of President Obama's healthcare law. In a recent national poll, supporters outnumbered detractors by more than 2 to 1. Latinos also overwhelmingly see guaranteeing healthcare as a core government responsibility, surveys show.

WASHINGTON - Republicans in Congress are renewing their political assault on the nation's new healthcare law, trying to repeal President Obama's signature domestic achievement as part of the next battle over the federal budget. Rep. Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, last year's Republican vice presidential nominee, said Sunday his forthcoming budget proposal will include repeal of "Obamacare," as his party calls it. That position puts tea-party conservatives at odds with others in the GOP who want to find common ground with Obama on the nation's fiscal woes after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the health law. In the Senate, conservatives will press for a vote this week to delay funding for the health law as part of a bill that must pass to keep the government running beyond March 27. "We say we get rid of 'Obamacare,' " Ryan said on "Fox News Sunday.

A Senate Republican leader has proposed eliminating limits on campaign contributions to state candidates, arguing the restrictions are ineffective. Sen. Ted Gaines, chairman of the Senate Republican Caucus, introduced legislation to repeal major portions of the Proposition 34 that put a $4,100 limit on contributions by individuals to candidates for the legislature and a $27,000 limit on contributions to candidates for governor. The measure would have to be acted on by the state voters.

A bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers is seeking to repeal a Medicare-pricing provision in the recent "fiscal-cliff" deal in Congress that benefits Thousand Oaks biotech giant Amgen Inc. Legislation to eliminate the exemption for a class of drugs, including Amgen's Sensipar, that are used by kidney dialysis patients, was filed this week by U.S. Rep. Peter Welch (D-Vt.). The fiscal cliff legislation approved this month excluded these oral medications from Medicare price controls for an additional two years.

Opposition to the Ohio law that limits the power of public employee unions has grown substantially in recent weeks, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released Tuesday, offering a ray of hope to Democrats and their allies in organized labor as the presidential race heats up. According to the poll, 57% of those surveyed said they would repeal the measure, known as a Senate Bill 5, while 32% said they would keep it. The difference between the...

SANFORD, N.C. - Ashley Broadway and Army Lt. Col. Heather Mack have been a couple for 15 years. Broadway attended every one of Mack's promotion ceremonies. The two lived together when Mack served on bases in Texas and Kansas. When Mack was deployed to South Korea, Broadway joined her there. She cared for their young son, Carson, when Mack was sent to Kuwait. On Nov. 10, the women legally married in Washington, D.C. Broadway began a new life as a military spouse, certain that with the repeal in 2011 of the "don't ask, don't tell" policy that banned gays from serving openly, she would enjoy the same rights as other spouses.