Senate

Consumer advocate and Democrat Elizabeth Warren will enter the Massachusetts Senate primary for a shot at challenging incumbent Republican Scott Brown for his seat. Warren will formally declare she's running on Wednesday, Kyle Sullivan, a Warren spokesman, said. She plans to greet commuters in Boston and make other stops during the day across the state.

It has been a long, confusing summer for the federal budget: The FAA shutdown, the debt ceiling crisis, the Deficit "Supercommittee." But all of that was just prelude to the battles ahead over the 12 major appropriations bills to fund the government's "discretionary" spending.

Unless lawmakers can agree on budget legislation to keep the federal government running, a shutdown at midnight Friday looms. If it happens, there will be a few clear winners, some who break even and a whole lot of losers.

The U.S. Senate is schedule to vote Tuesday on a bill that would repeal an unpopular tax-reporting requirement enacted as part of last year's health-care law. The House of Representatives approved the bill last month.

For the past decade, a few clever companies have been running an online scheme that tricked consumers into joining so-called membership clubs and charged their credit cards without their consent. But thanks to Sen. John Rockefeller, the era of this $1.4 billion con is coming to an end.

Approximately 60% of first-year U.S. senators and 40% of House of Representatives freshmen are worth at least $1 million, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. That makes them far richer than most of the Americans they represent: Just 1% of the country's population has reached the $1 million mark.

Consumers ought to have a lot of friends. After all it's our money that fuels business in this country - and a lot of other countries, for that matter. In about a week, the government is slated to unveil a tool for consumers that catalogs safety concerns and complaints about certain products. The...

Health care providers have been reporting unprecedented shortages of prescription drugs, including vital medications such as chemotherapies and antibiotics. Under current law, the FDA has no power to act, so two senators have introduced a bill to help government get a handle on the problem.

A sweeping food safety reform bill aimed at ultimately making food safer for consumers is now awaiting approval from the U.S. House of Representatives after languishing in limbo over a technicality. The U.S. Senate unanimously approved the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act by voice vote Sunday...

Now that President Obama has signed a sweeping tax bill into law, many Americans want to know how they'll be affected. The compromise deal extends Bush-era tax reductions on income, capital gains and dividends through 2012. But there were also some changes.