In an effort to woo Hispanic voters, President Obama made a pledge Saturday to push for immigration reform early in his second term. "This is something I care deeply about, [and] it’s personal to me," Obama told news anchor Enrique Acevedo in a television interview with Univision (left), a network viewed largely by Hispanics in the United States. Obama’s appearances on Univision have been frequent, as Saturday marked the 15th time he has been interviewed by the network, which purportedly reaches 97 percent of Hispanic households in the United States.

The Obama administration is quietly steering about $500 million to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to help bolster the President’s healthcare overhaul, despite efforts in the Supreme Court to strike down the law. The half-billion-dollar transfer is only a snapshot of the IRS’s total ObamaCare implementation spending, and it is being siphoned outside of the traditional appropriations process.

As President Obama and his GOP presidential rivals continue to pound the campaign trail, the grave issue of student loan debt has come under the spotlight. In what critics are calling the next "debt bomb," total student loan debt is slated to top a record $1 trillion, an amount larger than total U.S. credit-card debt and only second to the nation’s overall mortgage debt.

In response to rising citizen demand for government transparency and efficiency, this year China plans to defog the secretive workings of the government and ruling Communist Party, a senior official said Wednesday. "In this new year, we will adopt an even more open attitude and even more forceful policies," asserted Wang Chen, a Chinese propaganda official.

After being slapped with a $2.4-million bill by the Beijing tax bureau, Chinese artist and political dissident Ai Weiwei (left) could be charged with illegal fundraising. Ai disclosed to the public his hefty tax bill only last week, and since then nearly 20,000 people have donated more than 5.3 million yuan ($840,000) to help the artist pay an enormous sum of back taxes and fines.

As the issue of rising gas prices dominates Obama’s current standing among the public, the White House is scrambling to broadcast the President’s purported dedication to U.S. energy independence. And one strategy the administration is engaging in is to accuse congressional Republicans of stonewalling executive efforts to improve the country’s energy and environmental stature.

Following a scathing exposé that uncovered details on a lavish government conference in Las Vegas, the head of the General Services Administration (GSA) resigned, while two top deputies were fired and four managers were placed on administrative leave. GSA chief Martha Johnson (left) admitted in her resignation letter to a "significant misstep" at the federal agency — which handles real estate for the government — and as a result, she acknowledged, "taxpayer dollars were squandered."

Without a concrete plan for funding, proponents of a California high-speed rail project began pitching their plan this week to legislators and the general public. Updated from a previous proposal, the new plan narrows the scope of the project and intends to speed up construction to save money. However, despite the spending reductions, the rail still leans on shaky funding sources that might never materialize.

While GOP presidential candidates Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich release their 2010 tax returns, nearly 100,000 federal workers owe more than $1 billion in unpaid taxes in 2010. Congressional staffers owed $10.6 million in 2010, adding to a growing portion of the approximate $1 billion total owed by all civilian federal employees, which include military, postal service, executive branch, and congressional workers.

Former Congressman William D. Delahunt (left) from Massachusetts established a lobbying firm, the Delahunt Group, soon after retiring as one of the federal legislature’s most liberal lawmakers. After claiming an office on the 16th floor of a Boston skyscraper, Delahunt launched his business, and one of his first clients was the small town of Hull, on Massachusetts Bay, which agreed to pay him $15,000 a month for assistance in launching a wind energy project.