Republicans will wait until after the Memorial Day recess to begin the process of passing annual appropriations bills for fiscal 2014.

"The majority leader announced we'll begin the process of funding our government in June through an open appropriation," Rep. Kevin Brady (R-Texas) said on the House floor Thursday.

Republicans once again rejected Democrats’ unanimous consent agreement to form a conference committee on the House and Senate budgets on Thursday.

Senate Budget Committee Chairwoman Patty Murray (D-Wash.) said Republicans are holding the budget process “hostage” after Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) objected for a fifth time to appointing conferees to work out the massive difference between the House and Senate budget resolutions.

The legislation allows government to borrow money to fulfill bondholders and Social Security payments. 

Fannie Mae is making significant strides toward paying back its debt to taxpayers, probably giving the White House and Congress more breathing room on raising the nation's debt-limit. 

The mortgage giant announced Thursday that it would make a $59.4 billion payment to the Treasury Department next month as its balance sheet continues improving along with the housing market. 

The payment, combined with a $7 billion dividend payment from Freddie Mac, which was announced Wednesday, could give Congress and the White House more time to increase the debt limit, which is expected to be reached sometime this fall. 

Prioritizing bond and Social Security payments is no replacement for raising ceiling, agencies say.

The White House announced on Thursday that it is launching a competition for millions of dollars in federal funding to create several more manufacturing innovation institutes across the country as part of an effort to add jobs in the sector. 

The Obama administration said it will provide $200 million across five federal agencies — Defense, Energy, Commerce, NASA and the National Science Foundation — to add three more regional manufacturing-focused hubs, which are designed to accelerate the development and use of cutting-edge manufacturing technologies, boost the nation's competitiveness and strengthen state and local economies. 

The White House calls the hubs "teaching factories" that provide education and training to students and workers.

President Obama included a $1 billion request in his 2014 budget to create 15 institutes across the country as part of the National Network for Manufacturing Innovation (NNMI). 

Analysts say Washington focus on debt hurting job creation.

First-time jobless claims continued their descent last week, falling to their lowest level in more than five years and providing another sign that the labor market is healing. 

The number dropped by 4,000 last week to a seasonally adjusted 323,000, the best showing since November 2007, a signal that employers are laying off fewer workers, the Labor Department reported on Thursday. 

The four-week moving average, a figure that provides a better trajectory of where the labor market is headed, dropped 6,250 to 336,750.

The two top tax-writers in Congress have taken the next steps in their all-out drive for tax reform — a new website and Twitter handle.

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp (R-Mich.) and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) say the new site, taxreform.gov, and Twitter handle, @simplertaxes, would give the average taxpayer input into the tax reform process.

The two chairmen, "Max and Dave" on Twitter, cast their new effort as the modern-day equivalent of former Rep. Dan Rostenkowski’s request that people send him letters — “Write Rosty” — about their own problems with the tax code more than a quarter-century ago.

Rostenkowski (D-Ill.) was House Ways and Means chairman for the last successful overhaul of the tax code, in 1986, and Camp and Baucus suggested their efforts would help give regular citizens — and not just lobbyists and corporations — access to tax writers.

“The public has a huge role to play, because they’re the ones who have to suffer under this nightmare of a tax code, and its complexity,” Camp said in a joint interview with Baucus on National Public Radio.