WASHINGTON — Scientists say NASA is about to propose major cuts in its exploration of other planets, especially Mars. But even before the cuts are unveiled, lawmakers are vowing to fight “tooth and nail” to preserve missions to the Red Planet.

With limited money for science and an over-budget new space telescope, the space agency essentially had to make a choice in where it wanted to explore: the neighboring planet or the far-off cosmos.

Based on the advance word about NASA’s budget for the coming year, Mars lost out.

The signs look hopeful for a short-term accord in Congress on extending the payroll tax cut and unemployment benefits.

But right after Election Day, a lame-duck Congress will face a horrific fiscal train wreck: sharp tax increases, combined with automatic spending cuts — and scanty reserves of political goodwill to help clinch a deal to avert that outcome.

A House-Senate conference committee met Thursday to try to push ahead with a full-year payroll tax cut. The committee will keep working next week as Congress heads to a Feb. 29 deadline.

Also as part of that deal, there’s bipartisan accord on the committee to not allow Medicare spending cuts enacted in 1997 to take effect. The payroll tax cut package will include another in a long series of postponements of the cut in Medicare payments to doctors.

President Barack Obama on Wednesday called on Congress to approve a $5 billion to $10 billion effort to help U.S. homeowners refinance as part of a wider package of proposals to shore up the depressed housing market.

Obama had sketched out the proposals in his State of the Union address last week, including a tax on banks to pay for the plan that Republicans quickly rejected.

The White House offered more details on Wednesday ahead of a speech by Obama to expand on his initiative, which some Republicans have derided as an election-year ploy.

(CNN) — President Barack Obama unveiled a new college affordability plan Friday, proposing to further expand student financial aid while providing more assistance to schools that hold tuition down and cutting aid to those that do not.

The plan is part of a populist White House pitch to middle class families that promises to play an integral role in the Democrats’ 2012 campaign.

Appearing before a raucous student crowd in Michigan — a potentially critical swing state this year — Obama outlined plans to boost total federal spending on Perkins loans from $1 billion to $8 billion. He also announced plans to push for the creation of a $1 billion competition encouraging states to contain public tuition rates, among other things.

(CNN) – President Barack Obama’s reelection campaign returned political donations made by Jon Corzine, the embattled former Democratic governor and senator from New Jersey, on Friday.

The move comes as Corzine endures increased scrutiny following the bankruptcy of his brokerage firm MF Global. Corzine was CEO of the company until it declared bankruptcy in October and he subsequently resigned.

Vice President Joe Biden and several cabinet secretaries announced today the administration’s efforts to identify and eliminate misspent tax dollars. My favorite – the savings of $50 million annually by no longer minting unneeded and unwanted dollar coins. Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Neal Wolin says they currently have a decade worth of excess coins on the shelves! From the White House release:

The Vice President and Secretary Geithner announced the Administration’s plan to stop the wasteful production of $1 coins for circulation. In 2005, Congress enacted the Presidential $1 Coin Act, which mandated that the United States Mint issue new Presidential $1 Coins with the likeness of every deceased President. But more than 40 percent of the $1 coins that the United States Mint has issued have been returned to the Federal Reserve, because nobody wants to use them.

The Senate on Thursday blocked another portion of President Obama’s jobs plan, a $60 billion bill to fund infrastructure projects around the country.

This is the second piece of the president’s proposal to be voted on and rejected in the Senate. The bill would have invested $50 billion dollars to fund immediate highway, transit, rail and aviation projects. And it would have put $10 billion toward a national infrastructure bank.

The Senate voted 51-49 in favor of a procedural motion to bring up the component of President Obama’s jobs bill, nine short of the 60 votes needed to break a filibuster. Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE) and Sen. Joe Lieberman, a Connecticut independent who caucuses with Democrats, joined Republicans in opposition to the bill.

WASHINGTON (CNNMoney) — The FBI and federal prosecutors are investigating how some $600 million of MF Global customers’ money has gone missing, CNN learned Tuesday from sources close to the probe.

The investigation of MF Global (MF) is being conducted by the FBI and other federal regulators, including the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodities Futures Trading Commission.

This past weekend, executives at MF Global had been scrambling to sell the firm to Interactive Brokers, but the missing money cost the firm the deal and forced it into bankruptcy, regulators said.

Earlier on Tuesday, Craig Donohue, CEO of CME Group (CME), the operator of the nation’s largest commodity exchanges, told analysts that his firm has determined MF Global had broken government and CME rules requiring it to keep its customers’ funds separate from the firm’s assets.

WASHINGTON — The Senate has approved must-do legislation to fund the day-to-day budgets of five Cabinet agencies, kick-starting long overdue work to add the details to budget limits agreed to by President Barack Obama and congressional Republicans this summer.

The bipartisan 69-30 vote came on a $182 billion bundle of three bills to fund programs including transportation, space exploration, housing subsidies and the FBI for the 2012 budget year that started a month ago.

Under the budget pact enacted in August, lawmakers have to cut about $7 billion — or less than 1 percent — from the more than $1 trillion budgeted last year for the daily operations of federal agencies. Such cuts are too small for tea party conservatives but would come in addition to savings from benefit programs like farm subsidies and Medicare expected from a deficit “supercommittee” later this month.

Another Social Security tax cut, intended to spark the sluggish economy, seems to be in the works.

But the short-term boost for workers could create even more problems for a giant entitlement program already facing a long-term financing shortfall.

The tax cut is a vital ingredient in President Barack Obama’s jobs bill. On the campaign trail in Pennsylvania last week, Obama touted the proposal as a tax break for “middle-class families who are likely to spend this money now and get the economy moving again.”

For 2012, Obama wants to cut the tax, normally 6.2 percent on both the employer and the employee, to 3.1 percent. The tax cut for businesses would apply on the first $5 million in wages paid. The proposal builds on the 2 percentage point payroll tax reduction that is in effect for 2011.