The Department of Labor ("DOL") continues to investigate service providers to ERISA plans, including investment advisors, broker-dealers, recordkeepers and TPAs.

Election year politics already have arrived at the Capitol.

President Obama hosted a number of high-ranking House Republicans at the White House Thursday afternoon to discuss the debt ceiling and an end to the shutdown.

On October 26, Governor Tom Corbett (R-PA) signed into law the Promoting Employment Across Pennsylvania Act (PEP) (House Bill 2626).

Taxmageddon refers to several expiring tax policies (also known as the Bush-Era tax cuts) and tax increases from Obamacare slated to take effect on January 1, 2013.

The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) has begun designing a new Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) suspicious activity report database (the Database). The BSA requires, among other things, financial institutions – including mutual funds – to report suspicious transactions by filing Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs).

U.S. Customs and Border Protection posted an updated version of its procedures for its Centers of Excellence and Expertise.

The Middle Class Tax Relief and Jobs Creation Act of 2012, passed by Congress and signed into law by President Obama in February 2012, gave the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) the authority to conduct auctions of spectrum currently assigned to television broadcasters for future wireless broadband uses.

Drinker Biddle’s Government Relations and Health Care panel will host a three part webinar on the implications of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act Omnibus Final Rule.

The Acting General Counsel of the NLRB is apparently rummaging through handbooks and policy statements to charge nonunion employers with unfair labor practices for enacting seemingly innocuous rules that could conceivably be read as interfering with the right of employees to engage in protected concerted activity.

On August 27, 2013, the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs announced final rules for federal contractors regarding hiring and employment of disabled individuals and protected veterans and imposing new data retention and affirmative action obligations on contractors.

In a development that could have far reaching implications for employers, the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case, Vance v. Ball State University, in which the central issue is the definition of "supervisor" for purposes of determining an employer’s liability for harassment under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e et seq. ("Title VII").

A discussion on the benefits guaranteed by law provided to eligible individuals by the federal government.

The House Appropriations Committee will start marking up the first fiscal year 2014 appropriations bill.

The Ninth Circuit has recently affirmed the conviction and sentence of InterMune founder Scott Harkonen based upon a fraudulent press release that misrepresented the results of a clinical trial in the off-label use of the drug Actimmune to treat the fatal lung disease idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis.

As a healthcare patient or provider, is there an issue, question, or decision impacting your care or practice that you wish you could ask the government to research?

Earlier this week the House appeared poised to move swiftly to consideration and passage of H.J. Res. 59, the FY 2014 continuing resolution, which would keep the functions of the government operating between the upcoming start of the new federal fiscal year (October 1st) through December 15, 2013.

Just because funding for a program is included in the President's Budget or funding is authorized in a piece of legislation does not mean that the program will be funded.

An informal governing principle used by Republican Speakers of the House of Representatives since the 1990s to only allow bills to come up for a vote on the House floor that have support from the "the majority of the majority" of Members of Congress.

Spending caps are limits imposed on the amount of budget authority provided in annual appropriations bills.