Business

OVERNIGHT MONEY: Hochberg hits Senate Banking

by Vicki Needham - 05/06/13 10:31 PM ET

Club for Growth’s Andy Roth, vice president of government affairs, argues that Hochberg’s nomination should be opposed “until a real plan is implemented for reducing the Bank’s authority with the ultimate goal of ending its charter completely.”

{mosads}He said the bank’s increase in funding authority as part of a reauthorization bill that cleared by Congress last year “means its ability to distort the free market by handing out huge discounted loans and loan guarantees to special interests has only grown in size.”

Club for Growth has said it will key-vote the nomination.

The bank, created in 1934, provides loan guarantees to foreign companies that want to do business with U.S. exporters.

In 2012, the bank provided more than $35.7 billion in financing.

WHAT ELSE WE’RE WATCHING

Credit report errors: Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) will take up the issue of how consumers are affected by inaccurate credit reports at a Senate Commerce subcommittee hearing slated for Tuesday.

McCaskill’s hearing follows up after the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) released a report earlier this year showing that one in every five consumers had errors on at least one of their three major credit reports.

In many cases, the errors were serious enough to hamper their access to credit. McCaskill and other panel lawmakers will chat with representatives from the FTC, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, consumers and industry representatives.

Debt default: The House is expected this week to take up a bill that would require the Treasury Department to prioritize payments to creditors if default is looming. The House Rules Committee on Tuesday will set up the bill for floor consideration.

The bill would allow the Treasury to borrow above the debt ceiling for things like Social Security payments.

The Treasury says payments are made mostly electronically and can’t be reordered to make specific payments. But Republicans argue that their bill would go toward assuring the markets that the country will always pay its debts.

Lawmakers are expecting that a debt-ceiling increase will be needed by the fall.

Whistle-blower’s view: The House Oversight and Government Reform and the House Judiciary committees will hold a joint hearing to discuss a whistle-blower case in St. Paul, Minn., that the Justice Department decided not to consider. The case is at the center of questions surrounding the fitness of President Obama’s Labor Department nominee, Thomas Perez, head of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, who was involved in the process.

A committee vote on Perez was postponed until Wednesday because Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.) had invited the whistle-blower, Frederick Newell, to a separate hearing the same day the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee was set to push the nomination to the full Senate.

House and Senate Republicans have argued that Perez brokered an unethical deal in convincing St. Paul officials to drop a Supreme Court appeal that would have had a potentially adverse effect on discrimination cases in exchange for keeping the Justice Department from intervening in two whistle-blower cases they say could have brought the U.S. government upward of $200 million in damages.

Perez said that Justice Department officials determined that the case lacked merit and, ultimately, the Newell case against St. Paul was dismissed by a court and would not have provided any money for the government.

Republicans argue that Newell’s testimony could contradict statements made by Perez.

Isakson, Newell and Senate Judiciary ranking member Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) will discuss the issue.

A full slate: The House Financial Services Committee has a full slate on Tuesday, with the panel set to mark up and vote on nine different bills that would tweak the derivatives portion of the Dodd-Frank financial reform law. Several versions of the bills cleared the committee during the last Congress. But there is concern among advocates for better oversight that that the bills would reduce the power of regulators and weaken the law.

More budget talks: House appropriators will chat with Securities and Exchange Commission Chairwoman Mary Jo White about her $1.67 billion budget, a 27 percent increase over 2013’s levels as part of an effort to provide better oversight of Wall Street. There is money figured into the budget to hire 131 new investigators and litigators in the SEC’s enforcement division.

On the Senate side, appropriators will examine the $12 billion Interior Department budget with Secretary Sally Jewell and the spending levels for the U.S. Agency for International Development with Administrator Rajiv Shah.

More on Medicare: The House Ways and Means Committee on Tuesday will look into developing a better system to make Medicare payments to physicians with a variety of medical experts.

Immigration examination: Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, will testify before the Joint Economic Committee on Tuesday on how immigration can contribute to the nation’s economic strength. He will be joined by Adriana Kugler a professor at Georgetown University, to discuss the hot topic. The hearing is the first of two days of meetings on the issue, which will conclude on Wednesday.

BREAKING NEWS

On the move: The Senate passed legislation on Monday that, for the first time, would give states greater authority to collect sales taxes on goods sold online by out-of-state retailers, sending it to the House where its fate is uncertain.

Passage is viewed as a major victory for retail groups and state governments, who have fought for years for a bill they say will close a long-standing loophole and return as much as $23 billion in lost revenue.

The bill would empower states to collect taxes on purchases made online by consumers in their states from out-of-state retailers. Under current law, states can only collect from companies that are physically located within their borders.

LOOSE CHANGE

Williamsburg accord: On Monday, Heritage Action CEO Michael Needham sent a letter to conservative lawmakers reminding them that the debt ceiling can’t be raised until there is a guarantee that Congress will put forth a plan to balance the budget in 10 years. “Conservatives should not raise our nation’s statutory debt limit unless Congress passes and the President sign into law real reforms and immediate spending reductions that place America on a path to balance within 10 years without raising taxes and keeping the budget in balance,” it reads.

Hitting a low note: Grammy-winning singer Lauryn Hill was sentenced Monday to three months in prison and an additional three months in home confinement for failing to pay taxes on about $1 million in earnings.

The a 37-year-old pleaded guilty last year.

Hill told the judge on Monday that she had planned to pay the taxes when she had enough money.

ECONOMIC INDICATORS

Consumer Credit: The Federal Reserve releases its March measure of consumer debt.

WHAT YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED

— DeMint, Heritage estimate Senate immigration bill price tag at $6.3T

— House will pass farm bill, Lucas predicts

— Top NY official suing banks over mortgage settlement violations

— SEC charges Harrisburg, Pa., with ‘reckless’ securities fraud

— Sources: Spending bill reduced sequester to $80B

— Sessions: study ‘puts to rest’ idea Gang of Eight plan fiscally sound

— Treasury’s exit from GM bailout accelerates