On The Money: Senate panels postpone Tanden meetings in negative sign | Biden signs supply chain order after ‘positive’ meeting with lawmakers

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THE BIG DEAL—Senate panels postpone Tanden meetings in negative sign: Neera Tanden’s confirmation keeps slipping away.

Two Senate panels postponed meetings on Wednesday to consider advancing Tanden’s nomination to be President Biden’s budget chief, a bad sign for her prospects of winning confirmation.

• The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee had been scheduled to take up Tanden’s nomination to serve as director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), but the meeting was postponed, according to the committee website.
• The Senate Budget Committee also postponed a scheduled business meeting to vote on Tanden’s nomination, according to a committee aide.
• Both of those committees need to vote on Tanden’s nomination before it gets to the Senate floor for a confirmation vote.

Why the delay happened: The White House early Wednesday morning reiterated its support for Tanden, but she doesn’t appear to have 50 votes in the Senate after Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) last week said he would vote against her.

Several centrist GOP senators have also come out in opposition, and it is unclear whether Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who chairs the Senate Budget Committee, will support her confirmation.

The prognosis: Asked at a briefing Wednesday afternoon if she believed the delay in the meetings represents a setback, Psaki answered: “I wouldn’t put it in those terms. I think we are committed to continuing to fight for all our nominees.”

But let’s be real here. There is already one Democrat opposed to Tanden, another who is undecided, and three Republicans who’ve already said they won’t support her. And Sen. Lisa Murkowksi (R-Alaska), one the few remaining undecided moderates, apparently just found out that Tanden accused her of “getting high off her own supply” on Twitter, so that probably doesn’t help.

It’s not impossible that Tanden gets out of this jam, but it’s pretty darn close. The Hill’s Morgan Chalfant has more here.

Who may replace her: The White House is still all-in on Tanden’s nomination, but a consensus alternative has already emerged in Shalanda Young, Biden’s nominee to be Tanden’s deputy.

Young served as the House Appropriations Committee’s Democratic staff director since 2017 and has already received bipartisan support as a potential replacement for Tanden.

• Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), the top Senate GOP appropriator, said he would back Young to head OMB if the Senate does not confirm Tanden.
• Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) leaders are also prepared to push for Young to lead if Tanden is unable to get confirmed, CBC Chairwoman Joyce Beatty’s (D-Ohio) office told The Hill.

LEADING THE DAY

Biden signs supply chain order after ‘positive’ meeting with lawmakers: President Biden on Wednesday signed an executive order directing a review of supply chains for critical products across numerous sectors, including health, defense and communications.

• The order directs a 100-day review across federal agencies to address vulnerabilities in supply chains of pharmaceuticals, critical minerals, semiconductors and large-capacity batteries like those used to power electric vehicles.
• It also requires sector-specific reviews in six areas over the next year to address supply chain concerns, specifically the defense, information communications technology, energy, transportation, public health and food sectors.

Why? The order is meant to support jobs, particularly in traditionally marginalized groups such as communities of color, through helping to rebuild manufacturing jobs. It is also intended to address the ongoing shortage of semiconductors, which are essential to a wide range of tech products and the focus of a major competition with China.

“This is about making sure the United States can meet every challenge we face in this new era — pandemics but also defense, cybersecurity, climate change, and so much more,” Biden said in the State Dining Room before signing the order. “The best way to do that is by protecting and sharpening America’s edge by investing here at home.”

The Hill’s Maggie Miller and Morgan Chalfant explain here.

Most Fed services restored after ‘operational error’ causes outages: The Federal Reserve’s systems for transferring money and financial assets among banks, businesses and government entities went offline for a period of time on Wednesday, upending crucial parts of the country’s financial infrastructure.

The Fed said that a “Federal Reserve operational error” disrupted nearly all of the services the central bank provides as of 11:15 a.m Eastern.

What happened: 

• The error temporarily disrupted a wide range of essential Fed tools, including FedACH, which banks use to transfer money between each other, and Check21, which the Fed uses to process checks.
• Service to FedACH and FedWire, which also facilitates money transfers, were both restored. The Fed was also able to reopen its online cash- and coin-ordering service and its portal for banks to send applications to the central bank, and FedLine, an information portal for banks.

ON TAP TOMORROW:

• The Senate Banking Committee holds a hearing on reviving small business after the coronavirus pandemic at 9:30 a.m.
• The Senate Finance Committee holds a confirmation hearing for U.S. Trade Representative-designate Katherine Tai at 10 a.m.
• A House Financial Services subcommittee holds a hearing on domestic terrorism financing at 10 a.m.
• The Senate Budget Committee holds a hearing on corporate wages at 10:15 a.m.
• A House Financial Services subcommittee holds a hearing on corporate boards, climate change and social responsibility at 2 p.m.

GOOD TO KNOW

• The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced Wednesday that it will update its guidelines on how publicly traded companies should disclose climate change-related risks to investors.
• The Dow Jones Industrial Average set a new record at 31,961 on Wednesday, an increase of 425 points or 1.4 percent, after grazing 32,000 for the first time in intraday trading. The S&P 500 darted up 44 points, or 1.1 percent, but remained below its recent record.
• New York’s attorney general has reached a deal with two cryptocurrency trading platforms to shut down all business in the state and pay nearly $20 million in damages after the two firms hid hundreds of millions in losses.
• GameStop announced on Tuesday that Chief Financial Officer Jim Bell will be resigning from his role effective March 26.

ODDS AND ENDS

• Facebook and Australia’s eleventh-hour agreement Monday letting users resume sharing news links on the platform is being closely watched by regulators around the world as a possible model for requiring the social media giant to pay for news content on its site.
• Texas’s deregulated electricity market has raised costs to consumers by $28 billion since 2004, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis published Wednesday.