Overnight Finance: Trump expected to nominate Powell for Fed on Thursday | Ryan says Mueller indictments won’t stop tax reform | Regulator pleads with Trump to save arbitration rule | Trump under pressure for tax win

Trump expected to nominate Powell to run Fed: President Trump is expected to nominate Federal Reserve Board Governor Jerome Powell on Thursday to be the next chairman of the central bank, according to multiple media reports.

Powell, a Republican appointed to the Fed by then-President Barack Obama in 2012, was widely considered to be Trump’s top choice heading into this week.

The White House said today that Trump would name his pick for chairman on Thursday, following reports from Politico and Bloomberg that the president would nominate Powell.

{mosads}

The New York Times and Washington Post also reported Trump’s choice, citing people familiar with the discussions.

Powell would replace current Fed Chairwoman Janet Yellen, a Democrat, who in 2014 became the first woman to lead the bank: http://bit.ly/2ygsm3e.

 

Check out our preview of Trump’s decision, including the picks that could pull ahead at the last minute.

 

Ryan on indictments: Nothing will derail tax reform: Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said Monday that the indictments in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation wouldn’t hinder congressional Republicans’ goal of overhauling the tax code.

“Nothing’s going to derail what we’re doing in Congress,” Ryan said on WTAQ’s “The Jerry Bader Show.”

Prosecutors on Monday announced indictments against Paul Manafort, former chairman of President Trump’s campaign, and Manafort’s former business partner Richard Gates. Manafort and Gates both pleaded not guilty.

Separately, prosecutors also announced that former Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos had pleaded guilty last month to lying to investigators.

The new developments in Mueller’s investigation come just days before Wednesday’s release of a tax bill by the House Ways and Means Committee: http://bit.ly/2yfhwui.

 

And to recap the day’s stunning events, check out The Hill’s live blog of the latest on Mueller’s investigation.

 

Happy Monday and welcome back to Overnight Finance. I’m Sylvan Lane, and here’s your nightly guide to everything affecting your bills, bank account and bottom line.

See something I missed? Let me know at slane@digital-stage.thehill.com or tweet me @SylvanLane. And if you like your newsletter, you can subscribe to it here: http://bit.ly/1NxxW2N.

 

Cordray pens personal letter asking Trump to spare arbitration rule: The director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has written an unusual plea to President Trump, asking him to save the agency’s rule on forced arbitration.

Richard Cordray wrote what he called a “simple, personal appeal” to Trump, asking him not to sign a resolution from Congress that would kill the CFPB rule.

“Many have told me that I am wasting my time writing this letter — that your mind is made up and your advisors have already made their intentions clear,” Cordray wrote.

“But this rule is all about protecting people who simply want to be able to take action together to right the wrongs done to them.”

Cordray states in the letter that he and Trump have never met or spoken, despite their 10 months of overlap in the government.

“I think you really don’t like to see American families, including veterans and service members, get cheated out of their hard-earned money and be left helpless to fight back,” Cordray wrote.

“I know that some have made elaborate arguments to pretend like that is not what is happening. But you are a smart man, and I think we both know what is really happening here.” http://bit.ly/2z3p1U9.

 

Showtime for the GOP tax plan: House Republicans are scheduled to release their long-anticipated tax-reform bill on Wednesday, a major step toward fulfilling a critical part of the GOP agenda.

Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) detailed the House’s timeline on tax legislation Tuesday, two days before the chamber passed the Senate budget. The budget will allow Republicans to pass a tax overhaul that adds up to $1.5 trillion to the deficit through a process known as reconciliation. That process will only require 51 votes to pass in the Senate, helping them avoid a Democratic filibuster.

House Ways and Means Chairman Kevin Brady (R-Texas) announced after the budget’s passage that his panel will mark up the tax bill on Nov. 6. The five days between the bill’s introduction and hearing gives stakeholders a narrow window to protest eliminated deductions or rate changes they oppose. Here’s more of what to expect from the week ahead: http://bit.ly/2ygPVbT.

 

…And the tax effort is putting Trump under pressure to deliver a victory: President Trump is under pressure to deliver a big win for Republicans on taxes.

The GOP this week will dive headfirst into an overhaul of the tax code, a goal that has eluded the party for a generation. The House Ways and Means Committee is slated to release the text of legislation on Wednesday.

The message from Republicans is loud and clear: They need Trump to be energetic, focused and disciplined to help get the plan across the finish line.

“It does take presidential leadership, getting something like this done, which hasn’t been done since 1986,” Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said this month.

During the first nine months of his presidency, Trump has at times struggled to use his bully pulpit to advance his legislative agenda. The Hill’s Jordan Fabian explains: http://bit.ly/2yeUjs1.

 

Details about the tax bill are already surfacing…

 

House to consider phasing in corporate tax cut: Lawmakers who are drafting the House’s tax-reform plan are discussing gradually phasing in a corporate tax-rate cut that would bring the corporate rate down to 20 percent in 2022, Bloomberg reported Monday.

The phase-in plan, which has not been finalized, would allow for corporate tax rate to be reduced from its current 35 percent rate by three percentage points per year, starting in 2018.

U.S. stocks fell to session lows in the wake of the news, Bloomberg reported.

The White House indicated it is not yet on board with the plan.

“The president has laid out his principles and it doesn’t include the phasing in,” press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said, according to Reuters.

“I don’t have reason to believe we have changes on that front at this point.” http://bit.ly/2z3XJNw.

 

GOP chairman says tax bill to include property tax deduction: House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady (R-Texas) said on Saturday that he is planning to include a deduction for local property taxes in forthcoming legislation.

“At the urging of lawmakers, we are restoring an itemized property tax deduction to help taxpayers with local tax burdens,” Brady said in a statement.

The statement comes just before Wednesday’s expected release of a tax bill. In recent weeks, Brady has been meeting with GOP lawmakers from high-tax states to figure out how the bill would treat state and local taxes.

Under current law, taxpayers who itemize can deduct their property taxes as well as either their state and local income taxes or their sales taxes.

The tax framework Republicans released last month called for repealing the full state and local tax deduction in an effort to help raise revenue to pay for lowering tax rates: http://bit.ly/2yguzeH.

 

New York Republican slams GOP tax plan: Rep. Dan Donovan (R-N.Y.) in an interview on Sunday slammed his party’s tax reform plan, saying residents in his state could lose their homes if the plan targets the mortgage interest deduction.

“What they’re proposing, John, is to eliminate a deduction from your federal tax return that’s very important to every New Yorker. … To deduct your state and local income tax and your property taxes,” Donovan said in an interview with John Catsimatidis on AM 970 in New York.

“That’s essential for hard-working New Yorkers,” he added. “It’s been in the tax code since 1913.”

Donovan said eliminating the deduction would mean that people in New York “couldn’t buy homes anymore, couldn’t pay their mortgages, couldn’t pay their children’s tuitions.”
Lawmakers have argued that the GOP proposal would hit high-tax states like New York, New Jersey and California especially hard. http://bit.ly/2ygsEXS.

 

Home builders group won’t back GOP tax plan: The National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) will not support House Republicans’ upcoming tax reform legislation, the group’s CEO told the Wall Street Journal. 

Jerry Howard told the newspaper in an interview that the NAHB could not support the bill because the proposal is not expected to include a tax credit that would take the place of deductions for property taxes and mortgage interest that are likely to be lost under the legislation.

“It’s a bad bill for the housing sector,” Howard said. “We will not be for it.”

House Republicans are expected to unveil their tax bill on Wednesday. That measure would roughly double the standard deduction and eliminate personal exemptions.

But the plan also reportedly weakens the deduction home mortgage borrowers can take on mortgage interest they pay.

http://bit.ly/2gOHvgO

 

That led to a conservative group releasing a letter showing real estate support for the tax plan: Heritage Action for America on Monday released a letter showing support for Republicans’ tax plan from nearly 150 real estate professionals after a major trade group in the sector came out against the House’s forthcoming bill.

“This GOP tax proposal is a serious tax reform package that will grow the economy and help create a healthy and robust housing market,” the real estate professionals wrote in a letter to congressional GOP leaders. “The time for action is now.”

The letter follows an announcement from the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) Saturday that it plans to oppose the tax bill that the House Ways and Means Committee is set to release Wednesday: http://bit.ly/2z626aP.

 

GOP tax plan will explode deficit: Wharton study:  The Republican tax plan expected to be released this week will explode the deficit, according to a study from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School released Monday.

The study, which relies on the Penn Wharton Budget Model (PWBM), found that the deficit would increase by $1 trillion to $3.5 trillion over the course of the first decade, based on differing estimates of how the final plan will look. By 2040, the plans would cost between $2 trillion and $10.6 trillion.

House Republicans are set to reveal their tax plan Wednesday, adding details to the framework that calls for lowering corporate taxes, paring down the number of tax brackets and eliminating a variety of loopholes.

Under rules specified in the GOP budget approved last week, the Republican tax plan can add $1.5 trillion to the deficit before running afoul of special procedural rules that will fast-track the bill in the Senate. http://bit.ly/2z4qVDT

 

Consumer spending soars in September: Consumer spending in the United States shot up 1 percent in September, according to the Commerce Department, its fastest increase in eight years.

The $136 billion in consumer spending may be, in part, an aftereffect of hurricanes Harvey and Irma, which caused billions of dollars in damage.

As recovery and rebuilding efforts pick up, those affected by the disasters spend money on items such as cars that may have been destroyed. Motor vehicle spending was up a whopping 14.7 percent.

But while spending on goods and services was up, disposable incomes were flat in real terms: http://bit.ly/2yeVDet.

 

From The Hill’s opinion pages:

Playing politics with America’s money is a dangerous game, by former Rep. Steve Israel (D-N.Y.)

Corporate tax reduction is exactly what we need to boost American wages, Alex Hendrie from Americans for Tax Reform

The ‘Dumb and Dumber’ nature of our corporate tax code, by James Carter, head of tax policy implementation on President Trump’s transition team

 

Write us with tips, suggestions and news: slane@digital-stage.thehill.com, vneedham@digital-stage.thehill.com, njagoda@digital-stage.thehill.com and nelis@digital-stage.thehill.com. Follow us on Twitter: @SylvanLane,  @VickofTheHill, @NJagoda and @NivElis