This week: Yellen faces confirmation test

Janet Yellen will make her case to take over the Federal Reserve next week as Congress gets down to business on the budget and farm bill.

Yellen is seeking to become the first-ever female head of the Fed, and will seek the support of senators on Thursday at her confirmation hearing.

Her appearance before the Senate Banking Committee is likely to reveal whether Republicans will fight her nomination. Time is running short, as current Chairman Ben Bernanke is slated to exit at the beginning of 2014.

{mosads}The Banking panel will hear from another top regulator Tuesday when Richard Cordray, the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, delivers his agency’s semiannual report.

Meanwhile, talks between a pair of conference committees are set to accelerate.

Lawmakers on the budget conference committee will meet publicly on Wednesday as they seek to hammer out a deal.

Head appropriators from both parties have urged the group to reach an agreement by Thanksgiving, but the panel’s final deadline is Dec. 13. So far, both sides appear hung up on the issue of tax revenue, and whether it should be increased to replace spending cuts under sequestration.

The top four Democrats and Republicans on the farm bill conference committee are separately engaged in talks of their own. They want to finish a farm bill so that budget cutters don’t try to seize the bill and rewrite it for their own purposes.

On Wednesday, the Joint Economic Committee will convene to check in on the nation’s economy in the wake of the government shutdown and debt-limit fight.

Jason Furman, who heads the president’s Council of Economic Advisers, will testify.

Furman has also been making the rounds whipping up support for an increase in the minimum wage. A Senate vote on increasing the wage to $10 could come as early as next week.

Treasury Secretary Jack Lew will swing through Asia next week making stops in several countries involved in Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) talks.

Lew is slated to visit Tokyo, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, four of the dozen TPP nations. He also will go to China, where Beijing’s efforts to let its currency appreciate will be a hot topic.

The Obama administration has reiterated that they would like to see talks on the Asia-Pacific trade deal wrap up by the end of the year.

On Wednesday, the House Financial Services Committee will host a pair of subcommittee hearings. In the morning, the panel will discuss the future of the nation’s terrorism insurance program and what role the private market should play.

That afternoon, the House panel will get in on the central banking discussion by chatting about how central banks across the world conduct their monetary policy.

On Tuesday, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce will provide its quarterly economic briefing, its first since the shutdown.

Erik Wasson and Vicki Needham contributed.