OVERNIGHT MONEY: Pre-job day apprehension

FRIDAY’S BIG STORY:

The nerves around Washington and Wall Street could be especially jittery on the eve of this first Friday of the month.

The Labor Department is, as usual, set to release its newest employment figures tomorrow, but forecasters are seriously skeptical that May’s numbers will come anywhere close to the 244,000 jobs the economy added in April.

In fact, economic forecasters have downgraded their expectations for the May numbers after a slew of weaker-than-expected reports this week, with a Reuters survey from Wednesday projecting 150,000 new jobs and Goldman Sachs and Citigroup both rolling expectations back to 100,000. 

By and large, those forecasts came before Thursday’s latest not-so-good news on the economic front, when the Labor Department announced that 422,000 people filed new unemployment claims last week — a drop of 6,000, but still a higher total than many expected.

That came on the heels of ADP’s Wednesday release that the private sector only added 38,000 jobs in May — a report that many economists are skeptical of, but that with recent bad news in both housing and GDP spooked them nonetheless.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average also had another subpar day on Thursday, dropping more than 41 points a day after it experienced a 280-point fall.

WHAT ELSE TO WATCH FOR:

The train to Toledo: OK, so he’s flying. But President Obama, no matter where tomorrow’s jobs numbers land, is expected to comment on the state of the economy after touring a Chrysler plant in Toledo. (While in Ohio, you can also expect the president to tout the recent good news that Chrysler paid back its TARP loans six years ahead of schedule.)

Back in Washington: With sluggish May jobs numbers now expected, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and other GOP lawmakers are expected to discuss the jobs numbers with reporters at the Capitol on Friday. 

HOME sweet HOME: Remember that Washington Post story on the troubles in the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s HOME program? Well, the House Financial Services Committee sure does.

The panel is set to sink its teeth into the program and its oversight on Friday, after the Post reported that hundreds of millions of dollars in the block-grant program were trapped in stalled projects and government oversight of the program was lacking.

Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-Ala.), the committee’s chairman, has called the newspaper’s findings “disturbing,” and said tomorrow’s hearing “will help us get to the bottom of what is happening and what needs to be done to fix it.” But Shaun Donovan, the HUD secretary, has disputed large portions of the report, while acknowledging more work needs to be done on the program.

Mercedes Márquez, an assistant HUD secretary, and James Heist, an assistant inspector general at HUD, are slated to testify on Friday.

Getting constitutional: The House Judiciary Committee is scheduled to mark up a BBA — shorthand for balanced budget amendment — on Friday.

Not coincidentally, just that sort of constitutional amendment has emerged as one of the major demands Republicans are making in the debt-limit debate, driven primarily by more conservative members of Congress.

Think tanks!: Rep. Sandy Levin (D-Mich.), the ranking member on the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, is set to lay out his principles for tax reform on Friday at the liberal Center for American Progress.

In a little day-before preview, Levin told reporters that a tax reform plan would have to at least consider the impact to both the corporate and individual codes. Republicans have pushed for a comprehensive look at the code, while the administration has put more work into the corporate side so far.

Elsewhere on the leftish side of the dial, the Brookings Institution is hosting a discussion on financial regulation across the pond, and how the European Union is trying to build a new post-crisis financial landscape. A common worrying point over the Dodd-Frank financial reform law is how those new U.S. rules will co-exist with similar (or differing) rules abroad.

Entitlements!: With Republicans demanding that Social Security and other entitlement programs be on the table as part of a debt-limit deal, the Ways and Means subcommittee on Social Security is set to delve into a recent report from the program’s trustees that found that the Social Security trust fund will be exhausted by 2036 — one year earlier than its last prediction. 

Appropriations Roundup: As it stands, the House is on track to approve the 2012 appropriations bill for homeland security, and would then turn to debate on military construction tonight. 

Perhaps the major fight on that front is a provision that would block an attempt by the Obama administration to encourage contracts to go to unionized workers. The existing executive order encourages project labor agreements with organized workers, and Republicans say this has had the practical effect of excluding non-unionized firms. The White House has issued objections to this but has not threatened to veto the bill.

Gratuitous E2-Wire plug: Cass Sunstein, the White House’s point man on regulations, is set to testify on that issue Friday before a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee and with officials from several interest groups. Check out our compadres at OVERNIGHT ENERGY for a fuller breakdown.

BREAKING THURSDAY:

Your perhaps not-so-surprising poll result of the day: According to Gallup, 47 percent of Americans want to redistribute wealth through heavy taxes, while 49 percent oppose that approach.

The especially not-so-surprising part: 70 percent of Democrats say yes, with the same number of Republicans saying no. Gallup says a bare majority of independents are against the idea. 

WHAT YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED:

— Moody’s: The nation’s credit rating could ride on the next few weeks.

— Barney Frank: Recess appointment for CFPB definitely on the table.

— House Dems: Who’s going to have to pay for lower corporate tax rates?

— GOP lawmaker: “Beyond disheartening” that IRS can’t do more to battle taxpayer identification theft.

— And the GOP response to a Dem call for more stimulus? Too bad.

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