OVERNIGHT MONEY: The administration strikes back

For instance, Janet Napolitano, the Homeland Security secretary, told a group of Senate appropriators that the bill would impede her department’s progress in a host of areas — including airport safety, where Napolitano said House cuts would lead to possibly significant increases in wait times for passengers.  

“It cuts funding to sustain the progress that has been made in enforcing the nation’s immigration laws,” Napolitano said of the House measure. “It cuts critical cybersecurity tools and operations. It cuts intelligence personnel. It cuts Coast Guard funding to support our war efforts abroad. And it cuts grants that support counterterrorism and disaster response capabilities.”

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Defense Secretary Robert Gates also joined the chorus, with Clinton saying cuts in her area “would be devastating to our national security.”

The secretary of state also signaled that a past temptation to limit involvement abroad — in Afghanistan, during the Cold War — “came at an unspeakable cost … one we are still paying, 10 years later, in money and lives.”

For his part, Gates said that a tightened budget would lead to problems with procurement and disrupt the production of initiatives like unmanned aerial vehicles. 

The administration’s rhetorical offensive came, it should be noted, on the same day that the Senate passed and President Obama signed a two-week continuing resolution that shaved $4 billion in spending.

What Else to Watch For:

Ready for more budget talk?: Even if you’re not, it’s coming. Treasury Secretary Ray LaHood; Shaun Donovan, Housing and Urban Development secretary; Kathleen Sebelius, Health and Human Services secretary; Charles Bolden, NASA administrator; and, for a second consecutive day, Napolitano are all expected to make trips to Capitol Hill on Thursday.

For the most part, the scheduled topic is fiscal 2012 budget requests, but you can probably also expect some talk about this year’s bottom line as well.

Burning down the House: The House Financial Services Committee will mark up four bills tomorrow, each of which would spell doom for one of the administration’s housing relief programs. Republicans argue the programs are wasteful and ineffective, and have failed to help the number of homeowners originally planned. But the administration has gone to bat for the programs, calling them an essential part of its efforts to boost the economy. 

With Republicans in charge of the panel, we expect the bills to pass the committee, but it remains to be seen if the measures will reach the House floor. And even if the GOP can push them through, they will face a steep climb in the upper chamber, where Democrats still hold the reins.

Wall Street watch: The Senate Agriculture Committee is set to host two top Wall Street regulators tomorrow, as they discuss how the rules implementation for various parts of the Dodd-Frank financial reform law is going. (The two regulators? Mary Schapiro, who heads the Securities and Exchange Commission, and Gary Gensler, the chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.)

Also on the Hill: Rep. Dan Lungren (R-Calif.) is expected to hold a Thursday news conference on his measure to do away with the 1099 reporting provision in the healthcare overhaul, which the House is expected to pass tomorrow. 

Economic indicators:

• The Labor Department is set to drop both weekly jobless claims and its fourth quarter schedule on productivity and costs.

• Freddie Mac is expected to release weekly mortgage rates.

• The Institute for Supply Management is scheduled to circulate a February index on the service sector.

(And your 36-hour warning: The Labor Department’s release on February unemployment is coming Friday morning.)

Breaking Wednesday:

Have we told you about the budget hang-ups?: The Hill’s Alexander Bolton reports on Vice President Joe Biden’s taking the Democratic lead on 2011 spending negotiations, with more fierce budget discussions expected on the horizon this month. 

We like our entitlements: The vast majority of Americans — even Tea Party sympathizers — oppose using cuts to Social Security and Medicare to get the country’s fiscal books in order, a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll found. (Upping the Social Security retirement age got a much better reception.)

Speaking of belt tightening: The New York Times reports that the SEC is looking to go after Wall Street bonuses.

What You Might Have Missed:

On the Money’s Wednesday:

• Bernanke clarifies: House spending measure not catastrophic, would still cost a couple hundred thousand jobs.

• Eric Cantor: House not voting on debt ceiling until tax day. 

• Fed’s beige book: Economy still growing, pace “modest to moderate.”

• Speaking of which: ADP reports 217,000 more jobs in February.

• Republicans and Democrats still sniping over Social Security. 

• Want to know how your tax dollars are spent? Sens. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) and Scott Brown (R-Mass.) are here to help.

• The Obama administration’s housing scorecard finds a still-fragile market.

• Cutting the IRS budget could hurt businesses, K Street report finds. 

• Former Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin joins K Street. 

• Chamber of Commerce study: Rolling back regulations would equal three-quarters of a million jobs. 

• And Sen. Herb Kohl (D-Wis.) has a leg-up on Paul Ryan in one poll for a hypothetical Wisconsin Senate race.