OVERNIGHT FINANCE: IRS ordered to explain lost emails

TOMORROW STARTS TONIGHT — FEDERAL JUDGE TO IRS: EXPLAIN YOURSELVES. Stephen Ohlemacher for The Associated Press: “A federal judge ordered the IRS Thursday to explain under oath [by Aug. 10] how it lost a trove of emails to and from a central figure in the agency’s tea party controversy.

“U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan gave the tax agency a month to submit the explanation in writing. Sullivan said he is also appointing a federal magistrate to see if lost emails can be obtained from other sources.” http://bit.ly/1w6TS6r.

{mosads}– TRUCE? Bernie Becker for the hometown paper: “Sullivan cast his ruling as a compromise, and a potential way for Judicial Watch to get answers without the court wading any deeper into the matter.”

— MORE EMAILS COMING? Becker reports: “The IRS has said that it would turn over to Congress some 24,000 emails either to or from Lerner between 2009 and 2011 that the agency found through the accounts of other agency staffers. After Thursday’s hearing, attorneys for Judicial Watch [the conservative org that brought the suit against the IRS] said the IRS hadn’t disclosed that fact to them.” http://bit.ly/1rbYnfw.

— RT @RepBoustany, (R-Louis.): “The #IRS is being evasive – why wasn’t Congress notified of instant msg service employees used that wasn’t archived? http://on.wsj.com/1oEfapc.”

THIS IS OVERNIGHT FINANCE, and…  TOMORROW IS FRIDAY. What a week, huh? Tweet: @kevcirilli; email: kcirilli@digital-stage.thehill.com; and subscribe: http://digital-stage.thehill.com/signup/48.

Big game this weekend… not there yet…

FIRST LOOK – WARREN IN WEST VIRGINIA. Monday is shaping up to be an epic wonk war in West Virginia. Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) will campaign for Rep. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), the GOP Senate candidate who is the frontrunner with a formidable lead. Meanwhile, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) will campaign for Natalie Tennant, the Democratic Senate candidate.

A senior aide from the Tennant campaign tells OVERNIGHT FINANCE that Warren is “expected to draw a stark contrast between her record on the Senate banking Committee and Congresswoman Capito’s record on the House Financial Services Committee.”

The Tennant campaign, which trails Capito by double digits in most polls, is hoping that Warren’s populist appeal will resonate with West Virginians, as well as drum up support in the liberal base.

Warren, in a statement to OVERNIGHT: “Natalie Tennant and I don’t agree on every issue, but I’m campaigning in West Virginia because Washington already has enough people looking out for big financial institutions and Natalie will always put families ahead of Wall Street.”

2016 WATCH – PORTMAN: LEFT TOO LIBERAL FOR HILLARY. “The Democratic Party is more populist and more liberal than it was when she ran last time, and yet she’s more mainstream. It’s no longer the party of Bill Clinton,” Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) told Bloomberg earlier today.

Michael C. Bender for Bloomberg: “Portman, 58, mentioned as a potential vice presidential candidate in 2012 and 2008, said he’ll consider running to replace President Barack Obama if he’s not satisfied with the Republican candidates. He wouldn’t say who he’d support.” http://bloom.bg/1mOdAnz.

DAYS UNTIL EX-IM EXPIRES: 81. Yesterday, we spilled the details on Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Mark Kirk’s (R-Ill.) Ex-Im reauthorization bill. Here’s some reaction:

— RT @DanHoller, spokesman for Heritage Action, which opposes the bank: “Say what you will, ExIm is still Boeing’s Bank… or maybe just the Bank of Illinois. #endexim http://bit.ly/TVDY2b.

Two quick Qs:

1.) What’s Heritage’s beef with Boeing? Holler and Heritage are taking issue with a senior Kirk aide telling me that Kirk’s “consistent support of reauthorization is rooted in protecting companies like Boeing,” and that he is working to make sure “Ex-Im funds support Boeing airplanes.” Manchin-Kirk doesn’t address Delta’s concerns that Ex-Im financing is helping Boeing at the cost of hurting other U.S. companies.

2.) How are businesses defending Boeing? Ex-Im supporter William Reinsch, president of the National Foreign Trade Council, has a guest blog post for America’s Trade Policy:

“What is a wide-bodied aircraft? It’s 100,000 parts flying in close formation. Boeing didn’t make all those parts. Its suppliers did. Just as the plane won’t fly without them, those companies won’t survive without the plane sales…

“The Bank is not all about Boeing, but aircraft financing is a paradigm for where our high tech companies increasingly find themselves – under the gun from ferocious competition… It is one of the hallmarks of American manufacturing superiority, which U.S. policy has supported for more than 50 years. Now the Flat Earth Society proposes to do away with all that. Airbus must be laughing all the way to its bank, which its EU parents are smart enough to keep in business.” http://bit.ly/1mkESB3.

CONFIRMED: DONOVAN AT OMB. The Senate voted 75 to 22 earlier today to confirm Shaun Donovan as director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). He’s the former Housing secretary and replaces Sylvia Mathews Burwell, who is Health secretary.

THREE QUESTIONS FOR RICHARD SHELBY. We caught up with Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), the top GOPer on Senate appropriations, about what’s around the corner in September with the continuing resolution. As you know, the House and the Senate need to pass funding bills by Sept. 30 or we could have another shutdown.

1.) What’s the timeline on the continuing resolution? “It looks to me like we’re headed down the road to a CR and I’d assume it’d be at the end of September when we’re here to kick it over until the middle of November, probably, after the elections. But that’s ultimately up to leadership.”

2.) Looks like you’re going to be the next Senate Banking chairman. What can we expect? “That’s what people say. I could serve there again. We have to get control of the Senate first. We haven’t had any meetings with industry folks, though; we’re not there yet.”

3.) Do you predict another shutdown with CR wrangling? “I wouldn’t think so. I don’t think that anybody wants another government shutdown – Republicans, Democrats, or the American people.”

MEANWHILE… HIGHWAY TO HELL – OR AT LEAST A SHUTDOWN? There were (almost laughable) rumblings that Ex-Im wrangling would lead to another government shutdown. Now Democrats are saying that the Highway Trust Fund could lead to a “shutdown”…

Alex Bolton for The Hill: “Democrats are rallying around ‘shutdown’ as a new favorite buzzword as the Highway Trust Fund faces a $10 billion shortfall, and the annual bills funding government agencies have stalled. Democrats are warning of a looming ‘highway shutdown,’ implicitly comparing it to the government shutdown of 2013 that damaged the Republican brand.”

— THE BATTLELINES: Dems want to fill the highway shortfall with more taxes out of certain retirement accounts and increasing fees; while GOPers want spending cuts. Bolton with the primer: http://bit.ly/1mDSXsQ.

LEW IN CHINA, via WSJ: “U.S. Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew on Thursday said after high-level talks here that China was committed to reducing currency intervention and was preparing to make its foreign-exchange operations more transparent, a step that would make the yuan’s value more market-determined.” http://on.wsj.com/1kaNSnz.

SIDESHOW: QUOTABLE, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) during a presser on the Supreme Court: “We should be afraid of this court. That five guys should start determining what contraceptions are legal or not. … It is so stunning.” Mike Lillis has the story: http://bit.ly/1jhbGLy.

THE SCENE – FED FIGHT ESCALATES AT HILL HEARING. Retiring-Rep. John Campbell (R-Calif.) sparred with Dr. Simon Johnson, a professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Democrats’ witness at this morning’s House Financial Services Committee hearing.

Johnson said that a House GOP proposal that’d require the Fed to adopt a rule to guide monetary policy decisions was “like a police state for the central bank.” Campbell didn’t take that too well, throwing his arms in the air in disbelief and cutting off Johnson’s response.

“The GAO? Having the GAO audit a government agency is a police state? C’mon,” Campbell spat back. “The police state is the government they’re auditing. The police state is the IRS. The police state is the EPA. The police state is all of that. That’s the police state. Now you’re really ticking me off.”

Earlier in the hearing, Campbell said: “Give the markets some stability here so there’s some basis upon which you’re operating. That’s other than tomorrow morning, the Fed wakes up and decides, ‘Eh – let’s do more quantitative easing. Eh – let’s suck it back. Eh – let’s put more in. Eh – let’s do this and that. It throws everybody for a loop.” Video (Campbell’s feud with Johnson at the 1:31-ish mark: http://bit.ly/1nc5srn).

— SUMS IT UP, Ben Leubsdorf’s lede for his hearing coverage in The Wall Street Journal: “The polarization of American politics now extends to the issue of whether interest rates should be determined by mathematical formulas.” http://on.wsj.com/1mDQ3Eq.

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