OVERNIGHT FINANCE: Budget faceoff; SEC chief in hot seat

THE SCENE – – Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.) playfully blaming Rep. Gwen Moore (D-Wis.) for having her cell phone go off at this morning’s House Financial Services Committee hearing. In jest, Chairman Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas) awarded Cleaver “an extra 15-seconds” for ratting her out. Reminder folks: Even lawmakers forget to silence their cell phones.

{mosads}TOMORROW STARTS TONIGHT: BUDGET BATTLE VOTES. Jill Peterson for The Wall Street Journal: “Passing the GOP budget in the House is a very, very delicate operation. Last week Republican leaders crafted a plan to change the House GOP budget to win the support of defense hawks balking over its level of military spending. But the plan to tweak the budget through an unusual procedural vote raised its own set of concerns with another group of GOP lawmakers: conservatives lobbying for transparency in the House.” 

WHAT’S HAPPENING IN THE HOUSE TOMORROW:

1.) Republicans will first vote on the blueprint approved by the House Budget Committee last week, which includes a measure boosting the Pentagon’s war fund to $94 billion with $20 billion offset.

2.) The second amendment is an amended version of that blueprint, which, Peterson notes, “adds $2 billion more to a supplemental war fund and removes a requirement to find offsetting cuts for about $20 billion in military spending — changes likely needed for the budget to pass.”

3.) Peterson: “The House will then vote on final passage of the budget, as amended by the measure that receives the most support — an unusual process known as ‘Queen of the Hill’ rules. 

— QUICK Q: WHAT’S ‘QUEEN OF THE HILL?’ Peterson: “The change gives lawmakers a chance to vote on both versions of the GOP budget on the floor, but also invites a measure of unpredictability over the series of votes. Republican leaders had last week planned to alter the budget to boost military spending through a rule setting up the bill’s passage, generally a procedural vote approved along party lines.” http://on.wsj.com/1FT9l1U

THIS IS OVERNIGHT FINANCE. Keep smiling. It’s Tuesday. Tweet: @kevcirilli; email: kcirilli@digital-stage.thehill.com; and subscribe: http://digital-stage.thehill.com/signup/48. Pick up the pace…

FIDUCIARY FIGHT: SEC CHIEF IN HILL HOT SEAT. My recap of this morning’s House Financial Services Committee hearing: “Republican lawmakers pressed Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to Chairwoman Mary Jo White Tuesday  better coordinate with the Department of Labor (DOL) as the two agencies craft regulations for financial advisers. In testimony before the House Financial Services Committee, White said that SEC officials are moving ahead with plans to draft ‘fiduciary standards’ that would require more stringent disclosure requirements for the industry. ‘We’re separate agencies and each have to decide’ on our own rules, White testified at the hearing.” http://bit.ly/1Nc89Y0

— More from Waters, via Pete Schroeder: “Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) is drafting a bill that would require the Securities and Exchange Commission to go through a more rigorous process before it grants a waiver to a financial firm that has previously pled guilty to fraudulent activity.” http://bit.ly/19ipNfl

MARKEY JOINS WARREN IN OPPOSING OBAMACARE TAX. Bernie Becker: Sen. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) rolled out legislation Tuesday to eliminate ObamaCare’s medical device tax, and replace the lost revenue by raising taxes on oil-and-gas companies… The medical device industry has been pushing hard to repeal the 2.3 percent excise tax on devices. That idea has bipartisan support, from practically every Republican to Democrats like Markey whose home states have large medical device industries.” http://bit.ly/1FTDb6p

LEW MAKES CASE FOR FAST-TRACK, via Vicki Needham: “A top Obama administration official said Congress is expected to take up legislation in the near future that would smooth passage of pending global trade agreements. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew said Tuesday that passing bipartisan trade promotion authority (TPA) ‘is vital’ and that it will protect workers.” http://bit.ly/18VglhO

OUT FRONT: FED PREZ JAMES BULLARD. Reuters: “Federal Reserve policymaker James Bullard said on Tuesday that zero percent interest rates were no longing appropriate in the United States, and that a rate hike in the summer would still leave policy extremely accommodative. ‘Zero is no longer the appropriate interest rate for the U.S. economy,’ Bullard said during a panel session at London City Week.” http://reut.rs/1FAylwm

THE ODD-COUPLE: PRICE AND ENZI. Rebecca Shabad and Scott Wong: “One is a bookish accountant and self-described introvert. The other is an unassuming orthopedic surgeon. Neither is generally recognized outside the Beltway. But there’s a hot spotlight shining on the GOP’s new low-profile Budget chairmen: Sen. Mike Enzi of Wyoming and Rep. Tom Price of Georgia. And how well the two men can work together in the coming weeks may determine how successful Republicans will be in pushing forward their agenda and major policy changes in the 114th Congress.” http://bit.ly/1OvT0nL

CFPB COMMENT PERIOD ENDS FOR PREPAID CARD REGS. And the industry responded with a whopping 6,000-plus comments — most from cardholders asking to preserve their current access to overdraft on prepaid cards. CFPB says new regs are needed to better protect consumers. But according to the CFPB’s most recent “Semi-Annual Report of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau” – between Oct. 1, 2013 and Sept. 30, 2014, the CFPB received approximately 240,600 consumer complaints. Approximately 400 of those were related to prepaid cards. Of those, 1 percent of complaints covered “Overdraft, savings or rewards features.” That mean at most 0.0017 percent of complaints to the CFPB were related to overdraft on prepaid cards. It will be interesting as this heats up…

SPORTS BLINK: JIMMY ROLLINS TRASHES ‘BLUE COLLAR’ PHILADELPHIA. In a bizarre, out-of-touch, ungrateful rant to Fox Sports, ex-Phillies ballplayer turned L.A. Dodger blasted Philadelphia’s “blue collar” roots. In his own words: “The general area, the city [of Philadelphia] being blue-collar, it’s not conducive for a superstar. You can be good, but you’ve got to be blue-collar along the way, keep your mouth shut, just go and work. Where obviously, this is LA. It’s almost like it’s OK to be more flamboyant. You kind of appreciate that the more you’re out there. Because LA loves a star.

“So in that sense, I feel free. If I want to ‘show out’ a little bit — from the outside looking in, people might say, ‘You’re in Hollywood.’ But no, in some places you couldn’t do that… No one goes hard all the time. But with a reputation, once you get that, if you’re not going 100 percent, then you’re never hustling. That’s OK. It kept me on the field…

“But if I was going to talk trash, that was going to rub people the wrong way. Because it wasn’t blue-collar to talk trash. That’s more of a showboat type of thing. But I’m from California. You talk it, and you go do it. Here, you talk trash, it’s like, ‘Let’s see you do it.’ Not, ‘He said this. You’ve got to get him out of here for that reason. He no longer fits in.’ It’s just the way it’s perceived. Out west, out in LA, those things are perceived as being OK.” Recap via New York Post: http://bit.ly/1EOu2dO

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