OVERNIGHT MONEY: Congress will have full plate of fiscal issues waiting when they return from recess

By Vicki Needham and Bernie Becker - 03/29/12 05:39 PM ET

FRIDAY'S BIG STORY:

With every end, there is a beginning: Lawmakers have hightailed it out of Washington for now, but they will return in a couple of weeks or so and be welcomed by a plate loaded up with fiscal issues.

Congress cleared all necessary business on Thursday: the House and the Senate cleared a 90-day transportation bill —and no, California Sen. Barbara Boxer, along with plenty of other Democrats, wasn't happy about the short-term extension — while the House passed the GOP budget plan authored by Budget Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), which has no chance of getting through the Senate.

“We can’t keep kicking the can down the road," said Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) about the transportation bill.

"Pretty soon, there will be no road left to kick the can down,” he said.

“The easiest way to work together and forge a solution to create jobs and fund our nation’s highway system is for the House to take up the Senate’s bill. It’s a good bill."

Boxer, chairwoman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, said the House extension doesn't include "one dime of revenue to fund" programs and the "highway trust fund is on the road to bankruptcy."

"House Republicans sent out a signal that America should be ready for job losses and hardship, because they didn’t even have the decency to put in that extension a written commitment to produce a bill, to get to conference with the Senate, and to get a bill to the president," she said.

"There are many people on both sides of the aisle in the Senate who want to get our bill passed into law, and I am going to do everything I can to keep the pressure on the Republican House to do just that."

So mark your calendars — you’ll likely have to wait longer than mid-April, but that 90-day extension could get some attention before that deadline.

Meanwhile, the White House blasted the GOP budget as "another example of the Republican establishment grasping onto the same failed economic policies" after the House approved the plan on a 228-191 vote Thursday.

So with that out of the way, for now, let's talk about what will happen after Congress returns from its spring break.

On the House side, Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) will likely aim to follow through on on his plan to pass a proposed 20 percent tax cut for small businesses around Tax Day — mid-April-ish.

The Ways and Means Committee cleared the proposal on Wednesday, but Democrats have derided the deduction, which would be available to all companies with under 500 employees, as a giveaway to hedge funds, professional sports teams and even Larry Flynt.

Across the way, the Senate is expected to take up its bipartisan postal reform bill when it returns.

The Senate measure would allow the U.S. Postal Service, which has racked up billions of dollars in losses in recent years, to implement a range of cost-cutting measures.

But the bipartisan plan has also raised some objections — especially from the left, with senators like Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) expressing concern that the legislation would not do enough to preserve rural post offices or delivery standards.

And the House isn’t the only chamber to set up a post-recess messaging vote: Senate Democrats are prepared to vote on Buffett Rule legislation on the Monday they return, our Daniel Strauss reports.

As you’ll recall, the Buffett Rule is the idea, first pushed by President Obama, that those making more than $1 million a year should pay a higher tax rate than middle-class families. Transformed into legislative language, the rule named for the billionaire investor Warren Buffett means that those making seven figures annually should pay at least 30 percent in taxes.

BUDGET ROUNDUP

Let's campaign: House GOP leaders on Thursday brandished their newly passed budget as the foundation of the Republican fall election campaign.

They know the budget is going nowhere until the November elections, and said it will take an electoral mandate to enact the huge spending cuts and Medicare changes it calls for that, GOP leaders say, are needed to rescue the United States from fiscal calamity.

The Democratic response is “bring it on.” They said they are eager to run against what they are dubbing the Ryan-Romney plan, after GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney and House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), which they say destroys Medicare, hobbles the economy and provides a tax break windfall to the rich.

Meanwhile, on the House floor: The House voted down a budget alternative offered by the Republican Study Committee (RSC) in a 136-285 vote in which 136 Republicans supported it and 104 Republicans opposed it.

Well, it's not so bad: House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi on Thursday threw her support behind the sweeping budget proposal crafted by President Obama's fiscal commission, a plan she once deemed "simply unacceptable."

The California Democrat said she only voted against a budget amendment Wednesday that was based on the recommendations of fiscal commission co-chairmen Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles because the package had been altered.

So, this is what we're thinking: House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said that the GOP budget proposal is a "real vision" of how Republicans would govern if they had more control of Washington.

We're still not sure: Most House Republicans stuck with their party and doubled down on a budget crafted Ryan that would reshape Medicare while introducing large tax cuts.

Ten Republicans voted against this year's GOP budget, up from four last year, and most of the new defections seem to be from the right, not the center, of the GOP conference. Few Republicans facing tough races bucked their party on the vote.

ECONOMIC INDICATORS

Michigan Sentiment: Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan Surveys puts out its report on consumer confidence.

Personal income: The Department of Commerce releases figures on personal income, which measures income from all sources. The largest component of total income is wages and salaries, a figure that can be estimated using payrolls and earnings data from the employment report. Beyond that, there are many other categories of income, including rental income, government subsidy payments, interest income and dividend income. Personal income is a decent indicator of future consumer demand, but it is not a perfect gauge.

WHAT YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED

— House GOP still steaming over recess appointment to consumer bureau
— Senate defeats Democrats' measure to kill off oil tax breaks
— DCCC slams Ways and Means Republicans for tax vote
— Senate Banking Committee advances Fed, other nominees
— Mortgage rates fall below 4 percent; housing market continues recovery
— Economic growth picks up pace during final quarter of 2011
— Jobless claims drop to four-year low