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This week: Budget debate to take over Congress
This week will be dominated by the debate over President Obama’s $3 trillion plus budget, which will be presented to Congress on Monday.
Obama will discuss his budget at Northern Virginia Community College, and in the following days his top advisers will spread out across Capitol Hill to defend it before lawmakers.
The president’s budget will serve as a political flashpoint for the fall election, as Republicans use it to paint him as a hefty spender taking on too much debt while ignoring entitlement reforms, and Democrats defend it as a balanced approach to the nation’s fiscal woes that makes millionaires pay their fair share.
The budget is expected to reprise Obama's recommendations to the debt supercommittee in the fall while including some new, targeted job-creation initiatives he outlined in his State of the Union speech.
Joining him as a frequent presence before Congress will be Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, who is scheduled to testify at no less than four hearings this week.
Geithner will start the week by discussing the tax proposals contained in the budget before the Senate Finance Committee and the House Ways and Means Committee on Tuesday and Wednesday, respectively.
He’ll follow that up with a double billing on Thursday before the House and Senate Budget committees, where he will discuss the budget and revenue proposals offered by Obama.
Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood will also appear before the Senate Budget Committee on Wednesday, and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius will testify before the Senate Finance Committee the same day.
A House Financial Services subcommittee will get in on the budget debate on Wednesday by devoting a hearing to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s (CFPB) budget.
The new agency’s budget does not fall under the White House purview, but is instead provided by the Federal Reserve.
House Republicans don’t like that. They argue that congressional appropriators should set the CFPB budget.
House appropriators will be busy this week with several subcommittee hearings.
On Wednesday, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano will testify on her budget request. On Thursday, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta will do the same before their respective subcommittees. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack will round out the budget chat before appropriators Friday.
After a series of contentious public meetings, the 20 conferees tapped with crafting a yearlong extension of the payroll-tax break will likely take their work behind closed doors this week. No public hearings are on tap.
Capitol Hill watchers see this week as a critical period in the talks, given that Congress is out of session the following week, and the existing breaks are set to expire at the end of the month.
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