Budget

TUESDAY’S BIG STORY:

It’s back to the Blair House for Vice President Joe Biden and the bipartisan group of budget-negotiating lawmakers.

Biden and company are set to get back down to business on Tuesday afternoon after holding their first meeting last week. 

The get-together comes as House GOP leaders, despite pressure from some on Wall Street for a clean debt ceiling bill, are continuing to threaten not to raise the borrowing limit without a concession on deep spending cuts. 

Senate Budget Committee ranking member Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) said Monday that White House meetings on Wednesday and Thursday appear to be Democratic delaying tactics.

President Obama has invited Senate Democrats to meet with him Wednesday on the budget and Senate Republicans to meet Thursday. The meetings effectively postpone a markup of Senate Democrat budget resolution, planned for this week.

 “The announcement of these summit meetings at the White House is a stunning development," Sessions said.

Meetings on the deficit between President Obama and senators slated for Wednesday and Thursday mean that the Senate Budget Committee will have to likely postpone any budget resolution markup this week, aides said Monday.

Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) had hoped to release a 2012 budget resolution this week and hold a markup. Plans for a Monday markup were shelved when Senate Democrats could not agree on an exact approach late last week.

Obama will meet with Democratic senators on Wednesday and with Republicans on Thursday.

Schumer says the Speaker should act like an adult and start reassuring credit markets on the debt ceiling.

A top Treasury official has thrown cold water on the idea that the U.S. could sell off assets like its gold reserves to push back the need to raise the debt ceiling.

In a blog post on the Treasury website on Friday, Mary Miller, the assistant Treasury secretary for financial markets, said that presidents and Treasury secretaries from both parties had dismissed that sort of approach.

“A ‘fire sale’ of financial assets would be damaging to the economy, taxpayers and financial markets,” Miller wrote. “It would harm the interests of taxpayers, and would undermine confidence in the United States. Nor would such sales postpone reaching the debt limit for a meaningful amount of time.”

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner will urge China to hike interest rates when he meets with Chinese officials.

America's deficit and China's currency will be hot topics of discussion at the two-day meeting between U.S. and Chinese officials starting Monday.

Home prices took their largest fall since 2008 in the first quarter of 2010, as the housing market continues to search for a bottom.

Increasing gas prices are driving more Americans to buy bikes and fuel-efficient scooters.

But analysts expect the price of a gallon of gas to drop by nearly 50 cents in the next few months.

The federal budget will again be a major topic of discussion on Capitol Hill as lawmakers try to hash out a deal for 2012.

On Tuesday, the group of six lawmakers convened by Vice President Biden for budget talks will meet again. Members from both parties struck an optimistic tone after Thursday’s first meeting, but there are said to be no agreements so far. The group is trying to find common ground on fiscal reforms that could be paired with a vote on raising the federal debt ceiling, which the Treasury expects to be reached May 16.

Tea Party-backed freshmen and the Republican Study Committee will demand cuts now in exchange for upping the debt limit.

Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad will not be conducting a markup of a Senate budget resolution on Monday and no date has been set for one to occur.

"While Chairman Conrad was hoping a mark up could take place as early as the beginning of next week, his discussions with colleagues are continuing," committee spokesman Stu Nagurka said Friday.

He said that the Congressional Budget Office has shared new estimates with the commitee that "need to be examined before the committee moves forward."