Economy

Both chambers will dig into the farm bill this week as lawmakers look to strike a deal.

The Senate Agriculture Committee is set to mark up its version of the bill on Tuesday, while its House counterpart will follow suit on Wednesday. 

The biggest difference between the two bills is how they handle food stamps. The House would cut $23 billion from food stamp programs, while the Senate bill would trim just $4 billion.

Leaders in the House and Senate have both committed to floor action in the coming weeks. Farmers are currently operating under an extension of the 2008 farm bill.

The new economic atmosphere might help advance some of Obama’s agenda, but could dim hopes of fiscal reform.

The Treasury Department is confident the debt limit will not need to be raised until at least after Labor Day.

Treasury Secretary Jack Lew told CNBC on Friday that recent cash flow data is showing the government will be able to pay all its bills at least through the beginning of September, but he still urged Congress to act quickly to hike the nation's borrowing cap.

"Because of the extraordinary measures and the cash flow, that we now can predict, it will not be until at least after Labor Day," he said.

Fannie Mae is making significant strides toward paying back its debt to taxpayers, probably giving the White House and Congress more breathing room on raising the nation's debt-limit. 

The mortgage giant announced Thursday that it would make a $59.4 billion payment to the Treasury Department next month as its balance sheet continues improving along with the housing market. 

The payment, combined with a $7 billion dividend payment from Freddie Mac, which was announced Wednesday, could give Congress and the White House more time to increase the debt limit, which is expected to be reached sometime this fall. 

Prioritizing bond and Social Security payments is no replacement for raising ceiling, agencies say.

The White House announced on Thursday that it is launching a competition for millions of dollars in federal funding to create several more manufacturing innovation institutes across the country as part of an effort to add jobs in the sector. 

The Obama administration said it will provide $200 million across five federal agencies — Defense, Energy, Commerce, NASA and the National Science Foundation — to add three more regional manufacturing-focused hubs, which are designed to accelerate the development and use of cutting-edge manufacturing technologies, boost the nation's competitiveness and strengthen state and local economies. 

The White House calls the hubs "teaching factories" that provide education and training to students and workers.

President Obama included a $1 billion request in his 2014 budget to create 15 institutes across the country as part of the National Network for Manufacturing Innovation (NNMI). 

First-time jobless claims continued their descent last week, falling to their lowest level in more than five years and providing another sign that the labor market is healing. 

The number dropped by 4,000 last week to a seasonally adjusted 323,000, the best showing since November 2007, a signal that employers are laying off fewer workers, the Labor Department reported on Thursday. 

The four-week moving average, a figure that provides a better trajectory of where the labor market is headed, dropped 6,250 to 336,750.

The partisan battle over President Obama's Labor Department nominee ran hot again on Wednesday as Republicans used an obscure Senate rule to postpone a committee vote. 

Senate Republicans invoked a procedural rule to delay a vote scheduled for Wednesday afternoon on Thomas Perez, head of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, further ratcheting up tensions with Democrats.  

The rule says that all hearings must begin within two hours after the upper chamber gavels into session, according to a Senate aide. 

The Senate's top Republican sharply criticized President Obama's nominee to head the Labor Department on Wednesday saying he is willing to go around the law to achieve his objectives.  

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) cited several examples of the actions of Thomas Perez, head of the Civil Rights Division in the Justice Department, that he says proves that he "does not merely push the envelope; all too often, he circumvents or ignores a law with which he disagrees."

“Taken together, all of this paints the picture, for me at least, not of a passionate liberal who sees himself as patiently operating within the system and through the democratic process to advance a particular set of strongly held beliefs, but a crusading ideologue whose conviction about his own rightness on the issues leads him to believe the law does not apply to him," McConnell said on the Senate floor.

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Borrowing up in U.S., but still below pre-crash levels. Read more...