Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) on Wednesday slammed the Democratic effort to overhaul Wall Street, saying it hurts the country's financial system and helps foreign countries. "This bill should be named the 'Expansion of Government for the Purposes of Making Us More Like Europe Act,'" Gregg said. Gregg took aim specifically at an amendment backed by Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) that seeks to delay a ban on banks trading derivatives in-house. The original ban was authored by Senate Agriculture Committee Chairwoman Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.). Gregg said the Dodd amendment makes the legislation worse by putting in place an "even more convoluted system" to decide on the prohibition. A council of regulators, headed by the Treasury Secretary, would have a year to review the prohibition and could decided to scrap the ban entirely. Federal regulators, including Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, have already opposed the provision.

For the first time in more than a year, the consumer price index dropped unexpectedly in April.

Consumer prices declined 0.1 percent last month, the first time since March 2009, behind a fall in energy prices while core inflation rose during the past year at the slowest pace since 1966, according to Labor Department figures released Wednesday. 

Economists had predicted an increase of 0.1 percent last month. 

Core inflation, which excludes food and energy prices, remained flat, rising only 0.9 percent during the past 12 months. 

Consumers are becoming more confident about the economic recovery, according to a poll by the consulting firm Deloitte LLP. 

Republican Ways and Means members on Wednesday sharply criticized bills by Reps. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.) and Barney Frank (D-Mass.) to legalize Internet gambling and raise roughly $42 billion by taxing it. 

"People sometimes resort to drastic things when they are strapped for cash," said Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.), who testified before the committee. "However, it is unfathomable that Congress wold consider legalizing a currently illegal activity that imposes on the most vulnerable members of our society just to raise money for more big government spending." 

McDermott's tax proposal on Internet gambling was the subject of today's Ways and Means Committee hearing. The bill provides Treasury with the authority to establish regulations and license Internet gambling operators. 

Federal regulators offered Tuesday a preliminary explanation of what happened May 6 when stocks plunged in value then made up ground before financial markets closed. 

Besides heightened volatility that day due to fears surrounding the European debt crisis, about half a dozen theories have been formulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) as to what happened to force the market down about 1,000 then back up again. 

The CFTC and SEC has formed a Joint Advisory Committee on Emerging Regulatory Issues to probe the market events. 

Dems ponder avoiding tough vote on massive federal deficit; all options are examined, including a "deeming resolution"

A senior Blue Dog Democrat doubts the House would take up a budget resolution this year.

When asked whether House Democrats would forego a budget resolution, Rep. Baron Hill (D-Ind.) said, "I think that's where it's heading."

Hill, the Blue Dog Coalition's co-chairman for policy, said Tuesday that the major sticking point for his group of fiscally conservative Democrats is discretionary spending levels.

The Blue Dogs have been in talks with House leaders over their proposal for a 2-percent cut in non-security discretionary spending for each of the next three years, and a freeze for the two years after that. Blue Dogs and other centrist members have blanched at the idea of passing a budget with deficits that would surpass $1 trillion in 2011 and remain near that level in future years.

Nursing homes are carefully tracking the tax extenders bill to see if it will fix a flaw in the health reform law that could endanger their payments under Medicare.

"Ultimately, [if nothing's done] we can't get paid because there's no mechanism for the payments," a nursing home source said.

Ironically, the industry wants Congress to reverse a one-year delay in changes to their payment structure that nursing homes themselves had asked for. Because the health reform law didn't delay two related provisions, the whole payment system is now out of whack, and the industry wants to go back to the original timeline that the agency that oversees Medicare had announced last fall. The update is set to kick in Oct. 1.

Both the industry and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services have weighed in to get the fix passed, the source said. But it's not clear if the provision will make it in, the source said, because while the provision is uncontroversial in itself it would mean reopening the health reform bill.

New rules proposed by a federal regulator would require financial markets to pause trading on individual stocks if prices move beyond certain limits. 

In response to the May 6 market disruption, the Securities and Exchange Commission along with the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority filed proposed rules that would require the pausing trading of individual stocks in U.S. equity markets if the price changes 10 percent or more in a five-minute period, according to an SEC release. 

The circuit breakers should help to limit significant volatility, increase market transparency, bolster investor protection and bring "uniformity to decisions regarding trading halts in individual securities, SEC Chairman Mary Schapiro said in a release Tuesday.

Adding the circuit breakers to slow down trading is a good first step but it shouldn't be the last, Sen. Ted Kaufman (D-Del.) said today in a release. 

"There are deeper issues that these surface solutions do not address," he said. 

Other circuit breakers already in place -- none of which triggered May 6 -- could be recalibrated, the SEC release said. 

On May 6, 30 S&P 500 Index stocks dropped at least 10 percent within a five-minute period. 

"We continue to believe that the market disruption of May 6 was exacerbated by disparate trading rules and conventions across the exchanges," Schapiro said. 

The new rules, designed to provide uniform market-wide standards for individual securities in the S&P 500 Index that experience rapid movement, will be in effect on a pilot basis through Dec. 10. Adjustments will be made to the parameters of the circuit breaker before it's deployed to securities beyond the S&P 500, according to the release. 

The pause would provide markets the change to attract new trading interest in an affected stock, establish a reasonable market price and resume trading in a fair and orderly fashion.