A bipartisan group of senators were joined on Tuesday by business and labor leaders in support of a creating a $10 billion federal infrastructure bank to provide funding for transportation-related projects around the nation.

Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas) said the bill would help create a $10 billion fund federal fund designed to attract upward of $640 billion in private investment over 10 years.

"This national infrastructure bank is an innovative way to leverage private-public partnerships and maximize private funding to address our water, transportation, and energy infrastructure needs," Hutchison said during a press conference. 

Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) announced Tuesday that he’s looking to attach $20 billion in spending cuts to a small business measure currently being debated in the Senate.

The proposed cuts include items that have long been on Coburn’s wish list, including the elimination of ethanol subsidies (worth $6 billion, his office says) and funds from leftover earmarks ($7.3 billion).

WEDNESDAY’S BIG STORY:

Elizabeth Warren, the de facto head of that still-under-construction entity known as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, is set to tell a House Financial Services subcommittee what her bureau has been up to ahead of its official July start date. 

Warren, a Harvard law professor, is expected to continue to drive home her vision of financial institutions laying out their products to consumers in plain English — and can herself expect some probing questions from Republicans who never bought into the CFPB in the first place.

Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-Ala.), the Financial Services chairman, and Rep. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) are scheduled to follow up the hearing with a press conference to discuss CFPB leadership, but details are light on what exactly will be discussed.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has ratcheted down his proposal to cut $500 billion from the federal budget for fiscal year 2011.

Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) signaled Tuesday that he would not vote to increase the debt ceiling without significant signs that Congress will tighten its belt when it comes to spending. 

At an event of the conservative American Action Forum, Corker also said that he believed the vote on the debt limit was the “perfect vehicle” for a measure he is pushing to reduce spending to long-term historical averages. 

“There is no way that Bob Corker is voting for a debt ceiling increase unless I know that we’ve taken steps to alter the direction of this country pretty dramatically as it comes to spending,” asserted Corker, who also said that he thought more than 50 senators might have a similar view.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid told The Hill on Tuesday that Democrats will offer a different way to pay for a repeal of the 1099 provision that's included in the healthcare law setting up another possible hurdle for the elimination of the requirement. 

Reid, who said last week he supported the House-passed language compared with what the Senate had already approved, confirmed that Democrats will instead offer different language as an amendment to a small business bill under consideration in the Senate. 

"We will offer an alternative to that," he told The Hill.

Reid didn't provide any details and Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) said Monday "there is still a difference of opinion on the offsets" and he was seeking another way to cover the $22 billion cost of the repeal. 

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The Obama administration has threatened to veto two more Republican attempts to shutter its housing relief programs.

The White House released a pair of veto threats Tuesday, as it promised to block House Republican attempts to eliminate several of its housing programs. It came one week after the administration issued two similar threats for another pair of bills that would eliminate similar programs.

House Republicans have set their sights on four of the administration's programs, calling them wasteful and costly. The two bills the House approved last week to end two programs came from votes along strict party lines.

The Federal Reserve will not modify policies despite recent global turmoil, keeping interest rates low and QE2 operating

Former Clinton budget director Alice Rivlin and former Sen. Pete Domenici (R-N.M.) told the Senate Budget Committee on Tuesday that the current debate over 2011 spending is a distraction from solving long-term debt problems.

Domenici, a former Budget Committee chairman, said the House GOP spending bill is not a much of a stab at solving the larger debt issue. “I don’t believe that the cuts to domestic discretionary [spending] have much to do with deficit reduction,” he said.

He also minced no words in criticizing President Obama for failing to lead on the debt, and said Congress may have to try to go it alone.

Asked to react to the Domenici remarks later on Monday, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) said that the House spending bill that would cut $61 billion this year is a first step, and that Republicans will be tackling entitlements in next month’s budget resolution.

Rivlin and Domenici have authored their own plan that would cut spending over the long term, raise taxes and reform entitlements. Domenici defended the tax increases and said he is not impressed with anyone who claims to know in the abstract that taxes should not be above a set percentage of GDP.

At the hearing, committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-.N.D.) said the 2012 budget resolution process may be the opportunity to produce a long-term deficit plan, even though the congressional budget resolution is not a law that is signed by the president.

Conrad is involved in Gang of Six Senate talks on coming up with a long-term deficit plan, and he said that these “may” bear fruit. If not, the five-year budget resolution could be a chance to hash out a compromise.

Conrad emphasized that to truly deal with the long-term debt, Medicare and Medicaid have to be tackled.

“Healthcare is the 600-pound gorilla in the room,” he said.