President Obama will reportedly nominate Commerce Secretary Gary Locke to serve as his next ambassador to China.

U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk on Monday informed the House Ways and Means Committee and Senate Finance Committee that his office has finished preparing the Korea free trade agreement for submission to Congress.

But the Republican head of Ways and Means, as well as the Democratic head of Senate Finance, pushed back, demanding a timeline for the submission of the stalled Panama and Colombia free-trade agreements — thereby setting up a possible confrontation between Congress and the administration.

Consumer credit climbed 2.5 percent in the first month of 2011, the Federal Reserve reported Monday.

The January boost marks four straight months of growth for that economic indicator, further buttressing claims that the economy is recovering as consumers begin to line up more credit for more spending.

In each of those months, the amount of growth has increased, from 0.7 percent in November to 2 percent in December to January's new high.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) signaled Monday that Congress should rely mainly on increased tax revenues in its efforts to rein in budget deficits for the rest of the year.

In a release, Sanders suggested a surtax on millionaires and taking away tax breaks for oil companies as ways to narrow the deficit. 

“It would be morally wrong for the United States to balance the budget on the backs of the most vulnerable people in our society while asking nothing from the wealthiest,” said Sanders, a self-described socialist that caucuses with Senate Democrats. 

Residents of nine states pay an average state and local tax rate of at least 13 percent on their cell phones, a new map from the Tax Foundation shows. 

The map, which the nonpartisan group based off a recent private sector report, shows that regional differences cannot tell the whole story when it comes to which state’s residents get hit the hardest with cell phone taxes.

Any lawmaker toying with opposing an extension of the government's debt limit is "a child with a match in a dynamite storeroom," according to former Treasury Secretary and Obama adviser Lawrence Summers.

The former director of the president's National Economic Council upped the rhetorical ante in the debt limit debate in a recent interview with Newsweek.

"Anyone who takes seriously the idea that the debt limit could not be extended and there could be a default even for a nanosecond on U.S. debt is a child with a match in a dynamite storeroom," he said.

A liberal think tank is calling on Congress to embrace a $382 billion stimulus plan to lower unemployment. 

The call from the liberal Demos group comes as the White House and congressional Democrats and Republicans argue over how greatly to cut this year's spending. House Republicans have proposed a total of $61 billion in cuts this year, while the White House has agreed to a total of $10.5 billion in cuts. 

Officials with Demos told reporters on a conference call that their new stimulus plan would create 8.2 million government jobs over two years while lowering unemployment from 8.9 percent to 4.5 percent. 

They also said it would be politically popular.

“Poll after poll indicates the American people want job creation over other national goals, including deficit reduction,” Demos Vice President Tamara Draut told reporters. 

House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) has laid out four guiding principles for the budget resolution his committee will produce this spring.

Ryan has been conducting listening sessions with House GOP members as part of an effort to educate freshmen on budget basics and to solicit their views on what the 2012 budget resolution should contain.

Ryan and Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) have said that they will tackle entitlement reform this year. While Ryan has in his 2010 Roadmap plan called to convert Medicare to a voucher system and to curtail some Social Security benefits, it is not clear if he will be able to convince fellow Republicans to put such ideas into the 2012 budget resolution.

In a PowerPoint presentation, Ryan has said the Republican budget will include no changes for those in or near retirement; will fulfill the mission of health and retirement security; will lift the crushing burden of debt; and will spur economic growth and a path to prosperity.

These four principles also undergirded the Ryan Roadmap, which would not make changes to benefits for Americans near the retirement age now.

A full chairman's mark of the budget is expected in April. The GOP hopes that the battle over 2011 spending will be resolved by then and members of the House can start to focus on next year and beyond.

A pair of Montana merchant groups are launching a radio campaign aimed at putting pressure on Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) for his criticism of new bank limits on debit card fees.

The ads, announced Monday by the Montana Retail Association and the Montana Convenience Store Association, mark the first public initiative targeting a specific lawmaker since the new rules on so-called interchange fees were authorized as part of the Dodd-Frank financial reform law.

Retailers and banks have been fighting tooth and nail for months over the provision, which requires the Federal Reserve to write rules drastically curtailing how much banks can charge retailers for using their debit cards.