The Obama administration expressed strong support for a bill to repeal the 1099 provision included in the healthcare law but is concerned about how the cost of the measure is offset in House and Senate legislation. 

"The administration strongly opposes the House’s offset to pay for this repeal, which would undo an improvement enacted with nearly unanimous support in the Medicare and Medicaid Extenders Act that eliminated an egregious "cliff" in the tax system affecting middle income taxpayers," according to Statement of Administration Policy released Tuesday night.

The House's Republican-proposed offset would recapture improper overpayments of exchange subsidies established under the new healthcare law for those consumers earning more than to 400 percent of the poverty line. Those making less than that would have to pay back a greater portion than they are required to pay back under current law when health insurance exchanges open in 2014.

Buckle up — it’s going to be a long ride.

That was the message, in essence, at a Tuesday hearing on tax reform held by the Senate Finance Committee. 

The House moved a step closer Tuesday to repealing the 1099 provision included in the healthcare law while the partisan divide over how to pay for the bill widened. 

Republicans argued they are using the same pay-for offered by Democrats last year to cover the "doc fix," while Democrats say the bill, which eliminates a provision requiring businesses to file the form for every vendor from which they purchase at least $600 in goods and services, will create a $25 billion tax increase on the middle class. 

The House Rules Committee approved a closed rule on Tuesday, failing to approve a single Democratic amendment offered by Rep. Joe Crowley (N.Y.) that restructured how the bill covers the $22 billion cost. 

Although there is agreement among all lawmakers and the White House to repeal the measure, there is still partisan disagreement over how to cover the lost revenue. 

A bipartisan group of lawmakers has criticized the Obama administration’s new trade policy agenda for not giving enough of a push to pending trade agreements with Colombia and Panama. 

In its report, the administration continued to call for progress on those two pacts, as well as a renegotiated agreement with South Korea. But it also continued to discuss the Korean deal as running along a separate track from the other two.  

For their part, Republicans in Congress have called for all three agreements to be considered during the first half of this year.

Lawmakers will have a few more days to scuffle over the statutory debt limit, as the Treasury Department now expects to hit the $14.3 trillion ceiling between April 15 and May 31.

At the beginning of February, the department had pegged "D-Day" to be somewhere between April 5 and May 31. But thanks to new financial numbers, the department has pushed back the deadline by several days, according to Mary Miller, the Treasury's assistant secretary for financial markets.

The updated timeline buys lawmakers a bit more time to debate what to do with the limit. While Republican and Democratic leaders have both indicated that the limit will eventually need to be raised, conservatives are still pushing to leverage such an increase for promises for fiscal restraint.

FreedomWorks suggests lawmakers adopt a "tag team" approach when questioning Bernanke so he can't evade their questions with economic jargon.

A top Senate Democrat will reportedly demand sufficient budgets for federal financial regulators as part of any federal budget deal.

Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), who chairs the Senate Banking Committee's subcommittee on securities, said that adequate funds for the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) were crucial to the proper functioning of the nation's financial markets. As a result, any budget deal reached in Congress needs to include enough money for those agencies, he said.

"I'm certainly advocating that. I can't speak for all my colleagues, but I think we have to make the case publicly that this is one of those issues which is central to the way markets operate," he said Tuesday, according to Reuters.

The federal government can do a better job of doling out penalties for businesses and taxpayers that do not disclose reportable transactions, a new audit has found. 

Under a law enacted in 2004, individuals could be charged $10,000 for not listing a reportable transaction, with businesses open to a $50,000 penalty. But the Treasury Department’s Inspector General for Tax Administration reported that government procedures for assessing penalties could be improved.

The new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) should hold off on any rulemaking on consumer financial products until a permanent director is in place, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other business groups warned Tuesday.

In a letter sent to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, 13 business groups warned that allowing the CFPB to write rules before naming a director would deprive Congress of its sole ability to exercise oversight over the new agency. As a result, any new rules should wait until an official head of the agency has been named.

The caution was part of several recommendations the chamber made for the CFPB, as federal officials are hard at work making the new agency a reality.