The Security and Exchange Commission recently picked up an attorney who counsels businesses on complying with federal regulations and helped companies like Dunkin’ Brands go public.

Keith F. Higgins, a partner in of Ropes & Gray’s Boston office, will become the director of the SEC’s division of corporation finance next month. He has worked in the private sector for three decades and specializes in corporate securities offerings, mergers and acquisitions and executive compensation.

“The commission has an ambitious rulemaking agenda that will be my first priority, and I look forward to continuing to move that agenda forward,” he said in a statement released by the agency.

President Obama's nominee to head up the Labor Department is expected to finally get a vote in a Senate committee after weeks of delays. 

Thomas Perez, head of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, is expected to get a vote on Thursday in the Senate Heath, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee after weeks of delays by Republicans who have said they needed more time to sort through documents and continue to gather answers to their questions. 

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But the policy statement stopped short of threatening a veto should Congress approve the bill.

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The House Agriculture Committee leaders rebuffed liberal and conservative changes to the food stamp program in its draft farm bill on Wednesday.

The farm bill is on the way to committee passage Wednesday evening after the most controversial commodity and nutrition sections of the bill were finalized without changes.

Liberal Democrats attempted to reverse the $20.5 billion in food stamp cuts in the farm bill but their amendment, sponsored by Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), was defeated by a vote of 17 to 27. 

Three Democrats voted to defend the cuts -- ranking member Collin Peterson (D-Minn.), Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-N.Y.) and Rep. Mike McIntyre (D-N.C.).

“I think we’re better than this,” McGovern said. “These cuts … are going to hurt people.”

Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) countered that the cuts are needed because the Obama administration has engaged in a “concerted effort to increase the dependency class” during a heated debate that ultimately involved dueling citations from the Bible on how to treat the hungry.

President Obama's nominee to lead the Commerce Department will face her first hurdle next week. 

Penny Pritzker, the billionaire Chicago businesswoman, will sit down next Thursday with the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee to discuss a broad swath of issues from creating jobs, increasing exports, to manufacturing, fisheries and weather forecasting. 

Noted for her business acumen, Pritzker has garnered broad support from Democrats and groups such as the the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable.

Panel Chairman Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) told The Hill that he believes she has enough support to gain the panel's approval and be confirmed by the Senate.

The IRS said William Wilkins, one of two political appointees at the agency, was not involved with the applications.

The House’s top tax writer said that a new report on the IRS’s singling out of conservative groups leaves many questions unanswered.

Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp (R-Mich.) said that the audit from the Treasury’s inspector general for tax administration did not detail who exactly put into place extra screening for Tea Party groups seeking tax exempt status – and how and why IRS employees decided to focus on conservative organizations.

The report did find that ineffective management led the IRS to inappropriately target conservative groups, and that the agency asked groups for a wide range of unnecessary information, including donor lists.

“I think the IG report is almost as significant for what it doesn’t cover, as much as what it does cover,” Camp told reporters in the Capitol. “Certainly, it’s some additional information, but there’s a lot they don’t go into.”

Homeland Security executed a seizure warrant in Maryland to shut down the world's largest bitcoin exchange.

House appropriators on Wednesday released a draft 2014 Homeland Security bill that rebuffs Obama administration cuts to bombing prevention in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombing. Read more...