After months of delays, the Senate passed small-business legislation on Thursday that provides $12 billion in tax incentives and creates a $30 billion lending fund. 

Two Republicans — Sens. George LeMieux (Fla.) and George Voinovich (Ohio) — joined Democrats in passing the measure by a vote of 61-38. 

The House is expected to take up the bill as early as next week and send it along to President Obama for his signature. 

Senate Small Business Committee Chairwoman Mary Landrieu (D-La.) said the bill should "put this recession in the rearview mirror."

Lawmakers on Thursday said China's undervalued currency is hampering the U.S. economic recovery and said a more aggressive strategy is needed to level the playing field.

They expressed frustration over how Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and the Obama administration have handled a slew of economic policy issues in China, including currency, an "indigenous innovation" policy that favors Chinese business and hurts importers, and intellectual property violations. 

"We need some new policies here, it gets worse by the hour," Senate Banking Chairman Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) told Geithner during a hearing Thursday morning. "If we continue down this path it poses huge issues for us to have any meaningful recovery."

Geithner said he shares lawmakers' concerns and pledged that the White House would work with the committee to address the policy issues. 

“We are very concerned about the negative impact of these policies on our economic interests and are pursuing a carefully designed, targeted approach to address these problems,” he said. 

A Chinese exchange rate adjustment "is critical to removing a major distortion in the global economy, to rebalancing China's economy, and to ensuring strong, sustainable and balanced global growth," Geithner said. 

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Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) on Thursday objected to a unanimous consent request by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) to pass a tax extenders bill from the chamber. 

Hatch objected because he wanted the bill to be open to amendment. 

A new tax extender bill has apparently surfaced in the Senate, according to several sources.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) mentioned on the floor on Thursday the battle Senate Democrats have had in trying to advance an extender bill from their chamber.

Former Democratic Sen. John Breaux (La.) on Thursday announced that he will take the lead at the Alliance for Savings and Investment to extend the current tax rates for capital gains and dividends enacted by President George W. Bush.

Like all Bush-era tax cuts, absent congressional action, the lower tax rates on capital gains and dividends will expire at the end of the year.

Fifty-three percent of Americans support President Obama's plan to end the Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthy, finds a new CBS News/New York Times poll. 

Only 38 percent think all of the tax cuts should be extended. 

For Independents, 55 percent think tax cuts for the wealthy should expire. 

WARREN TO RUN CONSUMER BUREAU... OR NOT

President Obama is going to name Elizabeth Warren, the Harvard Law professor and darling of the left, as a new “assistant to the president.” But it’s unclear whether she’ll actually call the shots at the newly created Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Reports quote unnamed officials who say she could still end being nominated by Obama to become director of the CFPB.

The scoop from Jake Tapper: “President Obama will announce this week that Elizabeth Warren... will be named to a special position reporting to both him and to the Treasury Department and tasked with heading the effort to get the new federal agency standing, a knowledgeable Democrat told ABC News.” http://bit.ly/cgmkdW

The NYT sees her in charge in all but name. Hed: “Elizabeth Warren to Unofficially Lead Consumer Agency” http://nyti.ms/bdCe9T

HuffPo agrees... “The White House has tapped Elizabeth Warren as a special adviser to help set up the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, affirming its support for a tough new agency charged with protecting consumers from abusive lenders... The move allows her to act as an interim head of the CFPB and will enable her to begin setting up the agency immediately and prevent the GOP from filibustering her nomination. Warren could serve until President Barack Obama nominates a permanent director to serve the five-year term -- a nomination he's not required to make for some time.” http://huff.to/9nJlYl

But is she?

-TPM’s David Kurtz: “They Must Really Not Want Her” ... “I tend to agree with Matt Yglesias on this: ‘With Warren, Obama showing real innovation in developing odd, satisfying to nobody compromises.’” http://bit.ly/aeQnsg

-Angry Capitalist’s Yves Smith is more bearish: “Expect Warren to be pushed further to the sidelines, just as Paul Volcker has been (oh, and pulled out of mothballs when the Administration desperately needed to create the appearance it really might be tough on banks.” http://bit.ly/9zeGFn

GREENSPAN FOR TAXES, CHAMBER AGAINST

Deficit Hawk Alan Greenspan pushes for higher taxes, end to Bush tax cuts. Reuters: “Reversing a long-standing aversion to tax increases, Greenspan warned of ‘very grave problems ahead’ if the budget deficit, swollen to around $1 trillion by massive amounts of stimulus spending, is not tackled soon... ‘I am in favor for the first time in my memory of raising taxes,' Greenspan told an audience at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York... 'I would love to see taxes go down, and I would hope that what we would do is we allow the tax cuts, the so called Bush tax cuts, all to lapse as they will ... on December 31 and then gradually bring the level of expenditure down...’” http://fxn.ws/ckS5jk

But the U.S. Chamber of Commerce sees anything but the extension of all the cuts as a job-killer. ChamberPost: “The plain fact is that the people in the cross-hairs of this, the largest tax increase in history, will be small business. Some 75% of small businesses are organized as pass-through entities, meaning they pay taxes according to individual tax rates... Over the last decade, small business created two-thirds of the net new jobs in this country... A tax increase that falls disproportionately on the job creators makes no sense during the current climate of anemic job creation.” http://bit.ly/cv0KeO

What are small businesses actually thinking? "Nobody is buying what we're selling,” says Derek Thompson, armed with data and a graph. The Atlantic. http://bit.ly/aeMEnv

PRIMARY FALLOUT -- There’ll be no progress on the deficit in the next two years, says budget guru Stan Collender: “In light of the Castle and Lazio losses... [and] Murkowski’s defeat in Alaska, any GOP senator or representative who even dares vote for a budget deal with congressional Democrats or the White House…or perhaps even looks like he or she is interested in working with them…has to assume that they will get a well-financed primary challenge from a far-right/Tea Party candidate and that his or her cooperation will be stated as the reason they should be defeated. http://bit.ly/b7AUW1

And/But/Case in point... WSJ’s Daniel Henninger says the GOP now has to face up to spending: “In a sense, the GOP's impending victory is meaningless, a win by default. If the Republican rookies entering Congress next year don't do something identifiably real to stop the federal-spending balloon, voters two years from now will start throwing the GOP under the bus. http://bit.ly/bzGVgK

NEW OBAMA STIMULUS NOT VERY STIMULATIVE, according Macro Advisers forecast. Derek Thompson summarizes the report: “The proposal to build more roads and rail, establish an ‘infrastructure bank’, make permanent the research and experimentation tax credit, and expand tax breaks for small businesses will boost real GDP growth by an average of 0.3 percentage points over 2011 and 2012 and lower the unemployment rate by 0.2 points.” http://bit.ly/cWprkq

The original report. http://bit.ly/aoMl59

GEITHNER TO GET TOUGH ON CHINA

The Treasury secretary will take on China’s foreign exchange policy Thursday when he visits the Hill.

Geithner prepared remarks: "The pace of appreciation has been too slow and the extent of appreciation too limited... We are examining the important question of what mix of tools, those available to the United States and multilateral approaches, might help encourage the Chinese authorities to move more quickly."

Bloomberg: "Geithner’s comments, his strongest since he took office in January 2009, highlight growing frustration among American officials with policies they say put American companies at a competitive disadvantage.” http://bit.ly/bC9Zf2

President Obama took a few more shots at Republicans today for delaying a small business bill while pressing for cooperation on an extension of middle-class tax cuts. 

In a speech on Wednesday afternoon, the president applauded Republicans who voted in support of the small-business bill to provide $12 billion in tax incentives and a $30 billion lending fund. 

At same time, he said Republicans "want to hold these middle-class tax cuts hostage until they get an additional tax cut for the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans."

The Senate Budget Committee will hold a hearing at 10 a.m. Thursday on Jacob Lew's nomination to be the next White House budget director.

Lew, chosen by President Obama to succeed Peter Orszag as head of the Office of Management of Budget (OMB), is expected to get bipartisan support. 

Sen. Judd Gregg (N.H.), the ranking Republican on the Budget Committee, has said that Lew is "very capable" and should be installed quickly. 

Lew has executive branch experience as the final OMB director in the Clinton administration, where he helped lead the federal budget into surplus in the late 1990s. 

He is the deputy secretary of State for operations and management and was confirmed to that position in January 2009.