OVERNIGHT MONEY: Eyeing entitlements

The hearing is scheduled a day after almost half of the Senate Republicans said they wanted to see more White House leadership on entitlements — and threatened to possibly withhold their vote on the debt ceiling unless they saw that.

For his part, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner — making appearance No. 51 at a congressional hearing, at least since the current administration came to town — continued to dismiss lawmakers’ preconditions on the debt panel vote (see below). But he also agreed that entitlements, while more of a long-term problem, should be addressed sooner rather than later. 

WHAT ELSE TO WATCH FOR:

No. 6: The Senate passed the House-passed three-week spending measure that cuts about $6 billion on Thursday, thus averting a government shutdown on Saturday and allowing members on both sides of the aisle to head out for a workweek back home. 

The question will be how many Republicans vote for the deal, which is the sixth piece of short-term legislation the House has approved to fund the government this fiscal year. (And hopefully the last, leaders on both sides of the aisle have said.) 

Conservatives activists said Wednesday they are hoping to get as many right-leaning senators to vote against the three-week bill as possible, as possible leverage to get social policy riders, like the defunding of Planned Parenthood, into a bill funding the rest of the fiscal year. 

Up on the Hill: A Senate Budget hearing on Heather Higginbottom’s nomination to be the No. 2 at the Office of Management and Budget, as our Vicki Needham has noted, might turn a little more spark than first expected. Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, the ranking Republican on the Budget panel, expressed his concerns about Higginbottom on Wednesday, while also bashing the White House’s 2012 budget proposal. 

Elsewhere on the Senate side, the Banking Committee will discuss the last findings of the congressional oversight panel on the Troubled Asset Relief Program as it conducts something of a TARP post-mortem. The oversight group’s swan song report contained some mixed reviews for TARP, something program watchdogs and Timothy Massad of Treasury can be expected to talk about in their expected appearances. 

Fighting the Fed: Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) will continue to work in his new chairman’s gavel — by taking another swing Thursday at the Federal Reserve. Now chairing the House Financial Services Committee’s subcommittee overseeing monetary policy, the longtime Fed critic’s second hearing on the central bank’s policies will explore the relationship between monetary policy and rising prices. 

We can guess where Paul falls on the matter. (Short answer: The congressman believes the Fed’s policies have devalued the dollar and driven up prices.)

Talking trade: Commerce Secretary Gary Locke is set to testify on his agency’s budget before House Appropriations — where he can likely expect questions on where the administration stands on reorganizing the department, including the possibility of having it absorb the Office of U.S. Trade Representative.

The House Ways and Means subcommittee on trade is set to hear from a U.S. Trade Representative official and others on the Colombia free-trade agreement that Republicans (and some Democrats) have said they want to see more movement on.

Economic Indicators:

— The Labor Department is set to drop a trio of releases: weekly jobless claims; February data on real earnings; and February’s Consumer Price Index.

— The Federal Reserve is slated to circulate February numbers of industrial production.

— The Conference Board is expected to release February leading indicators.

— And Freddie Mac is scheduled to drop weekly mortgage rate figures. 

BREAKING WEDNESDAY:

Don’t play games: In his appearance before a House panel, Geithner appeared to warn that the administration would not feel backed into a corner by lawmakers who have vowed to vote against raising the debt limit without spending cuts or movement on entitlements.

The Treasury secretary reiterated his belief that it’s silly to force lawmakers to raise the ceiling due to financial obligations their predecessors might have enacted. But, he added, the debt limit vote “has not proven to be a key value in forcing choices Congress hasn’t been able to force on itself through other means. Because, fundamentally, we will never default on our obligations. No Congress will ever let us default. It provides no leverage in that context.”

The day in Dodd-Frank: House Republicans signaled Wednesday they don’t want one person heading up the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and instead want to install a five-member bipartisan board. As our Peter Schroeder writes, the House bill at least seems to have been crafted with an eye toward Elizabeth Warren, the CFPB’s architect who took some fire from the GOP at a Wednesday hearing. (Republicans denied that, however.) 

WHAT YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED:

On the Money’s Wednesday:

The Senate gives approval to slicing their own budgets. 

GOP senators break out a balanced budget amendment.

A large group of House Dems move to protect Social Security Administration from budget cuts.

A much smaller group of House Dems move to raise taxes on millionaires. 

Another much smaller group of House Dems question the South Korea trade deal.

Hal Rogers acknowledges conservative restlessness, but doesn’t think Speaker Boehner’s hand is weakened. 

Michael Bennet wants specifics on the debt ceiling. 

And mortgage applications drop slightly.