This week: House set for Lerner contempt vote

The House will likely vote this week to hold the former Internal Revenue Service official at the center of that agency’s targeting controversy in contempt of Congress.

Sometime this week, House lawmakers will vote on a contempt resolution against Lois Lerner, who has refused to answer questions, citing her Fifth Amendment rights. Republicans insist she waived those rights when she professed her innocence to lawmakers, and have pushed to compel her to answer questions.

{mosads}The fight over whether to hold Lerner in contempt has been a highly partisan affair, and next week’s vote should be no different.

In addition, the House will vote on newly introduced legislation that would name a special prosecutor to further examine the targeting controversy at the IRS.

The focus will shift to the economy when Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen returns to Capitol Hill to help lawmakers dissect the mixed signals coming out of the economy.

Yellen is due to appear before the Joint Economic Committee on Wednesday, followed by an appearance Thursday before the Senate Budget Committee.

Her testimony will come as many in the financial world are trying to figure out whether there is a spring surge in the economy. On Wednesday, the government reported that the gross domestic product grew a paltry 0.1 percent in the first quarter of the year. But on Friday, the government reported that the economy added 288,000 jobs and that the jobless rate had fallen to its lowest point in five years.

The Fed all along has argued the economy is relatively strong, and argued that the record-breaking winter temporarily depressed economic growth.

Two days before Yellen’s appearance, the Senate Budget Committee will debate the funding needs of the nation’s educational system with Education Secretary Arne Duncan.

On the other side of the Capitol, the House will vote this week to put the popular tax credit for business research and development in the tax code for the long haul, over the objections of Democrats.

The research credit has been extended on a start-and-stop basis for more than three decades; Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp (R-Mich.) and other Republicans believe Congress should just go ahead and make it permanent.

But Democrats, many of whom support the credit, are crying foul about the price tag. Ways and Means passed a permanent and expanded version of the credit on Tuesday that costs roughly $155 billion over a decade.

Camp has said that he wants to deal with expiring tax breaks like the research credit, commonly known as extenders, in a way that jumpstarts the debate over tax reform.

The House Appropriations Committee will mark up its Commerce, Justice, science bill for fiscal 2015, and plans to release its Transportation and Housing bill for a Wednesday subcommittee markup. Those bills represent the third and fourth of 12 annual spending bills the committee plans to move through the House by August.

On Thursday, the House Financial Services Committee is slated to receive testimony from Treasury Secretary Jack Lew. The purpose of the hearing is to discuss the state of the international financial system, but expect plenty of talk about hot-button issues like Dodd-Frank, Ukraine sanctions, and other regulatory matters.

The Senate Banking Committee only has a Wednesday subcommittee hearing on job creation on schedule. But panel leaders are hard at work drumming up support for their housing finance overhaul, and could summon lawmakers back to mark it up and pass it any day.

On Tuesday, the Senate Finance Committee will dig into the transportation funding debate. With a deadline looming on a new highway bill, senators will be exploring new ways to fund and finance the nation’s infrastructure.

On Thursday, the Finance panel will meet to vet four nominees — three to join the Social Security Advisory Board and one to serve as the nation’s chief agricultural negotiator for the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative.

On Wednesday, a House Ways and Means subcommittee will discuss how the Internal Revenue Service performed during the 2014 tax-filing season.

That same day, the Senate Agriculture Committee will meet with Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack to discuss how the nation’s farm bill is being implemented, and what Congress’s next steps should be.