OVERNIGHT MONEY: Budget time

TUESDAY’S BIG STORY: 

It’s budget season: There’s something in the air on Capitol Hill, a giddy feeling, really, that not only are budget markups scheduled in the House and Senate but there is a possible vote-a-rama next week in the upper chamber. 

The House kicks off the excitement on Tuesday as House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) releases his budget in anticipation of a Wednesday markup.

{mosads}The Ryan budget isn’t expected to be much different from the 2012 plan, cutting about $5 trillion without raising taxes. 

Ryan, the 2012 vice presidential candidate for the Republican Party, also is aiming to balance the budget in 10 years — a heavy lift, according to most budget experts. 

Like last year’s proposal, the blueprint will assume that the healthcare law is repealed even though it still uses its Medicare cuts to balance the budget. This is being done even though the Mitt Romney-Ryan team blasted President Obama during last year’s presidential race for the Medicare cuts.  

It also leaves the $600 billion in new revenue from the “fiscal cliff” deal in place. That prospect is disturbing enough to some House conservatives in the Republican Study Committee that they are writing their own budget alternative. 

After Ryan releases the budget, the panel’s top Democrat, Rep. Chris Van Hollen (Md.), will sit down with reporters to provide his insight on the proposal. 

Meanwhile, Senate Budget Committee Chairwoman Patty Murray (D-Wash.) intends to roll out a competing proposal on Wednesday, the first from Senate Democrats in about four years. A two-day committee markup sets the stage for its approval on Thursday with an aim to move it to the floor before Congress breaks for Easter recess, beginning March 22.

While Ryan is vowing to find a way to balance within a decade, Obama’s plan, set for release early next month is expected to seek out a “fiscally sustainable path” that brings the deficit below 3 percent of gross domestic product.

“The broader effort under way here is to try to, through the budget process, achieve a compromise that allows for both entitlement reform and tax reform, that produces the savings necessary to achieve that $4 trillion-plus target over 10 years of deficit reduction to put our economy on a fiscally sustainable path,” White House press secretary Jay Carney said on Monday. 

In a letter to Ryan on Monday, House Ways and Means Committee Republicans told him that they intend to pass a reform plan that would simplify the code and spark economic growth sometime this year, with the hopes of completing a tax rewrite during fiscal 2014. 

Let the budget battles begin.

WHAT ELSE TO WATCH FOR 

Uphill climb: A pair of people President Obama hopes will fill out his financial regulatory team is set to appear before the Senate Banking Committee on Tuesday. Whether they actually get confirmed is another matter. 

Mary Jo White, the president’s pick to head the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and Richard Cordray, who wants to stay on the job as director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), are expected to take a grilling from lawmakers. 

Obama has touted White’s background as a federal prosecutor to suggest that she’s a tough customer who will take on Wall Street’s bad actors. White herself will hit a similar note, as her prepared testimony states she wants an “unrelenting” enforcement effort at the SEC.

Most following the pick expect White will win confirmation, but she could end up facing the toughest questions from members of the president’s own party. Liberal members of the panel, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), might want to probe White’s time as a prominent white-collar defense attorney, where she represented some of the biggest names in finance, including former Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis.

Meanwhile, Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) could throw a bit of a curve ball into the proceedings, as he told media back home that he wants to ask White about her time working for the NFL as part of its probe into player bounties that led to coach and player suspensions for the New Orleans Saints.

Meanwhile, it’ll be déjà vu for Cordray. The CFPB director has been on the job for a little more than a year, getting the gig thanks to a controversial recess appointment now facing a court challenge. The recess appointment was necessary because Senate Republicans vowed to block his nomination, demanding structural changes to the bureau. Those changes have not come to pass and Republicans remain firmly against confirming a single director to the agency over a larger board, which they argue is needed to handle the broad range of tough decisions faced by the CFPB.

Democrats are refusing to consider the changes, leaving Cordray in a bit of a logjam, with his recess appointment set to expire at the end of the year.

Meanwhile, for all of his work so far, Cordray has received pretty high marks from the financial industry as a thorough director whose door, and telephone line, is always open.

Tax draft: House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp (R-Mich.) will roll out on Tuesday a draft proposal on small-business tax reform, as part of his plan to overhaul the tax code.

Because many small businesses pay taxes as individuals, Camp and other Republicans have long pushed for a rewrite of the code for individuals and corporations that would bring the top rate down to 25 percent for both.

House GOP leaders have reserved H.R. 1, prime legislative real estate, for the tax reform package that emerges from Camp’s panel.

Costs and benefits: On Tuesday, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce will hold a discussion with legal scholars and regulatory experts to talk about the role and importance of cost-benefit analysis in regulating capital markets.

As part of the event, the Chamber will release a new study concluding that while regulators sometimes fail to appropriately use cost-benefit analyses, “financial regulations grounded in rigorous, transparent analytical standards are more efficient and effective and also promote good governance and accountability.”

WHAT’S ON TAP THIS WEEK

— Here’s a roundup of the what’s happening on Capitol Hill this week. 

LOOSE CHANGE

It’s electric: Mary Schapiro, the former chairwoman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, is expected to to join GE’s board of directors in April. 

Schapiro left the agency in December and her possible successor, Mary Jo White, has her confirmation hearing on Tuesday before the Senate Banking Committee. 

Home sweet office: Although some large companies such as Yahoo are changing their telecommuting policies for employees, an overwhelming percentage of companies plan to keep letting their employees work outside the office. 

In a recent survey, 80 percent of the 120 human resources executives polled said their companies currently offer some form of telecommuting option to employees, with 97 percent of them saying there are no plans to eliminate that benefit, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas, a firm that tracks employment trends. 

“If a company is having success with its telecommuting program, it is unlikely to will pull the plug on it simply because Yahoo did,” said John Challenger, chief executive officer of Challenger.

“No two companies are the same, so each must evaluate policies such as telecommuting based on how it will affect its customers, employees and bottom line.”

ECONOMIC INDICATORS

Treasury Budget: The Treasury Department releases its February budget data, which is used mostly by the market for year-over-year changes in receipts and outlays.  

WHAT YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED

— Hatch: Including tax reforms in the budget is ‘injecting partisanship’

— SEC nominee vows ‘unrelenting’ Wall Street enforcement

— Financial groups: ‘Too big to fail’ is dead and buried

— Reid: Amendments to government funding bill will be allowed

— Hensarling demands answers on Holder’s big bank approach

— Manufacturers’ optimism rises in the first quarter

— US targets North Korean export bank, defense officials

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