TOMORROW STARTS TONIGHT: PRESIDENT OBAMA TO ELIZABETH WARREN: YOU’RE WRONG ON TRADE. President Obama hit back at his trade critics on Tuesday, telling MSNBC that Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) was “wrong” to oppose his trade deals. Jordan Fabian for The Hill: “President Obama on Tuesday said Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and other liberal critics of his trade policies are wrong. ‘When you hear folks make a lot of suggestions about how bad this trade deal is, when you dig into the facts, they are wrong,’ he said during an interview with MSNBC’s Chris Matthews. Obama said he would not be negotiating new free-trade agreements ‘if I did not think it would be good for the middle class.'” http://bit.ly/1cWVlK0
Meanwhile…
— HILLARY CLINTON DODGES MSNBC ON TRADE. Ben Kamisar for The Hill: “Hillary Clinton on Tuesday avoided taking a clear stance on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), an emerging trade deal that has divided congressional Democrats. During a campaign stop at the New Hampshire Technical Institute in Concord, the 2016 hopeful was asked by MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell if she backed the trade deal.
— WHAT HILLARY SAID: “Any trade deal has to produce jobs and raise wages and increase prosperity and protect our security. We have to do our part in making sure we have the capabilities and the skills to be competitive.” http://bit.ly/1GfrVQZ
— QUOTABLE, SENATE MINORITY LEADER HARRY REID (D-Nev.), to reporters: “I have never, ever … supported a trade agreement, and I’m not going to start now. So the answer is not only no, but hell no.” http://bit.ly/1De5pVl
THIS IS OVERNIGHT FINANCE, and it’s only Tuesday. Keep working hard because you’re in Washington, D.C. Tweet: @kevcirilli; email: kcirilli@digital-staging.thehill.com; and subscribe: http://digital-staging.thehill.com/signup/48.
DAYS UNTIL EXIM SHUTS DOWN: 71 day. And U.S. Chamber of Commerce president Tom Donohue isn’t taking it lightly. From today’s Senate Finance Committee hearing:
— Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) to Donohue: “Could you please tell the Republican presidential candidates that they’re wrong about the Ex-Im Bank?”
— Tom Donohue: “You’re damn right we tell them. I have told probably three of them myself.” (He didn’t say which ones.) “We have a little plan to have a visit with some of these people in the normal course of business to point out what the bank means to this country and to American industry and particularly the thousands of thousands of small companies.”
— CANTWELL DEFENDS BOEING. Cantwell used some of her questioning time to defend Boeing, which has become a Tea Party political piñata in recent months because it receives more than one-third of Ex-Im’s total loan commitments, according to a 2014 report from Standard & Poor’s… “When people talk about Boeing being a lot of the Ex-Im Bank — it’s almost as if people want us to apologize that we don’t make a lot of tchotchkes and ship them over to China for them to buy.”
— REPUBLICAN 2016-ers WHO OPPOSE EX-IM: Former Fla. Gov. Jeb Bush, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, Sens. Marco Rubio (Fla.), Ted Cruz (Texas), and Rand Paul (Ky.).
— RT former-Sen. @RickSantorum (R-Pa.): “I visited with @spmfg today in TX to see how #ExIMBank helps small manufacturers in the U.S.” See the pic: http://bit.ly/1HrItXF.
LET’S TALK WARREN, BUSINESS AND POLITICS, and — of course — my favorite topic: youth financial literacy. My interview THE Andy Busch here: https://vimeo.com/125476594 Andy’s website here, where he’s been interviewing the likes of Grover Norquist and Douglas Holtz-Eakin: http://bit.ly/1HgB5j7
Speaking of Doug…
HAPPY BDAY TO HOLTZ-EAKIN’S AMERICAN ACTION FORUM. The center-right think tank turns five years old tonight! House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) will help him celebrate at the Newseum tonight. We’ll be there, too. Check out their bday video here: http://bit.ly/1bqIzTx
HENSARLING PRESSES FOR FED TRANSPARENCY. My latest for The Hill: “Republicans on the House Financial Services Committee say an official investigation into a leak of confidential, market-moving information at the Federal Reserve was ‘inadequate.’
Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas) and Rep. Sean Duffy (R-Wis.), who leads the panel’s Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee, vowed Tuesday to launch their own investigation into the central bank’s handling of the October 2012 leak.”
— THE RETURN OF THE POLITICAL INTELLIGENCE DEBATE: Wonks, you already know: there are some inside-the-Beltway who will pay a hefty price for what’s become known as “political intelligence.” It’s the in-the-weeds, market moving information about the fate of amendments to bills, CBO reports and provisions and restrictions that would make even the sharpest wonks confused. Hensarling and Duffy are re-opening the debate on political intelligence by raising concerns about transparency at the bank. Here’s why: http://bit.ly/1DJVglI
DENNY HECK: VOTE AGAINST MY BILL, via me: Rep. Denny Heck (D-Wash.) is urging Democrats to oppose a bill he co-sponsored because he says House Republicans “put the torch to it.” Heck had introduced a bipartisan bill that would create an advisory board at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) for non-bank businesses.
The House Financial Services Committee moved the bill earlier this year on a 53 to 5 vote. But Heck says his bill now includes an amendment from House Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas) that he can’t support.
The amendment would lower the CFPB’s budget cap by about $45 million in 2020 and by about $100 million in 2025. “This is bad policy, bad precedent and completely unnecessary,” Heck wrote in a letter to his colleagues. “Jeb Hensarling put the torch to it.”
A senior Republican staffer said the bill is about “ensuring that small businesses have a voice.” “Unfortunately, Denny Heck and other Democrats are more than willing to silence that voice if that means reducing the CFPB’s bloated, wasteful spending by 0.1 percent over the next decade,” the staffer said. http://bit.ly/1EpE4p2
DOJ CHARGES CROOKS IN ‘FLASH CRASH.’ Peter Schroeder has the story: “The U.S. government has charged a British trader with illegal trading activity that contributed to the stock market ‘flash crash’ of 2010. The Justice Department and Commodity Futures Trading Commission announced Tuesday that it had brought criminal and civil charges against Navinder Singh Sarao and his firm, Nav Sarao Futures Limited, for reaping millions of dollars in profits by manipulating market prices with artificial trades.” http://bit.ly/1G47fst
TEAM HILLARY HUDDLES ON THE HILL, via Alexander Bolton: “Hillary Clinton’s senior campaign advisers met with Senate Democrats Tuesday to strengthen political relationships that will become increasingly important as the 2016 presidential campaign heats up.” http://bit.ly/1De5RTo
LORETTA LYNCH VOTE NO LONGER IN LIMBO. Bolton: “Senate leaders on Tuesday morning announced a deal on a long-stalled anti-human-trafficking bill, setting up a vote to confirm Loretta Lynch as attorney general as soon as tomorrow.” http://bit.ly/1Hr7u5b
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