ABOUT:
Defense policy analysis, commentary and discussion.Ben Weyl is editor of CQ Roll Call’s Banking and Finance Executive Briefing newsletter. He joined CQ in 2008, as a reporter covering legislative action on the House and Senate floor, before moving to CQ Roll Call’s economics and finance team. As a staff writer covering financial policy, he has reported on the aftermath of the financial crisis and enactment and implementation of the Dodd-Frank law.
Ben has also been published in the Los Angeles Times, The American Prospect, and the Economist Intelligence Unit. A New Jersey native, Ben is a graduate of Grinnell College, and lives in Washington, D.C.
It looks increasingly likely that we won’t have Ben S. Bernanke to kick around much longer.
President Barack Obama said Wednesday that he would nominate Rep. Melvin Watt to lead the Federal Housing Finance Agency, the regulator that oversees Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, but the initial response from some lawmakers and industry representatives suggests a sharp political fight over his confirmation.
A day after labor and business groups struck a deal on a new guest-worker program, key senators said they are within reach of finalizing an immigration overhaul proposal.
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke strongly defended the Fed’s monetary stimulus before a Senate panel on Tuesday, saying Congress itself is placing a “significant” burden on the economy with the sequester and urging lawmakers to replace the deep budget cuts set to take effect Friday with more measured, long-term deficit reduction.
The White House is aiming its latest warnings about the dire consequences of deep across-the-board spending cuts at an audience beyond the Beltway, issuing a new report Sunday that breaks down the effects on every state.
The Senate Finance Committee scheduled a vote for Tuesday on Jacob J. Lew’s nomination to succeed Timothy F. Geithner as Treasury secretary.
Jacob J. Lew emerged relatively unscathed from his nomination hearing to serve as Treasury secretary, putting the administration’s choice to replace Timothy F. Geithner on a likely easy path to confirmation.
Barring an unexpected revelation or major slipup, Jacob J. Lew almost certainly will secure a relatively smooth path to approval as Treasury secretary after a confirmation hearing Wednesday that lawmakers will use as a forum to score political points against Obama administration fiscal policies.
Senate Republicans say they once again have the votes to block President Barack Obama’s pick to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Senate Republicans won an important victory over President Barack Obama on Friday, when a federal appeals court ruled that his appointments to the National Labor Relations Board a year ago were unconstitutional. GOP lawmakers quickly responded by calling for the appointees to resign and for the board to shut down.
President Barack Obama is making a case for strengthening oversight of the financial industry with his nominations of former prosecutor Mary Jo White to be chairwoman of the Securities and Exchange Commission and Richard Cordray as director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Senate Democratic leaders urged President Barack Obama on Friday to be prepared to lift the debt ceiling “without congressional approval” if Republicans block legislation and default is imminent.
Although White House Chief of Staff Jacob J. Lew has relatively little experience dealing with the financial industry, that may not matter all that much if, as widely reported, President Barack Obama intends to nominate him on Thursday to be the next Treasury secretary.
With the fight over fiscal cliff issues only just resolved, the battle lines already are being drawn and important policy and economic implications measured for a coming showdown on the federal debt ceiling.
With the White House and congressional Republicans publicly deadlocked — but privately negotiating — to steer clear of the fiscal cliff, top lawmakers were left with little to do on Sunday’s talk shows except exchange partisan attacks, even as some predicted a deal would be reached.
The Senate on Thursday took up and then abruptly dropped a test of President Barack Obama’s bid to take the sting out of the debt limit, providing a brief public showdown over an issue linked to fiscal cliff negotiations.
Democrats aren’t expecting ongoing fiscal cliff negotiations or the threat of spending offsets to derail their push this month to pass a multibillion- dollar superstorm Sandy aid package.
If President Barack Obama and congressional Republicans are unable to agree to lift the debt ceiling, Obama could take extraordinary measures that would avoid a crippling government default but would surely invite Republican outrage and likely trigger a constitutional crisis.
The push by President Barack Obama and Senate Democrats to make it easier for homeowners to refinance their mortgages is based on a simple premise: Interest rates are at historic lows. That means modifying a loan at today’s rates would put serious money in the pockets of homeowners — some $3,000 per year under Obama’s plan, he says.
When Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke spoke recently of headwinds facing the U.S. economy, the top item on his list was housing.
Democratic leaders emboldened by this year’s electoral victories are driving a hard bargain on a potential deficit reduction package, pushing to raise taxes significantly in a short time period, while resisting major spending cuts as part of an agreement during the lame-duck session.
As fiscal cliff talks home in on raising revenue through the tax code, the housing industry is sounding the alarm to the consumer market that the mortgage interest deduction may be in the cross hairs.
Senate Democrats are keeping their proposals for curbing the cost of social programs under wraps in order to avoid a split in their ranks as talks on the fiscal cliff begin Friday.
President Barack Obama’s pitch for $1.6 trillion in new tax revenue from the wealthy has Republican leaders demanding major entitlement cuts even as they face the potential for a revolt among conservatives.
President Barack Obama appears unlikely to find broad backing in the business community for his effort to make upper-income Americans pay higher taxes.
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