Fed's Powell Faces New Line of White House Scrutiny
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Politico
29 minutes ago
- Politico
Ways and Means trade meetings postponed
Senate Majority Leader John Thune says he will bring the first procedural vote to the floor Tuesday on the White House's request to claw back $9.4 billion in spending. It's not clear he has even the 51 votes necessary to start debate on the package. Congress needs to approve the request before it expires Friday, or the administration will have to spend the money as lawmakers originally intended. That deadline is looming large as several GOP senators insist the administration clarify what spending it is actually seeking to rescind. They'll question President Donald Trump's budget director Russ Vought during senators' closed-door lunch Tuesday afternoon. 'We still are lacking the level of detail that is needed to make the right decisions,' Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins told reporters Monday evening. 'It's extremely unusual for any senator to not be able to get that kind of detailed information.' The Maine Republican is concerned not just over the administration's proposal to scale down the global AIDS-fighting program PEPFAR, but also about broader cutbacks in overseas public health. Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) told POLITICO he's particularly interested in protecting funding for global food aid programs like Food for Peace and the McGovern-Dole International Food for Education and Child Nutrition Program. It's increasingly evident the rescissions package will have to be changed in order to pass the Senate, and Thune told reporters as he left the Capitol on Monday that leadership is working with wary senators to 'see what a path forward on amendments looks like.' Senate leaders expect a vote-a-rama on amendments to start Wednesday, teeing up a final vote late Wednesday or early Thursday. If senators are able to advance a package with tweaks, House GOP leaders plan to put the package on the floor Thursday; they have already started to clear away procedural hurdles that would prevent them from passing the spending cut proposal ASAP. Throwing another wrinkle into it all, though, is that House GOP leaders don't want the Senate amending the package at all, knowing their members will be jammed with changes they don't like and be forced to choose between passing a watered-down product or missing the deadline to act. 'I think you got to respect the White House's request, and that's what we did, so I hope that's what we get back,' Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters Monday. 'There are two big categories of rescissions, and I'm not sure either of them should be subject to dispute.' It's also unclear whether an amended rescissions package would even have the support in the Republican House. Fiscal hawks are already drawing red lines, with Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) going as far as telling POLITICO he won't support a rescissions package that is 'a penny less' than the House-approved version. MEANWHILE, IN OTHER FUNDING FIGHTS — Senate appropriators remain at a standstill on moving a funding bill forward for the Commerce and Justice departments. They're trying to schedule a briefing with the FBI on the administration's rationale for abandoning the plan to move the bureau to suburban Maryland, according to Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), whose stand against Trump's desire for a site in the District of Columbia derailed a markup of the bill last week. But Van Hollen insists that even if the FBI assures senators that the Washington location is a secure site, he won't back off his attempt to block the administration from diverting about $1.4 billion that has been set aside for relocating the agency's campus to Maryland. Across the Capitol: House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole said that House leaders began whipping votes Monday night as the chamber prepares to take its vote on the $831.5 billion defense appropriations bill later this week. While defense appropriations bills have been bipartisan in the past, Republicans are expecting this measure to be a largely party-line affair. What else we're watching: — Epstein meltdown: We'll see if Republican leaders' headache from their members over the DOJ's failure to release files related to Jeffrey Epstein continues. Rep. Norman voted Monday in favor of a Democratic amendment in the House Rules Committee that would have forced a floor vote on the DOJ releasing more materials from the federal case. — Russia sanctions timeline: The bipartisan Russian sanctions bill might stall in the House and Senate after Trump announced secondary tariffs on countries trading with Russia. Thune said Monday he would hold off on advancing the bill for now. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise also said a vote could be delayed to post-August recess. — Dems' last stand against a controversial Trump pick: Senate Democrats are making a final bid to draw the spotlight to a whistleblower's allegations that Emil Bove, a top Justice Department official and 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals nominee, urged defiance of the same judicial branch he is seeking to join. Democrats want the whistleblower, Erez Reuveni, to testify before senators prior to their confirmation vote on Bove, which is set for Thursday morning. Jordain Carney, Katherine Tully-McManus, Jennifer Scholtes, Meredith Lee Hill and Cassandra Dumay contributed to this report.
Yahoo
30 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Employees at the nation's consumer financial watchdog say it's become toothless under Trump
NEW YORK (AP) — The lights are on at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau across the street from the White House, and employees still get paid. But in practice, the bureau has been mostly inoperable for nearly six months. CFPB employees say they essentially spend the workday sitting on their hands, forbidden from doing any work by directive from the White House. The bureau is supposed to be helping oversee the nation's banks and financial services companies and taking enforcement action in case of wrongdoing. During its 15-year existence, the CFPB has returned roughly $21 billion to consumers who were cheated by financial services companies. Instead, its main function now seems to be undoing the rulemaking and law enforcement work that was done under previous administrations, including in President Donald Trump's first term. One current employee, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the directive forbids staffers from speaking publicly about their jobs, said outsiders would be amazed at how little work is being done. Employees are reluctant even to talk to one another, out of fear that a conversation between two employees would be considered a violation of the directive. Another employee described the drastic shift in mission, from trying to protect consumers to doing nothing, as 'quite demoralizing.' To gain an understanding of what is happening inside the CFPB, The Associated Press spoke with 10 current and former employees, as well as bankers and policymakers who used to interact with the bureau nearly every day but now say their emails and voicemails go into a black hole. The agency's press office doesn't respond to emails. The CFPB took a lighter approach to its mission in Trump's first term but continued to pursue enforcement actions. Under President Joe Biden, the agency took an expansive view of its authority, targeting profitable practices by banks such as overdraft and credit card late fees, as well as investigating companies over credit reporting and medical debt. The bureau also turned a spotlight on Big Tech companies that have made inroads into financial services. For example, the CFPB ordered Apple to pay $89 million in fines and penalties for problems related to the Apple Card. Banks and the financial services industry felt the Biden CFPB acted too aggressively, particularly with a proposal to cut overdraft fees to $5 from the industry average of $27 to $35. The bureau estimated the move would save consumers roughly $5 billion a year. The proposal was overturned by Congress in April with Trump's backing. Once Trump 2.0 began, the bureau became a main target of the Department of Government Efficiency, then run by Elon Musk, who posted on X that the CFPB should 'RIP' shortly after DOGE employees became embedded at the agency. Through the bureau's acting chief, Russell Vought, the White House issued a directive that CFPB employees should ' not perform any work tasks. ' The administration then tried to lay off roughly 90% of the bureau's staff, or roughly 1,500 employees. Courts have blocked those layoffs, but there is a feeling inside the bureau that the court rulings are only a temporary reprieve. Companies that committed wrongdoing, or had open investigations, have lobbied the bureau and the White House for their punishments to be rescinded. Last month, the CFPB rescinded an agreement under which Navy Federal Credit Union agreed to pay $80 million to settle claims that it illegally charged overdraft fees to its members, who include Navy servicemen and women, and veterans. In mid-May, the agency scrapped an order for the auto financing arm of Toyota to pay customers a total of $48 million for illegally bundling products onto car buyers' auto loans. 'Companies are lining up to get out of repaying harmed customers,' said Eric Halperin, former enforcement director at the bureau, who resigned earlier this year. The Associated Press sent a list of questions to the White House regarding President Trump's vision for the CFPB. The White House did not respond. While the lack of new initiatives and the scuttling of old ones frustrate employees the most, they also note that even everyday tasks have largely fallen to the wayside. A report from the office of Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the senior Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee, found that the bureau is uploading roughly 2,200 complaints a day to its complaint database, compared to the roughly 10,500 complaints it was doing in the months before Trump took office again. Warren came up with the idea for the bureau when she was a law professor at Harvard University. The bureau did take an enforcement action on Friday. The pawn shop chain FirstCash Inc. agreed to pay $9 million to settle claims that it charged excessive interest rates on loans to armed service members, in violation of the Military Lending Act. FirstCash operates more than 1,000 stores. The bureau is going to be even further diminished in the coming months. The new budget law signed by Trump earlier this month cuts the CFPB's funding by roughly half, meaning the bureau will be forced into mass layoffs. Senate Democrats are looking for ways to restore that funding. In the meantime, employees go about their mundane routine: They continue to check their email once or twice a day to see if any of their previous work has been slated for being undone. They wait to be laid off. The only constants are the silence from bureau political appointees or the 'mini funerals' that happen every Friday, when another batch of employees who have decided to leave the bureau voluntarily have their last day. 'I don't think I'll ever work in public service again,' said one current employee, who has been looking for a new job for the past three months.
Bloomberg
30 minutes ago
- Bloomberg
Single Best Idea: Ritholtz & Munster
Tom Keene breaks down the Single Best Idea from the latest edition of Bloomberg Surveillance Radio. In this episode, we feature conversations with Barry Ritholtz & Gene Munster. Watch Tom and Paul LIVE every day on YouTube:
