• Senate panel approves Lew nomination

    By Kasie Hunt, Political Reporter, NBC News

     

    The Senate Finance Committee voted 19-5 on Tuesday to report Jack Lew's nomination as Treasury Secretary to the full Senate. 

    Lew's nomination moved a step closer to final confirmation before the full Senate with the finance panel's approval, though a floor vote isn't scheduled yet.

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    Five Republicans joined with all of the committee's Democrats in supporting Lew. Five Republicans opposed Lew.

    Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, voted yes, but criticized the administration for being reluctant to answer questions about nominees. Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, voted no, citing concerns about Lew's ties to Citigroup, which received federal bailout money.

  • Treasury: No, we won't mint $1 trillion platinum coin to avoid debt ceiling

    By Gil Aegerter, Staff Writer, NBC News

    A $1 trillion platinum coin will not be minted as a way of sidestepping the debt ceiling, the Treasury and the White House said Saturday.

    The idea has been floated as a way to avoid a bruising fight in Congress over raising the ceiling. Among the proponents is Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman.

    “By minting a $1 trillion coin, then depositing it at the Fed, the Treasury could acquire enough cash to sidestep the debt ceiling — while doing no economic harm at all,” Krugman said in a column in The New York Times.

    But the White House and the Treasury nixed that on Saturday.

    "Neither the Treasury Department nor the Federal Reserve believes that the law can or should be used to facilitate the production of platinum coins for the purpose of avoiding an increase in the debt limit," Treasury spokesman Anthony Coley said.

    And the White House said in a statement issued by Press Secretary Jay Carney: "There are only two options to deal with the debt limit: Congress can pay its bills or it can fail to act and put the nation into default. When Congressional Republicans played politics with this issue last time, putting us at the edge of default, it was a blow to our economic recovery, causing our nation's credit rating to be downgraded. ... Congress needs to do its job."

    Proponents of the coin have said they want to avoid a repeat of the near-self-induced default by the U.S. Treasury in July 2011. That battle caused the stock market to fall, cost the U.S. its Triple-A credit rating and produced the still ticking “fiscal cliff" budget time bomb.

    The government has hit its $16.4 trillion borrowing limit, The Associated Press notes, and could begin running out of money by late February or early March.

    On Friday, Senate Democratic leaders urged President Barack Obama to act unilaterally to increase the nation's debt limit, without congressional approval. But the White House has been loath to assert broad executive privilege to increase the amount of money the government is able to borrow in order to cover its obligations.

    NBC News' John Schoen and Michael O'Brien contributed to this report.

     

  • Chief of Staff Jack Lew is Obama's pick for Treasury

    Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images file

    President Obama is expected nominate Jack Lew, left, as the Treasury Secretary, replacing Timothy Geithner, right, pictured here during a press conference Sept. 19, 2011 in Washington, D.C.

    By NBC News political unit

    Updated 12:15 p.m. ET -- President Barack Obama will announce current White House Chief of Staff Jack Lew as his pick to be the next Secretary of the Treasury, CNBC's John Harwood confirmed Wednesday. The announcement could come as early as Thursday.

    Lew, who previously served as budget director under Obama and President Bill Clinton, has long been considered the frontrunner to replace departing Secretary Timothy Geithner, the last remaining member of Obama's first-term economic team.

    A former investment banker and Capitol Hill aide, Lew was instrumental in crafting the August 2011 debt deal that created the automatic tax increases and spending cuts narrowly avoided in the New Year's "fiscal cliff" agreement.

    The president's longtime chief of staff, Jack Lew, is slated to be nominated as early as Thursday. NBC's Brian Williams reports.

    Those negotiations didn't make Lew a hero to congressional Republicans, who were reportedly irked by his style. Journalist Bob Woodward wrote in his book "The Price of Politics" that top aides to House Speaker John Boehner found Lew "disrespectful and dismissive" and "obnoxious" during the talks.

    But, despite the bruising fight set up by the cliff built in the August talks, Lew's strategy ultimately helped set up what observers have deemed a political victory for Obama early in 2013.

    A 57-year-old native of New York City, Lew's long familiarity with Capitol Hill began when he took a job as a legislative aide in 1973. He went on to serve for nine years as chief domestic policy adviser to House Speaker Tip O'Neill.

    While Lew's announcement is expected soon, per CNBC's Harwood, it's not clear that the president has settled on his new choice for chief of staff.

    Deputy National Security Adviser Denis McDonough and former Biden chief of staff Ron Klain are both seen as potential Lew replacements.

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