27 Sep
2016
Debate time, budget time and Federal Reserve time: Sphere’s TenCount for Sept. 26, 2016
- Fifty-six years after John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon squared off in the first televised presidential debate, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump will go head-to-head on Monday night at Hofstra University on Long Island in a debate that, according to some estimates, could draw as many as 100 million viewers.
- Congress failed to reach agreement on a new budget last week, so with five days to go before current funding expires, members will return to Washington on Monday to try to reach an agreement to keep the government from closing down Saturday. The Senate will conduct a cloture vote on Tuesday, but it’s not clear that Republicans can garner the 60 votes needed to set up a final vote for Wednesday or Thursday. The current bill would extend funding through Dec. 9, requiring Congress to complete another budget deal after the election.
- The Senate is expected to vote midweek on whether to overturn the veto by President Obama of a bill that would allow victims of terrorist attacks on U.S. soil and their surviving family members to sue a foreign government for responsibility in an attack. The Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act is opposed by a wide swath of former national security and military officials as putting U.S. diplomats and troops in danger.
- While the House of Representatives waits for the Senate to act on a budget deal, House Speaker Paul Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican, will deliver remarks to the Economic Club of Washington, D.C., early Wednesday morning. (Because of a legislative quirk, this spending bill did not originate in the House, as tradition holds. The Constitution requires only that all bills for raising revenues originate in the House.)
- Plenty of issues will face the next president when s/he takes office; and many of those will be the subject of events in the coming months. At noon Monday, the Cato Institute hosts (and webcasts) a discussion on “Economic and Financial Issues Facing the Next President,” while later in the afternoon the George Washington University Elliott School of International Affairs conducts a discussion on “U.S.-China Policy for the Next Administration.”
- Days after Yahoo revealed that hackers compromised the accounts of an astonishing 500 million account users, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce will convene its fifth annual Cybersecurity Summit on Tuesday. Speakers include Tom Ridge, former Homeland Security Secretary; Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker; and John P. Carlin, the assistant attorney general for national security.
- And you thought the House had finished its probe into Hillary Clinton’s emails? Not a chance. At a House Judiciary Committee hearing on Wednesday on “Oversight of the Federal Bureau of Investigation,” Director James Comey will field questions on why the F.B.I. is not investigating Clinton for perjury for her earlier testimony to Congress, according to Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte.
- Last week, the Federal Reserve left interest rates unchanged but strongly hinted that a rate increase could be coming in December. Expect questions about whether the Fed is keeping interest rates down for political purposes when Janet Yellen, the Fed chairwoman, appears before the House Financial Services Committee on Wednesday for her “Semi-Annual Testimony on the Federal Reserve’s Supervision and Regulation of the Financial System.”
- “Fifteen Years After 9/11: Threats to the Homeland” is the subject of a hearing Tuesday by the Senate Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs Committee. Witnesses will be Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, F.B.I. Director James Comey and National Counterterrorism Center Director Nicholas Rasmussen.
- Trade has garnered more than the usual amount of attention on the campaign trail this year, and it is very likely to be a topic in the presidential debates, the first of which airs tonight. Two other forums look at the topic on Tuesday: a panel of the House Ways & Means Committee explores “Effective Enforcement of U.S. Trade Laws” in the morning while at noon the Peterson Institute for International Economics hosts a discussion on “How the United States Should Negotiate Trade Deals.” Really amazing, fantastic deals, of course.