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The U.S. House Financial Services and Senate Banking committees said yesterday they will hold hearings on the stock market after users of investment apps faced trading limits following the “Reddit rally” that put a charge into GameStop and other volatile stocks that were touted in online forums, Reuters reported. “We must deal with the hedge funds whose unethical conduct directly led to the recent market volatility and we must examine the market in general and how it has been manipulated by hedge funds and their financial partners to benefit themselves while others pay the price,” said Representative Maxine Waters, a Democrat who heads the House panel. Waters added the hearing will focus on “short selling, online trading platforms, gamification and their systemic impact on our capital markets and retail investors.” An army of retail investors routed Wall Street professionals this week, placing hedge funds in a costly “short squeeze” after the funds had bet on future declines in GameStop and other out-of-favor stocks. But on Thursday, brokerages Robinhood Markets Inc. and Interactive Brokers restricted buying shares in red-hot GameStop and several other stocks that soared after being shorted by professionals. Late Thursday, Robinhood said it will allow limited buying on Friday.

New Jersey's House members are urging the Biden administration and congressional leaders to include repeal of the cap on the state and local tax (SALT) deduction in the next coronavirus relief bill, The Hill reported. "Relief from the unfair and destructive SALT cap offers the precise breed of action our constituents, states, and localities will benefit from immediately," the lawmakers wrote in letters yesterday to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.). Every House member from New Jersey signed the letters, including the delegation's two Republican members: Reps. Chris Smith and Jeff Van Drew. Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.) highlighted the letters at an event in the state yesterday. Former President Trump's 2017 tax-cut law created a $10,000 cap on the SALT deduction. Most GOP lawmakers support the cap and have highlighted studies showing that repealing it would primarily benefit high-income households. But politicians in high-tax states such as New Jersey, New York and California have been highly critical of the SALT deduction cap, arguing that it hurts their residents as well as their states' ability to provide robust services to residents.

Democrats in both chambers of Congress on Tuesday reintroduced a bill to raise the federal minimum wage for the first time since 2009, setting a $15 an hour target by 2025, The Hill reported. That level would be more than double the current rate of $7.25 an hour, which was approved in 2007 and set in place two years later. “Let’s be clear: The $7.25 an hour federal minimum wage is a starvation wage,” said incoming Senate Budget Committee Chairman Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). “No person in America can make it on $8, $10 or $12 an hour." The House approved the same legislation in 2019, but it languished in the GOP-controlled Senate. Even with the Senate under narrow Democratic control, however, its prospects appear slim. The Senate cannot pass a minimum wage increase without the support of 10 Republicans to break a filibuster. President Biden included the policy in his $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief plan, but the minimum wage element is among the most controversial and precarious of its provisions. Biden has sought bipartisan support for the bill, but Democrats have threatened to advance it along party lines using budget reconciliation, a procedure that sidesteps the filibuster.

President Joe Biden said he’s open to negotiate on his $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief proposal, and is hopeful to bring Republicans behind it, though didn’t rule out pursuing a Democrat-only route, Bloomberg News reported. “I’m open to negotiate,” Biden said at a news conference on Monday. Still, he said “time is of the essence and I must tell you I’m reluctant to cherry pick and take out one or two items here.” Biden said that it would be up to lawmakers as to whether to use a budget-rule procedure in the Senate to forgo Republicans and proceed just with Democratic support. He also said that it won’t be clear if there’s a basis for agreement until the final stage of talks, which he anticipated in a “couple” of weeks. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said yesterday that he aims to secure passage of the next round of COVID-19 relief by mid-March, just when jobless benefits from the last package will be running out. “We’ll try to get that passed in the next month, month and a half,” Schumer said with regard to pandemic aid on Monday, speaking on a call with New York City mass-transit advocates. A bipartisan group of senators, along with the Republican and Democratic leaders of a moderate group of House representatives, on Sunday questioned the White House on the basis for Biden’s $1.9 trillion stimulus proposal. Brian Deese, head of Biden’s National Economic Council, was pressed on the justification for the price tag of the plan, which would be the second-largest emergency spending package on record. GOP Senator Susan Collins of Maine said she’d suggest to the bipartisan group that it look at pulling together its own, more targeted, proposal.

President Joe Biden will escalate appeals for Congress to back his top priority, $1.9 trillion in pandemic relief, seeking to overcome Republican opposition to the plan as he enters his first full week in office, Bloomberg News reported. Biden’s top economic adviser, Brian Deese, spent more than an hour on Sunday discussing the proposal with a bipartisan group of lawmakers. Some asked the White House to further justify what would be the second-largest emergency spending measure in U.S. history and expressed interest in a much narrower bill focused on accelerating coronavirus vaccine distribution, according to Senator Angus King of Maine and people familiar with the matter. Deese and other officials provided details and context in response to the senators’ questions, according to an administration official. Senior White House aides plan to keep talking with lawmakers in both parties this week to hear their concerns but also press for urgent action, the official said. As the president’s team began its work with key lawmakers, Biden is moving forward with another round of executive actions, following on a series of orders signed soon after he took office. On Monday, he will sign an order directing federal agencies to buy more American-made products and is expected to take other actions on criminal justice, climate, health care and immigration. The new orders will add to roughly two dozen actions Biden has signed since Inauguration Day in an effort to address the coronavirus pandemic, reverse former President Donald Trump’s agenda and point the nation in a new direction.

Janet Yellen, U.S. President-elect Joe Biden’s nominee for Treasury Secretary, urged lawmakers on Tuesday to “act big” on coronavirus relief spending, arguing that the economic benefits far outweigh the risks of a higher debt burden, Reuters reported. In more than three hours of confirmation hearing testimony, the former Federal Reserve chair laid out a vision of a more muscular Treasury that would act aggressively to reduce economic inequality, fight climate change and counter China’s unfair trade and subsidy practices. Taxes on corporations and the wealthy will eventually need to rise to help finance Biden’s ambitious plans for investing in infrastructure, research and development, and for worker training to improve the U.S. economy’s competitiveness, she told members of the Senate Finance Committee. Yellen, who spoke by video link, said her task as Treasury chief will be to help Americans endure the final months of the pandemic as the population is vaccinated, and rebuild the economy to make it more competitive and create more prosperity and more jobs. “Without further action we risk a longer, more painful recession now and longer-term scarring of the economy later,” she said. Yellen said that pandemic relief would take priority over tax increases, but corporations and the wealthy, which both benefited from 2017 Republican tax cuts “need to pay their fair share.” 

More than 1,800 Paycheck Protection Program loans last year went to debt collectors and high-interest lenders, according to an analysis by the Washington Post. In all, the aid to these firms amounted to more than $580 million. More than 170 of those recipients have been the subject of a multitude of complaints — each racking up at least 100 with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), according to The Post’s analysis. Twenty-five have been subject to legal enforcement or consumer alerts, many by the CFPB and the Federal Trade Commission.