FRIDAY'S BIG STORY:
First Friday jobs special: Tomorrow is the first Friday of August and the July jobs report will hit the airwaves at the crack of 8:30 a.m.
While this makes it a bit difficult to overindulge on National IPA Day — yes, that is today, and it's hot and perfect for a cold, crisp ... oh, sorry.
Back to the jobs. The report could show some improvement for the first time in several months.
Economists' estimates are coming in between 100,000 and 125,000 jobs created last month. The unemployment rate is expected to remain mired at 8.2 percent.
All eyes, especially those with the presidential campaigns, will be watching the figures closely.
Better-than-expected figures — there were 80,000 jobs created in June — could give President Obama's reelection campaign a boost. But he is still facing persistently high unemployment, which isn't likely to drop below 8 percent by the November elections.
Sluggish figures will give Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney another opportunity to pounce on the Obama administration's economic policies, which his campaign argues have failed.
No president since Franklin Roosevelt has been reelected with a jobless rate above 8 percent. It's gonna be close on many fronts.
Granted, the labor market has been in a stall for the past several months as the European debt crisis and economic uncertainty on Capitol Hill over the so-called fiscal cliff continue to weigh on employers' desire to hire.
Lawmakers didn't make much, if any, progress in their final days before heading out of town for the five-week summer recess.
There was this little nugget, though, from retiring House lawmaker Rep. Steven LaTourette (R-Ohio) that a major deficit-reduction plan “is written” and will be unveiled the day after the November elections.
But all the big decisions will be pushed off to the lame-duck session.
Meanwhile, the ADP report this week found that the private-sector added 163,000 jobs in July, a slightly slower pace than June but a sign that the labor market is showing signs of life.
Mark Zandi, chief economist with Moody's Analytics, who said he is expecting the addition of 125,000 jobs last month, said it is not clear why ADP is running so much higher than the Bureau of Labor Statistics in recent months.
"My sense is that ADP is closer to reality than BLS, but we won’t know that for a while, when all the revisions are in," he said.
We'll have to ponder that over something cold.
LOOSE CHANGE
Extenders!: The Senate Finance Committee, in a pre-recess flourish of bipartisanship, easily approved a tax extenders package on Thursday. The more than $205 billion package includes a two-year patch of the Alternative Minimum Tax, as well as targeted provisions for research-and-development and the wind industry.
The House, meanwhile, is not expected to act on extenders until after the election, and passed a bill this week that would pave the way for the tax reform that some analysts have said would require the elimination of chunks and chunks of tax breaks. Finance's Thursday markup was also described as a practice round for tax reform, but senators' defense of their own preferred tax credits and deductions also underscored the challenges lawmakers face in a tax revamp.
Foreclosure review extension: The deadline for borrowers seeking a review of their mortgage foreclosures has been extended until Dec. 1, theFederal Reserve said Thursday.
The new deadline provides additional time for borrowers to request a review and increase awareness for those homeowners who might have lost money as a result of errors in foreclosure actions on their homes in 2009 or 2010 by one of the servicers covered by enforcement actions issued in April 2011.
There are no costs associated with being included in the review.
Speaking of which: The Rate Coalition, a group representing a string of Fortune 500 companies, released a Thursday memo saying it saw growing momentum for corporate tax reform.
But hurdles do remain: For instance, the coalition said it was fighting a conventional wisdom that corporations would fight tooth and nail to keep their preferred incentives.
But hurdles do remain: For instance, the coalition said it was fighting a conventional wisdom that corporations would fight tooth and nail to keep their preferred incentives.
BREAKING NEWS
Drought relief: The House approved on Thursday a hastily assembled bill that would provide $383 million in drought aid to livestock and other agricultural producers, after a debate in which many Democrats criticized the bill for not providing aid to all farmers and cutting conservation programs.
The bill passed 223-197 and revealed Republican opposition to the bill.
But the bill has no chance in the Senate with Agriculture Committee Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) blocking the bill. Lawmakers are working, yes, even on Thursday afternoon, on trying to reach a compromise on a five-year farm bill by Sept. 10.
Clearing tax reform hurdles: The House passed legislation Thursday that would set up an expedited process for considering a tax reform bill in 2013 that cuts and reduces the number of individual and corporate tax rates, eliminates the Alternative Minimum Tax and ends special-interest tax breaks.
House Republicans called the bill a job-creation measure and said it would a shift from tax-code compliance to job creation.
ECONOMIC INDICATORS
ISM Services: The ISM will release its July report for the non-manufacturing sector, which accounts for about 90 percent of the economy, and covers industries ranging from utilities and retailing to health care and finance.
WHAT YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED
— Donovan urges DeMarco to reconsider decision on principal reduction
— Congress passes African trade bill
— Wind-energy credit resurfaces in Senate tax plan
[thehill]
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