In This Issue:

• Leading the Past Week
• President Obama Finally Releases his FY2013 Budget
• Legislative Branch
• Executive Branch
• International

Excerpt from Leading the Past Week

Two major events bookended this past week, which although not connected, provide a prism to view Congress and Washington, DC through in 2012. The beginning of the week saw the release of the President‘s FY 2013 Budget, which Republicans labeled DOA and purely a political document. However, those proclamations didn‘t prevent officials from across the Administration to go before Congress to justify their agencies‘ budget and defend the proposal. Treasury Secretary Geithner appeared to be everywhere this week, appearing before three Committees, and clearly irritating House Republicans with his "silly little smirk." Other Administration officials, including CFPB Director Richard Cordray appeared before Congress. The day after the budget was released, we saw the extended deadline for public comment on the Volcker Rule toll, and throughout the week, all sides of this contentious debate began publicizing their comments. Other implementations of Dodd-Frank continued as the CFTC finally set a date for a long-delayed vote on the definition of swaps related entities and the CFPB announced, through the larger participation rule; it would be targeting debt collectors and credit reporting companies under its nonbank supervision program. Then the close of the week saw both parties in Congress come together to work out a deal to pass a year-long extension of the Unemployment Insurance / Doc Fix / Payroll tax bill. This may be the last major piece of legislation to be enacted until after the elections in November, but it shows that it is possible for Congress to move pass the political rhetoric to get things done.

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