| Senate ends first year under Trump by voting to prevent shutdown: The Senate approved a stopgap spending bill on Thursday night, ensuring there will be no shutdown days before Christmas and essentially completing a frenetic year on Capitol Hill -- and the first under President Trump. Senators voted 66-32 to approve the roughly four-week continuing resolution (CR), which funds the government through Jan. 19, hours after it passed the House. It concludes a successful week for Republicans, who on Wednesday finished work on a sweeping tax-cut bill that marked the first major legislative win for Trump. There were some hiccups along the way with the spending bill, but GOP leaders shepherded the legislation through both chambers on Thursday in part by arguing that it did not make sense to step on the party's successful message on taxes. Defense hawks had pressed for more funding for the Pentagon. They wanted a deal that increased the spending ceilings for defense, and that would prevent automatic spending cuts scheduled to start at the end of next month without a new measure for the year. Meanwhile, a coalition of progressive Democrats bucked the bill because lawmakers failed to get a deal on the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program by the end of the year. Members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus (CHC) met with Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) on Thursday afternoon to urge him to take a harder line in the immigration fight. But Democratic leadership remained tightlipped about if they would force a shutdown in the hours leading up to the Senate's vote. "We're not going to address any of those things until we see what the House does," Schumer told reporters during a press conference on Thursday. Unlike in the House, where the stopgap bill passed with only Republican votes, GOP leadership needed the support of at least eight Democrats to get the 60 votes needed to overcome procedural hurdles. Speeding up the continuing resolution also required the agreement of every senator. Jordain Carney has the full recap here: http://bit.ly/2Bx83QE And to recap the House vote... House Republicans on Thursday evening narrowly passed a stopgap measure to avoid a government shutdown, one day before the deadline. GOP leaders' struggle to clinch the 231-188 vote demonstrated how, despite being fresh off their tax-overhaul victory, House Republicans remain bitterly divided when it comes to spending legislation. With House Democrats refusing to supply votes to help pass the spending bill, Republicans were left to pull together the votes among themselves. The continuing resolution also includes funding through March for the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP), a short-term extension of the government's foreign surveillance powers, some spending "anomalies" for defense and a waiver for pay-as-you-go budgetary rules so the GOP tax bill doesn't trigger automatic cuts to Medicare: http://bit.ly/2BZes6F. Ryan, Hatch sign GOP tax bill: House and Senate leaders signed the tax bill on Thursday, allowing the measure to be sent to President Trump for his signature. The bill was signed by Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and Senate President Pro Tempore Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), who is also chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. Both lawmakers played a key role in developing the bill. The signing ceremony comes after the House and Senate passed the measure on Wednesday. The bill cuts tax rates for individuals businesses and curbs some tax breaks. During the event, Republicans argued that the bill will help middle-class families and lead to more jobs. They touted announcements from several companies that said they were going to provide bonuses and make new investments in light of the bill: http://bit.ly/2BWb7oF. White House: Trump will likely sign tax bill Friday: President Trump will likely sign the Republican tax overhaul on Friday, according to a White House official. "There's a very good chance the president signs it tomorrow," said the official. The measure was the most extensive rewrite of the tax code in at least a generation and its passage Wednesday marked the first major legislative achievement for Trump and the GOP. But the question of when Trump would sign the bill into law had remained unanswered. White House officials said the president might wait until the new year if Congress did not approve a provision waiving automatic spending cuts as part of a government funding bill to prevent a shutdown. But a waiver of the pay-as-you-go budgetary rules was included in the funding bill, which lawmakers are expected to send to the president's desk late Thursday or early Friday: http://bit.ly/2BXG3VO. US economy grew at a 3.2 percent clip in third quarter: The U.S. economy expanded at a 3.2 percent annual rate during the July through September quarter, which was slightly slower than forecast partly on lower consumer spending, but is still the fastest pace since early 2015. The third and final estimate of third-quarter growth, which was revised down from 3.3 percent in the second estimate, represents the best two back-to-back quarters since 2014, the Commerce Department reported on Thursday. The economy expanded at a 3.1 percent rate in the April-June period. Overall for the year, the economy is expected to post about 2.3 percent annual growth, which is up from 1.6 percent in 2016 but would be lower than 2014 and 2015. Still, the economy maintained solid growth despite the effects of major hurricanes Harvey and Irma, which battered Texas and Florida and other areas across the South: http://bit.ly/2BWbvU9. Happy Thursday and welcome back to Overnight Finance. I'm Sylvan Lane, and here's your nightly guide to everything affecting your bills, bank account and bottom line. See something I missed? Let me know at slane@thehill.com or tweet me @SylvanLane. And if you like your newsletter, you can subscribe to it here: http://bit.ly/1NxxW2N. Conway predicts small business boom after GOP tax bill's passage: White House adviser Kellyanne Conway on Thursday predicted a boom in the creation of small businesses once the Republican tax-overhaul bill goes into effect. "I think there are so many men and women in this country who are going to now start a small business, who are gong to say 'I like what I see. The regulations are fewer. The tax code is simpler. The tax cuts are more robust, including for those pass-through companies,' " Conway said on "Fox & Friends." The comments from Conway, who serves as counselor to President Trump, come following the House and Senate passage of the tax bill this week, giving the administration and congressional Republicans a major legislative victory. "It also includes a president who since he was elected has presided over a booming stock market, booming consumer confidence, small business formation," Conway said of the tax bill. The White House has pushed the bill as an effort to provide tax relief to middle-class Americans, but Democrats have argued the bill favors the wealthy over the middle class: http://bit.ly/2BXGiQI. Fannie, Freddie allowed to hold limited $3 billion capital buffer: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will be allowed to maintain a limited capital buffer to protect against possible losses, according to a new deal announced Thursday by the Treasury Department and the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA). The mortgage giants, which were taken over by the government in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, will each get a capital cushion of $3 billion starting Dec. 31, a day ahead of when their capital was expected to fall to zero. "Both the Treasury and the FHFA believe that a draw on the Treasury funding commitment may be required given tax reform legislation and the write-down of the deferred tax assets held on the balance sheets of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac," the Treasury Department said. The new agreement changes the arrangement requiring Fannie and Freddie to send quarterly dividends to Treasury until their capital hits zero, which was expected by the start of 2018: http://bit.ly/2BYrRM7 Consumer bureau to revise mortgage, prepaid card rules from Cordray era: The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau said Thursday that the agency will review and reconsider two rules. Under Acting Director Mick Mulvaney, the CFPB announced that it plans to revise rules issued by former director Richard Cordray regarding mortgage data collection and prepaid cards. The bureau will no longer ask banks and other mortgage lenders to resubmit data subject to the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) if they make errors that aren't "material." Lenders subject to the law and CFPB rules also won't be penalized for information collected in 2018 and reported in 2019. The CFPB also said it would begin the process of making a rule to revise parts of its 2015 rule regarding the mortgage disclosure law. The bureau singled out institutional and transactional coverage tests, discretionary data points and lending-activity criteria that determine whether institutions are required to report mortgage data. "The rulemaking may also look at adjusting the new requirements to report certain types of transactions," read the CFPB statement said. "Finally, the rulemaking may re-assess the additional information that the rule requires beyond the new data points specified under the Dodd-Frank Act." The bureau also announced it would soon issue a rule to amend a 2016 regulation on prepaid cards and debit accounts: http://bit.ly/2BV4X8i. Goldman Sachs to establish digital currency trading desk: Goldman Sachs is reportedly creating a trading desk to make markets in digital currencies such as bitcoin, Bloomberg reported on Thursday. The bank plans to have the desk established by the end of June, sources told the news organization. Goldman Sachs's trading desk will make it the first large firm on Wall Street to create markets for such cryptocurrencies. "In response to client interest in digital currencies, we are exploring how best to serve them," company spokesman Michael DuVally said in a statement. The company's reported decision comes amid heightened public interest in bitcoin and other digital currencies, whose values have exploded over the past several months. Despite the interest, many major financial institutions have been hesitant to deal with digital currencies and important Wall Street players, including JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon, have derided bitcoin as a "fraud." http://bit.ly/2BZe3RH. Iced tea company's stock triples after move to digital currency: An iced tea company is the latest business to capitalize off the new hype around cryptocurrency. The Long Island Iced Tea Corp., which sells beverages, changed its name to the Long Blockchain Corp. and announced that it was looking at partnerships with companies that invest in blockchain, the technology digital currency bitcoin is built on. Shares of its stock initially rose by roughly 500 percent on Thursday after the name change. Its share price has since gone down but is still more than three times the pre-announcement level. But Long Blockchain Corp. has no partnerships with any bitcoin firms yet and says "there is no assurance that a definitive agreement with these, or any other entity, will be entered into or ultimately consummated." Long Blockchain Corp. will also continue sell its iced tea and other drinks: http://bit.ly/2BZFquA. Look ahead: Prudential Financial is the sole insurance company deemed systemically important by the Financial Stability Oversight Council. As the company seeks to have its SIFI designation removed, freeing it from extensive federal oversight, Prudential conducted a survey to gauge public opinion on insurance companies. The results? --"American workers consider life insurance companies to be the least risky of the financial services providers included in the survey, with 9 in 10 saying they do not pose a lot of risk. Moreover, out of 11 industries." --50% of American workers say they are not willing to pay higher taxes and 49% are not willing to accept lower job growth in exchange for increased consumer protection through regulation. American workers also say they are not willing to pay more for products in exchange for more regulatory oversight, across all the industries surveyed." Here's more on why insurance companies landed under federal supervision in the first place, and what regulators are doing about them now. From The Hill's opinion pages: Republicans in Congress are colluding with Democrats on the budget Tax bill demonstrates our nation's upside down fiscal priorities 'Loophole for billionaires' stays in code, undermines tax reform The US is dead broke and the tax bill does nothing to help matters | 
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