Congress

House Democrats are planning to disrupt President Trump’s first speech to a joint session of Congress by busing in hundreds of illegal immigrants, transgender teenagers, and angry celebrities including Madonna and Rosie O’Donnell, to fill the rafters of the House Gallery and “make Trump as uncomfortable as possible.” President Trump is keeping the tradition of previous Presidents by delivering a formal address to a Joint Session of Congress during his inaugural year on Tuesday February 28.

Traders are on edge ahead of tomorrow's key address by President Trump to Congress, in which as Bloomberg writes "trillions are at stake."

Since Trump’s election, the S&P 500 has risen by 10%, posting 17 record closes in a rally that’s added $2.8 trillion in value to the U.S. equity market, with economists divided on how much of the rally is due to hopes from Trump's pro-growth promises, how much due to corporate earnings growth (which are expected to rise 12% from last year's energy-depressed levels), and how much due to the organic growth of the economy.

'Good cop' Mnuchin appeared to play expectations-manager this morning in an interview with FOX's Maria Bartiromo. After confirming the Trump administration is "not touching" entitlement programs, and having said this week that tax reform is expected by August,  he appeared to walk back that hype by saying that President Trump "will be touching on tax reform" during his speech to Congress this week, which Reuters notes, is not an official "State of the Union" address.

Submitted by Ryan McMaken via The Mises Institute,

In the wake of the Senate's confirmation of the appointment of Betsy DeVos, the protests from the left prompted Republican Congressman Thomas Massie to offer them a way to get rid of DeVos: eliminate the Department of Education. 

According to Massie, he'd been planning to introduce the bill for more than a year, and the controversy over DeVos appeared to be as good a time as any. 

Concerns about Trump's tax cut plan - arguably the biggest catalyst behind the market's daily record highs - are mounting.

Yesterday, when discussing the rising opposition to a simple "repeal and replace" of Obamacare, Goldman Sachs explained that any turbulence in resolving the Obamacare problem would spillover into other domestic policy targets, most notably tax reform, to wit: