Echoing the demands of the Occupy Wall Street protesters, Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-OR) is proposing to tax the trading of stocks, bonds, and derivatives. DeFazio, along with his Senate co-sponsor Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA), has proposed the tax several times in the past. But this time around, the idea is getting a boost of momentum from the popularity of a similar measure in Europe, as well as renewed national media focus on Wall Street profiteering as a result of the 99 Percent Movement:

Declaring Wall Street a “gambling casino,” DeFazio said the new tax would “both raise needed revenue for the Treasury and rein in speculation on Wall Street.”

Already, the business community is mounting a counteroffensive. With the congressional supercommittee looking to trim at least $1.2 trillion in projected debt over 10 years, the tax could look tantalizing, despite public opposition from many Republicans and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. [...]

The tax could help shrink the deficit — its previous iteration was estimated to add $150 billion a year to federal coffers — and spare Social Security, Medicare and other programs from jarring cuts.

Even representatives from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce admit that this proposal is going to receive serious consideration this session, as congressional Democrats look to trim the deficit in a way that doesn’t overburden the middle and lower classes that are already stretched to the breaking point. “In reality, a proposal like this is going to be on the table in some regard,” said Tom Quaadman, executive director for financial reporting policy and investor opportunity at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

France and Germany have embraced taxing financial trades, and proponents say it’s only a matter of time before the common-sense solution is finally adopted in the U.S. While American bankers are predicting dire consequences if the tax goes into effect, Dean Baker, a co-director at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, says that’s nonsense. “The reality is all you’re doing is raising transaction costs back to where they were 15 or 20 years ago,” he says, noting that the tax has not prevented countries like the United Kingdom from developing vibrant economies.

Top economists and analysts like Reuters’ Felix Salmon have long advocated for a transaction tax as an important moderating influence on Wall Street excess. As Pat Garofolo has explained, “It will help temper trading for trading’s sake and excessive speculation, particularly in the form of high-frequency trading, which only major Wall Street players have the infrastructure to engage in and which will become far more expensive.”

ThinkProgress filed this report from the Occupy Wall Street demonstration in New York City.

While at the Occupy Wall Street protests, ThinkProgress spoke to Ken Zinn, a staffer with the National Nurses Union — the nation’s largest nurses union, with nearly 160,000 members. Zinn’s group is pushing for a financial transactions tax (FTT), which would enact a small tax on financial trading that could generate hundreds of billions of dollars every year.

Zinn says his group was motivated to join the protests and demand the tax because their patients all over the country are hurting, and it’s “time that Wall Street gave back to this country”:

ZINN: We’ve been calling for a tax on Wall Street for several months now because our nurses are seeing on the job, each and every day in hospitals across the country patients who are suffering, patients who are in great need because they’re without a job and having to make a decision whether or not to buy food or pay for medicine, buy food or pay their rent. [...] We’re here because it’s time that Wall Street gave back to this country. And it’s a small tax that we’re proposing on the buying and selling of stocks and bonds and derivatives that would bring in, by our estimation, $350 billion every year into the economy.

Watch ThinkProgress’s interview with Zinn:

While the United States continues to watch the profits of bailed out banks soar, the European Union is expected to move forward on a push for a global financial transactions tax.