Tea Party Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) — when he isn’t badly mangling the U.S. Constitution — wants to take a hatchet to the federal budget, proposing a program that “would require slashing every government program that’s not defense or Social Security (Medicare, Medicaid, veterans affairs, education, and so on) by 89.6 percent.” But at the same time, judging by a new proposal he released today, he wants to gift multinational corporations with a permanent tax break worth tens of billions of dollars.

A slew of multinational corporations — even though they already pay exceedingly low taxes — have been pushing for the enactment of a tax repatriation holiday, which would allow them to bring money they have stashed overseas back to the U.S. at a tax rate dramatically lower than the statutory 35 percent. The corporations want a short window in which this low tax rate would apply. But Lee has decided that he would just go ahead and make the holiday permanent:

Today, Senator Mike Lee submitted legislation that would create millions of new jobs and inject $1 trillion into the American economy by significantly reducing the excessive tax on repatriated assets. Sen. Lee’s proposal would permanently lower the tax rate for businesses from 35% to 5% on money earned overseas and brought back to this country…Unlike recent repatriation “holidays,” which last a short period of time, Senator Lee’s bill would make the repatriation rate permanent.

“We should be lowering those barriers and encouraging American companies to invest in this country, increase wages, and create new jobs,” Lee said. Lee joins House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) in calling for this permanent corporate giveaway. Not only do these sorts of moves not create jobs, but, according to the Joint Economic Committee, lowering the tax on repatriation to 5 percent would cost more than $78 billion.

But this wasn’t the only bad repatriation idea to surface today. Sens. John McCain (R-AZ) and Kay Hagan (D-NC) introduced a bill that would lower the rate on repatriated money to 8.75 percent, and lower it further to 5.25 percent if the company in question can prove it created jobs (thereby admitting that a lower rate doesn’t automatically translate into job growth?).

In a statement, Bob Keener of Business for Shared Prosperity said that the McCain-Hagan bill “would hurt small and medium-sized businesses, by taking money from the Treasury that could be invested in public infrastructure and services that they depend on — and urgently need now.” But no matter how much data is brought to bear showing how poorly repatriation holidays have worked out, lawmakers continue to treat them as a panacea for the struggling economy.

State Senator Juan Vargas (D) killed the foreclosure mitigation bill; later went to dinner with Bank of America lobbyists

As the 99 Percent Movement takes shape across the country, citizens are demanding that Congress represent the public interest instead of the whims of bankers and big corporations. For instance, after demanding and receiving massive bailouts, Wall Street banks successfully lobbied Congress to crush any serious effort to mitigate the foreclosure crisis. The spectacular bank lobbying coup in Washington prompted Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) to remark that the banks “frankly, own the place.”

And this dynamic is not only at play in Washington: Banks have a disproportionate amount of power in California as well.

As one of the epicenters of the foreclosure crisis, Californians by the tens of thousands have lost their homes. In most cases, banks have repossessed houses without bothering to re-negotiate interest payments to find foreclosure alternatives. And in a growing number of cases, “robo-signers” have allegedly forged documents and illegally foreclosed on borrowers. Since the foreclosure crisis is leading towards a spiraling decrease in home property values across the state, nearly everyone is affected.

A common sense idea to add transparency and accountability to the mortgage market died a quick death earlier this year. State Sen. Mark Leno (D-San Francisco) and State Sen. Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) proposed SB729, a measure “to require banks to give people a definitive answer on loan modification, identify who owns the loan, and give borrowers legal recourse if banks don’t take these steps.”

The idea, embraced by consumer advocates and many foreclosure experts, did not even make it out of committee. State Sen. Juan Vargas (D-San Diego), the chairman of the banking committee, joined two Republican state senators in snuffing the bill. State Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Los Angeles) abstained from the vote, ensuring a 3-3 split (a tied vote does not allow the bill to proceed). Despite moving testimony from victims of foreclosure fraud and persuasive academic opinion, the bill died. To understand why, simply follow the money:

– Bank of America, a leading mortgage-lender in California, spent $173,703 lobbying this year in Sacramento. Disclosure reports show Bank of America hired lobbying firms like Nielsen Merksamer and Government Relations Counsel to kill SB729. Reports also show that Bank of America treated Vargas to dinner at the Ella Dining Room and Bar about a month after he voted to kill the foreclosure mitigation bill. Bank of America has contributed $5,500 in campaign contributions to Vargas and nearly $2,000 to Padilla.

– The California Mortgage Bankers Association, a lobbying group representing a number of mortgage lenders in the state, spent $55,711 lobbying in Sacramento this year. The bankers hired KP Public Affairs, a firm that doubles as the general counsel for the association, to help kill SB729. The group donated $4,000 to Vargas and $1,000 to Padilla recently.

– Wells Fargo spent $84,027 lobbying in Sacramento, and hired a firmed called Knudsen & Associates to help kill SB729. Wells Fargo has contributed $2,800 to Padilla and $2,000 to Vargas. Disclosure reports show agents for Wells Fargo took a state senator out to lunch shortly after the SB729 vote, but the disclosure forms appear to be incomplete because the name of the senator is not filled in.

JP Morgan Chase, the California Chamber of Commerce, Fidelity National Financial, the Securities Industry And Financial Markets Association (a trade association representing investment banks like Goldman Sachs and Barclays Capital), and other bank-related organizations spent tens of thousands to lobby against SB729.

In an article last month in the San Diego Union Tribune, Vargas pled ignorance while explaining his role in killing the mitigation and transparency measure:

“If a homeowner is doing everything the bank asked him or her to do and the bank forecloses, I think that’s very inappropriate and should be a violation of the law. But I don’t remember hearing any testimony about that kind of thing while we were discussing this bill.”

According to sources contacted by ThinkProgress, Vargas was in the hearing room with witnesses who testified about a host of unfair and rushed bank foreclosures. Perhaps the dinner Bank of America bought Vargas after the vote had some memory-wiping ingredients.