The Senate today, by an overwhelming vote of 96-3, passed the STOCK Act, a bill crafted in response to a 60 Minutes investigation showing that members of Congress had personally profited from insider information. Most notably, House Financial Services Chairman Spencer Bachus (R-AL) made tens of thousands of dollars trading on information he received during private economic briefings at the height of the 2008 economic crisis.

However, the bill that the Senate adopted is the same one that the House passed last month, not a stronger version that the Senate had written earlier and approved by a huge margin. The earlier version included a provision, championed by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), that would have required Washington insiders who sell intelligence to corporate America to register as lobbyists. Grassley, who was one of the three votes against the bill, today took to the Senate floor to blast Congress for adopting the watered down House version:

On Tuesday the Republican Majority Leader of the House and the Democrat [sic] Majority Leader of the Senate worked together to thwart the will of 60 Senators and 286 Members of Congress. This is not the kind of bipartisan cooperation we need.

I won’t ascribe motives to anyone in this body, but I know that today’s actions only serve the desires of obscure and powerful Wall Street interests and undercut the will of an overwhelming majority of Congress. [...]

There are over 2,000 people working in the completely unregulated world of political intelligence, or political espionage as I call it. Right now, they are celebrating. They are celebrating because they know that its business as usual. They can continue to pass along tips they get from Members of Congress, Senators and staff and no one will be the wiser. They pass along these tips to hedge funds, private equity firms and other investors who pay them top dollar.

The lobbyists get rich. Wall Street traders get rich. But the American people lose.

The weaker House version of the bill was drawn up by House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA), who had earlier blocked the GOP from moving an anti-insider trading bill at all. Last month, Grassley reacted to the House removing his political intelligence provision by saying, “it’s astonishing and extremely disappointing that the House would fulfill Wall Street’s wishes by killing this provision.”

ThinkProgress reported Tuesday that the House Republican budget, authored by Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI), would give away $3 trillion in tax breaks to corporations and the wealthiest Americans. Roughly $2 trillion of those breaks are aimed at the rich, thanks to the repeal of multiple taxes that primarily affect the rich and the dropping of the top marginal tax rate from 35 percent to 25 percent.

Ryan insisted those breaks won’t blow holes in the federal budget, first by claiming a level of revenue that borders on pure fantasy, and second by promising to close tax loopholes. Even in the unlikely scenario that the GOP managed to close every tax loophole available to the wealthy, each millionaire would pay an average of $187,000 less under Ryan’s plan than they would under current law (which assumes an end to the Bush tax cuts), according to a study from Citizens for Tax Justice:

While Rep. Ryan does not specify which tax provisions he would repeal, these calculations assume he would repeal all itemized deductions, all tax credits, the exclusion for employer-provided health insurance, and the deduction for health insurance for the self-employed.

Even under these assumptions, over 92 percent of these very high-income taxpayers would enjoy a net tax cut, and the average income tax change for these taxpayers would be a reduction of $187,000 in 2014.

Dropping the top income rate to 25 percent “would provide a benefit to millionaire’s that would far exceed their loss of any deductions, credits, or breaks for health care.” Ryan said Tuesday that he designed the tax plan to bring in as much revenue as the government currently collects. But even if the Bush tax cuts were extended for everyone, that likely wouldn’t happen. “This is a very low revenue goal,” CTJ notes. “But [Ryan's] tax proposal would almost certainly fail to meet it nonetheless.”

Conservatives across the nation have claimed in recent months that progressive attempts to reduce the burden of budget state budget cuts by raising taxes on millionaires will do nothing but cause the to lower-tax states. “Ladies and gentlemen, if you tax [millionaires], they will leave,” said Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ), who vetoed a millionaire’s tax not once, but twice.

But a new study from the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst throws cold water on these claims, showing that millionaires don’t, in fact, move to avoid higher taxes (though they will engage in more tax avoidance, like shifting the composition of their income):

The evidence available in the research literature suggests that the worst fears of the policy debates over raising additional revenue from high-income households to sustain spending on public services are unlikely to materialize. The rich will not go on strike. They will not cease working, stop investing, or even move, but they likely will find ways to shift the timing and composition of their income in order to avoid paying taxes. The immediate result of this likely outcome is that revenue collections will fall below projected levels from static models that do not take tax avoidance into account. Tax revenue will certainly rise, as the elasticity of taxable income falls well below one, and is actually very low for many high-income groups. [...]

But against these considerations of the size of potential waste from increases in tax avoidance of rich households, policy makers need to weigh the real and current costs associated with underinvesting in basic services that matter to people and the region’s economic growth. Faced with several years of budget shortfalls, and more to come yet, state and local governments have cuts the budget of K-12 education, universities, and public safety. These basic services play a fundamental role in promoting economic growth, by training the future workforce, and making neighborhoods and businesses safe.

In the wake of the Great Recession, nearly every state has had to cut vital investments in education and infrastructure, and the study shows that the importance of these is outweighed by a possible increase in tax avoidance on the part oft he rich (and that avoidance can always be mitigated by proper tax enforcement). But while some states have tried to responsibly raise revenue to offset some of their cuts, others have pushed the pain entirely onto those who depend on government services, relying on claims that it turns out aren’t based in reality.