Today, House Democrats unveiled health care legislation that proposes a surtax on wealthy individuals in order to finance a portion of the $1.5 trillion cost of health reform. The surtax rates would be 5.4 percent for couples earning more than $1 million, 1.5 percent on couples with incomes between $500,000 and $1 million, and 1 percent on incomes over $350,000.

Before the unveiling, Reps. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) and Dave Camp (R-MI) appeared on CNBC to discuss the bill, and when asked about the surtax, Van Hollen approved while Camp did not. The CNBC anchors, however, didn’t question Camp’s incorrect statistic that half of small businesses would face the tax, while casting considerable doubt on Van Hollen’s much more accurate number of businesses that would be affected:

CAMP: This is going to be a massive tax increase, half of which will be paid by small business. We expect that as many as 2 out of 3 manufacturers could pay significantly higher taxes under this. [...]

CNBC: Rep. Camp, give some details of the alternative [Republican] proposal.
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VAN HOLLEN: 98 percent of small businesses are not going to feel anything with respect to the surcharge and 99 percent of American citizens are not going to feel anything with respect to the surcharge. These are very high-income individuals who did very well under the Bush tax cuts.

CNBC: It’s difficult for viewers to just hear those numbers and assume that they’re true, so we can’t go into the details of whether it’s accurate or not.

Watch it:

As Igor Volsky noted yesterday, the overwhelming majority of small business owners earn far less than $350,000, and thus will not be affected by the tax. Of people who earn most of their income from their own business, only 98 percent make less than $250,000, while “more than half have income below $30,000 and 80 percent make less than $100,000.”

Republicans come up with their 50 percent number by categorizing everyone that earns any money from a business or investment as a “small business owner.” But Citizens for Tax Justice ran the numbers on the House proposal today and found that about 5 percent of actual small businesses would be affected by the surtax, and that “even for those who must pay it, the surcharge would usually not affect their ability or incentive to hire workers or expand their operations.” But CNBC’s talking heads have never let the facts get in the way of their opinions.

Last month, the House held a hearing on the Obama administration’s proposal to create a Consumer Financial Protection Agency (CFPA). House Republicans, taking their lead from banking industry lobbyists, extensively criticized the proposal, claiming that the new agency would literally decide which mortgages and credit cards individual families could and could not have, thus making us all “yield our freedom.”

Today, the Senate had its turn, and the result was not any better. Led by Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) — and wholeheartedly joined by panelists Edward Yingling, President and CEO of the American Bankers Association, and Peter Wallison of the American Enterprise Institute — the GOP derided the agency as “a paternalistic departure from the notions of liberty and personal responsibility.” “In other words, yes, we can has become no, you can’t,” Shelby said. Watch it:

Leaving aside the fact that the agency simply will not mandate appropriate products for individual families, it’s really quite remarkable to watch Republicans go to great lengths to protect the worst predatory and deceptive practices that banks undertook in recent years. They never acknowledge that, yes, there were abuses, including banks pushing minorities who qualified for prime loans into subprime or signing immigrants up for a potpourri of unnecessary and expensive financial products. They make it sound as if as if exotic mortgages occupy a natural niche in the marketplace, and that there are lots of homebuyers who actively want to owe more on their house five years down the road, despite making monthly payments.

As Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal said, “the new agency is a necessary and appropriate response to exploding complexity, scope and scale of new financial instruments and markets — and exponentially increasing impact on ordinary citizens“:

Ever more slick and sophisticated marketing — often misleading and deceptive — cannot be battled successfully by states alone, or the existing federal agencies…The point is to assure that consumers fully understand the financial realities and consequences of financial obligations, credit cards or loans, they are considering before they make commitments…Once they use that information and make decisions, they will have to live with the consequences.

On a separate note, it’s interesting to watch Shelby’s utter dismay that creating a new agency might signal a new regulatory approach, as if the approach that utterly failed to prevent the subprime boom was somehow worth preserving.