Today’s Supreme Court ruling that opens the floodgates to unprecedented political spending by corporations is another major victory for the corporate lobbying giant — the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

In July, the organization declared its support for Citizens United in an amicus brief arguing that there is “no basis for restricting its core First Amendment right to engage in independent electoral advocacy.” In spite of the fact that the U.S. Chamber has topped lobbying spending year after year, the group had the gall to complain to the Supreme Court that its voice is being “suppressed”:

In particular, the electoral advocacy of the Chamber – a not-for-profit corporation – and of millions of its corporate members has been suppressed. This has occurred even though 96% of Chamber members are businesses with fewer than 100 employees, far from the immense aggregations of wealth hypothesized in Austin. Suppression has been imposed even when candidates have directly attacked business interests and when corporations have unique and valuable insight into the likely consequences of electing or defeating particular candidates. Although this Court has protected the ability of corporations to discuss “issues,” that is no substitute for direct and explicit speech about candidates.

After complaining about its influence being “suppressed,” the Chamber just disclosed that it spent a whopping $123 million to influence federal policy in 2009. Of all the corporations and associations spending money in D.C., the U.S. Chamber tops them all. The Chamber admitted to Roll Call that it was not “suppressed,” but rather, was “active in all of the major debates”:

“It shouldn’t come as a shock to anyone because it was an incredibly active year for the president and the economy,” said Tita Freeman, a chamber spokeswoman. “Hence the chamber was active in all of the major debates that impacted the economy and business community.”

Freeman said the big spike in spending in the fourth quarter was due largely to health care, including issue ads, meetings and letter-writing campaigns.

Aside from health care, the chamber listed a slew of other lobbying issues, including energy and climate change legislation, endangered species regulatory processes, executive compensation and travel promotion.

The Chamber isn’t happy with simply influencing Congress and the administration. It wants more — specifically, the opportunity to purchase its own fleet of friendly lawmakers.

As many federal lawmakers and the Obama administration push for cap-and-trade legislation, health care reform, regulatory reform, and corporate tax reform, the U.S. Chamber stands as the most well-funded opposition to progressive change. The group spent $10-$20 million of insurance-industry-provided cash on fighting reform. After Scott Brown’s victory in Massachusetts, the Chamber was quick to congratulate itself for running television ads in support of the candidate.

Between Brown’s election victory and the Supreme Court ruling, the most anti-reform corporations in the country are circling their wagons and their wallets around the U.S. Chamber and its fight to increase corporate influence in American politics at the expense of the average American. Today’s Citizens United ruling is a gift by the court’s conservative justices to their efforts.

During the presidential campaign, a key plank in then-candidate Obama’s platform was cutting taxes for 95 percent of Americans, but allowing the Bush tax cuts for those in the top tax bracket to expire on schedule in 2011. “I would roll back the Bush tax cuts on the wealthiest Americans back to the level they were under Bill Clinton, when I don’t remember rich people feeling oppressed,” Obama said at the time.

Obama reiterated this commitment as President, saying “we need to end the tax breaks for the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans, so that folks like me are paying the same rates that the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans paid when Bill Clinton was President.” And last week, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner swatted away reports that the administration was thinking about reversing course and extending all of the Bush tax cuts. “That’s not something we’ve contemplated,” Geithner said.

When asked if the administration would “go along if Congress took such a step,” Geithner replied, “I don’t think that would be good policy for the country, and I don’t think it’s a necessary thing to do.” Well, it seems like Geithner and the administration need to start convincing House Democrats that extending the cuts isn’t necessary:

– REP. GERRY CONNOLLY (D-VA): I think there is a certain logic to leaving well-enough alone for now, given the fragility of the economic recovery.

– REP. HARRY MITCHELL (D-AZ): Given the unique economic difficulties we face as a nation, this is the wrong time to raise these taxes. We need to retain these tax cuts that encourage investment that stimulates growth and job creation.

In an era when everyone seems to be running around screaming about the deficit, there’s absolutely no reason to extend these cuts, which this year will give millionaires more in tax breaks than 90 percent of Americans will earn in income. The Bush tax cuts have delivered $715 billion to the wealthiest one percent of the country over the last ten years, and extending the cuts would give households in that one percent $60,000 in additional breaks per year, with millionaires receiving a $150,000 annual break. Over ten years, that amounts to another $1.2 trillion in lost revenue.

Now, Mitchell and Connolly are both making the argument that this is about timing, and that raising taxes may choke economic recovery. Leaving aside that we still have another year before Bush’s cuts expire, as Michael Ettlinger pointed out, “while lower taxes during a recession can help the economy rebound, lower taxes for the wealthy are about the worst way to do it”:

Lower taxes for middle- and low-income people is a much better way to help the economy because middle- and low-income families are much more likely to spend their money than the wealthy. And it’s spending that we need to create the demand that will encourage businesses to hire and invest…If we decide we don’t want to raise taxes in a recession we should instead move the tax cuts around a bit. That is, let the tax cuts on those making over $250,000 expire and use the money to give tax cuts to people who could use the help and — more importantly for the economy — are more likely to spend the money they receive.

Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA) “dismissed the argument that allowing taxes on investment to rise now would slow the recovery.” “There’s no proof that the Bush tax cuts had anything but a negative effect,” he said.

I noted earlier in the week that the Chamber of Commerce was ginning up opposition to the creation of an independent Consumer Financial Protection Agency (CFPA) by conducting a “fly-in” of small business owners, who were then led to pre-arranged anti-CFPA meetings. The false premise of the Chamber’s theatrics was that the CFPA would be harmful to small businesses.

One of the events that the Chamber organized was a discussion with Sen. Mike Johanns (R-NE), who made it clear that he doesn’t think much of the CFPA:

Johanns outlined his opposition to the CFPA proposal, arguing it would drive up costs on consumers and create an agency with a “potential power grab over the nation’s economy.”

Johanns is vastly overstating what the CFPA will be able to do, but he is right in the sense that the CFPA is meant to grab a bit of power for consumers away from the financial services industry and the regulators which it dominates. Right now, all the power in the regulatory structure lies with the banks, whose fees the regulators count on in order to survive. Giving some power back to consumers and protecting them from predatory practices is an okay shift in my book.

That’s why it’s encouraging to see President Obama throwing his weight behind the CFPA. After reports surfaced last week that Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd (D-CT) was considering dropping the CFPA from his regulatory reform proposal, in favor of a trumped up consumer protection division within an existing bank regulator, Obama met one-on-one with Dodd to personally advocate for the agency. One administration official said the CFPA proposal is “nonnegotiable.”

But what can’t happen here is to let the CFPA become the public option of regulatory reform, in that Obama personally backs it and it becomes the crux of the reform effort, only to be dropped in the end. While the bailout tax and today’s proposal to limit bank size and risk-taking are both good steps aimed at reining in Wall Street, the CFPA is the only part of the regulatory reform effort that is directly for consumers and will produce tangible results on their behalf. As Ezra Klein put it, the CFPA is “the only part of [regulatory reform] that voters can easily understand. It’s the only policy that’s popular on its own. It’s the only piece of it that you can actually use to message.” Without it, the direct effect of regulatory reform becomes much less apparent.

And if Republicans like Johanns want to oppose the CFPA for reasons that don’t make any sense, that’s fine, as long as they are forced to actually cast that “no” vote. “It’s the banks versus the people, and it’s time to choose. For me, that’s the frame, and that’s what the conversation is about,” said Harvard Law Professor Elizabeth Warren. “If the White House forces that choice on the Congress, then we’re getting the leadership we need.” Weak regulatory reform is just about as bad as no regulatory reform, so let the right vote with the banks, and then make sure every voter knows where the right’s priorities lie.

Today, the Obama administration plans to announce new limits on the size and risk-profile of banks, implementing what one White House aide called “the spirit of Glass-Steagall,” which was the Depression-era law that separated investment and depository banking.

As the New York Times put it, “the president, for the first time, will throw his weight behind an approach long championed by Paul A. Volcker, former chairman of the Federal Reserve and an adviser to the Obama administration.” For months, Volcker has been calling for dividing the riskier trading portions of banks from those that deal with insured deposits. And that seems to be the main focus of the administration’s plan:

If the proposal took effect, big banks could be forced to wall off certain activities in their investing banking units — which trade and underwrite securities and make their own bets on markets — from their traditional businesses, which make loans and take deposits…The rules could also keep banks out of the business of running hedge funds, investing in real estate or private equity.

The upshot of the announcement is that banks will no longer be able to gamble with customers’ money that is federally insured. According to the Wall Street Journal, the policy “could have the biggest effect on Bank of America Corp., Wells Fargo & Co., and J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., which control a large amount of U.S. deposits.” The administration’s move coincides with its push to implement a bailout levy on the nation’s biggest banks.

This shift — while right from a policy standpoint as well — is pretty clearly a response to the charge that it is too cozy with the banks. As I pointed out yesterday, poll after poll shows that the administration is seen as offering too much support for Wall Street, and doing to little to improve the economic standing of low- and middle-class Americans. As Salon’s Andrew Leonard put it, “the decision to take a more aggressive stance against Wall Street marks a clear shift in tone, an abandonment of cautious accommodation [with Wall Street] in favor of out-and-out confrontation.”

The administration said that it plans to “work closely with the House and Senate to work this into legislation moving on the Hill.” Of course, we won’t know the true effectiveness of these proposals until more details come out, but you can be sure that, whatever they are, Wall Street will hate the whole thing, and will do all it can do prevent these measures from taking effect.

But this is an issue on which there should be no watering down. If Republicans want to stand in the way and be on the side of the big Wall Street banks, I say let them. As Paul Krugman wrote, “make them vote against it…Take on the banks — and force those who are covering for them into the open.”