Last month, as the Senate was gridlocked by a Republican filibuster of a bill to extend much-needed unemployment benefits to millions of out-of-work Americans, Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE) stood with the GOP against the extension. Nelson claimed that his concerns about the deficit overrode his support for the extension; he voted against the bill that finally passed 60-40.

Later that week, Nelson came out in support of an extension — “for now” — of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, which adds many billions more to the deficit than the unemployment insurance extension. In fact, extending the Bush tax cuts for one year alone would add $115 billion to the deficit, compared to the “relatively tiny budgetary cost of $33 billion” for the extension of UI benefits.

Today, though, Ben Nelson provided further evidence that he is a deficit peacock — someone who claims to be concerned about the deficit but isn’t actually interested in taking serious steps toward a balanced budget. Before the final vote on the states’ aid bill that passed today, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) offered two amendments that would, in effect, permanently extend the Bush tax cuts. David Dayen has the results:

Before passing the state fiscal aid bill, Democrats actually gave Jim DeMint two votes on tax rates. He wanted to add massively to the deficit – literally trillions of dollars – by freezing in place the tax rates on individuals and “small businesses” that we have now, and which make us one of the most lightly-taxed industrialized nations on the planet. And look at this: Democrats rejected the measure entirely. On both votes, only Ben Nelson [and Sen. Blanche Lincoln (AR)] crossed the aisle to vote with all Republicans [except deficit hawk George Voinovich (OH)]

Nelson and Lincoln (who also claims to be concerned about deficits) apparently don’t mind spending $3.1 trillion over the next ten years to pursue ineffective tax cuts for the wealthy. Perhaps they should have listened to their colleague, Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT), who said of DeMint’s proposal, “that’s not serious. Is that a stunt? Yes, it’s a stunt. Is it a gimmick? Yes, it’s a gimmick. Is it serious? No, it’s not serious.”

DeMint is particularly “not serious” when it comes to paying for his extraordinarily expensive amendments. Both came “with instructions to offset as necessary through spending reduction,” Senate-speak for “we’ll worry about the cost later.”

– Charlie Eisenhood

Recently, a slew of Republicans have tried to make their case for extending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy by claiming that doing so would actually increase revenues for the federal government. “There’s no evidence whatsoever that the Bush tax cuts actually diminished revenue. They increased revenue, because of the vibrancy of these tax cuts in the economy,” claimed Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), adding that this is “the view of virtually every Republican.”

“When President Bush imposed those tax cuts, they actually generated economic growth, they expand the economy, they expand tax revenue,” said Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN). Karl Rove even went so far as to claim that the Bush tax cuts led to “the largest amount of revenue being received by the government.”

Yesterday, I spoke with American Action Forum president Douglas Holtz-Eakin, formerly Congressional Budget Office director and an adviser to the McCain 2008 presidential campaign, who correctly pointed out that there is “no serious research evidence” backing up the GOP’s positon:

I have never been in the camp that believes that quote ‘tax cuts pay for themselves.’ There is no serious research evidence to suggest that. The work we’ve done on what would happen if you were to sort of raise or lower taxes suggest about a 20 to 30 percent offset, depending on how you do it. And I think that’s in the mainstream of the thought.

Watch it:

That, however, was where our agreement ended. Holtz-Eakin wants to see all of the Bush tax cuts extended because of their supposed effect on small businesses. I noted that fewer than two percent of small businesses file in the top two income tax brackets, to which Holtz-Eakin replied that the more important statistic is that half of business income is subjected to those higher tax rates.

While that’s true, the same report finding that half of net business income is in the top two tax brackets explicitly noted that “these figures for net positive business income do not imply that all of the income is from entities that might be considered ‘small.’” Yesterday, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner called the assertion that allowing the Bush tax cuts for the rich to expire would hurt small businesses “a political argument masquerading as substance”:

Now some have argued that even if only a few percent of small business owners make over $250,000, these few make up a vast amount of supposedly small business income. This argument apparently counts anyone who receives any type of partnership or business income as if they were a small business. By this standard, every partner in a major law firm and every principal in a major financial institution would count as a separate small business. A CEO who has board fees or speech fees would also count as a small business owner under this overly broad definition.

Yesterday, the Senate finally approved $26 billion in funding to bolster state budgets, including $10 billion meant to prevent massive teacher layoffs. The Senate has been grappling with this funding for months, but two Republicans senators — Sens. Susan Collins (R-ME) and Olympia Snowe (R-ME) — voted to move forward once the bill was fully paid for with spending offsets.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) has announced that she will interrupt the House’s August recess in order to hold a session to pass the bill, instead of waiting to pass it in September. But House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) slammed Pelosi’s decision to call the House back into session, calling the funding a “payoff to union bosses and liberal special interests“:

The American people don’t want more Washington ‘stimulus’ spending – especially in the form of a pay-off to union bosses and liberal special interests. This stunning display of tone-deafness comes at the expense of American workers, who will be hit by another job-killing tax hike because Washington Democrats can’t kick their addiction to more government ‘stimulus’ spending. Democrats should be listening to their constituents – who are asking ‘where are the jobs?’ – instead of scampering back to Washington to push through more special interest bailouts and job-killing tax hikes.

First, the stimulus spending that Boehner is so quick to deride will have saved or created 3.7 million jobs by September, according to the Congressional Budget Office (with which Boehner has an on-again, off-again relationship). And this bill actually reduces the deficit by $1.3 billion dollars, so Boehner is simply incorrect to claim that a tax hike will be necessary to pay for it.

But more importantly, does Boehner really consider teachers, firefighters, and police officers to be “liberal special interests”? Overall, it is estimated that the funding will save the jobs of about 300,000 workers, including about 140,000 school employees. According to the Department of Education, 5,000 teaching jobs in Boehner’s home state of Ohio will be preserved by the funding.

As Jonathan Alter wrote, “Republicans in both chambers were happy to let all those teachers lose their jobs. The results would have been devastating not just for schools but for the country. Just what we need when we’re trying to compete with China and India — four-day school weeks and teachers with 35 kids in a class.” But Boehner would prefer that we add these teachers — as well as thousands of other public servants — to the unemployment rolls, because evidently they only count as “special interests.”