Last month, Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) said that the House GOP is going to throw “everything we’ve got” into ensuring that the Bush tax cuts for the richest two percent of Americans don’t expire on schedule at the end of the year. President Obama and most Congressional Democrats have proposed allowing the Bush tax cuts for the rich to expire, while renewing them for the lower- and middle-class.

Last night, Pence granted an interview to CNBC’s supply-side guru Larry Kudlow, who asked if the GOP was gaining any traction in its push to spend $830 billion renewing tax cuts for those at the very top of the income scale. Rather than argue his position on the merits, Pence hid behind his constituents, saying “they don’t want to see taxes go up in January on any American.” “I think if the American people let their voice be heard right now, even this fall before this election, I believe we can still preserve the tax relief of 2001 and 2003,” added Pence:

It’s one of my frustrations from being here in Washington talking to you instead of a my job fair in Muncie, Indiana today, and that is, the longer members of Congress in both parties are home, the more they’re going to continue to hear from their constituents that they want to get spending under control, they want to get the economy moving, and they don’t want to see taxes go up in January on any American. And the more the American people have a chance to deliver that message, the more I believe we might have a chance to preserve the tax relief of 2001 and 2003…I think if the American people let their voice be heard right now, even this fall before this election, I believe we can still preserve the tax relief of 2001 and 2003.

Watch it:

Contrary to Pence’s assertion, “the American people” seem to overwhelmingly favor taxing the wealthy more in order to reduce the deficit. In fact, as Matt Yglesias noted, “higher taxes on the rich is basically the only deficit-reducing policy measure the public supports.”

According to a Qunnipiac University poll, 60 percent of Americans support raising taxes on those making more than $250,000 annually,while 72 percent and a majority of Republicans favor raising taxes on those making more than one million. Even the Pete Peterson-funded America Speaks project named a five percent tax increase on millionaires as its second-most preferred deficit reduction step (after raising the limit on taxable earnings for Social Security).

Within Pence’s own district — where the median income is about $45,000 — just 1.4 percent of taxpayers would see any tax increase whatsoever if the Bush tax cuts for the rich expire.

Dick Armey, the former House Majority Leader and current Chairman of FreedomWorks, has become something of a father to the Tea Party movement (even if only to exploit it for the benefit of his corporate clients). His latest gambit, however, may turn him into something of a pied piper as he leads Tea Party candidates down a path that is unpopular both with the general public and within the right-wing base of Tea Party movement itself.

In an op-ed published yesterday in USA Today — just days ahead of the 75th anniversary of the Social Security Act — Armey renewed his earlier calls to privatize the popular entitlement program. Armey begins his attack by declaring that “the nation’s largest entitlement program is officially in the red.”

This, of course, is a flat distortion of the most recent report from Social Security’s trustees, which acknowledges that while the economic downturn means the trust fund will pay out more than it takes in this year, it will remain solvent and be able to pay out full benefits until at least the year 2037. Armey, who has also sued to exempt himself from the “tyranny” of Medicare, then goes on to resurrect many of the same tired arguments that doomed to failure President Bush’s deeply unpopular 2005 push to privatize Social Security.

As Chris Good at the Atlantic pointed out yesterday, Armey’s arguments about “upending” Social Security and effectively ending the program as we know it have caught fire amongst the many Tea Party favorites running for the Senate this year:

– Extremist GOP Nevada Senate candidate Sharron Angle has said Social Security needs to be “phased out.”

– Ken Buck, the newly minted GOP Senate nominee in Colorado, has questioned the constitutionality of the program.

– Marco Rubio, the GOP Senate nominee in Florida, has called for cutting benefits for younger Americans.

– Aqua Buddha-worshipping Kentucky GOP Senate candidate Rand Paul has called for the privatization of Social Security and has derided Medicare as “socialism.”

Unfortunately for Dick Armey and his cadre of Tea Party candidates, their proposals aren’t very popular with the public. A new poll released today finds that a whopping 85 percent of Americans oppose cutting Social Security to reduce the deficit — with 72 percent “strongly” opposing doing so. What’s more, “half of non-retired adults would be willing to pay more now in payroll taxes to ensure Social Security will be there for today’s older people.”

Another recent poll found that 59 percent oppose privatizing Social Security and Medicare. When asked how they would feel about a candidate who supported a plan mirroring Armey’s to phase out and privatize Social Security, 46 percent of voters said it would make them “very uncomfortable” and a further 21 percent had reservations about the idea.

Not only does the public oppose Armey’s extremist proposals, the mostly Republican core of the Tea Party movement doesn’t seem to care for them either. As the New York Times reported earlier this year, “Tea Party supporters said they did not want to cut Medicare or Social Security — the biggest domestic programs, suggesting instead a focus on ‘waste.’”

The Times’ poll shows that when push comes to shove, the disproportionately older Americans that make up the Tea Party movement prioritize their benefits from the 75 year-old government entitlement program over their small government rhetoric.

Back in May, when Democrats proposed one of the various iterations of the state aid bill that finally passed the House yesterday, House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) blasted them for not “assessing priorities.” Last night, Cantor went on Fox News and laid out exactly what those priorities are.

The bill in question provides $26 billion in aid to states — $16 billion for Medicaid and $10 billion to prevent teacher layoffs — and actually reduces the deficit by $1.3 billion over ten years. But Cantor, right after asking “why aren’t we doing something about the deficit,” said passage of the bill “just begs the question about the priorities here”:

VAN SUSTEREN: $26 billion. The President says it’s deficit neutral, it’s going to pay for itself. True or false?

CANTOR: First of all, it doesn’t pay for itself. There are alleged pay-fors in the bill. And the way they come up with the biggest is they go for trying to impose a tax on job creators. You’ll hear many of the proponents of the bill talk about the need for us to stop shipping jobs overseas. But what this tax that they’re imposing does is it imposes additional cost on to foreign-based companies that have American facilities. That means jobs in America suffer. [...]

VAN SUSTEREN: In terms of paperwork, are you telling me that a company like, let’s say, BMW or Mercedes, if they have a plant here in the United States, that in order to pay for the $26 billion they’re going to have to pay an additional tax?

CANTOR: Right. This is why the National Association of Manufacturers, the Chamber of Commerce, people who represent small and large businesses say, wait a minute, this is bad. These taxes are not something we should be doing right now if you want us to create jobs. And again it guess back to the point, we are still at 10 percent unemployment. So, you know, again, it just begs the question about the priorities here.

Watch it:

Those “alleged pay-fors” at which Cantor scoffs are, according to the Congressional Budget Office, actually pay-fors, which reduce the deficit in the out-years. The cost of the bill is covered through an unfortunate cut in Food Stamps and the closing of a corporate tax loophole that allows multinational corporations to claim tax credits on earnings that they keep overseas.

It’s this closing of a loophole that Cantor disingenously refers to as a “tax on job creators.” But as House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Sander Levin (D-MI) pointed out, this aspect of the byzantine corporate tax code was actually “tilting the playing field in favor of investment overseas,” as the U.S. taxpayer actively subsidized companies for investing in other countries.

So Cantor is making it perfectly clear what his priorities are: continuing to pay multinationals to invest in other countries while allowing the education system at home to wither on the vine.