Florida’s Republican gubernatorial nominee Rick Scott — when he’s not spending an inordinate amount of time discussing policies over which he’d have no control as governor — likes to tout his economic growth plan, which involves large tax cuts and supposedly large spending reductions.

“You reduce every tax, every fee you can,” Scott has said, adding that such tax cuts can be paid for by cutting waste in government. “You prioritize, what should I spend my money on? Does that program work? Should I spend money there like I have before? There’s so many things we waste money on in this state,” he said.

In fact, Scott claims that he can cut more $500 million in government spending by simply implementing “operational efficiency savings.” However, the incoming Florida Speaker of the House, Dean Cannon (R), has warned members of his party against such optimistic assessments about finding waste in Florida’s government:

“There is no secret stash of money, no hidden account, or no politically easy, pain free, magic bullet,” Cannon said. “Republican House members have been looking for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow marked ‘waste, fraud and abuse’ as a means to solve all of our problems. No one has found it, because it isn’t there.“

This plan definitively puts Scott in the deficit peacock camp, as he’s espousing easy solutions to what is, in reality, a complex problem. (To be fair, Scott’s opponent Alex Sink has used some of the same rhetoric.) Florida is facing a $2.5 billion budget shortfall next year, before taking into the account the effects of the Gulf oil spill.

Medicaid costs in the state are slated to surpass $20 billion alone. It’s a favorite conservative talking point to crusade against “waste, fraud, and abuse,” but at the end of the day, that doesn’t get your budget into balance.

Of course, Scott could take a look at Florida’s tax system, which is one of the most regressive in the nation, with no personal income tax and a high reliance on sales taxes. Florida’s poorest 20 percent currently pay 13.5 percent of their income in taxes, while the richest one percent of Floridians pay just 2.6 percent. In fact, there’s only one state in the nation (Washington) where poor residents pay a higher percentage of their income in taxes than Florida, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.

Instead of repairing this inequitable system (and maybe helping reduce his state’s deficit a bit), Scott only wants to eliminate the state’s corporate income tax and reduce property taxes. Responsible budgeting means looking at both sides of the ledger — spending and revenues — but Scott steadfastly refuses to do so.

Yesterday, House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) “opened the door to a compromise” on the Bush-era tax cuts on CBS’s Face the Nation Sunday, saying “if the only option I have is to vote for some” tax reductions for families earning less than $250,000, “I’ll vote for them.” But this afternoon, during an appearance on Sean Hannity’s radio show to promote his new book ‘Young Guns’, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) backed away from Boehner’s concession, insisting that Republicans should not water down their commitments to extending tax cuts for the richest Americans:

HANNITY: [Boehner] said he would vote for extending tax cuts of middle class earners even though it was bad policy to exclude the highest earning Americans, which they pay the greater percentage of income taxes. So I ask you, in that sense, is it wrong to say that you’d even consider you know, not a full complete extension of the Bush tax cuts?

RYAN: No, we are for a full, complete extension of the Bush tax cuts. We do not want to negotiate down. We want to extend all of these things…We should not begin negotiating that down, we should be insisting on preventing this huge tax increase on the most successful small businesses, which is where most of our jobs come from.

Listen:

In fact, a growing number of Republicans are now distancing themselves from Boehner’s remarks. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), announced today that “he will introduce legislation that would ensure that no one pays higher income taxes next year.” Similarly, Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) said through a spokesperson that “there should be no tax increase on any job creator next year.”

Earlier in the program, House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) — who issued a harsh statement earlier in the day — also seemed to disagree with Boehner’s approach. “John Boehner is a small business person,” he said. “He knows what tax hikes mean to a small business, especially in a recession and I know that all of us are going to work and do everything we can to make sure that we do not allow tax hikes to occur this year.”

In order to pay for its proposed $50 billion infrastructure investment, the Obama administration wants to cut some of the subsidies that the federal government gives to oil and gas companies. One subsidy in particular, the Section 199 manufacturing credit, would be denied to the oil and gas sector. Today, on CNBC, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) derided cutting these subsidies as “ridiculous economics,” and claimed that such a step would inevitably increase energy prices:

We’re going to single out one sector of our economy, a very important sector of our economy, and say higher tax rates if you produce in the U.S. than any other sector in the economy. This is just ridiculous economics, redistribution, but more importantly, it’s just punitive. It’s punitive and it’s political and it’s not going to help our economy.

Watch it:

I would submit that the only thing “ridiculous” about this situation is that the federal government gives tax subsidies to one of the most mature, profitable industries in the country. Many oil companies have little to no federal corporate income tax liability, yet they still receive taxpayer handouts, something that a supposed free market devotee like Ryan should be staunchly against.

These taxpayer giveaways are particularly egregious when it comes to the Section 199 credit which is meant for “companies that produce goods or software or undertake construction projects in the U.S.” The goal of the credit is to protect manufacturing jobs in an era where cheap labor overseas is proving irresistible to many companies, not to subsidize dirty energy. Denying just this one credit to oil and gas companies can save $13.2 billion over ten years.

Ryan’s claim that removing the subsidies will drive up energy prices is also quite dubious. According to Citizens for Tax Justice, “there is no evidence that the additional profits [from tax credits] lead the companies to explore for more oil so that they can increase the supply.” In fact, the Office of Economic Policy at the Department of Treasury has found that removing subsidies for the oil industry would affect domestic production by less than one-half of one percent.

The CNBC segment was based on a new study by economist Joseph Mason, which purported to show that cutting the subsidies would lead to a slew of job losses, as he assumes domestic production would fall drastically. The study was funded by the American Energy Alliance, whose research arm, the Institute for Energy Research, has received money from ExxonMobil and the Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation, which was founded by Charles Koch of the oil and gas giant Koch industries.

When the prospect of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy expiring on schedule is raised with Republicans, they almost inevitably claim that the expiration will disproportionately affect small businesses. Point out that fewer than two percent of small businesses make enough money to be affected if the top two income tax brackets increase, and the GOP consistently replies that the increase would hit half of small business income.

“What they propose to do is raise taxes on the top two rates, which would capture about fifty percent of small business income,” said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY). “We know that roughly half of [small business income] will be affected by the top two rates, and then you start guessing, ’cause we don’t really know, how many employees are under that,” said American Action Forum President Douglas Holtz-Eakin.

As we’ve noted before, this is a selective reading of the data, as half of net business income claimed on personal returns would be affected, which does not mean that it is all from businesses that are small. In fact, this income is largely consolidated in the hands of very wealthy individuals, some of whom are using the personal income tax system to duck the U.S. corporate tax. Here’s a closer look at some of these “small businesses” (which are mostly S corporations or partnerships):

– As Citizens for Tax Justice pointed out, Bechtel Corp., the largest engineering firm in the country, is an S corporation, and thus its owners file their income from the company on their personal tax returns. It is the fifth-largest privately owned company in the U.S. and had gross revenue in 2008 of $31.4 billion.

– The Tribune Company — the country’s second largest publisher of newspapers, including the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times — is also an S corporation. It actually saved $1.8 billion in taxes by not filing as a corporation.

– The average gross adjusted income of someone who receives more than half of their income from an S corporation and will be affected by the expiration of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy will be $1.1 million next year.

Also included in this pile of business income will be income earned by doctors, lawyers, hedge fund partners, corporate CEO’s that receive a speaking fee on the side, people earning book royalties, and those (like former President George W. Bush) who have passive investments in large companies that they in no way influence on a daily basis.

I spoke with Steve Wamhoff, Legislative Director of Citizens for Tax Justice, who explained that, when it comes to S corporations, 59 percent of earnings are going to the richest 2 percent (who claim more than $10 million in S corp income). Meanwhile, 80 percent of the earnings from partnerships are going to the top 1 percent (which also have receipts of more than $10 million). So, he explained “the vast majority of the receipts [for these types of businesses] are going to a very small number of entities that have receipts over $10 million.”

House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) conceded yesterday that fewer than three percent of people with any business income would be affected if the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy expire. “Obviously, the top three percent have half of the gross income,” he said. “And this is why you don’t want to punish these people at a time when you have a weak economy.”

But these are people who are doing exceedingly well (and in some cases are using the personal income tax system to duck corporate taxes). It’s not worth spending $830 billion to prevent their tax rates from going back to where they were in the 1990′s.