Earlier this week, One Wisconsin Now revealed an alleged voter suppression plot designed to disenfranchise minorities, students, and others in heavily-Democratic areas of the state. At the center of this apparent “voter caging” operation that we reported on yesterday is the Wisconsin chapter of Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity. While the allegations of potentially illegal conduct leveled against Americans for Prosperity, the Wisconsin Republican Party, and other tea party groups are extremely serious, a ThinkProgress investigation reveals an even larger and more insidious effort by Koch-backed groups to tamper with the democratic process.

While a federal crime, the most essential voting issues, from registration and eligibility to specific early and Election Day voting procedures, are largely governed by state law. Even before becoming involved in the apparent plot to suppress the vote in Wisconsin, a web of Koch-backed groups played a key role earlier this year in defeating a proposed Wisconsin law that included numerous voter protection measures—including significant penalties for efforts to unlawfully challenge and intimidate voters. In fact, those at the center of the alleged voter suppression plot were caught on tape in June admitting that they could only proceed with their so-called “Election Observer Program” because they had successfully blocked the Voter Protection Act from passing earlier in the spring:

“And since the voter law did not get passed this year that could hit you with $100,000 and three years for unsuccessfully challenging a voter, we can still do this,” said Tim Dake, a prominent tea party member with the Wisconsin GrandSons for Liberty, the group that provided cover for Americans for Prosperity and the Wisconsin GOP by agreeing to be the public face for the campaign.

“Hallelujah,” shouted an unidentified meeting attendee in response.

“Yes, everybody gets to take credit for that,” replied Dake, before decrying early voting and detailing purported instances of voted fraud committed by individuals with Vietnamese surnames.

Tellingly, the Voter Protection Act provision that Dake references only criminalizes acts that “make use of or threaten to make use of force, violence, restraint, or any tactic of coercion or intimidation in order to induce or compel any person to vote or refrain from voting or to refrain from registering to vote at an election.” It also put in place less severe penalties for attempting to prevent someone from registering or voting “based upon fraudulent, deceptive, or spurious grounds or information.” If the goal of their “Election Observer Program” was simply to weed out ineligible voters and notify the proper authorities of any issues—rather than the deliberate use of intimidation and other tactics to suppress votes—it’s unclear why Dake and his compatriots would have been concerned about this provision or considered it an impediment to their plans.

Whether they were concerned about the bill’s voter protection provisions, numerous other provisions designed to make it easier to register to vote and to vote early or absentee, or the provision that implemented a federal law that makes it easier for military voters—including troops serving overseas—to cast ballots, right-wing activists derided it as the “Voter Fraud Protection Act,” an ACORN-Style Election Fraud Act,” and the “election deform bill.”

Regardless of the exact source of their concerns, a network of Koch-backed groups swooped in earlier this year and succeeded in killing the bill. Here’s a look at the key Koch-backed players that pushed for the defeat of the Voter Protection Act: Read more

Back in June, even with his state facing a $10 billion budget shortfall, Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ) vetoed a tax increase for millionaires, deriding the proposal as a “cute idea” that “doesn’t work.” He then set about slashing New Jersey’s budget to ribbons, including cutting the Earned Income Tax Credit and homestead rebates to such an extent that he increased taxes on the middle class.

Now, Christie has a new plan for getting his state’s finances under control that involves raising the retirement age and cutting retirement benefits for public-sector workers, including ending cost-of-living adjustments for current retirees (which amounts to a benefits cut). But at the same time, Christie is ready to blow a new hole in his state’s budget, as he told Bloomberg Radio that he hopes to implement a cut in the state’s top marginal income tax rate in the next year or two:

“We’ve got to do that,” said Christie…“You can’t be competitive when your top marginal rate is three times your neighbor.”

The 9 percent top marginal tax rate in New Jersey only applies to those making $500,000 or more annually, and because it’s a marginal rate, it is only levied on income in excess of that amount. The median income in New Jersey is about $69,000, so someone subject to the highest rate is making about seven times more than the median household.

It’s understandable that Christie is making budget cuts to deal with the effects of the Great Recession (though I think he made some bad choices), and it also makes sense that he is looking to reform his state’s pension system, which is badly underfunded. But to do so while simultaneously cutting taxes for the state’s most well-off residents is the height of fiscal irresponsibility. The Newark Star-Ledger’s Editorial Board took Christie to task for the proposal on those grounds:

Think about those priorities. Middle-class families just lost their property tax rebates. Schools lost nearly $1 billion in funding, their biggest hit ever. Thousands of working poor families were closed out of health care programs. And our colleges and universities were whacked hard, forcing tuition hikes as the state scholarship programs run dry. The governor said those cuts were necessary because the state’s vaults were empty. He was the guy telling us to live within our means, to face hard realities. And now this — a tax cut that would blow a new hole in the budget.

The Gloucester County Times also weighed in, saying Christie “ought to suspend his supply-side tax policy freight train long enough to examine the consequences.” But with his proposal, Christie is simply confirming what we already knew: Republican concerns about deficits evaporate when they see an opportunity to cut taxes for the rich.

A bevy of Republican lawmakers and strategists — including self-styled “Young Gun,” Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) — have recently taken to denying that the Republican agenda includes privatizing Social Security. Of course, plenty of Republicans have proposed doing just that, and in McCarthy’s case, his own book promotes a privatization plan.

Republicans are so desperate to avoid using the word privatization, in fact, that they are even claiming that the two highest-profile privatization plans — former President George W. Bush’s plan and Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) Roadmap for America’s Future — wouldn’t actually privatize Social Security:

“I would argue that Bush’s plan is not privatization, and the road map is not privatization,” said Texas Rep. Michael Burgess, another co-sponsor of the road map measure. “Call it what you will. I would prefer people think about it as giving people options and choice. Right now, you have one option and one choice.”

Road map co-sponsor and Republican Study Committee Chairman Tom Price of Georgia avoided using the word “privatization” when talking about Social Security, saying it only to accuse Democrats of misusing the term. “When you hear folks talk about privatization of Social Security, then it’s simply political demagoguery meant to divide people instead of fostering a sober, reflective discussion,” he said.

Let’s go straight to the source, shall we? In describing his plan, Bush said he wanted to “give younger workers the option, at their choice, of being able to manage some of their own money in the private sectors.”

Lest there be any mistaking it, he said during a different appearance that “our plan says, we’re going to keep the promise to our seniors, but we’ll allow younger workers at their choice to invest some of their own money in the private markets.” Bush even used the word “privatization” himself, though he later denied it.

For Price and Burgess to claim that Ryan’s Roadmap isn’t a privatization plan shows that they’re either willing to mislead people about a proposal they’re co-sponsoring or that they simply haven’t read the plan. The Roadmap clearly touts “the creation of personal investment accounts” that are “the property of the individual.” (Emphasis in the original document.) In fact, Ryan writes that a selling-point for his plan is that it will allow many people “to join the investor class for the first time.”

It was those who favored privatization that came up with the phrase in the first place, and then sought desperately to relabel it once it became clear that the word “privatization” scared people. As Paul Krugman put it, “the right discovered that ‘privatization’ polled badly. And suddenly, the term was a liberal plot.” But while they may shift their vocabulary, Republicans are not changing the substance of their agenda.

Tomorrow, House Republicans are planning to release the latest version of their Contract With America, modeled off the 1994 document of the same name. The plan will reportedly call for repealing the Affordable Care Act and the Dodd-Frank regulatory reform bill, as well as a full extension of the Bush tax cuts.

An open question is whether the Contract will be honest regarding the Republican desire to cut and privatize Social Security. Of course, plenty of Republicans have proposed such a move, including House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) and Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-TX), but a host of GOP talking heads have insisted that the party wants to do no such thing.

Evidently Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) — one of the GOP’s self-styled “Young Guns,” who will also be appearing at the Contract’s unveiling — isn’t clear on the party’s Social Security stance either. During an interview with the Wall Street Journal, McCarthy insisted that “no one has a proposal up to cut Social Security”:

The other fact is, no one has a proposal up to cut Social Security. It’s about protecting it. They try to claim that it’s about privatizing. No, it’s about making it the same option you have for federal employees right now.

Watch it:

Not only is McCarthy oblivious to his own leader’s plans — or to the pronouncements of Republicans like Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), who wants to “wean everybody off” Social Security entirely — but he also seems to have not read the book he just released with Reps. Eric Cantor (R-VA) and Paul Ryan (R-WI). The book — “Young Guns: A New Generation of Conservative Leaders” — features Ryan’s Roadmap for America’s Future, a budget plan that drastically cuts Social Security:

The Ryan plan would cut traditional guaranteed Social Security retirement benefits substantially compared to the benefits now scheduled to be paid. Much of the reduction would stem from the adoption of what is called “progressive price indexing,” which would reduce the benefits of future retirees except for the bottom 30 percent of wage earners. For the average new retiree, defined benefits would be reduced by about 16 percent in 2050 and about 28 percent in 2080. Reductions would be greater for retirees with higher earnings.

But because Ryan’s plan involves diverting funds into the creation of privatized accounts, according to the Social Security actuaries, it “requires transfers totaling $1.2 trillion [to Social Security from the general budget] between 2037 and 2056.” So McCarthy himself is supporting cuts to Social Security that don’t even guarantee the program’s solvency, or else he is disavowing the plan put forth in his own book.

Notably, Ryan is not scheduled to appear at the Contract unveiling, confirming that many in the Republican leadership are hesitant to publicly tie themselves to his proposals.