Since ThinkProgress first reported on the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s foreign sources of funding last week, the Chamber — and its enablers on the right and in the media — have engaged in a whitewash campaign that has deflected attention away from the core issue: that undisclosed monies from foreign entities may be improperly funding the Chamber’s political attack ads.

Yesterday on Fox Business, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) joined in when host Charles Payne asked the Minnesota lawmaker to comment on White House and Democrats’ calls for the Chamber to disclose its donors:

BACHMANN: This is about as low as it goes. It’s more than just disingenious, it’s a flat-out, patent lie. The Chamber of Commerce, who has been accused of taking foreign contributions to spend on elections, is absolutely not doing that. They have a separate political action fund and they use that only from American donors.

Watch it:

The Chamber does indeed have a political action fund. However, its PAC has so far raised $161,000 and spent only $104,000. Yet, the Chamber itself has spent more than $12 million so far this election season (and plans to spend $75 million), largely helping Republican candidates. Why is the Chamber spending so much while its PAC stays on the sidelines? Disclosure. Federal election law requires political action committees to reveal who is giving money to fund its campaign interests.

Prior to the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, the Chamber would have had to run its political ads out of its PAC, contributions to which are disclosed. But the Court’s decision allows large corporations — such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce — to spend unlimited amounts of money on political campaigns without publicizing their donors. Citizens United provided the Chamber with an end-around campaign finance law. Indeed, after ThinkProgress’s report, the Chamber not only refuses to say where the funding for its $75 million campaign comes from, but also will not prove that it separates foreign from domestic funding. “We are not obligated to discuss our internal procedures,” a spokesperson has said.

“If I was an enterprising reporter…I might ask the Chamber of Commerce to let me see their donors,” White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said today. “That seems like a pretty simple way to solve the debate…They say they take money from overseas, we know they are spending $75 to $80 billion running ads. Lets see where the money comes from to pay for those ads. There is an easy way to prove it all wrong.”

Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ) has become quite the conservative darling for refusing to raise taxes (even on millionaires) and slashing social services, while simultaneously proposing new tax cuts for the well-off. But Christie has also taken a stand against some of the economic recovery policies implemented by the Obama administration, particularly the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (i.e. the stimulus package).

“If they’re going to put strings on that money, then they’re going to tie your hands and make you expand programs, and not be able to have the freedom of choice that people elected you for, then you shouldn’t take the money,” Christie told Fox News’ Sean Hannity. “I think that it certainly helped states like New Jersey and others to not have to confront the difficult choices that we’re now having to confront. But it really just put it off,” he added at a National Governors Association meeting. “My view on it is, what it did was, at least from a personal perspective, push off the problem from the Corzine administration to the Christie administration.”

However, with his state’s Transportation Trust Fund running dry, Christie is taking full advantage of the Recovery Act to get suspended infrastructure projects back underway:

New Jersey is set to issue $1.4 billion in Transportation Trust Fund Authority bonds Oct. 13 and 14, about a week after James Simpson, the state’s transport commissioner, said the infrastructure account is “broke” and suspended 100 projects because of a lack of cash. The sale, a combination of tax-free refinancing securities and federally taxable Build America Bonds scheduled to mature in December 2027, will raise about $900 million for the trust fund.

The Build America Bonds program was created as part of the stimulus package, and entails having the federal government pay 35 percent of the interest on the bonds. As The American Prospect’s Tim Fernholz explained, Build America Bonds “is one of the most successful programs of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, spurring productive investment, job creation, and creating a more progressive and democratic method of local finance.”

This isn’t the first time that Christie has taken advantage of the Build America Bonds program, as New Jersey made a $500 million bond offering in April to finance school construction. At the time, Christie said “the sale of these bonds is a fiscally responsible way to continue to address the school-construction needs of New Jersey’s public schools.”

Christie is doing the right thing by taking advantage of the bond program to keep transportation projects funded. But he’s doing it while traipsing around the country criticizing the very bill that made those projects possible.

The financial meltdown of 2008 spurred lawmakers to crackdown on the notorious pay packages that characterized Wall Street largess. Seeking to limit the spending sprees, Congress enacted direct restrictions on compensation in the Wall Street reform law to ensure firms were responsible to taxpayers and their shareholders.

However, while excessive compensation underpinned the “irrational risk” taken by financial employees to “focus on short-term results at the cost of long-term success,” it appears that nothing has changed. According to a new Wall Street Journal survey, Wall Street firms are continuing their rapid return to pre-crisis revenue levels. In celebrating their taxpayer-assisted comeback, firms are on pace to spend $144 billion in compensation this year, setting a new record high in pay for the second consecutive year:

About three dozen of the top publicly held securities and investment-services firms—which include banks, investment banks, hedge funds, money-management firms and securities exchanges—are set to pay $144 billion in compensation and benefits this year, a 4% increase from the $139 billion paid out in 2009, according to the survey. Compensation was expected to rise at 26 of the 35 firms[...]

Overall, Wall Street is expected to pay 32.1% of its revenue to employees, the same as last year, but below the 36% in 2007. Profits, which were depressed by losses in the past two years, have bounced back from the 2008 crisis. But the estimated 2010 profit of $61.3 billion for the firms surveyed still falls about 20% short from the record $82 billion in 2006. Over that same period, compensation across the firms in the survey increased 23%.

It is important to note that the methodology of the survey was not published and this year’s compensation may not constitute a record if you aren’t comparing that sum to total Wall Street pay in 2007. However, the study does highlight that, while Wall Street profits are down 20 percent from pre-crisis levels, firms have actually increased pay by 23 percent. And, in surveying bankers and finance professionals’ expectations for bonuses, 50% expect an increase in bonus pay from last year. Banks may also skirt the Bush tax cut expiration to ensure employees can still take home a large compensation.

As CBS’s Jill Schlesinger points out, this pay scheme “will no doubt drive folks on Main Street crazy because they will rightly feel banks” are “back on track, while the rest of the country is left grappling with sagging home prices and retirement accounts that are far from their pre-crisis highs.”

Indeed, while Wall Street bonuses alone “run to millions of dollars for top staff,” the average income for the American worker is $68,914. And, according to a recent survey, 43% of American workers now have less than $10,000 in retirement savings and only 16% percent said “they have confidence in their ability to save enough for a comfortable retirement.” Despite the advice of most financial experts, a record number of people are also making hardship withdrawals from their retirement accounts because “taking loans and hardship withdrawals from their company-sponsored retirement accounts may be the only source of savings they have to bridge the growing gap between their earnings and the cost of living during the economic downturn.” On top of retirement trouble, Americans are facing record numbers of foreclosures and harassment at the hands of the same banks that engineered the housing crisis.

But, according to Wall Street firms, the average American worker and the executive “top talent” have very different worth. “The pay scale for Wall Street is different [from] the pay scale for America,” said one financial lobbyist. “I don’t think the issue is a dollar amount. It’s being paid what you’re worth.”

Before Congress adjourned for its current recess, Republicans refused to approve funding to implement the Dodd-Frank financial regulatory reform bill, the first real volley in the Republican push to prevent tighter regulations from coming on-line. The main focus of Republican ire has been the newly-created Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, but many Republicans have made no secret of their desire to repeal the entire Dodd-Frank bill, sending the regulatory system back to 2008.

And the GOP’s zeal for repeal has led to an inflow of cash from Wall Street:

Financial firms have given Democrats a cold shoulder since President Barack Obama signed the financial reform legislation in July, says Dave Levinthal of the Center for Responsive Politics, which monitors election funding sources. “Wall Street-related contributions took a dramatic shift towards the Republicans since the beginning of this year and it is no irony that financial regulatory reform was heating up at the same time,” Levinthal said. According to the center’s study, Republican candidates received 34 million dollars in donations from the finance, insurance and real estate sector since January compared to 23 million dollars given to Democrats.

“Our target ratio for the 2010 cycle is 80-20 Republican,” said Karen Klugh, spokeswoman for the American Financial Services Association, which represents some of the biggest financial behemoths in the country.

Part of this shift, of course, is Wall Street betting that Republicans will take over the House, which is a large part of the reason the Street’s donations migrated to Democrats in the last few years. But with their campaign coffers being filled by the banks, House Republicans are intensifying their attacks on Dodd-Frank. Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-TX), one of the top Republicans on the House Financial Services Committee, promised to defund “portions of it,” particularly the Consumer Protection Bureau, which he said “assaults the liberties of the consumer.”

Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-AL), who is in line to inherit the Financial Services gavel should Republicans take control, said that if the GOP takes the House, “the administration will no longer receive a pass when it comes to aggressive oversight of their failed economic policies, and that includes extensive review of all the job-killing provisions in [Dodd-Frank].” It’s unclear what Bachus views as job-killing, but some of the regulations are necessarily going to cut into Wall Street’s profits, as banks will no longer be able to freely trade with federally insured money.

Investing in a new regulatory scheme requires some up-front money and giving the regulatory agencies the ability to implement rules aimed at reining in some of Wall Street’s riskiest practices. But Republicans want to render Dodd-Frank toothless, and leave Main Street right where it was pre-2008: at the mercy of Wall Street’s money-making machine.