Our guest blogger is Karla Walter, Senior Policy Analyst with the American Worker Project at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

New York City residents are gearing up to support a bill ensuring that when businesses get taxpayer dollars to invest in the city, they give back good jobs to the community. New York City is home to some of the nation’s largest development deals, and the City Council is considering the Good Jobs Bill, which would ensure that when developers receive those city subsidies, building services workers (such as security guards, janitors, and maintenance workers) at those sites are paid family-supporting wages.

The bill has the backing of more than 30 council members, but Mayor Bloomberg is withholding his support and his administration is claiming that wage standards could hurt the city’s economy:

“It’s quite broad and it affects basically everything the city does,” said Tokumbo Shobowale, chief of staff to Deputy Mayor for Economic Development Bob Lieber. “Rather than do harm, we prefer the deliberative approach,” he added. The administration would rather the City Council hold off on any wage requirement mandate until it conducts a living wage study, which it is scheduled to complete in 2011.

A new report from the Center for American Progress Action Fund’s American Worker Project refutes these claims and gives fact-based ammunition to supporters of wage standards. In the largest study of its kind ever conducted — looking at more than 20 years of data across 31 cities — the report finds that business assistance wage standards have no negative impact on employment levels:

Our estimates indicate that passage of a business assistance living wage law has no measurable effect on citywide employment. Employment levels are unaffected in low-wage industries as is employment in industries likely to be targets of economic development subsidies and in firms that are sensitive to the perceived business climate of a city. This suggests that business assistance living wage laws are unlikely to have direct, direct spillover, or indirect effects on employment levels. These findings discredit the primary arguments used by opponents of business assistance living wage laws that these laws are harmful to employment in direct and indirect ways.

New York is not alone in this important public debate on whether to link job creation programs with job quality standards. State and local governments spend $50 billion every year to entice private businesses to invest in their communities, financing developments such as sports arenas, high-tech manufacturing zones and big-box retail. The idea is that this public investment will spark job growth and build a sustainable local economy. But these public funds often help create low-quality jobs that pay poverty wages and provide no benefits.

Cities across the country are recognizing this problem and adopting wage standards to make sure that when businesses receive subsidies, they pay family-supporting wages. Wage standards proponents are right: job quality and job quantity can and should go hand in hand.

Yesterday, Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) — who has been serving as House Republican Conference chairman and is being touted as a possible 2012 Presidential nominee — gave what his office promoted as a “major economic speech” at the Detroit Economic Club. At the best of times, Pence has a very tenuous grasp of economic reality, but he still believes that he has the recipe for fixing the country’s long-term deficit: a spending limit amendment to the Constitution. During his speech, Pence invoked former President Reagan to promote his idea for this new constitutional amendment:

For my part, I believe the answer is a Spending Limit Amendment to the Constitution. Since World War II the federal government has operated on an average of just under 20 percent of gross domestic product. But, in the past three years, federal spending has climbed to nearly 25 percent of GDP. Left unchecked, and accounting for no new programs, federal spending will reach 50 percent of GDP by 2055. We should remember what Ronald Reagan said, “No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size.” We must have a mechanism that forces Washington as a whole to make the hard choices necessary to reform our nation’s addiction to big spending and unsustainable entitlements.

Pence then appeared on CNBC to reiterate his support for spending cap amendment. Watch it:

But over at Capital Gains and Games, Bruce Bartlett — who served as an economic official under both Reagan and President George H.W. Bush — blasted Pence as “not ready for prime time” because of his amendment proposition:

I just want to call attention to Pence’s ultra-gimmicky plan for dealing with the deficit: a constitutional amendment limiting federal spending to 20 percent of GDP. No need to spell out spending cuts or anything politically unpopular, just let the Constitution do all the dirty work. What a total crock.

Pence does have an awfully hard time identifying any actual spending cuts he would make in the budget, so proposing a constitutionally mandated spending cap is indeed a convenient way to pretend to be serious about the deficit without getting into actual substance. A cap like the one Pence envisions is totally unworkable for a variety of reasons, including: our imprecise GDP measurements (which would make assessing the dollar amount allowed under the cap very difficult); large and very obvious loopholes that could be exploited by Congress to circumvent the cap; and a complete lack of enforceability.

For someone who invokes the sanctity of the Constitution so often, Pence seems pretty cavalier about changing it to suit the political moment. And at the end of the day, proposing this sort of blunt budget instrument does nothing but provide Pence with a nice talking point that he can parrot to cover for his lack of actual, constructive ideas.

Unless Congress acts today, unemployment benefits will expire for 2.5 million Americans, with unemployment above nine percent and five unemployed workers competing for every available job opening. If Congress, as expected, does nothing, this will be first time in the last forty years that benefits have expired with unemployment so high.

According to calculations by the Congressional Budget Office, Moody’s Economy, and myriad other economists, unemployment benefits are the single best way to pump money into the economy and generate economic activity, as the unemployed are very likely to spend all of the benefits they receive (thus moving money into local businesses). But during an interview with MSNBC’s Mike Barnicle today, Rep. John Shadegg (R-AZ) scoffed at the notion that unemployment benefits help the economy. “Unemployed people hire people? Really? I didn’t know that,” Shadegg jeered:

BARNICLE: What about the fact that unemployment benefits pumped into the economy are an immediate benefit to the economy? Immediate…

SHADEGG: No, they’re not! Unemployed people hire people? Really? I didn’t know that.

BARNICLE: Unemployed people spend money Congressman, ’cause they have no money.

SHADEGG: Aha! So your answer is it’s the spending of money that drives the economy and I don’t think that’s right. It’s the creation of jobs that drives the economy…Actually, the truth is the unemployed will spend as little of that money as they possibly can. Job creators create jobs.

BARNICLE: Have you ever been unemployed? Have you ever been unemployed?

SHADEGG: Yes, I have.

BARNICLE: What did you do with the money? Save it?

Watch it:

At the same time that he was dumping on the unemployed, Shadegg called for extending all of the Bush tax cuts without paying for them, joining a slew of Republican lawmakers who care more about tax cuts for the very wealthy than unemployed Americans about to lose the last strand of safety net that they have available.

Shadegg never managed to explain why all of the job creators he cites would create any jobs if households aren’t spending money. In that vein, MarketPlace noted today that “when unemployment checks stop, it’s felt right away by businesses like gas stations, apartment operators, and grocery stores.” And as the Center for American Progress’ Heather Boushey and Jordan Eizenga found, “the workers losing benefits have an average weekly benefit of a little over $290 per week, which translates into a total loss of about $2.5 billion dollars in benefits over December. This is equal to about one in seven dollars of the gain in retail sales seen between December 2008 and December 2009.”

Some economists estimate that allowing benefits to expire could cause economic growth to “fall by one half to nearly 1 percentage point,” as well as throw hundreds of thousands of people into poverty. “Look for homelessness to rise and food lines to get longer as we approach Christmas if the situation can’t be resolved,” says Diane Swonk, chief economist at Mesirow Financial.

While Shadegg joked that he will be unemployed come January since he is retiring from Congress, next year he will be eligible for a federal pension (if he opted for one), as he is turning 62 and served on Capitol Hill for more than five years.

While much of the attention regarding the looming expiration of the Bush tax cuts is focused on where income tax rates will be set, the 2011 estate tax rate also has yet to be resolved. As a reminder, the estate tax, which is levied on inheritance, doesn’t exist this year, but comes back next year at the 2001 level of 55 percent with a $1 million exemption (meaning the first million is passed on entirely tax-free) due to a Bush-era budgeting gimmick.

Instead of allowing that reset to occur, the Obama administration has proposed setting the estate tax permanently at 45 percent with a $3.5 million exemption. But conservatives in both the Senate and the House — led by Sens. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) and Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) — want to see a 35 percent rate and a $5 million exemption.

The Kyl-Lincoln plan to cut the estate tax would cost about $91 billion over ten years. Today, Bloomberg pointed to a Congressional Research Service report, which found that those billions would be spent to save just 0.1 percent of estates from a possible tax increase:

The Congressional Research Service says using [President Obama's] parameters in 2011 would subject 0.25 percent of U.S. estates to any tax in 2011 and generate $18.1 billion in revenue. By contrast, a 55 percent top rate, with a $1 million exclusion, would affect 1.76 percent of estates and generate $34.4 billion in revenue, the CRS said. That’s enough to fund the departments of Labor and State. The Kyl-Lincoln approach would subject just 0.14 percent of estates to any tax and generate $11.2 billion, according to the CRS.

At the 2008 level, which is slightly higher than Obama’s proposal, just 0.6 percent of deaths resulted in any estate tax liability at all. Under Obama’s plan, just 0.25 percent of estates in the country would conceivably have to pay the estate tax, but Lincoln and Kyl want to spend billions to lop another 0.11 percent off of that.

And how rich are these estates Lincoln and Kyl are working so hard to defend? Well, at the 2009 level, 62.5 percent of estate tax revenue comes from estates worth more than $20 million and another 35 percent comes from estates worth between $5 million and $20 million.

With Congress refusing to fund unemployment benefits and middle-class government workers being asked to swallow a pay freeze, spending billion of dollars on a tax break for the richest quarter percent of households in the country would be completely unconscionable. But such a move is actually on the table for the current lame-duck session.

Unless Congress acts by the end of next month, the Bush tax cuts enacted in 2001 and 2003 are set to expire, with the tax code essentially reverting to where it was under President Bill Clinton. While Democrats and President Obama have said that they want to preserve the tax cuts for the middle-class — saving $830 billion over ten years by allowing the cuts to expire for the richest two percent of Americans — Republicans have steadfastly refused to consider anything but an across-the-board extension.

The expiration of the Bush tax cuts was put into law to mask their long-term cost, and so that they could pass under budget reconciliation rules (and thus not be subjected to a filibuster). Even so, the second round of tax cuts — the Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003 — barely scraped by in the Senate.

After a tied 50-50 vote, Vice-President Dick Cheney cast the deciding aye to move the Bush tax cuts forward. And in a segment of Brit Hume’s six-hour documentary, The Right, All Along: The Rise, Fall & Future of Conservatism, which aired on Fox News this weekend, Cheney brags about how his vote was the culmination of a 30 year push to put supply-side economic theory into practice:

I became a believer. If you fast-forward, in 2003, where we cut the capital gains rate, the rate on interest, did the across-the-board cuts in the income tax, and passed by a single vote. My vote.

Watch it:

Since Hume’s documentary is basically a love letter to Arthur Laffer and supply-side economics, the Bush tax cuts are portrayed as a glorious moment in economic history. But looking at the facts distorts that pretty picture. First, following the Bush tax cuts, the country “registered the weakest jobs and income growth in the post-war period”:

Overall monthly job growth was the worst of any cycle since at least February 1945, and household income growth was negative for the first cycle since tracking began in 1967. Women reversed employment gains of previous cycles. And for African Americans, the worst job growth on record was matched by an unprecedented increase in poverty.

Under President Clinton, job creation, GDP growth, wage growth, and business investment were all stronger than they were under Bush. In fact, the only economic indicators that went up under Bush were deficits and the poverty rate. But Cheney is still crowing, as the country tries to crawl out from the economic catastrophe that occurred on his watch.

Yesterday, David Stockman, budget director under President Reagan, blasted the Republican party for creating a “theology” regarding tax cuts. “After 1985, the Republican Party adopted the idea that tax cuts can solve the whole problem, and that therefore in the future, deficits didn’t matter and tax cuts would be the solution of first, second, and third resort,” Stockman said. Indeed, it was Cheney himself who allegedly claimed that “deficits don’t matter.”

Cross-posted on ThinkProgress.

Unless Congress acts by tomorrow, 2.5 million Americans will lose their extended unemployment benefits, even though unemployment is still above nine percent and there are currently five unemployed workers for every job opening. In the last forty years, the U.S. has never allowed jobless benefits to expire with unemployment so high.

At the same time, Congress is also faced with the December 31st expiration of the Bush tax cuts. Today, in two separate interviews, Sen.-elect Mark Kirk (R-IL) tried to bolster his fiscal conservative credentials by saying that extending unemployment insurance without finding spending cuts to offset the extension would be “misguided” because of its effect on the deficit. However, Kirk also called for extending all of the Bush tax cuts, “no matter what” the effect on the nation’s budget:

KIRK: We should extend the Bush tax cuts and make sure we don’t have a double-dip recession. And I have the honor to be the first of ninety-five new Republicans, fiscal conservatives, to help right our ship of state. [...]

Q: The first thing you’re talking about is deficit reduction and spending. Does that mean that right now, as of today, you’d be against extending the unemployment insurance?

KIRK: That’s right. You could extend it if you found a way to pay for it. And I voted for that in the past. But these proposals to extend unemployment insurance by just adding it to the deficit are misguided.

Watch it:

Kirk actually claimed that extending benefits — which costs $60 billion for one year, or $12.5 billion for a three-month extension — would lead to a Irish-style debt crisis, while glossing over the $4 trillion cost of extending the Bush tax cuts for a decade ($830 billion of which goes to only the richest two percent of Americans). Even MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough saw through Kirk’s double-talk, asking, “if [the tax cuts] are not paid for though, do we not risk going the way, as you said, of Greece and Ireland?”

As the New York Times editorial board wrote, “opponents would have you believe that the nation cannot afford to keep paying unemployment benefits: a yearlong extension would cost about $60 billion. The truth is, we cannot afford not to…Without jobs, there is inadequate spending, and that means ever fewer jobs. A wide range of private and government studies show that unemployment benefits combat that vicious cycle by ensuring that families can buy the basics.”

Of course, Kirk is no stranger to fraudulent fiscal conservative rhetoric. During the campaign, he paired his call for massive new tax cuts with a budget-cutting plan that included only one actual spending cut, reducing the budget by less than one percent.

During the final hours of debate over what became the Dodd-Frank financial reform law, lawmakers inserted an exemption to the Volcker rule, which is meant to prevent banks from trading for their own benefit with federally insured money. Added at the behest of Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA), the exemption allows banks to invest three percent of their capital in risky hedge funds and private equity firms.

This was a lousy compromise that undermined the original goal behind the Volcker rule. Former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker — for whom the rule is named — expressed disappointment at the time that the rule had been diluted. “Allowing a bank to invest in a speculative fund goes against the very intent of the bill as we seek to define those activities that are worthy of government protection,” he has said.

And now, with financial reform no longer in the headlines, the banks are hoping to make the already weakened rule even weaker:

In comment letters to regulators studying how to implement the rule, banks are seeking laundry lists of carve-outs, including broad exceptions from what is considered proprietary trading and greater freedom to invest in private-equity firms and hedge funds…The length and breadth of the exceptions being sought run the gamut.

Specifically, Bank of New York Mellon, Northern Trust, and State Street are looking to exempt certain investments from counting towards the three percent cap.

Volcker, for his part, has been warning the regulators against watering the rule down any further. “Clear and concise definitions, firmly worded prohibitions, and specificity in describing the permissible activities will be of prime importance for the regulators as they implement and enforce this law,” he said. A group of Senators led by Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) — who was one of the Volcker rule’s biggest advocates during the financial reform debate — have also penned a letter to regulators stating that “[Congress] provided you with a clear mandate and broad authority to act. The American people are now relying upon you to fully carry out the law.”

American Banker characterized the financial services industry as desiring “so many exceptions from the Volcker Rule’s limits on risky activities that it might as well not exist at all.” If regulators give in to the industry’s demands, the rule will indeed amount to nothing.

Back in April, an explosion at the Upper Big Branch mine in West Virginia killed 29 workers, in the deadliest mining disaster since the 1970′s. Prior to the explosion, the mine, which is owned by Massey Energy, was cited for thousands of safety violations, but took little corrective action.

Under the Obama administration, the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) — which did next to nothing under President George W. Bush — has been trying to build itself back up. In addition to taking a hard line with other Massey mines, the agency “has targeted 111 mines with high rates of safety violations, simplified the path to declare a ‘pattern of violations’ that allow MSHA to mete out stronger sanctions on troublesome mines and moved to ease a backlog of disputed violations that has tied up enforcement.”

But MSHA still lacks critical powers to shut down especially dangerous mines and to subpoena documents and witnesses during investigations. The late Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV) wrote legislation addressing these concerns, but it has languished in Congress and, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the incoming chairman of the House Labor Committee doesn’t feel any urgency to get it moving:

The bill passed out of the House Education and Labor Committee on a party line vote in July but never made it to the floor. Now with Republicans taking control of the House, it likely won’t get there in the new Congress. Rep. John Kline, R-Minn., the likely incoming chairman of the Education and Labor Committee, has said he wants to wait until the investigation into the Upper Big Branch explosion is complete before legislating.

Punting on mine safety would make sense for Kline, as he has shown little but contempt for workers during his time in the House. He has voted against minimum wages increases three times, and is a top advocate of the anti-union Secret Ballot Protection Act. When the House Labor Committee held a hearing on the Upper Big Branch disaster, Kline couldn’t even be bothered to show up.

Even if the bill somehow made it out of the House, it would run into the buzzsaw of the Senate, where new members like Sen.-elect Rand Paul (R-KY) don’t believe in any mine safety regulations at all. According to Paul’s theory, mine safety rules will just magically appear, because if they don’t, “no one will apply for those jobs.”

The resurgence of the Labor Department (including MSHA) and its commitment to enforcing labor law has been one of the great successes of the Obama administration. Giving MSHA the tools to do its work effectively is critical, but it seems that such a step may no longer in the cards.

When the Supreme Court invalidated a decades-long ban on corporate spending in federal elections in their Citizens United decision, it was by the narrowest of margins — only one justice. The public is less split on the issue, however. A new poll by the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, which was provided to the Huffington Post, shows that by a double-digit margin, voters want Congress to use a constitutional amendment to overturn that decision and once again restrict corporations from directly spending on elections.

Forty-six percent of voters said that “Congress should consider drastic measures such as a constitutional amendment overturning” Citizens United, while 36 percent disagreed. Only a fifth of voters were undecided on the matter. Rep. Donna Edwards (D-MD) has already authored such an amendment, and told the Huffington Post, “I really concluded that the Supreme Court actually put the challenge out to us, here in the Congress. They said…Congress, you have no authority to regulate. And when the Court says that so directly, it only leaves us one choice.” Sens. John Kerry (D-MA) and Max Baucus (D-MT) are also behind the amendment, which enjoys the strong support of many law professors and former attorneys general.

Short of a constitutional amendment, which would require a two-thirds vote in both houses of Congress and ratification by three-quarters of the states, the DISCLOSE Act offers another possible remedy to the worst aspects of Citizens United. Today in Roll Call, Norman Ornstein of the conservative American Enterprise Institute think tank wrote a stinging op-ed calling on Republicans to support DISCLOSE:

The first is the failure of any Republican Senator to step up and support the DISCLOSE Act, to bring sunlight to the outrageous, anonymous huge funders who played a major role in the 2010 campaigns, hiding behind the cloak of 501(c)(4)s run by groups cynically manipulating weak IRS enforcement of the law. [...]

So where are the previous champions of campaign finance reform? Where is Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), whose greatest legislative accomplishment was given a sharp stick in the eye by a 5-4 decision on the Supreme Court? Where are previous supporters of reform — and professed supporters of disclosure — such as Republican Sens. Susan Collins (Maine) and Scott Brown (Mass.)? And most important, where is Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine), who has always been an independent voice, whose Snowe-Jeffords amendment to the campaign reform law was the provision most assaulted by the Citizens United case, who stood up to immense pressure from Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Republican leaders in 2002 to do the right thing?

With this kind of pressure building, PCCC cofounder Adam Green thinks it’s a ripe time for action. “It’s time to stop thinking small-bore. The solution to Citizens United is not merely disclosure, it’s to overturn Citizens United — and even last November’s Republican-skewed electorate agrees,” he told the Huffington Post.

Last week, Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) – a man ThinkProgress readers are familiar with – took to the House floor to bemoan the “insidious” tax on corporations. “We can compete with anybody,” Gohmert declared, “if you take off that insidious tax” on business. Watch it:

Gohmert’s defense of corporations are not the words of a single rogue congressman. Rather, sticking up for the big guy is an orthodoxy that pervades the Republican Party and the conservative movement. Newly-elected Gov. Scott Walker (R) of Wisconsin has pledged to repeal the state’s corporate income tax. Sen.-elect Marco Rubio (R-FL) wants to slash the federal corporate income tax. And Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) proposes completely eliminating the tax in his radical Roadmap for America.

Conservatives’ attempts to portray corporations as victims in this economy is dubious for two reasons. First, despite right-wing misinformation, American corporations actually already pay far less in taxes than those in other industrialized nations:

Source: OECD

In fact, because of tax havens and other loopholes, many mega-corporations actually pay little to no taxes. The most recent high-profile example is Google, which has used income shifting and other tactics to reduce its effective tax rate to 2.4 percent. General Electric went a step even further. The company not only avoided all corporate income taxes last year, but actually recorded a tax benefit of $1.1 billion.

Secondly, despite the myths that corporate taxes are “strangling” business, and that President Obama is “anti-business,” a report released today from the Commerce Department shows that American companies actually brought in record profits during the last quarter. With an annual profit rate of $1.66 trillion, the third quarter of this year produced “the highest figure recorded since the government began keeping track over 60 years ago.”

Still record profits are likely not enough to convince conservatives that corporations have it just fine in the U.S.. Even apologizing to mega-corporations that just dumped millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico isn’t enough. Right-wingers like Gohmert and Ryan will not be satisfied until we give tax-free status to all corporations.

Since they can’t realistically repeal the Dodd-Frank financial reform law due to President Obama’s veto pen, Republicans have been gearing up to slow down the law’s implementation by hassling regulators with hearing appearances, questionnaires, and resolutions of disapproval. To that end, Reps. Judy Biggert (R-IL) and Spencer Bachus (R-AL) sent a letter yesterday to the newly-constituted Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (which operates as part of the Treasury Department until July 2011), voicing concerns about the Bureau’s supposed lack of oversight.

The lawmakers took particular aim at Harvard Law Professor Elizabeth Warren, the special adviser to the President who is currently leading the Bureau, saying they planned to scrutinize everything she does:

“There is a clear absence of accountability and transparency” about the activities Treasury is undertaking to establish the consumer bureau, the letters said…The lawmakers signaled they planned to scrutinize Ms. Warren’s every move, writing that they “are concerned that Professor Warren will be approaching this task without any experience managing — or creating — an organization of this scale and importance.”

Bachus and Biggert asked for a response to their concerns by January 10th, and according to the Wall Street Journal, “the reports requested by the lawmakers will likely lead to hearings.”

As the Center for Public Integrity reported, Republicans have a handful of options available for slow-walking financial reform, among them “peppering agencies with letters and with oversight hearings.” And they’re keying in on Warren as the focal point of their efforts, despite her vast qualifications for the position and the lack of substantive complaints against her that the GOP has mustered.

Of course, transparency and accountability are valid concerns, and Treasury should be completely open about the process of setting up the Bureau. But since Republicans are staunchly opposed to the Bureau’s very existence, this looks more like an effort to bog its employees down in paperwork and appearances on Capitol Hill, rather than a good-faith effort at oversight.

The way in which Republicans are treating Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) chief Don Berwick is illustrative. Last week, Berwick appeared before the Senate Finance Committee to ostensibly answer questions about the agency’s progress in implementing the Affordable Care Act. Instead of using their time to ask productive questions, Republicans simply griped about how they didn’t have enough questioning time.

As more of letters like that sent by Bachus and Bigger head out the door, and the almost inevitable hearings begin to take place, we’ll be able to see whether House Republicans actually have an interest in implementing Dodd-Frank in a responsible manner, or if they’re simply intending to try crippling the ability of the Bureau to get off the ground.

Last week, top Republicans in the House and the Senate called for ending the Federal Reserve’s mandate to ensure full employment. “It is time that we work to clarify the mandate of the Federal Reserve. Providing our central bank with a clear and explicit focus on keeping inflation low will serve America better than the broader mandate approach we have today,” said Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN).

Since then, a slew of Republicans have hopped on board, criticizing the Fed’s recent policy actions, even though they represent the last option for boosting job-creation (because the GOP won’t move forward with further fiscal stimulus). “Basically the Fed is driving a car with two feet, one on the brakes and one on the gas pedal, and it’s a real jerky ride,” said incoming House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI). Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC) agreed, saying “I think the Fed should be focused on monetary policy and clearly monetary policy has an impact on unemployment, but I don’t think that should be a driving issue in their decision-making.”

On CNBC today, Corker went so far as to predict that the Fed’s employment mandate will get whittled away “in the near future“:

CORKER: I agree that we need to do some things that we haven’t been doing, but that doesn’t mean if we don’t there ought to be another body out there that acts independently if we don’t. That’s inappropriate. I think, again, I think you’re going to see a narrowing of the mandate in the near future. I think people realize it’s inappropriate. I think that’s what’s going to happen.

Q: Before 2012?

CORKER: Well, we’ll see.

Watch it:

As economist Mark Thoma summed up, “Republicans oppose fiscal policy — including things such as extending unemployment compensation and job creation initiatives to help to overcome severe conditions (though tax cuts for the wealthy are okay) — and they oppose monetary policy that tries to lower the unemployment rate. So, in essence, they oppose doing anything to help the unemployed during a recession.” And their wild concerns about inflation clash with the fact that there is currently exceedingly little inflation.

Not only does the GOP’s criticism of recent Fed actions to boost employment evince a severe lack of concern for the country’s sluggish rate of job creation, but as Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) pointed out, it also aligns Republicans with foreign central banks against American interests. “Debating American economic policy is one thing; joining in a broad attack by foreign central banks, who insist that America somehow must subordinate our own legitimate economic needs to their currency requirements, is quite another,” he said.

Over the weekend, CNN’s Ed Henry drummed up the idea that President Obama should to go to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the world’s largest right-wing big business lobby, to give a speech as a “peace offering.” The Chamber, which helped kill President Obama’s initiatives on climate change, clean energy, labor reform, and lobbied against Obama’s reforms on health care and Wall Street reform, also funneled $75 million into helping elect Republicans in the midterm elections. “It would be particularly good timing for Obama to try and set the agenda and tee up his State of the Union address later in the month, not to mention hit the reset button on his fractured relationship with the business community,” wrote Henry, eagerly cheering on the move. Yesterday, the Huffington Post’s Sam Stein confirmed that administration officials are indeed interested in reaching out to the Chamber.

However, Henry, in advocating the speech, promulgates falsehoods manufactured by the Chamber. First, Henry claims that Obama’s visit to the Chamber would help “bury the hatchet” with the “business community.” The Chamber does not represent the entire American business community — not by a long shot. Although the Chamber has misrepresented itself and claimed to represent 3 million businesses (later modified to 300,000 after a Mother Jones exposé), in reality it actually represents a small group of multinational corporations. In 2008, half of its donations came from just 45 corporate donors. In 2009, nearly half of the Chamber’s money came from a single donation from the health insurance industry trade association. Moreover, the Chamber doesn’t appear to truly care about jobs or small businesses — evidenced by the fact that the Chamber killed legislation to create millions of new clean energy jobs and expand America’s competitive advantage in clean energy technology.

As ThinkProgress has noted, journalists often give undue credit to the Chamber as the “voice for business” simply because the Chamber is an old institution, they associate it with separate and distinct local Chambers that actually represent small businesses, and because the U.S. Chamber has one of the most sophisticated media outreach programs in Washington, D.C. But the Chamber does not deserve such respect, either from journalists or President Obama. Despite the “U.S.” in the Chamber’s name, the Chamber has consistently placed the priorities of its select corporate members over the interest of the American people:

– The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has long opposed women’s rights. For example, the Chamber lobbied against Sen. Al Franken’s (D-MN) bill to allow victims of rape to file a lawsuit against their defense contractor employers. The Chamber also lobbied against the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, the Paycheck Fairness Act, and numerous other bills to address systematic gender inequality.

– The U.S Chamber of Commerce has been the driving force against consumer, worker, and public safety laws for nearly a century. This year, it lobbied against regulating BPA, a chemical found to cause birth defects and genital mutations. The Chamber has a history of fighting work place safety regulations, the Clean Air Act, the Mine Safety Act, and other fundamental programs used to strengthen American society.

— The U.S. Chamber of Commerce helped President Bush in his attempt to privatize Social Security and his drive to deregulate Wall Street. Even during President Roosevelt’s era, the Chamber lobbied against the New Deal agenda, especially the passage of Social Security. After its members helped cause the Great Depression, the Chamber still fought against regulating Wall Street as well as measures such as unemployment insurance. Chamber officials charged that Roosevelt was attempting to “Sovietize America.”

– The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is responsible for many of the policies that have made America the most unequal in terms of income/wealth distribution in the industrialized world. On tax policy, the Chamber has pushed efforts to repeal the estate tax while helping to pass the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy. Corporate tax loopholes promoted by the Chamber ensure that corporations like ExxonMobil pay zero corporate income taxes while regular American workers foot much of the Treasury’s bill. The Chamber also opposed the creation of a minimum wage, and has lobbied against nearly every increase in the federal minimum wage.

– The U.S. Chamber of Commerce doesn’t even necessarily represent American businesses. As first reported by ThinkProgress, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce recently began a fundraising program soliciting foreign corporations to give to the Chamber’s account that in turn was used to run attack ads during the midterm elections. The Chamber admitted that it fundraises from foreign donors, but has refused to reveal how it finances its political campaign expenditures. ThinkProgress noted that the Chamber has aided its foreign members by lobbying this year to kill a bill to close tax loopholes for businesses that ship jobs overseas, and has even sponsored seminars to teach businesses how to ship their jobs to places like China.

– The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has consistently sided with polluters and the fossil fuel industry. Not only has the Chamber challenged the science of climate change, but after BP’s oil spill, Chamber CEO Tom Donohue said American taxpayers should pay for the clean up.

– The U.S. Chamber of Commerce practices the politics of division and hate when it serves their corporate interests. Throughout 2010, the Chamber worked closely with hate television star Glenn Beck, who calls President Obama a “racist” who has a “deep-seated hatred for white people.” Top Chamber lobbyists met secretly with Beck at a meeting in June to plan the midterm elections, and Beck has sponsored on-air fundraisers for the Chamber. Similarly, the Chamber joined Sen. Joseph McCarthy (R-WI) to eagerly brand political opponents — like labor organizers and liberal intellectuals — as communists during McCarthy’s red scare.

– The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has worked to give corporations unfettered control of government. For instance, the Chamber successfully filed an amicus brief in the Citizens United case to roll back nearly a century of campaign finance laws. Because of the Chamber’s efforts, corporations can spend unlimited amounts in American elections. Now the Chamber is attempting to repeal legislation aimed at discouraging American businesses from bribing foreign governments.

– The U.S. Chamber of Commerce fought every attempt at health reform, from Truman to Johnson to Nixon to Clinton to Obama’s efforts to help the American people gain access to quality health care. The Chamber even tried to stop the passage of Medicare under President Johnson.

– The U.S. Chamber of Commerce often places the profits of its member companies over American foreign policy objectives. Last year, the Chamber lobbied against President Obama’s efforts to place economic sanctions on Iran. In 1941, the Chamber was one of the most outspoken opponents of intervening in World War II (Chamber officials feared that war would give Roosevelt more power and wartime spending would lead to higher deficits, then higher taxes).

– The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has a sordid history with civil rights. It opposed key planks of the Civil Rights Act, and lobbied against the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Recently, the Chamber paid for campaign advertising to help Sen.-elect Rand Paul (R-KY), who told ThinkProgress he too opposed the ADA.

If Obama chooses to address the Chamber, he should draw a line in the sand, as Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) did when he spoke to the Chamber in October. President Obama should work with any stakeholder when it serves the American people and America’s best interests. If he chooses to make peace with the Chamber, it should be on mutual terms and on policies which benefit America — not only the Chamber’s tiny clique of corporate members.

For months, Republicans in the Senate have blocked an extension of the currently expired Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) Emergency Contingency Fund, a successful jobs program that has created more than 250,000 subsidized jobs for low-income workers through grants to states.

The Emergency Fund has the support of a slew of governors — with conservative darling Gov. Haley Barbour (R-MS) saying that it provided “much-needed aid during this recession by enabling businesses to hire new workers, thus enhancing the economic engines of our local communities” — but it has been sitting idle since September, causing states to terminate or greatly scale back their employment programs.

The TANF program itself is the nation’s basic welfare program, and before departing for the weekend, the Senate reauthorized TANF while leaving the Emergency Fund on the sidelines:

The bill did not revive an emergency fund, passed as part of the 2009 economic stimulus law, that enabled states to place adults with private employers and youths in summer jobs programs. That funding expired at the end of September after Republicans blocked attempts to extend it.

“This program delivers exactly what my colleagues say they want — jobs — yet time and again, they have put up a unified wall of resistance against reinstating it,” said Sen. John Kerry (D-MA). In fact, House Republicans named the expired program as one of the first things they would cut from the federal budget (saving exactly zero dollars).

As the Washington Monthly’s Steve Benen wrote, “in a sane political world, the death of the TANF Emergency Fund would be a pretty big scandal, and Republicans would be afraid to kill an effective jobs program with an unemployment rate near 10%.” Not only was the program incredibly successful, but it is supported by a huge majority of the public, according to a new poll conducted by Hart Research Associates:

A new poll conducted by Hart Research Associates reveals strong public support for human needs programs that aid low-income and jobless Americans. The poll, commissioned by the Half in Ten campaign, shows overwhelming support for the TANF Emergency Fund, with 79 percent of respondents answering in favor of continuing this successful job-creation engine.

And this favorability is bipartisan, as the TANF Emergency Fund “receives nearly unanimous support from Democrats (90%), as well as strong support from both independents (77%) and Republicans (70%).”

The basic TANF reauthorization was a golden opportunity to extend the Emergency Fund and get a highly effective jobs program back on its feet. Instead, Congress seems content with shrugging at nearly ten percent unemployment.

Two weeks ago, the co-chairs of President Obama’s debt commission released a report proposing, among many other things, raising the Social Security retirement age. According to the co-chairs, such a move is necessary to ensure Social Security’s continuation as a program. “As you all know, Social Security runs out of money in 2037. We’re not making it up. That’s the law,” said co-chair Erskine Bowles.

This sort of rhetoric has been repeated by members of both parties, with Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) saying “We’re going to have to raise the retirement age slowly, in a slow way that doesn’t affect folks 50, 55. But this is just math. We’ve got to do some of these things.” In an interview published today in the Wall Street Journal, the next House Majority Leader, Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA), agreed:

THOMSON: Are you in favor of increasing the retirement age over the short to medium term?

CANTOR: I think the discussion has to be: There is a difference between those nearing retirement and those who are seniors right now. And those who are younger are not going to see the benefits that seniors today are just by virtue of application of the statute. The formula is such that benefits will be reduced. So if we do not do something to extend retirement age, if we do not do something formulaically in terms of the top end or the top tier of income earners, you’re not going to have this program. You’re just not going to have it. That’s reality.

The “reality” espoused by Cantor and the others actually has no basis in reality. If nothing — nothing! — is done to Social Security, it will pay full benefits until the year 2037. After that, the program is still projected to pay out 75 percent of benefits until 2084, which is close to full benefits once inflation is accounted for. There are certainly progressive changes that could be made to further guarantee Social Security’s solvency, but Cantor’s house-on-fire rhetoric is simply inaccurate.

Plus, of all the policy steps available to Social Security reformers, raising the retirement age is the most regressive, and is pushed due to a faulty understanding of America’s increasing life expectancy. Average life expectancy has been rising, but largely as a result of increases among upper income earners. Middle- and low-income workers have not seen the same increases. As the Center for Economic and Policy Research put it, “there has been a sharp rise in inequality in life expectancy by income over the last three decades that mirrors the growth in inequality in income.”

As Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman asked, “you’re going to tell janitors to work until they’re 70 because lawyers are living longer than ever?” For Cantor, the answer is clearly yes.

A handful of incoming Republican lawmakers — including Sen.-elect Mike Lee (R-UT) and Reps.-elect Jeff Denhem (R-CA) and Tim Scott (R-SC) — have said that they will not vote to increase the debt ceiling, even though the U.S. government will reach its borrowing limit early next year. “I’m going to vote against raising the national debt ceiling. We simply can’t continue to mortgage the future or our unborn children and grandchildren,” Lee said.

Plenty of Republican freshman besides these three also ran on opposition to a debt ceiling increase, and according to Rep.-elect Bill Johnson (R-OH), many of them have agreed to stick to their guns when the vote comes:

Rep.-elect Bill Johnson of Ohio said those who ran on such messages didn’t intend to reverse themselves now. “Most of us agreed that to increase the limit would be a betrayal of what we told voters we would do,” he said. GOP leaders hope to package a debt-limit vote with significant spending cuts, making it easier for Republicans to vote for it. But it isn’t clear that will be enough for many of the GOP freshmen.

Incoming Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) has been talking to the GOP’s freshmen about the debt ceiling, telling them “we’re going to have to deal with it as adults.” “Whether we like it or not, the federal government has obligations, and we have obligations on our part,” Boehner said. And he’s correct that raising the ceiling affirms that the country will pay off the debts its incurred. As the Center for American Progress’ David Min pointed out, failure to raise the debt ceiling could be disastrous:

The financial markets are on edge today, with U.S. Treasury bonds being the safe haven for most investment capital. Refusing to raise the debt ceiling would recklessly disrupt the sale and purchase of new Treasury bonds, and could potentially cause a run on outstanding Treasurys as well, as investors sought other investments. This could have catastrophic consequences for our economy as well as the economic stability of the rest of the world.

Such a move will also increase long-term deficits and debt, while cutting off Social Security and Medicare benefits for millions of seniors. But if Johnson is to be believed, many incoming Republican freshman will put that second to their Tea Party ideology.

Cross-posted on ThinkProgress.

House Republicans have made it clear that they intend to use their new majority to launch an assault on the Dodd-Frank financial regulatory reform law. Of course, due to the Democratic Senate and President, outright repeal of the law is a pipe dream, but that won’t prevent the GOP from hassling regulators as they attempt to craft rules under Dodd-Frank.

Dodd-Frank delegates much of its rule authority to regulators, so Republicans have been targeting them in an attempt to politicize and delay their rule-making activities. To that end, Bloomberg is reporting that House Republicans plan to use the Congressional Review Act of 1996 to try and cow regulators into submission:

One procedure being considered by House Republicans is a little-used “resolution of disapproval,” through the 1996 Congressional Review Act, which can be deployed to target a specific regulation. “We are committed to conducting aggressive oversight to bring the Administration’s actions to light,” said Alabama Representative Spencer Bachus, the Republican in line to be chairman of the House Financial Services Committee. “The Congressional Review Act should be a tool for Congress to use to demand greater efficiency and accountability throughout the federal bureaucracy.”

Such a move doesn’t have much chance of success, as under the Congressional Review Act, a regulation is only blunted if both congressional chambers pass a resolution of disapproval, which the President then signs. But “a threatened resolution of disapproval might force the agencies to rethink what they are doing,” said Jeffrey Lubbers, an administrative law professor at American University. “Just the fact that it hasn’t been used all that much, people notice it.”

Earlier this year, Republicans in the Senate tried the same tactic — led by Sen. Johnny Iskason (R-GA) — when the National Mediation Board approved a rule they didn’t like. Isakson couldn’t drum up 51 votes in the Senate for his resolution, but its easy to see how a resolution disapproving of a Dodd-Frank rule would sail through a Republican-controlled House.

Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-AL), the potential House Financial Services Chairman, as well as likely House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrel Issa (R-CA), have said that they will also “lean heavily on investigations and hearings to rein in parts of the new law they deem too restrictive on the banking industry.” So this is what regulators attempting to implement Dodd-Frank have to look forward to: resolutions of disapproval and constant hassling by House Republicans who, while powerless to actually change the law, can make life miserable for those trying to follow it.

Read more in yesterday’s Progress Report, “The Assault on Wall Street Reform.”

Yesterday, House Democrats finally decided that they will bring a bill to the House floor extending the Bush tax cuts for only those making less than $250,000 per year. “That is the plan,” Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) told a reporter yesterday.

The situation in the Senate is significantly muddier, however. While Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has said he will hold a vote on just extending the middle-class tax cuts as well, the prospects for passage seem dim. This because Senate Republicans have made it quite clear that they intend to vote against a middle-class only extension, holding those cuts hostage until they get an extension of tax cuts for the rich as well. During an interview with Bloomberg News yesterday, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, confirmed that this is exactly what the Republicans intend to do:

Q: The President, Democrats here, they are insisting that extend only for the middle-income Americans, those households earning less than $250,000 a year. If they put a bill on the floor that only advances that, doesn’t extend for high-end earners, is Chuck Grassley going to vote in favor of that.

GRASSLEY: No, and I don’t think any other Republican will, and there’s quite a few Democrats now that won’t. There was at least five or six Democrats back in September said that that was the wrong policy and there were forty-some Democrats in the House that signed a bill saying that that was not good policy.

Watch it:

So this is the game that Republicans are ready and willing to play: either they get an extension of the Bush tax cuts for the richest two percent of Americans, at a cost of $830 billion over the next decade, or they let the tax code reset to where it was in 2001 and everyone’s taxes go up.

And they’re being aided by Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT), who said yesterday that a full extension “would be OK,” and Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE), who said “it wasn’t a matter of who gets the tax cuts, but a matter of for how long everyone gets them for.”

When asked about the ongoing work of President Obama’s fiscal commission, Grassley warned of the current trajectory of the nation’s budget deficit, saying, “we can’t continue on that path or this generation, new generations, aren’t going to have an increase in the standard of living. He added that getting the deficit down was “the most important thing” the commission could do. Of course, one great way to get the deficit down is not spending $830 billion over the next decade to finance tax cuts for the rich.

Yesterday, the House of Representatives failed to pass a (far too short) three-month extension of unemployment benefits. If Congress does not act to extend benefits by the end of the month, 2.5 million Americans will lose their benefits, right in the midst of the holiday season.

At the same time, Congress is intensely debating whether or not to extend the Bush tax cuts for the richest two percent of Americans, at a cost of $830 billion over the next decade. Earlier this week, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) called for a permanent extension of the tax cuts for the rich, while deriding extending unemployment benefits as “some new massive spending.”

And in an interview with Minnesota Public Radio, the incoming chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, Rep. John Kline (R-MN), pronounced that extending benefits is not a priority for the incoming Republican Congress because “we can’t fund everything.” “We just don’t have the money,” Kline said:

KLINE: That’ll be a tougher lift in the 112th Congress. We’ve had unemployment benefits be extended for almost two years in some states, a little bit less in Minnesota. When you’re running a one and a half trillion dollar deficit per year, that’ll be part of the discussion as to whether that’s a priority for how we’re going to spend money. I would just reiterate what I said earlier, that the obligation for the Congress is to look at the entire budget and recognize that we’re borrowing over forty cents of every dollar that we spend, and say what are the priorities going to be. We can’t fund everything.

Q: But what do you tell those folks hanging on by a thread who really need those benefits?

KLINE: Well, they, heh, the best thing to do for them is to get the economy back on track and get businesses hiring so that they have a job that they can go to. We simply don’t have the money to keep extending unemployment benefits indefinitely. We just don’t have the money.

Listen here:

Kline also supports extending the Bush tax cuts for the rich. So in his world, $830 billion to finance tax cuts for the wealthy is fine, but $12.5 billion to extend unemployment benefits for three months is too expensive.

Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) is also a part of this crowd, supporting a full extension of the Bush tax cuts, but saying today, “we’re facing a fiscal crisis. If we’re going to choose to extend unemployment, we’ve got to find a way to pay for it.” Rep. Charles Boustany (R-LA) added, “we can both provide this help and pay for it by cutting less effective stimulus spending. That’s what we should be debating today.”

In the last forty years, the U.S. has never allowed extended benefits to expire with the unemployment rate above 7.2 percent, far below today’s rate of 9.6 percent. Plus, there are currently five unemployed persons for every job opening in the country. In fact, there are so few job openings, that even if every open position in the country were filled, four out of five unemployed workers would still be out of work. But for Kline and the other House Republicans, extending tax cuts for the rich is much higher on the priority list then ensuring that these households have an adequate safety net.

Cross-posted on ThinkProgress.