Yesterday, President Obama’s fiscal commission released its final report, which the full commission will vote on tomorrow. The report needs to receive approval from 14 of the 18 commission members to move forward, and thus far nine have said that they will vote in favor of it (the co-chairs, Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson; Sens. Judd Gregg (R-NH), Tom Coburn (R-OK), Mike Crapo (R-ID), and Kent Conrad (D-ND); Honeywell CEO Dave Cote; Former Young & Rubicam Brands CEO Ann Fudge; and Brookings Institute Fellow Alice Rivlin).

In its report, aside from the regressive Social Security cuts that they decided to suggest (even though Social Security can’t add to the national debt), the commission’s co-chairs also proposed a dramatic rewrite of the nation’s tax laws. The proposed changes include slashing the corporate tax rate and lowering income tax rates after eliminating lots of credits and deductions from the tax code.

But in their quest for budget balance, the co-chairs left some tax ideas on the table that would mitigate the need for the large discretionary spending cuts that they also propose. These ideas would not only help reduce the deficit, but would make the U.S. economy more stable and fair:

– Financial Transactions Tax: In addition to raising revenue, a tiny, fraction of a cent fee on financial transactions like stock trades would slow down some of the hyper-trading that has been popularized recently by Wall Street, but that has no societal benefit. The tax would discourage some excessive speculation and high-frequency trading, but even assuming a 25 percent reduction in trading volume, the tax could still generate about $265 billion in revenue per year. Last year, House Democrats said a transactions tax was “very much” on the table for deficit reduction — and it should be.

– Bank Tax: The Obama administration has already proposed a Financial Crisis Responsibility Fee — which would be assessed on the biggest banks, in accordance with their riskiness — but the idea has gone nowhere in Congress. Besides raising revenue, such a tax would help level the playing field between large and small banks by making it more expensive to be a large, interconnected firm (offsetting some of the funding advantages that such size conveys). The Congressional Budget Office has said that a bank tax would “improve the competitive position of small- and medium-size banks, probably leading to some increase in their share of the loan market.”

– Carbon Tax: As Brad Johnson noted when the commission’s co-chairs released their first report, “Nowhere in their discussion of the prospects for the next generation did they mention the challenge of global warming, nor did they integrate climate policy into their economic suggestions.” Implementing some sort of carbon tax both raises revenue and helps combat the effects of climate change. Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) — a member of the commission who opposes its final report — released her own deficit reduction plan that raises $52 billion by implementing a cap-and-trade system.

As Paul Krugman put it, the debt commission’s report is really “a compromise between the center-right and the hard right,” so it’s not super surprising that none of these ideas made an appearance. But they are realistic ways to raise revenue and avoid some of the draconian cutting measures that the commission preferred.

The Nigerian government will charge former Vice President Dick Cheney in a massive bribery case involving $180 million in kickbacks paid to Nigerian lawmakers, who awarded a $6 billion natural gas pipeline contract to Halliburton subsidiary KBR when Cheney was running the company. Godwin Obla, prosecuting counsel at the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, said indictments will be lodged in a Nigerian court “in the next three days,” and an arrest warrant for Cheney “will be issued and transmitted through Interpol.”

KBR already plead guilty in the U.S. last year in relation to the bribery scheme, and along with Halliburton agreed to pay a $579 million settlement. “This bribery scheme involved both senior foreign government officials and KBR corporate executives who took actions to insulate themselves from the reach of U.S. law enforcement,” said Acting Assistant Attorney General Rita M. Glavin of the Criminal Division at the time. Cheney was indeed a “KBR corporate executive” at the time, but was not specifically charged. The case revolves largely around the actions of London lawyer Jeffrey Tesler, who maintained strong connections with the Nigerian government and was hired by Halliburton subsidiaries to funnel money to them in order to obtain lucrative contracts. Halliburton Watch explains the Cheney connection:

[In June 2004], Halliburton fires Albert Jack Stanley after investigators say he received $5 million in “improper” payments from Mr. Tesler…. Halliburton spokesperson, Wendy Hall, said that during the years he ran KBR, Mr. Stanley reported to David Lesar, Halliburton’s president and chief operating officer at the time and CEO today. Mr. Lesar reported to Mr. Cheney when Cheney was chief executive…. According to the Dallas Morning News, “Mr. Cheney ran Halliburton when one of four suspicious payments occurred.” [...]

The Wall Street Journal reports on newly disclosed evidence by Halliburton, including notes written by M.W. Kellogg employees during the mid-1990s in which they discussed bribing Nigerian officials. The Financial Times of London said the evidence “raises questions over what Mr Cheney knew – or should have known – about one of the largest contracts awarded to a Halliburton subsidiary.”

A Cheney spokesperson told Reuters he had no comment, but would later today. It is important to note that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce — of which Halliburton is a member — recently lobbied to weaken an important U.S. law that “stops American-based multinational firms from bribing foreign governments in order to win special business advantages,” as ThinkProgress detailed in October.

On Monday, President Obama announced that he’d like to see Congress implement a two-year freeze in federal employee pay. “The hard truth is that getting this deficit under control is going to require broad sacrifice. And that sacrifice must be shared by the employees of the federal government,” Obama said.

Obama’s proposal was rightly panned by everyone except Republicans, who criticized the President for not going far enough. “Without a hiring freeze, a pay freeze won’t do much to rein in a federal bureaucracy that added hundreds of thousands of employees to its payroll over the last two years,” said incoming Speaker of the House Rep. John Boehner (R-OH). On Fox News this morning, Sen.-elect Rand Paul (R-KY), as well as his father, Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX), relied on a series of false characterizations to call for not only freezing pay for federal employees, but cutting it:

Well, you know, if you look at the statistics recently and you look at total compensation of federal employees, they’re making almost twice what the private sector employees are making. It’s $120,000 average total compensation for federal employees, over twenty percent of federal employees make over $100,000 a year now, so I agree with my dad, we need to cut their pay, not just freeze their pay. We need to cut their pay and approach back to what the private marketplace is paying.

Watch it:

As my colleague Zaid Jilani laid out in today’s Progress Report, the freeze was already an awful combination of bad policy and bad politics that saves little money, harms the economy, and was done without extracting any concessions from Republicans. It buys into a false conservative narrative regarding overpaid federal employees that has little basis in reality. And Paul’s statements are even less factual.

At first blush, federal employees do make more than private sector employees, but that is only because federal employees, on average, are higher educated, and there are very few low-skill, low-pay federal jobs (while such jobs drag down the private sector average). According to data from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, federal workers actually earn 22 percent less than their counterparts in the private sector. Research by Harvard economist George Borjas shows that, at the top-end, private sector pay is so much better that the public sector has “found it increasingly more difficult to attract and retain high-skill workers.”

And while Paul is more than willing to slice pay for federal workers, he is far more reluctant to cut federal payments to doctors (a profession he conveniently shares). “Physicians should be allowed to make a comfortable living,” he says, when the prospect of such cuts is broached.

The federal government is in the process of implementing both health care reform and financial regulatory reform, which requires highly-skilled, motivated workers. The government also needs to attract highly-skilled individuals to, among other things, inspect oil rigs and staff VA hospitals. But Paul is more than willing to cut their pay, while leaving payments to those in his chosen profession, including himself, untouched.

Read more in today’s Progress Report, “Freezing Hope.”

ThinkProgress intern Riley Waggaman contributed research for this post.

During the 2008 Presidential campaign, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) praised the Irish economy for its low corporate tax rate and said that if the U.S. would just follow suit, companies would “be able to create jobs, increase your business, make more investment.” And McCain was far from the only conservative making the “Celtic Tiger” argument that Ireland’s low tax rates were a shining, successful model of conservatism in action. Some examples:

– Dan Mitchell (then of the Heritage Foundation, now at The Cato Institute), July 2002:

Ireland already has shown that tax cuts are a recipe for prosperity. Thanks to Reagan-style tax-rate reductions, including a corporate income tax rate of just 10 percent, Ireland has become the “Celtic Tiger” and is now the European Union’s second richest country.

– Sean Dorgan, The Heritage Foundation, June 2006:

While economic success over the past 15 years can be ascribed to a range of domestic and international factors, it was not a fluke. Ireland has long had, and intends to sustain, low tax rates to attract investment. Its current 12.5 percent corporate tax rate evolved from the zero rate on export sales in the 1950s and the 10 percent rate on manufacturing and some internationally traded services introduced in 1980.

– Chris Edwards, The Cato Institute, March 2007:

However, the key to Ireland’s success has been its excellent tax climate for business. In 1980, Ireland established a corporate tax rate for manufacturing of just ten percent. That low rate was subsequently extended to high-technology, financial services, and other industries. More recently, Ireland established a flat 12.5 percent tax rate on all corporations — one of the lowest rates in the world, and just one-third of the U.S. rate. Low business tax rates have helped Ireland attract huge inflows of foreign investment.

– Jurgen Reinhoudt, American Enterprise Institute, October 2007:

The real credit belongs to Irish fiscal policy. Beginning in the late 1980s, successive Irish governments pursued vital spending cuts and tax relief…At present, Ireland has a 12.5 percent corporate tax rate, which has made it a magnet for powerhouse firms.

– Former Gov. Mitt Romney (R-MA), FOX News, January 2008:

MITT ROMNEY: Well, you know, the — the experience of other countries in the world is some guide. You take a nation like Ireland, for instance. They cut their tax rate. I believe it’s less than half of the tax rate in most of the other European nations. And they have become — well, they have moved from a basket-case economy to a booming economy. Jobs have been flowing into Ireland.

– Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and Sean Hannity, FOX News, October 2008:

MCCAIN: No. But you know what, Sean? You’re going to go on my first overseas trip. And I think it might be to Ireland.

HANNITY: Listen, you were right about their tax rates. They did lower tax rates on businesses and it’s been a big economic boom for them.

But now that Ireland’s economy has crashed down around it, those on the right are claiming that Ireland’s woes are due to big government run amok. As Jonathan Chait mocked, “Sadly, the Irish fiscal crisis has prompted a quick realization [amongst conservatives] that Ireland was not actually the free market state we thought it was”:

– Dan Mitchell, Cato Institute, November 2010:

There are lots of lessons to learn from Ireland’s fiscal/economic/financial crisis. There was too much government spending. Ireland also had a major housing bubble. And some people say that adopting the euro (the common currency of many European nations) helped create the current mess.

– Nicole Gelinas, The National Review, November 2010:

A big reason for Ireland’s current sub-crisis is that in the fall of 2008, the nation guaranteed all of its bank liabilities. This fateful choice was not a market decision, but a government one. One could make the case that had Ireland let its bank bondholders go, as Iceland did, Ireland would be better off today. Unlike Greece, Ireland has competitive tax rates, an English-speaking population, and a workforce that desires work.

– Margot Crouch, The Heritage Foundation, March 2010:

One of the reasons for the flight of companies from Ireland and other European nations is the potential for a common tax base across the European Union which forced Ireland to raise its taxes on businesses significantly to be more consistent with high-tax European norms.

– Reihan Salam, The National Review, November 2010:

Let me say that I’m quite willing to believe that an excessively progressive income tax in Ireland exacerbated underlying political economy problems.

Though far from being the sole cause of Ireland’s economic calamity, its very low-tax environment turned it into a favorite tax haven and led to an influx of “business” that wasn’t really business at all: it was just companies like Google shuffling paper through Ireland to dodge taxes.

Ireland then experienced the same housing bubble that plagued both the U.S. and mainland Europe, and its banks, the biggest of which were twice the size of the nation’s GDP, went bust. As Peter Boone and Simon Johnson wrote, “Simply put, the Irish miracle was a mirage driven by clever use of tax-haven rules and a huge credit boom that permitted real estate prices and construction to grow quickly before declining ever more rapidly.”

Now, Ireland is undertaking draconian austerity measures, including raising personal income taxes by 1.9 billion and cutting the minimum wage, in order to receive an 85 billion bailout. So as Fortune’s Dan Primack wrote, “Got to wonder if McCain would like to recall his original message, or if he still considers Ireland to be the beacon of federal tax policy. And, if the latter, I’d assume he also believes that raising personal income taxes [is] a smart way to deal with staggering budget deficits.”

Cross-posted on ThinkProgress.