This morning, several reports said that Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) and the White House are close to settling on a level of spending cuts for the remainder of 2011. The so-called compromise would put spending $33 billion below current levels (or roughly $74 billion below President Obama’s 2011 budget request). However, Boehner said during a press conference today that “there is no agreement on numbers and nothing will be agreed to until everything is agreed to.”

President Obama has consistently said that he’s willing to meet the GOP halfway when it comes to the level of spending cuts. But if this is where the deal ultimately lands, Democrats will have come three-fourths of the way from the Obama budget to the $100 billion below that budget ($61 billion below current spending) that the Republicans passed in their bill, H.R. 1. Here’s a handy version of the situation, in graphic form:

Whether measuring reductions from current spending or the Obama budget, it’s clear that Democrats have moved significantly, while Republicans have offered nothing in return. As Center on Budget and Policy Priorities president Robert Greenstein wrote, “that’s been the story of the fiscal 2011 appropriations cycle — a story of the goal posts being moved by Republican demands for ever deeper cuts; Democrats moving toward these deeper cuts over time; and Republicans charging that Democrats have not offered enough by way of cuts.”

Still, Boehner today asserted that “we are going to fight for H.R. 1″ and all of its economically destructive cuts. Even at the “compromise” level, the cuts would undermine competitiveness and job creation, in an already weak economy.

The House Republican spending plan for the remainder of fiscal year 2011 — H.R. 1 — includes many economically counterproductive cuts that will lead to job loss and stunted growth. One of these is a provision rescinding unobligated money from the Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery II, or TIGER II, grant program. The program is designed to deliver competitive grants to states for high-need infrastructure projects.

All but three Republican senators voted for H.R.1 when it was before the Senate, and those three only voted no because they wanted even deeper cuts than those included in the bill. But three GOP senators — Sens. Olympia Snowe (R-ME), Susan Collins (R-ME) and Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) — are now taking credit for a grant to rebuild the Memorial Bridge that was provided under the TIGER II program they voted to cut:

COLLINS: “I am delighted by today’s announcement that this critical $20 million will be preserved that will help to rehabilitate a vital link for our states’ businesses and people…I particularly appreciate Secretary LaHood’s working so closely with me to expedite the process to guarantee this funding.”

SNOWE: “Snowe said she is grateful the US DOT fulfilled its commitment to the Memorial Bridge project in a timely fashion, and that completion of the bridge overhaul was not jeopardized by ongoing budget debates in Washington, D.C.”

AYOTTE: “Having been called ‘one of the worst bridges in America,’ I am pleased that paperwork issues have been resolved allowing this project to move forward. New Hampshire and Maine have already made a serious commitment to replacing Memorial Bridge, and I am glad that DOT followed through on its commitment.“

After having voted to rescind any funding left for this program, the three New England Republicans lobbied the Department of Transportation to release the funding quickly before the recissions could take place. When H.R. 1 was before the Senate, Transportation Secretary Ray Lahood warned people before the vote that approving those could put projects in peril. “We just want to make sure everybody understands that,” LaHood said.

Overall, H.R 1 “cuts funding for transportation infrastructure by 9 percent, slashing $2.7 billion from rail, $675 million from federal transit investments, and nearly $1 billion from highway investments.” Unfortunately for those trying to use America’s aged and disintegrating infrastructure, not every project will be rushed through to avoid the budget cuts that the GOP wants to implement.

Our guest blogger is Adam Hersh, an economist at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

In an op-ed in today’s Financial Times, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan proffers a back-handed criticism of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. Financial markets are too complex to regulate the way the supporters of Dodd-Frank want, and those markets basically efficient and stable anyway, the Maestro tells us:

The financial system on which Dodd-Frank is being imposed is far more complex than the lawmakers, and even most regulators, apparently contemplate. We will almost certainly end up with a number of regulatory inconsistencies whose consequences cannot be readily anticipated. Early returns on the restructuring do not bode well.

As shepherd of the US financial system from 1987 to 2006, Greenspan presided over development of the two largest speculative financial bubbles in the history of the world: the high-tech bubble of the 1990s and the real estate bubble of the 2000s. All the while, Greenspan championed the removal of any regulatory obstacles to Wall Street getting what Wall Street wants.

In retrospect, it is obvious how both Greenspan bubbles have been terribly detrimental to the US economy and the livelihoods of hundreds of millions of families here and around the world. But it was perfectly obvious to many even before the fact that the bubbles would threaten economic meltdowns, disrupting economic growth and destroying jobs, wealth, and the lives of people who had nothing to do with the financial largesse but were nonetheless swept up in the economic wreckage. Either the Maestro didn’t understand what risks an overblown, unbridled financial system posed, or he was a grossly negligent policymaker leading the world’s most important central bank.

Now Greenspan is warning that Dodd-Frank might put finance at risk because lawmakers don’t understand the complexity of the financial system they are trying to regulate. And besides, financial markets aren’t so bad:

With notably rare exceptions (2008, for example), the global “invisible hand” has created relatively stable exchange rates, interest rates, prices, and wage rates.

Thanks for the advice Maestro, but no thanks. Actually, it is well understood in the economics research that exchange rates and other financial indicators are less stable now in the age of Greenspan and financial deregulation than in previous decades, and that financial liberalization shoulders much of the blame for this development. As for stable prices and wages, we can thank conservative economic policies (pursued by Greenspan and others) promoting wage stagnation.

By Pat Garofalo and Igor Volsky

The ongoing budget negotiations between the House Republican leadership and Senate Democrats has broken down, as Republicans continue to insist that their spending bill — H.R. 1 — “serve as a starting point for all negotiations.” House Republicans “have demanded everything: not just some of their cuts but almost all of them, and not just a reduction in spending but a reduction only in the programs they don’t like,” the New York Times notes today. In fact, many are “insisting Democrats also agree to nonbudgetary riders, like ending the financing of Planned Parenthood or health care reform.”

But a closer examination of the at least 81 riders from OMB Watch reveals that many would have the opposite of the GOP’s intended effect and actually increase federal spending. For instance, a CBO analysis of Sec. 4017 of H.R. 1 — which would strip funding for any provisions in the Affordable Care Act — argues that partially defunding the law increases costs “by $3.1 billion in fiscal year 2012 and by smaller amounts in each of the fiscal years 2013 through 2021.” The same may be true for the following riders:

Sec. 4013 — Prohibits funds to the Planned Parenthood Federation of America: Planned parenthood provides services more efficiently and each dollar spent on contraception saves taxpayers multiple dollars down the line. For instance, it’s estimated that pushing contraceptive care patients from Planned Parenthood to other clinics would “cost the government an additional $174 million a year.”

Sec. 1591 — Prohibits funding for needle exchange programs: As an example, the cost to prevent a single HIV infection by needle exchange “has been calculated at $4,000 to $12,000, considerably less than the estimated $190,000 (listed in 1997 dollars) medical costs of treating a person infected with HIV.”

Sec. 4020 — Prohibits funds to take any action to effect or implement the disestablishment, closure or realignment of the US Joint Forces Command: Closing the Joint Forces Command, which “employs more contractors than troops” and which Defense Secretary Gates says is no longer necessary, could save up to $240 million per year.

Sec. 4051 — Prohibits funds for implementing a provision specific to the State of Texas in the “Education Job Fund”: This provision prevents Texas from collecting money from the education jobs bill passed last year unless it maintains its own rate of current education funding. Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX) has previously stuck federal education money into his state’s Rainy Day Fund. Blocking the provision amounts to giving Texas more than $800 million with no oversight.

Sec. 4012 — Bans funding for the Department of Education regulations on Gainful Employment: These regulations would restrict federal funding for subprime schools, many of which make 90 percent of their revenue from the federal government, while accounting for nearly half of student loan defaults.

Earlier this month, Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Tom Harkin (D-IA) insisted that riders would not be part of a budgetary agreement. “[W]e’re not going to have any riders,” Harkin told Politico. “So, that’s just not going to happen. It won’t be part of the deal.”

The House this week will vote on a bill reauthorizing the Federal Aviation Administration. The FAA has been acting without a full authorization for more than three years (and through 18 continuing resolutions). However, inserted into a bill dealing with flights into D.C.’s national airport and upgrades of air traffic control facilities is an anti-union provision meant to prevent workers from exercising their right to organize.

The provision, backed by House Transportation Committee Chairman John Mica (R-FL), would reverse a ruling by the National Mediation Board that did away with the absurd practice of counting workers who didn’t vote in union elections as having voted against the union. Since the NMB’s ruling, workers who don’t vote in union elections are simply not counted at all, just like voters who choose not to vote in elections for local, state, or federal governments.

Why would Mica want to reverse a ruling that treats union elections like any other election, including those for Congress? Perhaps because he has received far more money from transportation companies — which would desperately like to see the NMB’s ruling reversed — than from any other group in his career, according to the Center for Responsive Politics:

FedEx — which is fighting the NMB’s change tooth and nail — is one of Mica’s highest contributors. (FedEX CEO Fred Smith has said that “I don’t intend to recognize any unions at Federal Express.”) Delta is also lobbying heavily for the Republican-backed provision, even “forgoing selling seats to paying customers to fly their employees — contra stated corporate policy — to DC to lobby.”

Under the old rules, corporations were able to game union elections by including the names of former employees (some of whom were dead) on their employment rolls; of course, these employees didn’t vote and thus were counted as voting against unionization. And if the rules Mica wants to reinstate for union elections were applied to his own election, he would have lost handily:

Rep. Mica received support from 69% of the voters in his district who cast a ballot in his successful 2010 re-election campaign, amounting to slightly over 185,000 actual votes tallied for him. However, if you add the over 83,000 voters who voted against Rep. Mica to 312,000 eligible voters who did not participate, then Rep. Mica would only muster 32% of the overall total — falling far short of the majority needed for election. Rep. Mica would lose handily to the 68% of “voters” who chose his opponent or were non-participating voters whose absence was counted as a vote for the alternative.

This is a pretty clear case of Republicans doing the bidding of corporations, with no real policy rationale behind their legislation. Incidentally, Mica’s chief of staff recently left to become a lobbyist for the transportation industry.

Today, the House is voting on H.R. 839, The HAMP Termination Act of 2011, which is sponsored by Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-NC). The bill would immediately end the Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) — the Obama administration’s signature foreclosure prevention program — rescinding tens of billions of dollars in funding meant to aid troubled homeowners. This move comes despite analysts predicting that one million homes will go into foreclosure this year.

But during floor debate today, House Republicans came up with a novel reason to justify cutting foreclosure relief with the housing crisis still burning. They said that HAMP needs to be cut because Democrats haven’t yet done enough to fix it:

REP. PATRICK MCHENRY (R-NC): My colleagues on the other side of the aisle have not offered legislation to fix it when they were in the majority. And so we’re left with what is required today, [which] is to root out this federal program.

HOUSE FINANCIAL SERVICES COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN SPENCER BACHUS (R-AL): You haven’t mended it. You’re talking about mending it today. Where is your bill to mend it? Is there a bill to amend it?…You can file the bill, we’ll take a look at it, but we’re ending this failure.

Watch it:

Of course, if Republicans were actually serious about addressing foreclosures, they could suggest their own fix for HAMP. But they haven’t. To the contrary, they have opposed all foreclosure prevention efforts, including bankruptcy cramdown and the foreclosure fraud settlement that’s currently being negotiated by the nations’ attorneys general.

Undeniably, HAMP has suffered from significant design flaws and has fallen far short of the goals that the Obama administration set for it. But the answer is not to eliminate it compltely, leaving homeowners to fend for themselves. There are, instead, several fixes that could be made that would improve HAMP, including allowing housing counselors to directly approve HAMP modifications. See other recommendations here.

And if its really the cost of the program that’s bothering House Republicans, they could support Rep. Barney Frank’s (D-MA) effort to fund foreclosure prevention through a fee on the nation’s biggest banks. “I don’t mean to demonize, but I think Goldman Sachs and Wells Fargo and the Bank of America and Citicorp and Morgan Stanley and the large hedge funds, I think they can pay for this,” Frank said.

Instead of adopting any of these fixes, Republicans are simply letting the program disappear, because they believe that all federal foreclosure prevention efforts “need to stop.”

The current continuing resolution under which the federal government is operating expires on April 8, and at the moment, it seems that budget talks between House Republican leadership and Senate Democrats have broken down. Republicans want their spending bill — H.R. 1 — to “serve as a starting point for all negotiations” (even though Democrats have now upped the amount of spending cuts they’re willing to pass, alongside zero concessions from Republicans).

As we’ve noted, H.R. 1 includes debilitating cuts to programs that benefit women, children, students, and veterans. And by limiting their cuts to the non-defense discretionary portion of the budget, the GOP’s cuts disproportionately fall upon those who depend most on government programs that provide important services like education and health care.

Republicans claim the cuts are necessary to reduce the deficit, but in an interview with The Wonk Room today, Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA) noted that cuts to anti-poverty programs like the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) are “fiscally stupid” due to their potential for providing savings over the long-term:

On two levels [the cuts are] wrong. One is they’re wrong morally. We need to take care of women and children and WIC program is very important for childrens’ health and healthy babies and for healthy mothers. But on a second level it’s fiscally stupid, because if you don’t feed kids, if you don’t feed mothers and get them up to speed, they deliver a low birth-weight baby that then you spend hundreds of thousands of dollars dealing with in the premie units of hospitals.

If you get a mother healthy through the period of her pregnancy she delivers a normal baby, normal birth-weight, and the child has a decent start and it’s a lot less expensive. So if you don’t care about morals and you just want to talk about money, it’s better on the money side. That’s why what they’re doing makes no sense at all.

Watch it:

According to the Government Accountability Office, every dollar invested in WIC “generated $2.89 in health care savings during the first year after birth and $3.50 in savings over 18 years.” But this isn’t the only way in which Republican cuts could conceivably make the deficit worse: they’re also cutting programs like IRS tax enforcement (which lowers tax receipts) Title X family planning (which leads to higher Medicaid expenditures) and food safety regulations (which leads to more foodborne illness and higher health care costs).

Potential 2012 GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney earlier this month endorsed a lobbying push by multinational corporations that are trying to cajole Congress into granting them a big tax break. These corporations — many of which already have very low effective tax rates — want Congress to enact a tax repatriation holiday, allowing them to bring money they have stashed offshore back to the U.S. at a dramatically lower tax rate. Usually, money brought back to the U.S. is subject to the statutory corporate tax rate of 35 percent.

As of last night, Romney is no longer alone amongst 2012 GOP hopefuls in supporting this tax break. Former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty told CNBC’s Larry Kudlow that such a move “makes perfect sense”:

And as to repatriating foreign income, of course, Larry, we’re getting none of that now. And offering a dramatic reduction or even a holiday for repatriation makes perfect sense.

Watch it:

Pawlenty is right that, currently, money that U.S. corporations have stashed offshore is untaxed. But that’s because the U.S. tax code has the incentives completely backwards, allowing corporations to stow money offshore while still claiming domestic tax credits. This enables them to dramatically lower their effective tax rate by stashing money in tax havens.

The solution to this problem is not, as Pawlenty and Romney claim, allowing corporations to repatriate the money tax free. The corporations claim that allowing a repatriation holiday would enable them to invest in domestic operations and job creation. But Congress approved a tax repatriation holiday in 2004, and the result was corporate executives lining their own pockets and then increasing the amount of money they moved offshore, in the hopes that they could sucker Congress into approving another tax holiday sometime down the line.

The data shows that the corporations benefiting the most from the tax holiday actually cut jobs in the subsequent two years. So while a tax holiday may make “perfect sense” for Pawlenty, in terms of tax policy, it makes absolutely no sense at all.

Our guest blogger is Erica Sagrans, a writer who has spent the last six weeks in the UK. You can follow her on Twitter at @EricaS.

Following Saturday’s huge protests against government spending cuts in London, the mainstream media has latched on to a story of “anarchist rioters,” rather than place the emphasis on the large majority of overwhelmingly peaceful protesters. The demonstration attracted a diverse crowd of teachers, nurses, firefighters, parents with children, and students who marched, blew whistles, and gathered for speeches in London’s Hyde Park. But to read the next day’s papers, those in the streets were masked thugs hell-bent on violence.

While the US and international media largely ignored the demonstration, England’s right-wing newspapers had a field day. The Telegraph reported that “police fought mobs of masked thugs who pelted officers with ammonia and fireworks loaded with coins.” “RITZKRIEG,” screamed the front of the Daily Mail, with a cover article on how “extremists brought violent chaos to Central London,” the author sympathizing with Ritz Hotel visitors whose tea reservations were canceled when the hotel restaurant briefly closed during the protests.

Many British papers ran similar photos of police covered in paint, protesters smashing windows and wielding sticks, and London set ablaze with bonfires. Even the Observer reported that the “day was marred by a violent minority of anarchists who went on the rampage, smashing windows and attacking property around Oxford Street.”

While there were windows smashed and paint thrown — the result of an anarchist black bloc or those who just wanted in on the action — the largest occupation, led by UK Uncut, was carried out in the group’s typical peaceful and approachable fashion. Hundreds associated with the push took over high-end department store Fortnum and Mason, citing their owners’ evasion of £10 million pounds in taxes each year.

New Statesman columnist Laurie Penny and others made it clear the group was careful not to damage the store: “The posh sweets, however, remain untouched, as do all the other luxury goodies in the store, as protesters share prepacked crisps and squash (juice) and decide that it’d be rude to smoke indoors,” writes Penny. Watch the video of protesters in Fortnum and Mason here (UK Uncut occupation begins around 1:10):

Meanwhile, Britain’s mainstream news ran only passing coverage of police violence toward protesters in Trafalgar Square on Saturday evening after the demonstration, where some were blocked from leaving and hit with batons.

For more information, read today’s Progress Report, “London Calling.”

Gov. Pat Quinn (D-IL), unlike so many other governors across the country, decided to responsibly deal with his state’s budget gap by raising revenue to offset some of the impact of severe budget cuts. Amongst the tax increases Quinn and the Illinois legislature approved was an increase in the state corporate income tax rate from 4.8 percent to 7 percent.

In response to the tax change, the multinational corporation Caterpillar has threatened to move jobs out of Illinois. CEO Doug Oberhelman — who has hosted Republican fundraisers in his home that featured former First Lady Laura Bush — told Quinn in a letter that “the direction that this state is headed in is not favorable to business, and I’d like to work with you to change that.”

Sen. Mark Kirk (R-IL), rather than defending the choices made by the elected officials of his home state, then piled on, claiming that because of the tax increases, Illinois now has “the highest corporate taxes in the industrialized world“:

In comments before and within his address to a formal gathering of Tazewell County Republicans, however, U.S. Sen. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., blasted Gov. Patrick Quinn specifically for the increases.

Because of Quinn’s “grievous error,” Kirk said, Illinois now has “the highest corporate taxes in the industrialized world.”

Even with the increase, Illinois doesn’t have the highest corporate tax rate in the United States, much less the entire world. By increasing its corporate income tax rate to 7 percent (which is coupled with a 2.5 percent property tax), Illinois still has a lower rate than Iowa, Pennsylvania, the District of Columbia, and Minnesota, and has a rate roughly equal to that of Alaska.

But, more importantly, Illinois’ rate is only that high on paper. Much like the federal corporate income tax, Illinois’ corporate tax is riddled with loopholes and giveaways, which allow Caterpillar to drive its effective tax rate all the way down to just 1.4 percent.

Kirk has taken the side of corporations against the middle class before, but this is a particularly egregious case of going to bat for a corporation that’s holding people’s livelihoods hostage in order to preserve tax giveaways. During the 2010 campaign, Caterpillar gave Kirk $24,000 and the endorsement of its chairman, Jim Owens.

(HT: ThinkProgress reader Mitch)

Our guest blogger is Mike Elk, a freelance labor journalist and third generation union organizer based in Washington, D.C. You can follow him for more updates on Wisconsin on twitter at @MikeElk.

Last week, the New York Times reported that, despite making $14.2 billion in profits, General Electric, the largest corporation in the United States, paid zero U.S. taxes in 2010 and actually received tax credits of $3.2 billion dollars. The article noted that GE’s tax avoidance team is comprised of “former officials not just from the Treasury, but also from the I.R.S. and virtually all the tax-writing committees in Congress.”

After not paying any taxes and making huge profits, ThinkProgress has learned that General Electric is expected to ask its nearly 15,000 unionized employees in the United States to make major concessions.

This year, 14 unions representing more than 15,000 workers will negotiate a new master contract with General Electric. Among the major concessions GE has signaled that it will ask of union workers is the elimination of a defined contribution benefit pension for new employees, a move the company has already implemented for its non-union salaried employees. Likewise, GE is signaling to the union that it will ask for the elimination of current health insurance plans in favor of lower quality health saving accounts, a move the company has already implemented for non-union salaried employees as well.

In addition, General Electric may ask some workers for a wage freeze. Since the recession began in 2007, GE threatened to close plants in Schenectady, NY and Louisville, KY unless workers took wage concessions and adopted two-tier wage structure. In an interview with ThinkProgress, Mark Haller, a machinist at General Electric locomotive factory in Erie, PA, said:

The company I work for paid no federal taxes last year, but we all get these mass emails from GE asking us to call our Congressman to fund the useless, alternative GE engine for the F-35. As taxpayers, we are subsidizing the profits of this company to a huge extent and now after making the company even more profitable, they are asking us to make concessions on pensions, benefits, and perhaps even wages. You wonder why there is a jobs crisis in this country with a guy like G.E. CEO Jeff Immelt heading the President’s Jobs Commission.

In 2003, union workers at 16 different General Electric factories engaged in a strike when G.E. proposed to cut their health care. Workers are mobilizing again this year. They have planned a rally that is expected to attract 10,000 workers from all over the country at the General Electric Locomotive Factory in Erie, PA on June 4th.

While many Americans are still feeling the pain of the Great Recession in the form of unacceptably high unemployment and mounting foreclosures, corporate America has come roaring back in 2010. According to results released Friday by the Bureau of Economic Analysis, “corporate profits grew 36.8 percent in 2010, the biggest gain since 1950.”

But these numbers hide the fact that not all industries are doing well. In fact, the recent growth in corporate profits was driven almost entirely by the financial industry:

Domestic profits of financial corporations increased $57.7 billion in the fourth quarter, compared with an increase of $34.6 billion in the third. Domestic profits of nonfinancial corporations decreased $10.1 billion in the fourth quarter, in contrast to an increase of $0.3 billion in the third. In the fourth quarter, real gross value added of nonfinancial corporations increased, and profits per unit of real gross value added decreased.

The financial industry now accounts for about 30 percent of corporate operating profits. As the Wall Street Journal’s Kathleen Madigan wrote, “that’s an amazing share given that the sector accounts for less than 10% of the value added in the economy.” Before the Great Recession, the financial industry accounted for about 23 percent of corporate profits.

At the same time that it’s reaping an ever-larger share of corporate profits, the financial industry is lobbying hard against new rules in Congress that would restrict some of its activities. For instance, the banks are trying to delay (and ultimately repeal) a new rule limiting how much they can charge merchants for the use of debit cards. They have all but ended the push the enact a bank tax on the largest financial institutions, and they are fighting tooth and nail against a settlement regarding the foreclosure fraud scandal that would involve them modifying $20 billion worth of mortgages.

Several of these banks have also paid nothing in corporate income taxes in recent years, taking advantage of the byzantine corporate tax code to hide profits offshore. So, as Madigan noted, “given the latest profit numbers, it is hard for banks to cry poverty” regarding new regulations that are coming online or for having to pay homeowners to rectify past abuses.

All around the country, right-wing legislators are asking Main Street Americans to pay for budget deficits resulting mainly from a recession caused by Wall Street by attacking collective bargaining, and cutting necessary services and investments like college tuition aid and health care for the poor.

Yet at the same time, some of the country’s biggest corporations are getting away without being asked to pay anything at all. In 2009, mega corporations like Boeing and General Electric managed to avoid paying a penny in federal taxes — while also netting enormous benefits in tax benefits and subsidies.

Now, with many companies releasing their financial reports for 2010, it appears that Bank of America — the nation’s largest bank — has gone a second year in a row paying absolutely no federal corporate income taxes. In fact, not only did the company use its losses to avoid paying taxes last year, but it actually reported a tax benefit of almost a billion dollars:

After another money-losing year, Bank of America Corp. got the upper hand with Uncle Sam in 2010.

The Charlotte-based bank had no federal income tax expense for a second straight year and actually reported a tax “benefit” of nearly $1 billion. Also, the bank’s billions in accumulated losses could reduce its taxes in future years, a tax expert said.

“Bank of America takes its role as a corporate citizen very seriously, and pays taxes in accordance with all applicable laws and regulations,” bank spokesman Jerry Dubrowski said.

“If you go out and try to make money and you don’t do it, why should the government pay you for your losses?” asked Bob McIntyre of Citizens for Tax Justice when Bank of America used a similar provision in the tax code to dodge taxes in 2009. Additionally, in one state alone, Connecticut, Bank of America’s state income tax tax dodging cost the state a whopping $500 million.

Over the weekend, the UK-inspired movement US Uncut held demonstrations at Bank of America branches all over the country to protest the bank’s egregious tax dodging. In Washington, D.C., US Uncut protests shut down a major Bank of America branch in the Columbia Heights neighborhood. Watch it:

In a press release from last week, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) laid out ten corporate tax dodgers who aren’t paying their fair share and called for shared sacrifice. “We have a deficit problem. It has to be addressed,” said Sanders in a press release addressing tax fairness. “But it cannot be addressed on the backs of the sick, the elderly, the poor, young people, the most vulnerable in this country. The wealthiest people and the largest corporations in this country have got to contribute. We’ve got to talk about shared sacrifice.”

Our guest blogger is Will Straw, founder of Think Progress’ sister UK blog, LeftFootForward.org, and Associate Director for Strategic Development at the Institute for Public Policy Research.

The hundreds of thousands of teachers, nurses, firemen, students, families, environmentalists, and political activists who took to the streets of London on Saturday did so to express their support for an alternative to the failing economic policies of the Conservative-Liberal Democrat (“Con Dem”) Government.

Last year, Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne announced an £83 billion programme of public spending cuts – effectively speeding up the process of deficit reduction announced by the previous (Labour) Chancellor Alistair Darling.

Since then, the British economy has begun contracting again, unemployment has grown, and the credit ratings agencies have warned that slow growth could undermine Britain’s triple-A credit rating. To compound this, new research shows that rising inflation combined with losses to tax credits and universal entitlements mean that middle income families are set to lose 5 to 7 per cent of their disposable income next year.

But Osborne’s second Budget last week did nothing to moderate the pace of deficit reduction. Instead, he adopted the failed Reaganomics policies of the past including tax cuts for big business, cuts to employment protections, and — at odds with their claim to be the “greenest government ever” — a reduction in fuel duty. Despite dubbing his Budget a ‘Plan for Growth,’ the independent Office for Budget Responsibility judged that growth would be slower in 2011 and 2012 and that unemployment would be 200,000 higher than under previous estimates.

The cuts are rapidly losing public support with the polling agency YouGov finding that, “The proportion who feel it is good for the economy has fallen from 53% to 39% … Similarly those who feel it is being done fairly has fallen from 45% to 31%.” So what is the alternative? Labour’s shadow Chancellor, Ed Balls, writes for today’s Daily Mail:

There is a better way. We would be halving the deficit steadily over four years and putting jobs and growth first because getting the economy moving again and more people into work is the best way to get the deficit down.

Given the low cost of debt in the UK, key to this alternative is a properly funded National Investment Bank of the kind proposed by respected economists including Robert Skidelsky, Martin Wolf, and Gerald Holtham. And as well as slowing the pace of public spending cuts, the bankers that caused the crisis should make a greater contribution. The IMF has called for a trebling of the Government’s bank levy while an extension of the one-off bankers’ bonus tax would be a fair outcome.

Our guest blogger is Erica Sagrans, a writer who has spent the last six weeks in the UK. You can follow her for more London protest updates on Twitter at @EricaS.

Fueled by anger at drastic government cuts, 500,000 protesters took to the streets of London yesterday in the largest protest since the city’s 2003 march against the Iraq war.

Few parts of British life will remain untouched by the massive $130 billion in cuts to public services now being rolled out by the coalition government. Local budgets are being slashed by up to 30 percent, leading to cuts in child care, public safety, programs for retirees, and library closures — and an increasing privatization of the popular, publicly-funded National Health Service.

“Women, parents, carers, disabled people, teenagers and elderly people” are likely to be hardest hit, reported the Guardian in a study of the cuts’ devastating impact. On top of services, the job losses are expected to be enormous. Amidst the UK’s current record 17-year unemployment high, the cuts will mean a loss of 490,000 public sector jobs.

The crowd at yesterday’s protest — the major march organized by the Trades Union Congress — was as diverse as the cuts people came out to rally against. On the streets, I stood next to firefighters wearing ‘Cuts cost lives’ shirts, a ‘book block’ of 20-somethings wielding large pink cardboard books as shields, kids on parents’ shoulders, and loads of homemade signs: ‘Give me back my future,’ ‘Stop teabagging the public sector,’ and ‘Hands off — the NHS is ours’ were just a few.

UK Uncut, the distributed effort that calls attention to corporate tax avoidance by taking over stores, used the march as a jumping off point for occupations throughout London’s major shopping areas. The spin-off group US Uncut also spent the day targeting more than 40 Bank of America branches across the United States.

UK Uncut peacefully took over London’s upscale Fortnum and Mason department store, whose owners they say have dodged more than 40 million pounds in taxes. Others climbed onto the store’s second-story roof, where they strung up tape saying ‘Closed by UK Uncut’ and sprinkled glitter on the crowd. Later in the evening protesters danced in Trafalgar Square when they were surrounded by riot police, who prevented them from leaving by using the harsh ‘kettling’ technique that was introduced during this winter’s UK student protests.

While the line that played out in the media focused on a small minority of protesters throwing paint and smashing windows, the vast majority were parents, students, health care workers, and union members there to voice their anger about the cuts. The real power of the day came from its dual nature: both the smaller groups ready to take more direct action combined with the strength in the numbers and stories of ordinary people standing up to say ‘no more.’ Their half-a-million strong presence in London’s streets yesterday gave rise to the feeling amongst many that this is just the beginning of something much larger.

The New York Times reported today that General Electric’s effective tax rate in 2010 was zero. Despite making $14.2 billion in profits, the company received $3.2 billion in tax benefits. GE is able to drive down its effective tax rate via “an aggressive strategy that mixes fierce lobbying for tax breaks and innovative accounting that enables it to concentrate its profits offshore.”

The fact that hugely profitable companies receive billions in benefits from taxpayers clearly makes the case for ending giveaways in the corporate tax code and cracking down on companies that use tax havens to shelter income overseas. However, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), when asked about GE’s zero percent tax rate today on CNBC, replied that the real problem is the U.S. corporate tax rate is too high:

We have to be concerned about what the business environment is in the U.S. here. We can’t afford to have the highest tax rate in the world…Those are individual companies. I think overall, we really can’t be looking at a corporate tax rate much higher than 25 percent because that’s the world average. So we’re sitting up there at 35 percent, that’s just the wrong signal.

Watch it:

Needless to say, reducing the corporate tax rate to 25 percent without cutting down on loopholes, giveaways, and tax avoidance wouldn’t change much for companies that already pay nothing. And GE is hardly alone in this regard: Boeing, Bank of America, and ExxonMobil have all paid no taxes into the U.S. Treasury in recent years.

But Republicans had much the same reaction when Bloomberg blew the lid off of Google’s elaborate scheme to lower its tax rate all the way down to 2.4 percent. “I don’t know the individual facts of the Google situation. What I do know is that, second only to Japan, we have the highest corporate income tax rate of any industrialized nation of the world,” said Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-TX).

U.S. corporate tax revenue has plunged to a historical low and corporate tax receipts here are less than they are in other developed countries. Particularly with the U.S. facing a long-term problem with its structural deficit, corporate tax reform should involve clearing the corporate tax code of its myriad loopholes and giveaways and raising additional revenue, so that the tax burden is not shifted onto small businesses and the middle-class.

On its front page this morning, the New York Times reported that General Electric — the world’s largest company — made $14.2 billion in profits ($5.1 billion in America) and managed to not pay a dime in federal taxes. In fact, the company actually received “a tax benefit of $3.2 billion.”

The mega corporation’s tax dodging flies in the face of the rhetoric of its CEO Jeffery Immelt — also the head of President Obama’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness — who sought to portray his company as one that values fairness in a speech at West Point in 2009.

In that speech, titled “Renewing American Leadership,” Immelt stood before hundreds of military cadets — who enlisted in the military and were willing to sacrifice everything for their country — and complimented the military audience for its heroism while blasting the greedy culture of big business:

Few of us will ever do what many of you will do for duty, honor and country. But America doesn’t expect heroism from all of us. [...] Wherever our talents lie, and whenever our conscience requires, we must all, to the best of our abilities, help keep America the great face for good it has long been. We are trying to do that at GE. [...]

I think we are at the end of a difficult generation of business leadership, and maybe leadership in general. Tough-mindedness, a good trait – was replaced by meanness and greed – both terrible traits. Rewards became perverted. The richest people made the most mistakes with the least accountability.

At the same time, ethically, leaders do share a common responsibility to narrow the gap between the weak and the strong. [...] What I can bring … what GE can bring … are investments, training and operating approaches to help everyone win.

Immelt won wide praise for his speech at the time. The Huffington Post wrote that he “has come clean about the financial crisis” in a “remarkably candid” speech. The Financial Times said that it was “one of the strongest criticisms” yet made by a major US CEO of business practices.

It appears that Immelt has fallen short of his lofty rhetoric during the West Point speech. Far from making the sort of sacrifices he was honoring at that speech, GE appears to be exploiting loopholes in the tax code to shirk its responsibilities — one of which would be paying its taxes to maintain the military the cadets in the audience were a part of. The behavior of his company matches that of Bank of America, Citigroup, ExxonMobil, and other companies that have gone quarters or entire years while not paying a penny in federal corporate income taxes.