The budget released last week by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) included a cut in the top income tax rate of ten percentage points, taking that rate — which is paid by just the richest two percent of Americans — from 35 to 25. Ryan claims that his tax code will raise the same amount of revenue as the current code, which, as Michael Linden notes, means that he’s necessarily planning a middle class tax increase.

House Budget Committee Ranking Member Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) delivered a speech at the Center for American Progress Action Fund today to lay out the principles that House Democrats envision for their 2012 budget plan. At the very least, Van Hollen explained, the Democrats’ budget will “raise the top income tax rate back to where it stood in the 1990s and close loopholes in the tax code in order to raise revenue levels.”

Several Democrats in the House — including Rep. Jan Schakowky (D-IL) and the Congressional Progressive Caucus — have endorsed additional tax brackets at the top of the income scale as a way to reduce the deficit, rather than resorting to draconian budget cuts. During an interview with ThinkProgress, Van Hollen said — while going to great lengths to emphasize that the Democratic leadership has not made a decision one way or the other — that additional tax brackets are “something that should be looked at”:

Speaking personally only and not as the ranking member of the Budget Committee or as a member of the Democratic leadership, just speaking for myself, I think that’s something that should be looked at as part of individual tax reform. I think that we do need to look at some of the ideas in the bipartisan fiscal commission’s approach, and I do think you can change some rates and broaden the base, but I think we should go into it with an open mind as to what the parameters are.

Watch it:

At the moment, the wealthiest one percent of Americans make nearly 25 percent of the country’s total income, and income inequality is the worst its been since the 1920s. The top 400 taxpayers — who have more wealth than the bottom 50 percent of Americans combined — are paying lower taxes than they have in a generation. In 2009, tax revenue was the lowest its been in 60 years.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R) launched a presidential campaign exploratory committee yesterday, complete with a video in which Romney claims that his days in the private sector taught him all about job creation:

Across the nation, over 20 million Americans still can’t find a job or have given up looking. How has this happened in the nation that leads the world in innovation and productivity? The answer is that President Obama’s policies have failed. He and virtually all the people around him have never worked in the real economy. They just don’t know how jobs are created in the private sector. That’s where I spent my entire career.

In 1985, I helped found a company. At first we had ten employees. Today, there are hundreds. My work led me to become deeply involved in helping other businesses, from innovative start-ups to large companies going through tough times. Sometimes I was successful and helped create jobs. Other times, I wasn’t. I learned how America competes with companies in other countries, why jobs leave, and how jobs are created here at home.

Romney is right to be talking about job creation considering the unemployment rate, but his record in the private sector is one of job destruction. As Politico detailed, Romney’s company, Bain Capital, was in the business of buying up distressed companies, slashing them to bits, and then selling them off, resulting in lots of job losses:

– In 1992, the firm acquired American Pad & Paper. By 1999, the year Romney left Bain, two American plants were closed, 385 jobs had been cut and the company was $392 million in debt. The next year, Ampad was forced into bankruptcy.

– Bain Capital and Goldman Sachs bought Dade International for about $450 million in 1994. The firm quickly fired or relocated at least 900 workers. Over the next several years, it sunk increasingly into debt and laid off 1,000 workers. In 2002 — after Romney had left Bain — it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

– A 1997 buyout of LIVE Entertainment for $150 million resulted in 40 layoffs, roughly one in four of the company’s 166 workers. The job cuts affected all aspects of the company, from production and acquisition to legal and public relations.

– In 1997, Bain bought a stake in DDI Corp., a maker of electronic circuit boards. Three years later, Bain took the company public and collected a $36 million payout. But by August 2003, the company filed for bankruptcy protection, laying off more than 2,100 workers.

22 percent of the money Bain Capital raised from 1987 to 1995 was invested in five businesses — Stage Stores, American Pad & Paper, GS Indusries, Dade, and Details. These five made Bain $578 million in profit, even as all five eventually went bankrupt.

As the New York Post’s Josh Koshman wrote, “there’s little question [Romney] made a fortune from businesses he helped destroy.” Travis Waldron noted today that Romney’s company also boosted its profits — and thus enriched Romney — by abusing offshore tax havens.

Late Friday night, President Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) struck a deal that averted a government shutdown, but (unless it is rejected by Congress) will lead to about $38 billion in spending cuts over the remainder of the fiscal year. These proposed cuts, alongside rising gas prices and draconian budget cuts at the state and local level, have already led some economists to knock up to a point off of their estimate for U.S. economic growth.

For instance, Diane Swonk, chief economist at Mesirow Financial, “said she had cut her forecast for 2011 to 3.3 percent, from 4.2 percent.” Anything below 3 percent and “you’re just running on a treadmill. You’re not getting anywhere,” she said. Here are just some of the cuts included in the deal, which should be voted on by the end of the week:

– Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC): $504 million

– State and local law enforcement: $415 million

– Community oriented policing services (COPS): $296 million

– Green jobs innovation fund: $40 million

– Community health centers: $600 million

– Dislocated worker assistance: $125 million

– Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMSHA): $45 million

– Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA): $49 million

– IDEA (special education): $16 million

– Infectious disease prevention: $277 million

– National Institutes of Health: $260 million

The deal also flat-funded the Pell Grant program, paying for increased enrollment by eliminating the provision allowing students to use a second grant for summer study. At the same time that it cuts these programs upon which the middle-class and low-income Americans depend, the plan actually increases defense spending by $5 billion relative to the 2010 baseline.

Not all the news out of the budget deal is bad, however. Both the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission will actually see budget increases, which will allow them to move forward with implementing the Dodd-Frank financial reform law. $700 million will also be provided for another round of the Obama administration’s Race to the Top education reform program.

But nothing in this deal with help lower the country’s unemployment rate or do anything to boost economic growth. It will simply result in fewer services for people still grappling with the effects of the Great Recession.

Our guest bloggers are Heather Boushey, Senior Economist, and Danielle Lazarowitz, Special Assistant for the Economic Policy team at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Equal Pay Day comes but once a year. It’s the day that marks how many weeks into 2011 the typical woman worker needed to toil after 2010 ended to earn what her male colleagues earned in 2010 alone. On average last year, women earned 77 cents for every dollar earned by men.

Women are paid less than men in no small part because they are promoted less. Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal highlighted a new McKinsey report that highlighted the consequences of a leaky talent pipeline for women. More than half of business’ new hires are women (53 percent) and yet very few reach the top of the corporate ladder. Only a quarter of vice-presidents (26 percent) and a seventh (14 percent) of senior executives are women.

And, this glass ceiling is not just at the very top of America’s corporations, it’s also a story that’s all too familiar to Betty Dukes and the women of Wal-Mart. In 2001, Betty Dukes and five additional plaintiffs filed a case against their employer, Wal-Mart, on behalf of 1.5 million female employees, alleging that they were denied promotions and equal pay. Stephanie Odle, one of the plaintiffs, explains it this way: “The promotions I should have had, the jobs I should have had, were given to men.”

When statisticians looked into what was going on at Wal-Mart, they saw a disturbing pattern: It took longer for women to be promoted up to a managerial position than men. At Wal-Mart, men reached managerial positions in less than 3 years while it took women almost four and a half years. Women made up only 10.3 percent of Regional Vice Presidents and earned 67 percent of their male counterparts’ salary. Sadly, what happens at Wal-Mart isn’t unique. Currently, the Supreme Court is considering whether women at Wal-Mart can file the largest class action suit in U.S. history.

But, if it wanted to, Congress could do something right now about the glass ceiling. This past November the Senate decided along party lines that the Paycheck Fairness Act was not even worth a vote. This important legislative measure would have prohibited employer retaliation against employee wage practice inquires; increased penalties for equal pay violations, and clarified acceptable reasons for differences in pay. Conservatives claimed that wage discrimination did not exist, making the bill unnecessary. Yet the stories of women like Lilly Ledbetter, Betty Dukes, and millions of other womenc exemplify why those claims are false.