Last week, on the same day that it announced an $11 billion first quarter profit, oil giant Exxon Mobil publicly whined about the renewed push in Congress to cut the $4 billion in subsidies that go to oil companies every year. “Over the last week as earnings season has approached, the Democratic Party leadership again talked about removing what they call $4 billion in oil industry subsidies,” Exxon’s vice president for public and government affairs said. “But what they really mean is that they want to increase our taxes by taking away long-standing deductions for our industry.”

Of course, this is pretty rich coming from a company that has consistently broken and then rebroken the record for yearly profits, making it the most profitable company in the Fortune 500, while simultaneously paying far below the statutory corporate income tax rate due to various loopholes, deductions, and the use of offshore tax havens. In fact, in 2009, Exxon paid no income taxes to the U.S. whatsoever.

But in a desperate bid to convince everyone that it should continue receiving billions in taxpayer-funded largesse, Exxon is out with new claims about its level of taxation, saying that it actually pays more taxes in the U.S. than it earns here in profits:

In the first months of this year, Exxon (XOM, Fortune 500) says it paid $3.1 billion in taxes in the United States — more than even the $2.6 billion in profit it made selling oil and gas. To get to that number, the company includes the federal and state gasoline taxes that the company collects from drivers and passes on to government coffers. It also includes payroll taxes the company pays on behalf of its employees.

The problem here is that Exxon is counting as part of its tax burden a tax that it simply does not pay. The gas tax — which is 18.4 cents per gallon, plus whatever individual states decide to levy — is paid entirely by consumers. Unless Exxon wants us to believe that it is knocking 18.4 cents (or more) off of every gallon it sells, and turning that money over to the government, this number is absolute hokum. (Many economists also consider the employer side of the payroll tax as being paid by employees, in the form of lower wages, making Exxon’s number even worse.)

The fact of the matter is that the government is spending billions each year to support an industry that clearly doesn’t need it and that already takes advantage of the byzantine U.S. corporate tax code to lower its tax payment far below the rate that’s on the books. Instead of accepting that the rationale for oil subsidies has vanished, Big Oil is concocting bizarre numbers to justify continuing taxpayer giveaways to a hugely profitable industry.

For more information, read today’s Progress Report, “The Showdown Over Big Oil.”

In 2008, Milwaukee, Wisconsin became the third city in America to guarantee workers paid sick leave, joining Washington D.C. and San Fransisco. These cities are stepping up to fill a void left by the federal government, which is content to leave America as one of the only countries in the developed world that does not guarantee workers paid time off if they are sick.

The sick leave law was approved by referendum — with nearly 70 percent of voters in favor — and was upheld a few weeks ago by the state’s court of appeals. However, Republicans in the Wisconsin state legislature passed a bill preempting the city’s law and ensuring that no jurisdiction within the state of Wisconsin is allowed to decide it wants to mandate paid sick days. Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI) — who gained notoriety for proposing a law stripping public sector workers of their collective bargaining rights and sparking mass protests — signed the anti-sick leave bill into law today:

Gov. Scott Walker has signed a bill that prohibits local governments from passing ordinances guaranteeing workers’ paid sick and family leave…Walker, a Republican, says in a statement the bill removes another barrier to creating jobs.

But Walker’s concern about job-loss is overblown. The Drum Major Institute conducted a study examining San Francisco’s paid sick leave law and found “no evidence that businesses in San Francisco have been negatively impacted by the enactment of paid sick leave.” In fact, the U.S. economy as a whole loses $180 billion in productivity annually due to sick employees attending work and infecting other workers.

Despite Walker’s misguided action, as the National Association of Working Women noted, plenty of other cities are forging ahead with paid sick leave legislation:

In Philadelphia, a paid sick days bill was passed out of a City Council committee a few weeks ago, and in Connecticut, the state legislature is moving forward on a bill with bipartisan support. Paid sick days legislation in New York City has 35 City Council sponsors, legislation is about to be introduced in Seattle, and more than a dozen states have coalitions advocating actively for paid sick days and paid family leave policies. San Francisco and Washington, DC have already implemented paid sick days laws.

In the end, repealing Milwaukee’s paid sick leave law is simply one more way in which Walker is undertaking his assault on Wisconsin’s workers.

After the killing of Osama Bin Laden at a compound in a suburb of Islamabad, Pakistan, much of the nation’s focus has turned to the men in our military who were responsible for the raid. The combat team that attacked Bin Laden’s compound was composed of an elite unit of Navy SEALS.

As economist Dean Baker points out, ABC News did a feature story about the SEALs to highlight the sacrifices those enlisted in the unit make. ABC compared their base salaries of $54,000 a year to the average annual salary for teachers. Baker notes that perhaps their salaries should be compared to Wall Street CEOs who earn tens of millions of dollars:

In the wake of their successful assault on Osama Bin Laden’s hideout, ABC News did a short feature on the Navy Seals. The report tells us that the people who hold this highly demanding and dangerous get paid about $54,000 a year. It then adds that:

“The base salary level [of Navy Seals] is comparable to the average annual salary for teachers in the U.S., which was $55,350 for the 2009-2010 school year, according to the Digest of Education Statistics.’ That is one possible comparison. There are other possible reference points. For example, the CEOs of Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan both pocket around $20 million a year.

Baker’s query poses an interesting question. What would the numbers look like if the base salary of a Navy SEAL — who risk their very lives in their day-to-day work — was compared to the compensation of the CEOs of some of America’s wealthiest corporations? Data from the AFL-CIO’s Executive Pay Watch finds that the average 2010 CEO compensation at an S&P 500 company was $11,358,445. ThinkProgress has demonstrated this gap in compensation visually:

It’s important to note that the gap between executive compensation and average worker compensation has exploded over the past few decades. CEOs at America’s largest companies now earn 343 times more than the typical worker. In 1970, the average CEO earned 28 times as much as the typical worker.

Vice President Joe Biden will preside over a new round of budget negotiations today at the Blair House, with several budget related issues needing to be resolved, including raising the nation’s debt ceiling. In return for their vote to increase the debt ceiling, Republicans have been proposing various caps on spending, in an attempt to prove that they’re serious about the deficit.

President Obama, along with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), have countered with a proposal for a “deficit trigger”: a mechanism that would enact automatic spending cuts and tax increases if the deficit grows too large. According to The Hill, Republicans are balking:

While Democrats back a White House approach that would force automatic tax increases or spending cuts to ensure the government hits thresholds for reducing the debt, Republicans want a hard cap on spending that would not force tax increases of any kind.

The divide on discussing taxes appears to be one of the central obstacles in talks that will convene Thursday between Vice President Joe Biden and representatives from both parties.

This is one more piece of evidence proving that Congressional Republicans are fundamentally uninterested in reducing the deficit. After all, if you’re trying to reduce the deficit and the debt, why would you not cap…well, the deficit. Following a spending cap to the absolute letter of the law could still, easily, result in a huge deficit and a growing debt, as it ignores the other side of the budget equation: revenue.

Republican plans to cap spending have taken various forms, including Sen. Bob Corker’s (R-TN) CAP Act, which would cap federal spending at 20.6 percent. Even if this were strictly adhered to, the deficit could still be huge, depending on how much revenue the government brings in. Capping spending at 20.6 percent wouldn’t balance the budget if revenue were consistently 16 percent of GDP. Making matters worse, as the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities explained, a spending cap would push the government into taking actions that would make recessions worse:

Imposing an arbitrary limit on federal spending would risk tipping faltering economies into recession, make recessions deeper, and make recovery from a recession more difficult. Spending for some important federal programs — including unemployment insurance, food stamps, and Social Security — increases automatically during a recession, when the need for assistance grows. Since GDP [Gross Domestic Product] also shrinks during a recession and remains below its trend level during the early stages of recovery, federal spending increases significantly as a share of GDP during periods of economic weakness.

It’s worth mentioning that relying on automatic triggers, in general, is not an ideal way to budget. The budget is riddled with provisions that were supposed to enforce certain restrictions, but simply get waived by Congress year after year, like the Alternative Minimum Tax or the doc-fix. But if you’re going to try implementing an cap, it makes sense to design a cap that actually addresses the problem at hand. Instead, Republicans have designed one that will simply further their goal of making the government as small as possible, without regard for the deficit.

A House Financial Services Subcommittee yesterday approved three bills that would change the structure of the newly-created Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in such a way that its independence — a key feature — would be undermined. Republicans claim that these bills are necessary to reduce the Bureau’s power, even though the Bureau can already be overruled by a two-thirds vote of the Financial Stability Oversight Council (a panel of regulators charged with policing systemic risk in the financial system).

The three separate measures would, respectively: replace the Bureau’s director with a five-member commission; make it easier for bank regulators to veto the Bureau’s rules; and delay the date on which the Bureau officially stands on its own (currently July 21). The second, sponsored by Rep. Sean Duffy (R-WI) and co-sponsored by House Financial Services Chairman Spencer Bachus (R-AL) and Rep. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), would lower the threshold for the FSOC to veto a Bureau rule from a two-thirds vote to a simple majority vote, and remove the CPFB director from his/her seat on the FSOC.

This is a move backed by, among others, the American Bankers Association, which donated $10,000 to all three of the GOP sponsors during the 2010 election campaign. In fact, all three of the Republican sponsors of this bill received significant amounts of money from the financial services industry during the 2010 election cycle*:

REP. SPENCER BACHUS (R-AL): Bachus received nearly $400,000 from the finance industry (including commercial banks, securities firms, and investment banks), including $10,400 from Goldman Sachs, and $10,000 each from the American Bankers Association, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and Morgan Stanley.

REP. SHELLEY MOORE CAPITO (R-WV): Capito received nearly $118,000 from the finance industry, including $10,250 from JP Morgan Chase, $10,000 each from the American Bankers Association and Goldman Sachs, and $5,000 each from Bank of America and Citigroup.

REP. SEAN DUFFY (R-WI): Duffy received nearly $110,000 from the finance industry, including $10,000 from the American Bankers Association, $5,250 from JP Morgan Chase, and $3,000 from the Financial Services Roundtable.

All told, Republican members of just the subcommittee that advanced these bills yesterday received $1.6 million from the finance industry during the 2010 election cycle.

Bachus said back in December that Congress’ role is to “serve the banks.” His committee has certainly taken that to heart with its action today to kneecap the one agency within the financial regulatory system explicitly tasked with protecting consumers from the financial industry’s excess.

*Totals compiled by ThinkProgress from data from the Center for Responsive Politics.