President Obama’s call during a press conference yesterday to end a tax breaks for private jet owners has been met with derision and confusion by many the right, with most Republicans lawmakers dismissing it out of hand as just another tax hike. “Republicans weren’t having it,” the Wall Street Journal reported.

On MSNBC this afternoon, Sen. Mike Crapo (R-ID) dismissed ending the tax break as just “code for much broader, large tax increases,” saying that the jet tax break is “not the issue we’re debating here.” Watch it:

Sen. Marco Rubo (R-FL) meanwhile, told the National Review that Obama was suggesting corporate jet owners earn too much money. “[D]on’t go around telling people that the reason you are not doing well is because some rich guy is in a corporate jet or some oil company is making too much money,” he said. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-KY) spokesperson defended the tax break without really addressing the issue on its merits, quipping to reporters, “Interesting that he keeps pointing to corporate planes and oil/gas.”

Conservative media outlets took up the same line, dismissing Obama’s call as an empty “metaphor” and the “latest class warfare catchphrase.” The Wall Street Journal wrote a gleefully condescending blog post yesterday called, “Note To Obama: $250,000-a-Year Earners Can’t Afford Jets,” in which it sought to educate Obama about taxes. The only problem? The author assumed Obama was referring to the Bush cuts — he was not and the esteemed paper was forced to run a correction at the bottom of the story

But not only are Rubio, Crapo and the rest defending a tax loophole for the most fortunate Americans, they’re completely misunderstanding it. As hard as it to believe, the private jet tax break is no “metaphor” or “code” for people making too much money — it is an actual loophole in the tax code that applies to private jets and not commercial ones. The provision, created in 1987, allows corporate jets to be depreciated over a five-year period rather than the seven-year period required for commercial ones. It has been defended and supported by Republicans since.

The more sophisticated conservative defense of special tax breaks private corporate jets, advanced by the Hertiage Foundation, among others, is that it was created by the stimulus package. As ThinkProgress’ Matt Yglesias explained, this myth too is bunk.

While closing the loophole wouldn’t raise enough money to solve the deficit problem by any means, it points to the absurdity of much of the spending in the tax code and would surely be a step in the right direction. The conservative response to ending it, meanwhile, speaks to the priorities of their tax cut “theology” — fewer taxes for the wealthy above all else.

In addition to releasing a radical budget that dismantled Medicare while likely raising taxes on the middle class, House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) has suggested a radical reworking of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, or food stamps). Under his plan, which would simply block grant SNAP to state governments, “SNAP would largely lose the ability to respond to rising need, forcing states during economic downturns to cut benefits or create waiting lists for needy families.”

In order to build support for his dismantling of the food safety net, Ryan has been spreading falsehoods regarding SNAP. Case in point, during a question and answer session hosted by the Spolight on Poverty and Opportunity, Ryan claimed that SNAP is “rife with fraud“:

Help us figure out how to reform these programs so they can grow at more sustainable rates and so that they really work. Help us reduce the redundancy and the duplicativeness of programs. Help us figure out how to make sure that these things are actually getting the assistance to the people who really need them.

Look at SNAP for example. You know we get all these reports. We get hearings and GAO and reports about how the SNAP program is rife with fraud, how it’s not getting the assistance to the people who need it, how there’s no incentive to – we’ve got a guy who won a lottery that’s on the program you know. Help us figure out how to reform these programs so that they can work better.

Listen here:

But as the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities found, SNAP errors are currently at an all-time low, with errors accounting for less than three percent of the program’s cost:

To ensure that benefits are provided only to eligible households and in the proper amounts, SNAP has one of the most rigorous quality control systems of any public benefit program and, in recent years, has achieved its lowest error rates on record. In fiscal year 2009, even as caseloads were rising, states set new record lows for error rates. The net loss due to errors equaled only 2.7 percent of program costs in 2009. There is no evidence that program errors are driving up SNAP spending.

During the recession, SNAP has been critical for reducing poverty and pumping money into local economies. So in order to push his radical revamp of the program, Ryan is simply inventing reasons to attack its current structure, which is actually functioning quite well.

After the longest recession since WWII, many Americans are still struggling while S&P 500 corporations are sitting on $800 billion in cash and making massive profits. Now, economists from Northeastern University have released a study that finds our sluggish economic recovery has almost solely benefited corporations. According to the study:

“Between the second quarter of 2009 and the fourth quarter of 2010, real national income in the U.S. increased by $528 billion. Pre-tax corporate profits by themselves had increased by $464 billion while aggregate real wages and salaries rose by only $7 billion or only .1%. Over this six quarter period, corporate profits captured 88% of the growth in real national income while aggregate wages and salaries accounted for only slightly more than 1% of the growth in real national income. …The absence of any positive share of national income growth due to wages and salaries received by American workers during the current economic recovery is historically unprecedented.”

The New York Times adds, “According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, average real hourly earnings for all employees actually declined by 1.1 percent from June 2009, when the recovery began, to May 2011, the month for which the most recent earnings numbers are available.”

So as average wages fall, and nearly 14 million people remain unemployed, America’s economic recovery has almost entirely benefited corporations. This development adds another chapter to the decline of the middle class, whose incomes are shrinking and wages are stagnating. Last year, top executives’ salaries increased 27 percent, while workers’ salaries increased only 2 percent. At the moment, income inequality in America is the worst it’s been since the 1920s, as the richest 1 percent make nearly 25 percent of the country’s income.

–Sean Savett

Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT)

Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) is evidently going to stand with McConnell on this one. “We have long said that TAA — even this scaled-back version — should be dealt with separately from the trade agreements, and that is how we expect to proceed,” a spokesman for Boehner said. And according to Reuters, at least four of the 11 Republicans on the Senate Finance Committee will vote against the South Korea Free Trade Agreement if it includes aid for displaced workers:

At least four of the 11 Republicans on the panel say they will vote against the South Korea deal if the White House sticks to a plan to include in the implementing legislation renewal of a retraining program for U.S. workers who lose their job because of foreign competition.

Those opponents include the panel’s top Republican, Senator Orrin Hatch, who is up for re-election next year and is under pressure from the Tea Party conservative movement to take a tough line on spending. Aides said Republican Senators Jon Kyl, John Thune and Tom Coburn would vote against the South Korea pact if the Trade Adjustment Assistance program, or TAA, is included in the bill, while other Republicans on the panel are considering that.

Leaving aside the merits of these particular trade deals, any expansion of trade is going to produce winners and losers. The GOP, however, only wants to acknowledge the former, while ignoring the latter, pushing through trade deals while neglecting those who inevitably wind up on the short end of the stick.

Today, nearly three-quarters of a million teachers, immigration officials, court workers, and other unionized civil servants in the United Kingdom are on a 24 hour strike. These workers are protesting harsh austerity policies by the right-wing British government that will ask poor and middle class Britons to sacrifice in the form of pension costs and pay cuts, but leave the rich largely untouched. Al Jazeera English interviewed some of the strikers and filed a video report about the action. Watch it:

An individual may not accept or hold a position in the Government of the United States or the government of the District of Columbia if he —
(1) advocates the overthrow of our constitutional form of government;
(2) is a member of an organization that he knows advocates the overthrow of our constitutional form of government;
(3) participates in a strike, or asserts the right to strike, against the Government of the United States or the government of the District of Columbia; or
(4) is a member of an organization of employees of the Government of the United States or of individuals employed by the government of the District of Columbia that he knows asserts the right to strike against the Government of the United States or the government of the District of Columbia.

Additionally, in many parts of the United States, public employees who work for municipalities or states are also prohibited from striking. In states as diverse as Washington, New York, and Wisconsin there is a broad framework of laws that prohibits most strikes by most public employees.

Some British conservatives, fearing the rights that public employee unions have in their country, are already calling for changing the United Kingdom’s strike laws to make it more difficult for workers to exercise their power. It seems they would prefer their workers to be as relatively powerless as their American counterparts.

Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) with Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner

“We’re not going to default even if there is no debt-ceiling increase,” Sen. Tom Coburn (R., Okla.) said in an interview. “The fact is we’ve got to cut spending and we’ve got to cut it now.”

Sen. Rob Portman (R., Ohio), a former White House budget director, said that in any given year there’s enough federal revenue to cover the government’s debt service payments. “This is not so much a question of default as whether we’re going to use this opportunity to get our fiscal house in order,” Mr. Portman said.

Sen. Ron Johnson (R., Wisc.), who wrote a separate letter to the Obama administration, said the administration was acting irresponsibly by not developing a contingency plan in case Congress fails to raise the limit. The first-term senator said that 2012 revenues would be more than enough to cover interest on the debt, as well as Social Security, and essential defense, security, health and safety spending. “It doesn’t have to be a crisis if we plan for it,” Mr. Johnson said Wednesday on Fox News.

As Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner explained in a letter yesterday to Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) — who is making the same argument regarding the debt ceiling — “this ‘prioritization’ proposal advocates a radical and deeply irresponsible departure from the commitment by Presidents of both parties, throughout American history, to honor all of the commitments our nation has made.” Indeed, forcing the Treasury to prioritize payments means that someone is getting stiffed, and thus U.S. creditworthiness would be undermined. While Treasury might be able to get away with only skipping payments to government contractors and vendors initially, eventually important programs will be on the chopping block.

In fact, if the borrowing limit is actually hit on August 2, Social Security could be the first casualty, as $23 billion in Social Security payments are due on August 3, while the government would collect only $12 billion in revenue that day, as a report released yesterday by the Bipartisan Policy Center found. As the BPC put it, if the debt limit isn’t increased, “handling all payments for important and popular programs (e.g., Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Defense, active duty pay) will quickly become impossible.”

Even House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) admitted that short-term failure to raise the debt ceiling would mean cuts to “vital programs.” The GOP, however, is sticking its fingers in its collective ears, believing that having the U.S. miss payments to people whom it has promised to pay will have no effect on its creditworthiness or the wider economy.

Earlier this month, House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) joined the growing chorus of Republicans who have been claiming that not raising the debt ceiling for a few days once it is hit around August 2 won’t be a big deal. “If a bondholder misses a payment for a day or two or three or four — what is more important is you are putting the government in a materially better position to better pay its bills going forward,” Ryan said.

However, during a question and answer session hosted by the Spolight on Poverty and Opportunity, Ryan admitted that even a short-term failure to raise the debt ceiling — which would force the Treasury Department to start choosing which creditors to pay off and which ones to stiff — would mean “literally cutting off assistance to people” who rely on “vital programs“:

So ultimately, if the debt ceiling is not increased you ultimately would have a default. Now perhaps not immediately, but some would argue that the Treasury can prioritize its payments. I believe they can, but I don’t think we want to go down that path.

I don’t think we want to tempt default. That’s not our strategy. And so if we did have a default or if we did not raise the limit, then Treasury’s prioritizing payments and literally cutting off assistance to people because they don’t have the checks they can write to vital programs.

Listen here:

Ryan has been all over the place when it comes to the debt ceiling. Back in January, he said “you can’t not raise the debt ceiling. Default is the unworkable solution.” However, a few weeks ago he said that raising the debt ceiling “won’t happen, I’m serious about this, it won’t happen if we don’t cut spending.” Then he said that short-term default is okay with him.

But Ryan is correct that even a short-term failure to raise the debt ceiling could have disastrous consequences. For instance, the Bipartisan Policy Center found that one of the most immediate cuts, were the debt ceiling not raised in time, would have to be to Social Security. As the BPC put it, if the debt limit isn’t increased and Treasury is forced to only work with the revenue coming in on a daily basis, “handling all payments for important and popular programs (e.g., Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Defense, active duty pay) will quickly become impossible.”

And forcing the government to stiff somebody, regardless of who it is, is going to call into question the nation’s creditworthiness. It seems that Ryan agrees, even if he is disinclined to do anything about it.

Back in 2002, a spokesman for former Gov. Mitt Romney (R), a current GOP presidential hopeful, derided an anti-tax pledge as “government by gimmickry.” But Romney is evidently okay with gimmickry now, as he signed the Americans for Tax Reform anti-tax pledge last week.

Not through with putting his John Hancock on cockamamie pledges, Romney today signed the right-wing “Cut, Cap, and Balance” pledge that is being pushed by a host of conservative organizations and Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC). Among other things, the pledge demands that the nation’s debt ceiling not be raised without congressional approval of a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution:

Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney (R) said Wednesday that he supports a pledge put forth by some congressional Republicans and conservative groups calling for significant spending cuts and caps as well as a balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution in exchange for a vote this summer to raise the country’s debt ceiling.

“I am for cut, cap and balance,” Romney told reporters after a Capitol Hill meeting with Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), according to the Salt Lake Tribune’s Tommy Burr.

In addition to calling for the U.S. to default on its debt unless Congress approves a balance budget amendment (which is totally unrealistic as well as economically bone-headed), the pledge also calls for caps on federal spending. Romney has voiced support for such caps before before, and as I noted here, they would be terribly destructive and force deep cuts to important government programs, without even resulting in a balanced budget.

As Judd Legum noted today, even the radical House Republican budget authored by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) wouldn’t pass muster under the balanced budget amendment. That Romney is willing to risk the economic meltdown that could occur if the U.S. defaults on its debt in order to pander to DeMint and his conservative allies is quite distressing.

For months, Senate Republicans have been carping that the administration was not moving fast enough in submitting free trade agreements with South Korea, Colombia, and Panama for congressional consideration. And one of the loudest voices in favor of moving the agreements has been Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY). “We need to change course. And a good place to start is with trade,” McConnell said just a few weeks ago.

The administration had been refusing to move the pacts forward without Congress reauthorizing the Trade Adjustment Assistance program, which aids workers who lose their jobs due to international trade. Republicans allowed an expansion of TAA to expire back in February (even as they were advocating for their constituents to receive TAA payments).

Congressional leaders yesterday struck a deal with the White House that will reauthorize TAA in return for moving on the pending agreements. But McConnell is so adamantly opposed to helping workers who are harmed by trade that he vowed to vote against a free trade deal that includes a reauthorization of trade assistance:

“I’ve never voted against a trade agreement before — but if the administration were to embed TAA into the Korean trade agreement, I would be compelled to vote against it,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) told reporters.

McConnell’s distaste for trade assistance is well known. Earlier this month he called on the administration to move on free trade pacts and “leave Trade Adjustment Assistance out of it.” But now he will vote against the very deal he has championed if it includes provisions to help the workers who are inevitably hurt.

And McConnell is not the only Republican who wants trade deals to be approved without also approving measures to help workers who are displaced. For instance, House Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp (R-MI) called it “regrettable” that trade assistance is a part of the package.

Merits of the trade deals aside (and they have their issues), forging ahead without providing help to the workers who wind up on the short end of the stick is simply unacceptable. But for McConnell, including aid for displaced workers is reason to vote down what is otherwise a top GOP priority.

Like many of his Republican colleagues, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) has aggressively cut social services for the most vulnerable in his state while prioritizing a reduced tax burden for the most fortunate. Christie vetoed a bill last May that would have raised taxes on any income over $1 million to 10.75 percent, increasing revenue that was needed to plug the country’s second largest budget gap.

The measure would have affected just 16,000 of the state’s nearly 9 million residents, while Christie’s cuts to education, public safety, and health services have affected millions. Now, state Democrats are re-introducing the surtax, even though it has little hope of passing, as Christie has already said he would veto it:

The way state Sen. Ray Lesniak and several other Democrats see it, public employees are about to dig deeper into their pockets to bail out New Jersey’s fragile economy, and they want millionaires do the same.

But with Gov. Chris Christie vowing to veto any tax increase. … The Democrats said the additional revenue could be used for a variety of purposes, like increasing school financing for rural and suburban school districts, property tax rebates for the elderly and increased aid to police departments that had to lay off officers.

Chrisite claims he has a mandate from voters to impose this Tea Party agenda on the generally blue state of New Jersey, fighting high-profile wars with teachers, reporters, and even his own constituents who opposed him.

But a new Bloomberg Poll suggests Christie has greatly overplayed his hand. More than half of New Jersey residents now say they wouldn’t support a second term for the governor, and majorities disagreed with Christie on nearly every major issue he has pushed. On the millionaire surtax, a strong majority — 58 percent — of New Jersey residents said they disagreed with his veto.

Meanwhile, 65 percent opposed his education spending cuts. Overall, 68 percent said they think Christie stands with the business community over “ordinary New Jerseyans.”

Christie has claimed the surtax would force “job creators” to flee the state, even though a study from Princeton found this not to be true. “Christie wants us to believe that lower taxes on the very wealthy create jobs,” the Newark Star-Ledger wrote Sunday in an editorial calling for restoring many of Christie’s cuts. “There is no evidence to support that, but the dogma lives.”

Over the next few weeks, you’ll hear a lot from Republicans about the desperate need for a Balanced Budget Amendment to the Constitution. The Hill reports:

Republican Senators are set to kick off a media blitz to push a balanced budget amendment, beginning Wednesday in D.C. and building up through their July Fourth recess next week, when Members will flood local papers and airwaves with support. [...]

More than a dozen lawmakers will hold a news conference Wednesday morning to reintroduce the bill they touted in March, followed by colloquies on the floor Wednesday and Thursday and multiple television appearances throughout the week. … The aides orchestrating the hometown push for the balanced budget amendment said most lawmakers are slotted to write local opinion pieces, discuss the amendment in local TV appearances, and address the topic in town halls and constituent meetings over the holiday break.

But here is something you likely won’t hear during the GOP “media blitz”: The amendment would make the budget authored by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI), which nearly every House and Senate Republican just voted for, illegal.

Why? For decades, the Ryan Budget would exceed the spending cap of 18 percent of GDP specified by the Balanced Budget Amendment. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities explains:

Even the House-passed budget plan of House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan would not pass muster under the [Balanced Budget Amendment]…Federal spending under the Ryan plan would be close to 20 percent of GDP in 2018 through 2021. And the Congressional Budget Office estimates spending under the Ryan plan would be between 20 and 21 percent of GDP in the decade after that (for example, it would be 20¾ percent of GDP in 2030.)

Here is the chart straight from the CBO report:

In other words, the Republicans are now insisting on a bill that would require budgets far more radical than the Ryan budget that turns Medicare into a voucher program. It suggests that congressional Republicans are far more interested in grandstanding than actually reaching a deal to raise the debt ceiling and avert economic catastrophe.

Several Republicans have poo-pooed the need to raise the debt ceiling when the nation hits its legal borrowing limit sometime around Aug. 2. “I doubt that it would be disruptive to the economy,” said Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA). Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said yesterday that Americans will say “well, good” if the U.S. defaults on some obligations.

Depending on how long the stalemate lasts, hitting the nation’s debt ceiling could do real damage to the nation’s economic growth, harm the fragile housing market, and even reignite the financial crisis. And as a new report from the Bipartisan Policy Center found, seniors may be among the first harmed if the debt ceiling isn’t raised because the country almost immediately wouldn’t be able to pay all Social Security benefits:

The Bipartisan Policy Center studied Treasury Department receipts and expenditures for August 2009 and 2010 and determined that the government likely would not have enough revenue to pay the full $23 billion payment to Social Security recipients due on Aug. 3.

On that day, according to the analysis, the government would take in about $12 billion in taxes and other revenue but would owe $32 billion, creating a $20 billion shortfall. It happens to be the first Wednesday of the month — the day a majority of Social Security recipients get their checks.

That Social Security would take such a heavy hit right away is a quirk of the calendar (in that payments are due literally the day after Treasury estimates that the ceiling will be hit), but the point is that an immediate 44 percent cut in government spending, which is what would be necessary if the debt ceiling isn’t raised, is going to adversely affect large and important government programs. As the BPC wrote, if the debt limit isn’t increased, “handling all payments for important and popular programs (e.g., Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Defense, active duty pay) will quickly become impossible.”

At the moment, the GOP has blown up negotiations over raising the debt ceiling in order to protect the rich and oil companies from tax increases, and to preserve corporate tax accounting gimmicks. And it seems that seniors will be the first ones to face the consequences of that decision.

Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) raised hell last year to stop the federal government from investigating Goldman Sachs regarding allegations that the company defrauded investors. In April 2010, shortly after the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced a civil suit against Goldman Sachs, Issa sent a letter to SEC Chairwoman Mary Schapiro demanding to know if there was “any sort of prearrangement, coordination, direction from, or advance notice” between the SEC and the Obama administration or congressional Democrats over the timing of the lawsuit.

Issa’s investigation of the SEC’s investigation into Goldman Sachs stole the headlines and reinforced Goldman Sach’s claim that they had done nothing wrong. Explaining his defense of Goldman Sachs, Issa said he was representing the views of ordinary Americans who are worried about the “growth of government and the growth of government wanting to become more complex, with more agencies and more control over our lives.”

However, recent personal finance disclosures reviewed by ThinkProgress paint a different picture of Issa’s motivations. According to documents filed recently with the House Clerk, Issa went on a buying spree of high yield Goldman Sachs bonds at the same time he was running defense for the investment bank in Congress. From February to December of 2010, Issa bought 12 Goldman Sachs High Yield Fund Class A bonds, each worth up to $50,000 (view page 10 the disclosure here). Many of the bonds were purchased in the months after he filed his letter to the SEC. The $600,000 in new Goldman Sachs investments added to Issa’s multimillion dollar accounts managed by the company, valued from $5.1 to $15.5 million.

Issa has faced accusations that he has used his considerable political power to enrich himself. Earlier this year, ThinkProgress revealed that Issa had requested nearly $1 million in earmark projects that would have benefitted real estate owned by Issa and his family.

Around the time Issa launched his defense of Goldman Sachs and Republicans at-large ramped up efforts to stop President Obama’s financial reforms, Goldman Sachs and other major investment banks shifted their campaign donations mostly to Republican candidates.

Issa’s inquiry in defense of Goldman Sachs turned out to be completely bunk. In October, an Inspector General investigation found no wrongdoing by the SEC regarding Issa’s allegations. But for all the media attention Issa created with his request for an investigation into the SEC, he faced little to no blowback for being dead wrong. Meanwhile, a report this year authored by Sens. Tom Coburn (R-OK) and Carl Levin (D-MI) concluded that Goldman Sachs “misled clients and Congress about the firm’s bets on securities tied to the housing market.”