Republicans in Congress have decided to ramp up their campaign to extend the Bush tax cuts already, with House Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp (R-MI) claiming last week that the 2013 expiration of the cuts is causing uncertainty in the economy today. President Obama has said that he will not renew the Bush tax cuts for the richest two percent of Americans when they expire in 2013, even though he extended those cuts as part of last December’s tax deal.

Today, in an interview with CBS News, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT), the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, got in on the act, saying that allowing the Bush tax cuts for just the richest Americans to expire would turn the U.S. into a “second rate nation“:

The fact of the matter is that you raise those taxes, and see what you’re going to get. You let them go up, like the Democrats [want to] let them go up, and we’ll more quickly become a second rate nation.

Watch it (about 7:15):

Tax revenue in the U.S. is currently the lowest its been in more than half a century. Taxes, including those on the rich, are lower than they were under conservative icon President Reagan. As Zaid Jilani pointed out, “The top 400 taxpayers — who have more wealth than half of all Americans combined — are paying lower taxes than they have in a generation.”

It’s unclear why Hatch thinks that allowing tax rates for the very richest Americans to go back to where they were under the Clinton administration — still far below where they were under Presidents Reagan or Eisenhower — means immediate American decline. In a new Pew poll, 66 percent of Americans favor raising taxes on the richest Americans as a way to reduce the deficit.

Hatch also said, “The Bush tax cuts were proven to be effective in their own way.” In fact, the Bush tax cuts delivered none of their promised results, leading to the weakest economic expansion of the post-war period. Read out full report on the failed legacy of the Bush tax cuts here.

As ThinkProgress Economics Editor Pat Garofalo noted today, millions of Americans are still living in fear of having their homes foreclosed on as the nation’s housing crisis continues unabated, and federal efforts to stem the flow of foreclosures have thus far been too little and too late.

One particularly shocking foreclosure story revolves around father and son Tim and Aaron Collette. In 2006, in more prosperous times, Tim Collette purchased a new home in his state of Oregon and was able to pay more than $100,000 in a down payment. But when the recession hit, his construction business suffered and he was soon unable to make mortgage payments through no fault of his own.

His mortgage servicer, Chase, refused to work with him to renegotiate the terms of his mortgage to adapt to the hard economic times. While this was occurring, his son Aaron was serving in Iraq. He is soon scheduled to come home for a brief period of leave, but Chase is taking away his family’s home. In ten days — the family has set up a countdown clock to the actual time — the bank is set to foreclose on house, essentially meaning that Aaron is going to be coming home to a home that doesn’t exist.

This afternoon, Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) appeared on the floor of the Senate to relay the tale of the Collette family. He read a letter from Tim Collette and concluded that for this family and “countless others, it didn’t need to be this bad”:

MERKELEY: I’d like to share with you today a story, a story about Tim Collette and his son in my state of Oregon. [...] Mr. Collette says, my biggest problem now is my some comes from the military in August, and my home is being foreclosed on in 18 days. He’s been hit by an I.E.D., people shooting at him, and he just wanted to come home and sleep in his room, in his bed, and be safe for 15 days. And I told him I’d make that happen. I don’t know how yet. [...] And for Tim and countless others, it didn’t need to be this bad.

Watch it:

The Collette family is campaigning for legislation in Oregon that would give homeowners more leverage to negotiate with banks to modify their mortagages. If you want to help this father and his military son, you can go here to sign a petition by Economic Fairness Oregon to demand that Chase work with the family rather than foreclose on their home.

Our guest bloggers are Theodora Chang, an Education Policy Analyst at the Center for American Progress Action Fund, and Devin McMahon, an intern with the education policy team at CAPAF.

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan visited Minnesota last week to meet with students and discuss the likelihood of reforming the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), the nation’s main education law:

“I just want a sense of urgency,” Duncan told reporters in St. Paul. “We’ve got children out here, we’ve got teachers out here. We’ve got parents and principals who need change now.”

Lawmakers, both Republicans and Democrats, also say that they believe that fixing education should be a priority. But do their actions match their words? Here’s a look at the scorecard so far:

Chamber	Committee	Key Stats: Republicans	Key Stats: Democrats
House	Education and Workforce	23 Committee members. Total of 9 bills introduced. 19 members have not introduced any education-related legislation.	17 Committee members. Total of 23 bills introduced. 3 members have not introduced any education-related legislation.
Senate	Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions	10 Senators. Total of 1 bill introduced.	12 Senators. Total of 28 bills introduced.

The bills introduced by Democrats address key priorities such as teacher and principal quality, early childhood education, expanded learning time, special education, turnaround schools, and wraparound services. The bills introduced by Republicans address issues such as recycling leftover school cafeteria food, and cutting education programs.

Even without discussing the merits of the bills they have put forth, it’s clear that Republicans are way behind the ball when it comes to spurring action on education reform. House Education and Workforce Committee Chairman John Kline (R-MN) recently justified eliminating 43 programs by saying that they were “just too complicated” and “difficult” to deal with. Let’s hope that’s not the same stance that lawmakers take with the rest of the law.

Back in February 2009, the Obama administration launched the Home Affordable Modification Program, one of several initiatives under an umbrella program called Making Home Affordable. The goal of the program was to entice banks into modifying millions of mortgages using a system of sticks and carrots: payments for successful modifications and sanctions for failing to keep borrowers in their homes.

However, the program quickly fell on its face. A change in bankruptcy law allowing what are known as mortgage cram-downs, which was supposed to be the major stick used against the banks, failed to get through Congress after intense lobbying by the banking industry. The banks, particularly Bank of America, became notorious for losing borrowers’ paperwork, running them in circles, and even foreclosing on them while they were in the midst of obtaining a HAMP modification. Back in November 2009, Andrew Jakabovics and I uncovered Bank of America violating HAMP by trying to siphon borrowers off into its own private modification program.

More borrowers wound up entering HAMP and getting booted out than ever received a sustainable mortgage modification. Despite all this, only now, two years and four months after HAMP launched, has the administration finally seen fit to slap some sanctions on the banks:

Three of the nation’s largest mortgage servicers will no longer receive payments tied to their participation in the Obama administration’s main foreclosure prevention initiative until they improve their performance in that program, a senior administration official said Wednesday. Bank of America, J.P. Morgan Chase and Wells Fargo need to make “substantial improvements” to collect fees through the Making Home Affordable Program, which helps struggling borrowers by lowering their monthly mortgage payments. The companies failed to meet basic program requirements, such as properly contacting borrowers, the official said.

This is simply far too little, far too late. As Firedoglake’s David Dayen wrote, “These steps, like withholding incentive payments, and mandating a single point of contact, and introducing the net present value calculator, are all things Treasury should have done IMMEDIATELY when they saw the servicers abusing the program. That would have not only forced compliance, but alleviated the suffering of hundreds of thousands if not millions of borrowers. It took too long to get to this point.”

At this point, the HAMP’s ship has largely sailed, and less than $2 billion of the $50 billion dedicated to the program has been spent. According to Reuters, the Obama administration is looking for new ways to help ease the housing crisis. Here are some ideas that the administration should adopt.

For years, 2012 Republican presidential hopeful Rick Santorum has been a staunch advocate of Social Security privatization. In fact, he called privatization the “great hope” for Social Security, and even referenced his support of privatization on the day he officially announced his candidacy for president.

However, Santorum has tried to have it both ways when it comes to his favored policy recently, saying that even though he still favors privatization, he doesn’t think it is appropriate to implement it now due to the state of the economy. During an interview with NBC’s Chuck Todd today, Santorum admitted that one of the factors leading him to the conclusion that Social Security shouldn’t be privatized right now is the cost of setting up private accounts:

What I said was that, in recent interviews, is that the idea of going to personal accounts right now is just, I think, a little too tough. Because we have, at the time I was proposing them back in the ’90s and even into the early part of the 2000′s, we had a surplus in Social Security, we could afford, we could finance personal accounts, to begin that process of transitioning Social Security into a program that I think is much more robust for future generations. Now the rubber’s hit the road. Social Security is paying out more in benefits than it’s collecting in taxes, we have a $1.4 trillion deficit, and the idea of financing personal retirement accounts, in addition to having to pay for Social Security benefits, is to me just something that we can’t do right now. I’d love to be able to do it, but we can’t do it right now.

Watch it:

Santorum is absolutely right that privatizing Social Security would be prohibitively expensive. As Center for American Progress Senior Fellow Christian Weller explained, under a Bush-style privatization scheme, “money that was earmarked to pay current beneficiaries would no longer be available, requiring the government to borrow trillions of dollars to allow Social Security to pay for promised benefits. Without this borrowing, benefit cuts to current retirees would have to be made.”

But even if the country could afford the high cost of setting up such a system, it would still be a terrible idea, imposing new risks on seniors without setting Social Security on a path to solvency. Santorum admits that the cost of privatizing Social Security is a problem; now if only he would realize the rest of the consequences would be horrific as well.

As ThinkProgress has reported, the conservative movement is currently in the midst of a gold craze spurred by prominent Republicans like Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) and Glenn Beck. These “gold bugs” are demanding a return to the gold standard and encouraging their supporters to invest in gold — all based on the apocalyptic belief that the U.S. dollar is on the verge of collapse, runaway inflation is imminent, and gold is a more stable and reliable currency than paper money.

These concerns are baseless. As Matt Yglesias points out, the Obama years have seen the lowest inflation in 30 years, but Tea Party groups are determined to make returning to the gold standard a litmus test for GOP presidential candidates. And it looks like they’re succeeding. The Daily Caller reports that at least six Republican contenders are scheduled to speak at a pro-gold standard bus tour in Iowa:

The Iowa Tea Party and the group American Principles in Action announced that they are launching their 18-day bus tour starting June 13.

Republicans Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, Gary Johnson, Tim Pawlenty and Rick Santorum are scheduled to speak during at least one stop on the tour, according to Andy Blom, executive director of American Principles in Action. All are either running or contemplating a run for president in 2012. [...]

“We’re facing dramatic inflation and we have a government with out of control spending,” Blom said. “If we go back to making our money actually worth something, it stabilizes prices, it takes away the government’s credit card, they can’t just decide to go print tons of money and devalue the dollar.”

Blom said they also hope to get the grassroots, populist support behind the issue.

Nevertheless, Republican candidates have increasingly pandered to the far-right base by endorsing these gold schemes. Former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R) recently derided the U.S. dollar as a “fiat currency” — a dog whistle to “a narrow constituency of voters who believe that America’s woes began when it abandoned the gold standard.”

House Republicans have been playing games with the nation’s debt ceiling for months, threatening to not raise it — and thus invite all of the adverse economic consequences that would follow — unless they receive various concessions from the Obama administration and Congressional Democrats, including cuts to Social Security or new constitutional amendments. But at the same time, the Republican leadership has been saying that failure to raise the debt ceiling would be, in the words of House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), “irresponsible.”

But as Aug. 2 approaches, which is the date on which Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner estimates the U.S. will begin to default on some obligations, the Republicans have acted more reckless when it comes to the debt ceiling. Case in point, House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) has outright called for the U.S. to go over the cliff and miss payments to creditors:

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.

Several Republicans — including Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA) and Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) — have said default would not necessarily be bad thing. Others, like Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA), have said that failing to raise the debt ceiling would bring on a “crisis,” but that such a crisis could be beneficial. But as The State pointed out, Ryan is “is the highest ranking Republican thus far to express support for a possible U.S. default.”

Ryan has changed his tune regarding the debt ceiling significantly over the last several months. Back in January, Ryan admitted that failing to raise the debt ceiling was “unworkable.” “Yes, you can’t not raise the debt ceiling. Default is the unworkable solution,” he said during an appearance at the National Press Club. Earlier this month, he began to take a more radical line, saying that the ceiling wouldn’t be raised without concessions from Democrats. “It won’t happen, I’m serious about this,” he said. Now it seems he’s gone full-in with the fringe of his party in actually inviting a default.

Yesterday, the credit rating agency Fitch warned that even a short-term default that resulted in some missed payments — exactly what Ryan is advocating — would do real damage to the U.S. creditworthiness. “If the Treasury missed a payment on its debts, even for a short period, Fitch would lower the nation’s credit rating — adding that it would be ‘unlikely’ the government could return to AAA after such a default,” The Hill reported.