House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) appeared on CNBC today, where he endorsed giving a $78 billion tax break to some of the nation’s largest corporations, even though an identical plan passed in 2004 failed to deliver on its promise of economic growth and job creation. Later in the interview, Ryan revealed that he has little idea of the extent of the country’s corporate tax problem, as he thinks mega-manufacturer Boeing — which hasn’t paid a dime of federal corporate income taxes in three years — has an “extremely high” tax rate:

Sure, you can say GE and others [pay no taxes], but there are lots of large corporations that pay these high effective tax rates. UPS was 34 percent this year, I think. I talked to [Boeing CEO] Jim McNerny a couple of weeks ago, their tax rate is extremely high, far higher than their competitors. So when you tax American competitors a whole lot more than our foreign competitors tax theirs, they win and we lose.

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As Citizens for Tax Justice found, Boeing has made $9 billion in profits over three years, while not paying any corporate income taxes. In fact, the company received tax benefits of $178 million over that period. But Boeing’s lack of a tax bill didn’t stop Ryan from pushing to give it another tax break, and it hasn’t stopped the company itself from lobbying for a corporate tax cut.

While a growing number of Americans support raising the federal debt ceiling, Republican lawmakers remain fastidiously committed to plunging the nation into an economic crisis that could bring about a bigger GDP drop than the 2008 recession. Ignoring the foreseeable danger, Republicans insist on holding the necessary increase in the debt ceiling hostage for destructive demands like a balanced budget amendment or crippling budget cuts. Last week, Tea Party Doyen Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) signaled that if any Republicans should go “the wrong way” and vote to raise the debt ceiling, he would work to oust them in 2012.

DeMint’s dangerous political posturing, however, drew scoffs from Sen. Al Franken (D-MN). Speaking with ThinkProgress at Netroots Nation this past weekend, Franken blasted DeMint and the GOP’s “hostage-taking” on the debt ceiling as an “unconscionable” gamble with the “full faith and credit” of the U.S.:

FRANKEN: I think it’s unconscionable. This is really playing with the full faith and credit of the United States government. We don’t know for sure what the effect would be, but we may be risking a worldwide depression by doing this. Basically, the world economy is based on the dollar and based on the Treasury. And for us to allow the default on treasuries would be, I think, an absolute disaster. This kind of hostage-taking to me is unconscionable.

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Given the comprehensive nature of the consequences of failing to raise the debt ceiling, “absolute disaster” may be putting it lightly. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke recently noted that even a short-term default could result in cuts to vital programs like Social Security, Medicare, and the military. The Wall Street Journal noted that, if Republicans hold out long enough, their failure could serve to negate all of the expected 2011 economic growth. The U.S default would also land a severe blow an already fragile housing market that is currently experiencing a downward spiral worse than that of the Great Depression. Be it “absolute disaster” or “unconscionable,” Franken’s characterization of this issue is undeniably more accurate than that of the GOP.

Ever since President Obama was on the campaign trail, he has been derided by Republicans for vowing to allow the Bush tax cuts for the richest two percent of Americans to expire. And that’s because, to Republicans, there are few things more important than the top marginal tax rate. And to hear Republicans tell it, marginal tax rates are the be-all and end-all of economic growth.

“We’ve seen over the last 30 years that lower marginal tax rates have led to a growing economy, more employment and more people paying taxes,” said Speaker of the House John Boehner. “We also need to just cut the top marginal rate for individuals and corporations so that we’re more competitive and companies can look way out in the future and know they’ll have a competitive tax rate,” said Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC). “The economics profession has been really clear about this – higher marginal tax rates create a drag on economic growth,” added House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI).

But is the data as clear as Ryan suggests? In fact, as Michael Linden, Director of Tax and Budget Policy at the Center for American Progress, found, “growth was actually fastest in years with relatively high top marginal tax rates”:

Back in the 1950s, when the top marginal tax rate was more than 90 percent, real annual growth averaged more than 4 percent. During the last eight years, when the top marginal rate was just 35 percent, real growth was less than half that. Altogether, in years when the top marginal rate was lower than 39.6 percent — the top rate during the 1990s — annual real growth averaged 2.1 percent. In years when the rate was 39.6 percent or higher, real growth averaged 3.8 percent. The pattern is the same regardless of threshold. Take 50 percent, for example. Growth in years when the tax rate was less than 50 percent averaged 2.7 percent. In years with tax rates at or more than 50 percent, growth was 3.7 percent.

As Linden put it, “these numbers do not mean that higher rates necessarily lead to higher growth. But the central tenet of modern conservative economics is that a lower top marginal tax rate will result in more growth, and these numbers do show conclusively that history has not been kind to that theory.” Indeed, these numbers put the lie to the common Republican refrain that Obama and Democrats in Congress are trying to implement a “job-killing tax hike” by putting the top tax rate back to where it was under President Clinton.

This past February, House Republicans allowed an expansion of the Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) program to expire. TAA is designed to help workers who lost their jobs due to trade agreements. Since then, the House GOP has been demanding that President Obama submit three new trade agreements for passage before a vote is held on TAA renewal.

But last week, Rep. Dennis Ross (R-FL) went one step further, introducing H.R.2165, which would abolish the TAA program entirely:

“It is near impossible to determine whether someone lost their job due to free trade,” Ross has said. “A government handout, borrowed from China, as a bone to Big Labor, won’t create a single job and is a needless distraction.” He also said trade assistance is “a federal wealth-redistribution program that has no business existing in a free society.”

Nearly 300,000 workers were aided by trade assistance in 2009. According to the Economic Policy Institute, the Korea-U.S. free trade agreement alone would cost 159,000 American jobs.

Several multinational corporations — operating under a united campaign called “Win America” — have been pushing Congress to enact what’s known as a tax repatriation holiday. Such a holiday would allow U.S. corporations to bring money held overseas back to the U.S. at a dramatically lower tax rate, even though the corporations calling for the holiday already pay exceedingly low taxes.

The premise of a repatriation holiday is that the money brought back will be invested domestically and create jobs. However, corporations used the money from a 2004 repatriation holiday to enrich their executives, not expand U.S. operations. In fact, the companies that benefited most from that 2004 tax break wound up cutting thousands of jobs over the subsequent few years.

But that hasn’t stopped Republicans from calling for a repeat performance. House Republicans have proposed a repatriation holiday that would have corporations pay a 5.25 percent tax rate on any money they repatriate (instead of the statutory 35 percent rate). And the idea evidently has the support of House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI), who appeared on CNBC today. He not only endorsed a repatriation holiday, but said we should permanently allow corporations to repatriate money at a lower tax rate:

It’s a good idea. We ought to have it every day. Instead of having repatriation every seven years, let’s have it every single day by going to a different system.

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Of course, permanently allowing corporations to repatriate money at a lower rate would create all sorts of perverse incentives to first send money offshore for purely tax purposes and then bring it back later. But Ryan may also have been endorsing the move to what’s known as a territorial tax system. Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) has called for such a system, which, as Citizens for Tax Justice noted, would promote the permanent offshoring of U.S. jobs and funds.

Already, the prospect of repeated tax holidays has encouraged corporations to move assets offshore. According to research done at Northwestern University, following the 2004 tax holiday, corporations moved more money offshore in anticipation of another tax holiday, and “by the end of 2006 the total ‘permanently’ reinvested abroad had exceeded the 2004 peak.” The Joint Economic Committee estimated that a repatriation holiday would cost the U.S. nearly $80 billion over 10 years.

Earlier this month, the California Legislature approved the final version of a bill that would effectively end tax-dodging by online retailers like Amazon.com and Overstock.com, requiring them to collect sales taxes just like any other retailer.

Now, the provision is sitting on the desk of California Gov. Jerry Brown (D), who has to decide whether he will approve it or veto it. As of Friday, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that lawmakers who are pushing for ending the tax loophole currently are unsure of what Brown will do.

As the Associated Press reports today, ending the online sales tax loophole nationwide could bring in $23 billion of revenue annually. In California, ending this loophole for just one retailer — Amazon.com — would bring in enough revenue to reverse the state’s cuts to child welfare services:

State governments across the country are laying off teachers, closing public libraries and parks, and reducing health care services, but there is one place they could get $23 billion a year if they could only agree how to do it: Internet retailers such as Amazon.com. That’s enough to pay for the salaries of more than 46,000 teachers, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. In California, the amount of uncollected taxes from Amazon sales alone is roughly the same amount cut from child welfare services in the current state budget.

Amazon has previously responded to legislative efforts to close the tax loophole by threatening to cut ties to affiliates in the state of California. Some estimates say that California could collect as much as $1.1 billion annually from online retailers if it closed the online sales tax loophole.