Since the housing bubble burst, millions of families have been foreclosed upon and millions more have seen their mortgages sink underwater (meaning they now owe more on their mortgage than their house is worth), through no fault of their own. Continued foreclosure have been a drag on the economy for the last few years, pulling down home values and blighting neighborhoods.

The Obama administration has tried to implement anti-foreclosure programs (with extremely limited success). But according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, these efforts should come to an end, as the economy actually needs more foreclosures:

On the housing front, [U.S. Chamber of Commerce President Tom] Donohue struck a somewhat dire tone, arguing that more foreclosures need to occur before the housing market can turn around, and criticizing Washington efforts to provide relief.

“Through their actions over the last two decades, the politicians have already proved they can help royally mess up the housing sector,” he said. “Government should be smarter this time around and avoid the temptation to endlessly prop up those who, sadly, will never be able to afford the homes they are in now.”

Currently, one in five homeowners in the U.S. is underwater. At the current rate, it would take 103 months to “sell off all the foreclosed homes in banks’ possession, plus all the homes likely to end up there over the next couple years, at the current rate of sales.” That’s eight and a half years of backlog. Wall Street is not maintaining the properties it already owns, further dragging down the value of homes. More foreclosures and empty houses will do nothing to help the situation.

The Wall Street Journal reported this morning that “the Obama administration is ramping up talks on how to revive the housing market,” but has not decided on any specifics. Last week, President Obama hinted that the White House is working on ways to apply more pressure on banks, pushing them to reduce loan amounts for troubled borrowers.

The Chamber of Commerce, however, as it stands up for the nation’s biggest banks and multinational corporations, thinks it best that homeowners simply lose their homes. According to a new CBS/New York Times poll, “53 percent say the federal government should be helping people who are having trouble paying their mortgages.”

Just days after the nation’s unemployment rate hit 9.2 percent, Rep. Kevin Brady (R-TX) said on CNBC that it’s a problem that the federal government isn’t “sacrificing” by laying off workers like the private sector. Last week’s dismal jobs report showed that the recovery has stalled and 14.1 million Americans are out of work, but Brady complained that government isn’t doing its part to “get our financial house in order” because it’s hiring workers while private companies lay them off:

BRADY: Truth is, when’s the government going to sacrifice? Everyone’s been pinching pennies, the government budgets have almost doubled the last couple years. Most companies are laying off workers, especially small businesses, the federal government’s hiring federal workers. So my question is, when is the government going to sacrifice in order to help us get our financial house in order?

Watch it:

Brady’s suggestion that the government needs to lay off more workers during a time of high unemployment is not only disturbingly out-of-touch, it’s also untrue. Last month marked the sharpest decline in state and local jobs since the 1982, and most job growth at the moment is coming from private companies.

As Matt Yglesias has documented, over 500,000 government workers have lost their jobs since January 2009. State and local government employees have been particularly hard hit: nearly 100,000 have lost their jobs so far this year, and 464,000 have found themselves jobless since September 2008. Forecasts say another 110,000 could soon lose their jobs as states begin their new fiscal years.

Federal payrolls have been mostly flat for years, even as the population has been growing. In November, President Obama announced a two-year pay freeze for 1.9 million federal workers.

According to David Leonhardt, if state and local governments had continued to hire at their previous pace, they would have added half a million jobs to the economy. In other words, government austerity over the past two years “has cost the economy about one million jobs.”

It should go without saying, but apparently doesn’t, that it’s a bad thing that some small businesses are laying off workers and the public sector should not try to emulate them. It’s also callous and ignorant to suggest that government workers aren’t shouldering their fair share of economic pain.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is proposing a new plan that would give the Republicans everything they want — $2.5 trillion in spending cuts — plus 12 new chances to blame Obama for everything. Under the McConnell plan:

1. Obama would have to request and increase in the debt ceiling along with “a plan to reduce spending by a greater amount.”

2. Either chamber could pass a “Resolution of Disapproval” blocking the plan. Since the GOP knows they don’t have enough votes in the Senate, this method ensures the House would pass such a resolution, sending it back to the President.

3. Obama would then have an opportunity to veto the resolution.

4. Obama would have to round up enough Democratic votes to avoid the veto from being overridden.

Each of these unnecessary steps would be repeated three times, giving Republicans a chance to bash Obama on 12 separate occasions, while avoiding any accountability for the debt ceiling increase or spending cuts. The largest of the three debt limit increases under the McConnell Plan is scheduled for the summer of 2012, to maximize political opportunities against Obama.

As the negotiations regarding raising the nation’s debt ceiling have ground on, Republicans have steadfastly refused to make any concessions. While Democrats have reportedly agreed to trillions of dollars in spending cuts, as well as cuts and changes to Medicare and Social Security, the GOP has refused to consider raising taxes on the richest Americans or oil companies, or closing tax loopholes that benefit corporate jet owners and billionaire hedge fund managers.

Yesterday, ThinkProgress’ Marie Diamond noted that GOP leaders, even as they say that its imperative and necessary, consider the very act of raising the debt ceiling to be a concession on their part. For instance, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) said yesterday that the key Republican concession is “the fact that we are voting the fact that we are even discussing voting for a debt ceiling increase.”

Today, Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) took this absurd notion one step further, claiming that the spending cuts that the GOP has demanded in return for a debt ceiling increase are somehow a concession on the part of Republicans:

Q: You say you want to reach a deal, you say it’s important, everyone in the room says the same thing, but the President says Republicans have to make concessions to move this ball forward. Where are these concessions?

BOEHNER: I don’t know why he believes that it’s going to be any easier for Republicans than Democrats to make these tough decisions, uhhh, in terms of reducing spending. Washington has a spending problem, we don’t have a revenue problem.

Watch it:

As Boehner himself explained earlier today, “my message to the White House over the last several months has been real simple: the spending cuts have to be larger than the increase in the debt ceiling.” Yesterday he said, “the House can only pass a debt limit bill that includes spending cuts larger than the hike in the debt limit…I think we also need real reductions in spending right now.” The day before that he told conservative radio host Laura Ingraham, “I’ve made it clear all through this fight that we should not increase the debt limit without real spending cuts.”

To try and turn the tables now and make it seem that the spending cuts Republicans have demanded for months are some sort of concession is the height of ludicrousness. Boehner agrees that the debt ceiling needs to go up to avoid economic catastrophe, yet he’s still dragging these negotiations out in order to score maximum political points.

One of the major demands that almost all congressional Republicans have made about deficit reduction is that wealthier Americans and large corporations shouldn’t have to pay any more in taxes. “The House has taken a firm position against anything having to do with increasing taxes or raising tax rates,” said House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) at the onset of negotiations over the budget deficit in May.

Yet as the Daily Beast’s Howard Kurtz reports, one group that Cantor is apparently fine with making pay more is American college students. Cantor, at the White House for budget negotiations, apparently proposed that students who take out student loans should immediately start paying interest, rather than getting to make payments after graduation:

As Monday’s White House budget talks got down to the nitty-gritty, Eric Cantor proposed a series of spending cuts, one of them aimed squarely at college students. The House majority leader, who did most of the talking for the Republican side, said those taking out student loans should start paying interest right away, rather than being able to defer payments until after graduation. It is a big-ticket item that would save $40 billion over 10 years.

According to Kurtz, Obama rejected Cantor’s proposal out of hand, saying that he didn’t want to “screw students.” Cantor’s proposal comes at a time when American students are already overwhelmed by student loan debt. In 2008, the average debt that a college student graduated with was a whopping $23,000. American students continue to pay more than most of their developed world neighbors for a college education, and Cantor apparently wants to make it even more difficult for them while not touching the richest Americans.

In an attempt to “revive profit,” corporate giant Cisco Systems is expected to announce that it’s laying off 10,000 workers, or 14 percent of its workforce:

The cuts include as many as 7,000 jobs that would be eliminated by the end of August, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the plans aren’t final. Cisco, based in San Jose, Calif., is also providing early-retirement packages to about 3,000 workers who took buyouts, the people said. [...]

Eliminating jobs will help Cisco wring $1 billion in expenses in fiscal 2012, the company said in May.

The news comes at the same time that Cisco is lobbying Congress for a huge corporate tax break in the form of a repatriation holiday, which would allow companies that have stashed money offshore to bring it back to the U.S. at a much lower rate than they would normally pay. As ThinkProgress has reported, Cisco is part of a group of corporations called WinAmerica that continue to lobby for a repatriation holiday, even as the companies already pay extremely low taxes.

Cisco, for instance, has paid an effective tax rate of 19.8 percent — far below the statutory corporate tax rate of 35 percent. Additionally, Cisco has dodged $7 billion in taxes since 2005.

Ironically, WinAmerica corporations are pushing for a tax holiday based on the claim that it will allow them to bring funds into the U.S. that they will invest in domestic operations and job creation. However, Congress approved a repatriation holiday in 2004, and data show that the companies that benefited most wound up cutting jobs in subsequent years, laying off tens of thousands of workers. The news that Cisco is laying off 10,000 American workers to boost their bottom line is further proof of just how empty the claim still is.