ThinkProgress filed this report from Pella, Iowa.

As Americans struggle with a sputtering economy and persistently high unemployment, renewed attention is being focused on corporations that avoid paying taxes, leaving taxpayers to cover their unpaid bills. Already, we’ve seen a number of major corporations, many of which brought in huge profits, avoid paying corporate income taxes altogether — from Bank of America to Boeing to General Electric.

Yet corporate tax dodgers have found a willing shield in the Republican Party. From Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-SC) to Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) to presidential hopeful Herman Cain, GOPers are lining up to protect corporate interests in the tax code.

The latest corporate defender is former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. During a presidential campaign stop in Pella, Iowa on Monday, Gingrich discussed corporate tax dodgers like General Electric. However, rather than advocating we pursue tax cheats or close down the loopholes that allow them to skirt the corporate income tax, Gingrich proposed an alternative solution: lower the corporate tax rate to a level that corporations would be more willing to pay. Specifically, the former House Speaker called for reducing the corporate income tax rate by nearly two-thirds to 12.5 percent:

GINGRICH: We ought to cut the corporate tax rate down from 35 percent to 12.5 percent. And ironically, for our liberal friends, General Electric would pay a higher tax at 12.5 percent, because at 35 it pays them to hire lots of lawyers to get around all the taxes and they pay virtually no taxes. But at 12.5 they’d fire the lawyers and write a check to the government. So ironically, you’d get more tax, but also you’d liberate about a trillion dollars overseas of money which is currently locked up in profits but they don’t want to bring home and pay high taxes on.

Watch it:

Why stop there? Why not cut the rate to 9 percent, like Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) is posing? Surely there are some corporations who would be more likely to actually pay their corporate income taxes if the rate were 9 percent instead of 12.5 percent?

In all seriousness, Gingrich is espousing a backwards notion of the way government and corporations ought to be interacting. In most people’s view, government is there to act in the people’s best interests by maintaining a level playing field for all people and ensuring that everyone pays their fair share towards society. In Gingrich’s view, government is there to act in the corporations’ best interests by setting corporate tax rates at whatever level CEOs say they’re willing to pay.

To read more about corporate taxes, check out ThinkProgress’ coverage of how the United States has the second lowest corporate taxes in the developed world, six ways in which conservatives encourage and abet corporate tax dodging, and more about which corporations are avoiding their tax bills.

House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) — when he’s not busy trying to protect the nation’s biggest banks from consumer protection regulations — has issued legislation to “reform” the US Postal Service. “Congress can’t keep kicking the can down the road on out of control labor costs and excess infrastructure of USPS,” Issa has said.

But it seems like Issa is far more interested in attacking the Postal Service’s workers than he is in actually fixing USPS’ fiscal problems. As the Center for American Progress Action Fund’s David Madland and Zane Farr found, Issa’s bill includes a provision that would allow a “Solvency Authority” to unilaterally void USPS’ collective bargaining agreements (much like the “emergency managers” empowered by Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder (R) to nullify labor contracts):

Rep. Issa’s proposed Postal Reform Act isn’t the frontal assault on collective bargaining being pushed by Govs. Scott Walker in Wisconsin and John Kasich in Ohio but instead closely adheres to the strategy of Michigan’s Republican Gov. Rick Snyder to empower “emergency” managers to unilaterally modify collective bargaining agreements. Such powers effectively end any real ability for workers to bargain collectively.

Rep. Issa’s bill would create a Solvency Authority that can “after meeting and conferring with the appropriate bargaining representative … reject, modify, or terminate 1 or more terms or conditions of an existing collective bargaining agreement.” That’s virtually identical language to the Michigan law that allows the emergency manager to “after meeting and conferring with the appropriate bargaining representative … reject, modify, or terminate 1 or more terms and conditions of an existing collective bargaining agreement.”

Issa has expressed admiration for the union-busting efforts of Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI), saying Walker’s “actions to cut spending and address over-compensation of public employees are putting his state government in a stronger financial position.” Making it quite clear that Issa is more interested in busting labor than solving USPS’ problems, he “rejected the approach of the other prominent Republican bill on this topic — introduced in February by Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) — that addresses the Postal Service’s underlying financial issues without giving emergency managers the power to overturn collective bargaining.”

This week, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) caused quite the stir by releasing a convoluted plan for giving President Obama discretion to raise the debt ceiling unilaterally, while handing Republicans the opportunity to bash Obama for raising it on 12 separate occasions, thanks to his plan’s labyrinth of required votes. This has been interpreted by many as McConnell caving and trying to craft a way for the GOP to raise the debt ceiling without receiving many of the various demands it has spent the last several months laying out.

Today, however, McConnell attached his name to a radical piece of legislation crafted by tenther Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), which states that the debt ceiling shouldn’t be raised unless Congress approves huge spending cuts, implements a cap on federal spending and sends a constitutional balanced budget amendment to the states:

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has signed on to co-sponsor the Cut, Cap, Balance Act, The Daily Caller has learned.

A group of Republican Senators introduced the legislation last week. The bill is the legislative embodiment of the Cut, Cap and Balance Pledge that began floating through the halls of Capitol Hill last month. It seeks to tie a vote on the debt limit to spending cuts and caps, and the passage of a balanced budget amendment.

The legislation is very clear in stating that the debt ceiling should not be raised in the absence of approval of a balanced budget amendment that includes spending caps:

The Secretary of the Treasury shall not exercise the additional borrowing authority under subsection (b) of section 3101 of title 31, United States Code until the date that the Archivist of the United States transmits to the States S.J. Res. 10 as introduced on March 31, 2011, a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution, a similar amendment provided it requires that total outlays not exceed total receipts, that contains a spending limitation as a percentage of GDP, and requires that tax increases be approved by a super-majority vote in both houses of Congress, for their ratification.

This is clearly a face-saving move for McConnell, who has earned the wrath of the right wing over his compromise plan. But any of the ideas included in the legislation would be horrible on their own: to bundle them all together would create a trifecta of terribleness that, if McConnell truly believes it should be implemented, should render him unfit to discuss budget matters.

As investigations into the mortgage services industry continue across the country, the register of deeds of South Essex County in Massachusetts, John O’Brien, has uncovered a large problem. Concerned that local banks were not paying transaction fees to the county when trading mortgages, O’Brien conducted an audit where he discovered that 75 percent of the mortgage assignments, or transfers from lenders to investors, issued in his county were invalid. Business Insider has the details:

Of the mortgages issued in South Essex County, “16% of the assignments were valid, 75% were invalid, and 9% were deemed questionable. Of those that are invalid, 27% were fraudulent, 35% showed evidence of robo-signing, and 10% violated the Massachusetts Mortgage Fraud Statute. The proper owner of the mortgages could only be determined 60% of the time.

In a release by his office O’Brien said: ‘…I suspect that at the end of the day we are going to find that the taxpayers have been bilked in this state alone of over 400 million dollars not including the accrued interest plus costs and penalties. The Audit makes the finding that this was not only a MERS (Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems) problem, but a scheme also perpetuated by MERS shareholder banks such Bank of America, Wells Fargo, JP Morgan and others. I am stunned and appalled by the fact that America’s biggest banks have played fast and loose with people’s biggest asset – their homes. This is disgusting, and this is criminal.”

O’Brien is urging Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley to “back out of the proposed foreclosure fraud settlement with banks until the full extent of damages can be ascertained.”

This only adds another page to the recent revelations regarding improper practices that still exist in the mortgage industry. Predatory lending, robo-signing, and foreclosure fraud have sparked investigations and lawsuits from many state’s attorneys general. A recent ProPublica investigation found that bank errors are continuing to cause improper foreclosures.

–Sean Savett

Yesterday, House Financial Services Chairman Spencer Bachus (R-AL) provided the novel theory that the nation’s current rate of sluggish job growth is due to former Presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson. Today, Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-NC) found another culprit — Professor Elizabeth Warren, who is setting up the newly created Consumer Financial Protection Bureau:

Professor Warren has continued to evade questions about the types of financial products that the CFPB would ban or restrict. Businesses and investors are sitting on the sidelines due to economic uncertainty. Professor Warren’s evasive non-answers only further contribute to this climate of tepid investment and slow job growth. I fear that actions by the CFPB that limit access to credit and increase its cost will only further damage a struggling economy.

Warren appeared before the House Oversight Committee today, where Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) and the rest of the GOP followed through on their plan to grill Warren out of fear that she will “bully” the banks. The GOP whipped itself into a tizzy over Warren’s previous appearance on Capitol Hill, when a misunderstanding over the amount of time Warren would testify led to McHenry berating Warren. And McHenry is not the only one who feels that Warren could be personally preventing businesses from hiring:

REP. PAUL GOSAR (R-AZ): The last job numbers I saw are just plummeting, and part of that is the uncertainty we’re creating in here. And to have one individual truly heading an agency, dictating that there won’t be a product, creates some uncertainty into the markets. And so you can see, understand, where I mean as a businessmen, doesn’t like that.

Watch it:

Since the idea for bureau was first floated, the GOP have done all they can to obstruct its creation. Now that it is on the verge of officially launching on July 21, they are trying to render it toothless by refusing to fund it, looking to change its structure to make it more bank-friendly, and ultimately preventing President Obama from appointing anyone to head it. But House Republicans are taking this crusade to the height of absurdity, blaming the nation’s slow rate of job growth on an agency that has not officially launched yet and an individual’s answers to questions during a congressional hearing.

As ThinkProgress previously reported, since 2009, 88 percent of income growth has gone to corporate profits, and only 1 percent has gone to wages. Now, a July 11 edition of Eyes On The Market, a JP Morgan investor report, finds that S&P 500 corporate profit margins increased by about 1.3 percent from 2000 to 2007, with profit margins reaching levels “not seen in decades.”

The JP Morgan analysis concludes that “reductions in wages and benefits explain the majority of the net improvement in margins.” The report includes graphs charting out these profit gains as compared to wages:

Note that the JP Morgan report explains this behavior taking place between 2000 and 2007, meaning that it began long before the Great Recession. Also note that the company ends this section of its report with a chilling conclusion: “As we have shown several times over the last two years, US labor compensation is now at a 50-year low relative to both company sales and US GDP.” (HT: @wonkmonk_)

As the nation’s foreclosure crisis continues to take its toll on homeowners across America, one bright spot is the aggressive investigations that state and local officials are pursuing of mortgage lenders, hoping to uncover dirty practices and hold financial institutions accountable.

But one foreclosure investigator is alleging that she and a colleague were let go for pursuing banks too aggressively. Former Assistant Attorney General Theresa Edwards told the Palm Beach Post that she and colleague June Clarkson were pursuing the state’s “foreclosure mills” when Attorney General Pam Bondi let them go for no apparent reason. Edwards thinks it’s because Bondi and Gov. Rick Scott (R) wanted staff more in line “with their thinking“:

Former Assistant Attorney General Theresa Edwards and colleague June Clarkson had been investigating the state’s so-called “foreclosure mills,” uncovering evidence of legal malpractice that also implicated banks and loan serv­icers. Despite positive performance evaluations, Edwards said the two were told during a meeting with their supervisor in late May to give up their jobs voluntarily or be let go. Edwards said no reason was given for the move.

“It all happened very abruptly,” said Edwards, who had worked in the attorney general’s office for about three years. The foreclosure investigations were launched under former Attorney General Bill McCollum, but Edwards said she sensed changes were coming under Gov. Rick Scott and Attorney General Pam Bondi. “I think they wanted to put people in there that were more in line with their thinking,” Edwards said.

According to data collected from the National Institute On Money In State Politics, Bondi received $57,500 from the securities and investment industries and $150,925 from the real estate industry during her last election campaign. While Florida has been one of the places hit hardest by the foreclosure crisis, it was also the state where a couple successfully recouped legal fees from a local Bank of America branch by threatening to foreclose on it, a remarkable act of defiance. (HT: @matthewstoller)

Previewing a hearing he’s holding today on the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) told Fox Business yesterday that he plans to grill Professor Elizabeth Warren, who is setting up the Bureau as a special assistant to the president and could be nominated as its first director. Bank lobbyists and predatory lenders have lined up to generate opposition to Warren, who is a noted consumer advocate.

Issa’s hearings, as well as several GOP proposals to limit her power or scuttle her nomination, are viewed as part of an industry-led campaign to cripple Warren’s ability to rein in abusive practices in the credit card, mortgage, and related lending businesses. During the interview, Issa let his sympathies be known to world when he said that he feared Warren could “bully” the banking industry:

ISSA: As you know, we’re very concerned that this is essentially an entity funded around Congress and yet it has the ability to bully banks.

FOX HOST: Well I was going to ask you. Do you have a problem with her or the entity?

ISSA: Our big problem is with the entity.

Watch it:

When it comes to consumer financial issues, Issa should be investigating the mortgage lending industry, abusive for-profit schools, car title loans, and other forms of usury that have saddled Americans with debt and economic ruin. Instead, he hopes to embarrass the one person most likely to provide oversight over predatory lending.

Issa’s stand for the banks against “bully” Elizabeth Warren places him in line with other major GOP legislators working on behalf of Wall Street. Issa’s colleague, House Financial Services Chairman Spencer Bachus (R-AL), has openly said his job is to “serve the banks.” Bachus has also admitted that all of his anti-CFPB legislation is really just an effort to take down Warren.