The Senate today approved, and President Obama signed, a debt ceiling package that will cut trillions from the budget, without raising one dime in revenue (though the super committee that the legislation creates could technically decide to craft revenue-raising provisions later). Though President Obama had continually called for a “balanced approach” to deficit reduction, the bill he signed today is undoubtedly a conservative one, with Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) crowing that he got “98 percent” of what he wanted.

The New York Times’ Nate Silver argues that Obama could have gotten more out of the deal, as even the House Tea Party Caucus — which had taken a very hard line against raising the debt ceiling — fell in line in the end:

Almost three-quarters of Republicans voted in the affirmative. And even the Tea Party came around in the end. By 32-to-28, members of the Tea Party Caucus voted for the bill, despite earlier claims — which now look like a bluff — that they wouldn’t vote to raise the debt ceiling under any circumstances.

These results seem to suggest that Mr. Obama left something on the table. That is, Mr. Obama could have shifted the deal tangibly toward the left and still gotten a bill through without too much of a problem. For instance, even if all members of the Tea Party Caucus had voted against the bill, it would still have passed 237-to-193, and that’s with 95 Democrats voting against it.

Of the GOP freshman class, 59 members voted in favor of the deal, with 28 opposed.

Tea Partiers had said that everything from a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution to corporate tax cuts were required in return for their vote to raise the debt ceiling — if they were willing to vote to raise it at all — but still, many of them came over without such pieces being in the bill (which only requires that a vote be held on a balanced budget amendment). Last week, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) excoriated Tea Partiers for their “bizarro” and “foolish” debt ceiling demands.

ThinkProgress filed this report from the Western Conservative Summit in Denver, CO.

During a major policy address in June, former Godfather’s Pizza CEO Herman Cain laid out his three economic guiding principles. Cain’s first tenet: “Production drives the economy.” Yet looking at his campaign merchandise, Cain appears to be more interested in driving the economy of Honduras than the United States.

An ABC investigation found that Cain’s t-shirts, which the campaign sells at $30 apiece, are manufactured in Honduras rather than the United States.

ThinkProgress was in attendance when ABC’s Arlette Saenz confronted the former pizza executive about his campaign’s decision to manufacture t-shirts in Honduras rather than in the United States. Cain downplayed the concern, saying “I don’t have a political statement with respect to that.” When asked if he would consider producing his campaign’s t-shirts in the United States instead, Cain dismissed the idea out of hand, saying there was no “compelling reason” to do so:

SAENZ: This is one of your t-shirts. If you look at the label, it says that it’s made in Honduras. Were you aware that that was going on?

CAIN: No, I wasn’t aware that it was made in Honduras. I just was aware that it was Fruit of the Loom, which is an American company. So where they buy their t-shirts, no, we did not look at that. [...] The fact that it was made in Honduras, I don’t have a political statement with respect to that.

SAENZ: Would you consider changing your campaign gear that isn’t made in this country?

CAIN: It depends on the reason why somebody would want me to change it. Changing it because someone says it was made outside the United States alone isn’t a reason. If I had a compelling reason, yes. But if I don’t have a compelling reason, no. You want to know why? We live in a global marketplace, and we’re not going to reignite the growth in this country with any sort of protectionism.

Watch it:

Cain isn’t the only Republican presidential campaign to get caught selling merchandise that wasn’t manufactured in the United States. Last week, Newt Gingrich’s campaign was confronted for selling t-shirts produced in El Salvador. (Gingrich blamed the t-shirt snafu on his campaign’s volunteers.) Cain, on the other hand, was unfazed by his campaign’s decision to boost Honduran production in lieu of American production.

Months ago, Cain chose this as his presidential campaign slogan: “Is America Ready?” When it comes to producing t-shirts, Cain’s answer is clear: not yet.

Just a year and a half ago, Detroit Public School employees accepted a $93 million wage concession. But that isn’t enough for the undemocratically appointed Emergency Manager of Detroit, Roy Roberts, who last Friday ignored teachers’ union contracts and cut wages by 10 percent across the board.

The 10 percent reduction will translate to a wage cut of $7,300 for every teacher. The cuts will also be devastating for other DPS employees like food service workers and bus attendants, some of whom make less than $24,000 a year and will now be forced to go on public assistance to get by:

Wielding power under a new state law to modify union contracts, Detroit Public Schools emergency manager Roy Roberts this morning imposed a 10 percent wage cut on all employees and moved the district to a less costly benefits plan.

The move, announced by Roberts this morning at a meeting with leaders of eight unions representing nearly 10,000 employees, will save DPS $81.8 million dollars this year alone at a time when the district is struggling with a $327 million budget deficit.

Roberts became the first emergency manager of a Michigan school district to use the power of the state’s Emergency Manager Law to modify existing collective bargaining agreements.

All 10,000 workers in the district – union and nonunion – will see the 10 percent cut in their paychecks starting on August 23, and will begin to pay 20 percent of health care benefits costs starting September 1. Other cuts include ending payments for unused sick days and for teaching in oversized classrooms. The budget also closes 11 schools and calls for nearly 800 layoffs.

The emergency manager appointed by Gov. Rick Snyder (R) first announced the wage concession last month when the district released it annual budget. Union leaders have balked at the cuts and pledged to fight the move. There’s speculation that teachers may strike or not show up for school this fall in protest, and the unions are considering legal action for breach of contract. Unions have already given millions in concessions to Roberts’ predecessor, Robert Bobb.

Many believe Roberts’ decision will further fuel efforts to strike down Michigan’s emergency manager law, which is already deeply unpopular. In May, Snyder amended state law to give emergency managers broad powers, including the ability to reject, modify or terminate collective bargaining agreements.

Opponents of the law are trying to get a voter referendum on the ballot in November 2012. According to a recent poll, 53 percent of the likely Michigan voters would reject it and only 34 percent would vote to keep it.

As ThinkProgress previously reported, a handful of right-wing front groups and the major media have successfully turned our the focus of our political leaders from job creation to deficit reduction. In a series of interviews with ThinkProgress, a number of mayors of major American cities — as a part of a push by the U.S. Conference of Mayors — called on Congress to refocus itself on creating jobs and growing the economy.

Laredo, Texas mayor Raul G. Salinas (D) told ThinkProgress that we need the twelve-member committee formed out of the debt ceiling deal to “absolutely” create jobs and that it’s “time to put people back to work, man. That’s the bottom line”:

In another interview with ThinkProgress, Salt Lake City mayor Ralph Becker (D) echoed similar remarks, also calling for Congress to immediately pivot to job creation. Becker said that Congress has spent a “tremendous amount of time” on the debt limit and that mayors have been left to feel “the pain” of the unemployed:

Washington, D.C. mayor Vince Gray (D) lamented that there has been no “emphasis on job creation.” He asked that Congress focus on discussion “of what is going to get America back to work”:

Congress should heed the call of these local leaders and assist them in growing the economy and getting Americans jobs.

Even as the Senate approved a deal to raise the debt ceiling that cuts trillions from the federal budget without increasing revenue by one dime, the fact remains that federal revenue is currently at a 60-year low. (The House approved the debt ceiling deal last night.) And part of the reason that overall revenue so low is that corporate tax revenue has plunged over the last few decades.

Even though the U.S. has one of the world’s highest corporate tax rates on paper, it actually collects the second-lowest corporate tax revenue in the developed world, thanks to myriad loopholes and deductions in the corporate tax code and rampant tax evasion. Case in point, Reuters notes that Microsoft’s tax rate last year was just seven percent, due to the company’s extensive employment of tax havens:

Microsoft is straightforward about the core reason for its lower tax bill: It is increasingly channeling earnings from sales to customers throughout the world through the low-tax havens of Ireland, Puerto Rico and Singapore…The change is fueling its shrinking tax bills. According to its 2010 annual report, by keeping a good chunk of foreign earnings away from the U.S., Microsoft has accumulated $29.5 billion overseas — and that is before the impact of its last financial year.

Microsoft joins a slew of corporations that take advantage of tax havens to drive their tax rates down. Google, for instance, paid just a 2.4 percent tax rate last year thanks to its use of tax havens.

At the same time that its sheltering income all over the world in order to avoid taxes, Microsoft is part of a coalition lobbying for a tax holiday that would allow corporations to bring money they have parked in tax havens back to the U.S. at a dramatically low tax rate. The holiday would cost nearly $80 billion, while a similar holiday approved in 2004 did not deliver any of its promised results.

The Economic Policy Institute, a top nonpartisan think tank, estimates that the deal struck this weekend to raise the nation’s debt limit will end up costing the economy 1.8 million jobs by 2012. Today the Senate is expected to approve the package passed yesterday by the House and send it to President Obama. But while the unemployment rate remains above 9 percent, the deal does nothing to address chronic joblessness.

The agreement would reduce spending by at least $1 trillion over 10 years, but even the near-term cuts could shrink already sluggish GDP growth by 0.3% in 2012. According to EPI, the plan “not only erodes funding for public investments and safety-net spending, but also misses an important opportunity to address the lack of jobs.” In particular, the immediate spending cuts and the “failure to continue two key supports to the economy (the payroll tax holiday and emergency unemployment benefits for the long term unemployed) could lead to roughly 1.8 million fewer jobs in 2012.”

Top economists and CEO’s have also weighed in against the deal and said that GOP concessions to the Tea Party will cost our economy dearly. Pimco CEO Mohamed El-Erian warned that the deal will lead to less growth, more unemployment, and more inequality. Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman called the plan “a disaster” and “an abject surrender” that will “depress the economy even further.”

The Center for American Progress’s Michael Ettlinger and Michael Linden argue that while the deal “goes straight in the wrong direction,” Congress can redeem itself by using the so-called “super committee” mandated by the bill to focus on job creation. The committee, made up of six Republicans and six Democrats, is tasked with finding an additional $1.5 trillion of deficit reduction over the next 10 years, and must report a plan by Thanksgiving.

Linden and Ettlinger write, “It’s especially important for the committee to produce a plan that creates jobs and spurs growth because the committee’s proposals will come on top of a set of already-dramatic spending cuts that will have adverse economic consequences.”

Last night, the House went off for summer recess without reauthorizing the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), which has been shut down for days now due to lack of funding. The House’s action means that the FAA will remain shut down for at least another month, leaving 4,000 federal employees furloughed, tens of thousands of workers stuck on stalled construction projects, and hundreds of millions of dollars in federal airline taxes uncollected. Airport inspectors are currently working without pay.

The FAA is the victim in the GOP’s assault on organized labor, as House Republicans are insisting that any FAA reauthorization include a provision making it harder for workers at airlines and railways to unionize. However, the House GOP’s intransigence doesn’t extend to all Republicans. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) yesterday criticized her party’s stance, saying “it’s not honorable” to hold up the FAA over unrelated policy disputes:

Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, breaking with her party, called on Congress to pass a temporary extension that was devoid of any complicating policy issues.

“We’re getting ready to leave for a month. We should not shut down the FAA because of a rider put on the extension of the FAA legislation that has not been negotiated,” Hutchison said.

“It is not honorable for the House to send an extraneous amendment” on a funding extension, she said.

House Transportation Committee Chairman John Mica (R-FL), in a fit of spite, attached extra cuts to rural airports (in mostly Democratic states) to his version of the bill, which he admitted was merely meant to tweak Democratic senators for not going along with the GOP’s union busting. If the FAA shutdown continues for another month, it will cost the government about $1.2 billion. But for the GOP, that seems to be an acceptable price for advancing an anti-union agenda.

Last night, Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) attempted to pass a clean FAA reauthorization through the Senate by unanimous consent. Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) objected.