Falling into line with the Tea Party rhetoric against “out-of-control” government spending, Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX) is now supporting a move away from direct subsidies to the agriculture industry in favor of an incentives-driven model. But Perry himself has benefited from over $80,000 in farm subsidies over the years and publicly declared his support for farm subsidies when running for Texas Agriculture Commissioner in 1990. After his opponent accused him of wanting to terminate price supports for farmers, Perry was quick to deny the claim:

“[Former Commissioner Jim Hightower] says I support eliminating our farm program payments. That’s not true. I’ve participated in the program as a producer. My neighbors participate. I know what would happen to rural areas of Texas if these programs were discontinued. I do not support such an action.”

Perry certainly has benefited from the nation’s proclivity toward farm payouts; his 40-acre farm — which he finally sold in 1998 — brought him $72,687 in farm payments between 1987 and 1989 and even made him an additional $9,624 for leaving his land lying fallow. Perry’s father has also received $6,443 from cotton and wheat subsidies in 2002 and 2003.

When asked to comment on the subsidies, Perry’s office defended his record. “The governor is proud of his years in the farming industry, which he believes is an important part of the nation’s overall economy,” spokeswoman Katherine Cesinger said.

But she also reiterated Perry’s position on federal spending, saying, “Out of control Washington spending is threatening every aspect of our economy, and now, more than ever, the federal government has an opportunity and obligation to have a real conversation about how to get our country’s fiscal house in order.”

Perry is expected to declare his intention to run for president during a speech in South Carolina this weekend. If he is to win the GOP nomination, however, he will have to appeal to an anti-spending, anti-government base — something that his history of accepting farm subsidies may hinder.

– Sarah Bufkin

Standard & Poor’s decision to downgrade the United States’ credit rating Friday night came with clear shots at congressional Republicans who had refused to consider tax increases in the deal to raise the debt ceiling. S&P criticized Congress for allowing new revenues to drop from the “menu of policy options,” criticizing “the majority of Republicans in Congress [who] continue to resist any measure that would raise revenues.” The National Journal proclaimed it “hard to read the S&P analysis as anything other than a blast at Republicans.”

Unlike his party’s presidential candidates and several of his congressional colleagues, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) seems to have heard that blast, as he sent a memo to congressional Republicans today acknowledging S&P’s calls for tax increases. Despite hearing those calls, however, Cantor is urging his colleagues to ignore them:

Over the next several months, there will be tremendous pressure on Congress to prove that S&P’s analysis of the inability of the political parties to bridge our differences is wrong. In short, there will be pressure to compromise on tax increases. We will be told that there is no other way forward. I respectfully disagree.

As we have said from the beginning of the year, the new Republican Majority was elected to change the way Washington does business. We were not elected to raise taxes or take more money out of the pockets of hard working families and business people. People understand Washington can’t keep spending money that it doesn’t have. They want to see less government – not more taxes.

Not only has Cantor chosen to ignore S&P, he has his facts wrong about the American people. Polling conducted by the New York Times and CBS News found last week that half of Americans did, in fact, support the inclusion of new revenues in the debt deal, and numerous polls have shown wide support for ending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, a proposal that would reduce the federal deficit by $830 billion over the next decade. S&P today called the full expiration of the Bush tax cuts, which would save $4 trillion in the next decade, one of the major steps in restoring the nation’s AAA credit rating.

Given that S&P downgraded the U.S. in part because of political instability brought on by the GOP taking the economy hostage, Cantor urging his colleagues to ignore the agency’s warning likely won’t help the government’s attempts to avoid yet another downgrade in the future.

After benefiting substantially from the Internal Revenue Service’s maternity-leave policy, presidential candidate Rep. Michele Bachmann voted twice (in 2008 and in 2009) against measures that would provide four weeks of paid parental leave to all federal employees. The New Yorker’s Ryan Lizza explains in his new profile of the congresswoman:

“Two of Bachmann’s five children were born while she worked for the I.R.S., and all six former colleagues said that the primary fact they remembered about Bachmann was that she spent a good portion of her time on maternity leave—the I.R.S. had a fairly generous policy—and that caused resentment.

“Basically, the rest of us that were here were handling Michele’s inventory,” one former colleague said. “In her four years, she probably didn’t get more than two, two and a half years of experience. So she was doing lightweight stuff.” A second colleague said, “She was an attorney here, but she was never here.” (Bachmann declined a request to respond.)”

According to the Family and Medical Leave Act, all IRS full-time employees receive up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave for the birth of a child, and Bachmann could afford to take the unpaid time off, given that her husband brought in a second income through his clinical practice.

Most of the other 2.7 million federal employees aren’t so fortunate, Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-MA) said, explaining why he co-sponsored the Federal Employees Paid Parental Leave Act. Yet when the act reached a vote in the U.S. House in both 2008 and 2009, Bachmann opposed it both times.

GOP lawmakers — including Bachmann — criticized the measure as an increase in spending. According to the Congressional Budget Office, however, the act would have cost the American taxpayer less than $1 in 2010.

For someone who “believes in the vitality of the family” and has pledged to defend America’s family values, Bachmann has not taken a stand to defend the families of federal employees who cannot afford unpaid parental leave.

–Sarah Bufkin

A number of major American corporations, as a part of a larger campaign called WinAmerica, are currently pushing for a massive new corporate tax holiday. WinAmerica is calling for a tax repatriation holiday that would allow corporations to bring cash they have stashed overseas back to America at a dramatically reduced tax rate.

While this idea may sound appealing, its application in 2004 blew a huge hole in the budget deficit and failed to result in significant investment or job creation (which the corporations had insisted it would). At the end of the day, the policy rewarded corporations and harmed the U.S. Treasury.

Currently, there is a bill before the House of Representatives — the “Freedom To Invest Act 2011” — that would enact such a holiday. ThinkProgress investigated the co-sponsors of this legislation and U.S. senators who have expressed sympathy with a repatriation holiday, and found that they’ve received thousands of dollars from the same corporations bankrolling the WinAmerica campaign. Watch our video investigation:

In addition to the Win America campaign and a number of members of the U.S. Congress, General Electric (GE) CEO Jack Welch recently called for a repatriation holiday. This is particularly ironic given GE’s knack for avoiding taxes altogether.

Tea Party Rep. Allen West (R-FL) blamed Standard & Poor’s downgrade of U.S. debt squarely on Democrats, saying this morning on Fox and Friends that “they are the ones that are totally to blame.” West added that the downgrade “has nothing to do with increasing revenues by tax hikes,” saying only spending mattered. Watch it:

This is likely news to S&P, as they said revenues had everything to do with their decision. If West had bothered to read and accurately present the rating agency’s explanation for its move, he would see they repeatedly expressed concern about the lack of revenues in the debt ceiling deal and Republicans’ stated refusal to raise revenues in the future. For example:

We have changed our assumption on this because the majority of Republicans in Congress continue to resist any measure that would raise revenues, a position we believe Congress reinforced by passing the act.

West went on to feign some outrage against Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), calling his comments labeling S&P’s move the “Tea Party downgrade” as “the most insidious thing I’ve ever heard.” West has apparently led a very pleasant life if that’s the most insidious thing he’s ever heard — though his dishonesty might be worse.

Yesterday, 45,000 Verizon employees, represented by the Communications Workers of America, went on strike following the breakdown of negotiations between union representatives and management on Saturday. The workers are battling a long list of concessions that the company is demanding of them, ranging from asking employees to contribute more to their health care plans to halting pension accruals this year.

The AP News Service filed a video report about the strike. Watch it:

Cutting workers benefits as a cost-saving measure is a natural part of a market economy when times are bad, but what is particularly outrageous about Verizon’s demands is that the company’s fiscal health is actually rapidly improving and its profits soaring. The company’s quarterly report released in January found that their profits nearly doubled from the same point last year. Then in April, Bloomberg reported that the company’s profits “more than tripled” after the company began offering services on Apple’s popular iPhone, with net income approaching $1.44 billion:

Verizon Communications Inc. (VZ), the second-largest U.S. phone company, reported earnings that more than tripled as taxes decreased and the carrier attracted new customers after introducing Apple Inc. (AAPL)’s iPhone. Net income rose to $1.44 billion, or 51 cents a share, New York-based Verizon said today in a statement.

Their 2010 annual report shows that their stock returns are actually outperforming the wider market, easily overcoming the S&P 500 index:

“They are outperforming the overall industry,” said financial analyst Michael Nelson of their Spring 2011 returns. Meanwhile, one person at Verizon who is not being asked to take any cuts is Ivan Seidenberg, the company’s CEO. His compensation actually rose four percent in 2010 to $18.1 million. The Communications Workers of America note that the “top five executives [at the company] received compensation of $258 million over the past four years.”

It appears that Verizon’s stockholders and executives are being treated well by the company while it demands sacrifice from its workers. “We are regular folk like most other folk out here trying to pay our mortgages, pay our bills and survive and we don’t think that is a lot to ask when the company is making billions of dollars in profits,” said one striking worker.

2012 GOP Presidential hopefuls Mitt Romney, Michele Bachmann, and Jon Huntsman

On Friday, the credit rating agency Standard & Poors downgraded the U.S. from AAA to AA+ in the first downgrade in U.S. history. In its release, S&P took Republicans to task for using the debt ceiling as a political football and refusing to consider new revenues as an option for reducing the country’s long-term deficit. As National Journal put it, “it’s hard to read the S&P analysis as anything other than a blast at Republicans.”

However, you wouldn’t know that from reading the statements the GOP presidential candidates released in the wake of S&P’s announcement. In their world, the downgrade was entirely due to government spending, and the way to turn things around is to balance the budget without raising any additional revenue:

MICHELE BACHMANN: “We were warned by all of the credit agencies that a failure to deal with our debt would lead to a downgrade in our credit rating, but instead he submitted a budget that had a $1.5 trillion deficit and then requested a $2.4 trillion blank check. President Obama is destroying the foundations of the U.S. economy one beam at a time. I call on the President to seek the immediate resignation of Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and to submit a plan with a list of cuts to balance the budget this year, turn our economy around and put Americans back to work.”

MITT ROMNEY: “Standard & Poor’s rating downgrade is a deeply troubling indicator of our country’s decline under President Obama. His failed policies have led to high unemployment, skyrocketing deficits, and now, the unprecedented loss of our nation’s prized AAA credit rating.”

JON HUNTSMAN: “Out-of-control spending and a lack of leadership in Washington have resulted in President Obama presiding over the first downgrade of the United States credit rating in our history. For far too long we have let reckless government spending go unchecked and the cancerous debt afflicting our nation has spread.”

Of course, the S&P explicitly cited the fact that “new revenues have dropped down on the menu of policy options” as reason for the downgrade, pointing out that one way to get the U.S. on a more sustainable fiscal path is to allow the Bush tax cuts to expire:

Compared with previous projections, our revised base case scenario now assumes that the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, due to expire by the end of 2012, remain in place. We have changed our assumption on this because the majority of Republicans in Congress continue to resist any measure that would raise revenues, a position we believe Congress reinforced by passing the [debt ceiling] act.

Yesterday, House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) seemed to soften his anti-tax zeal just a bit in response to the downgrade, saying that he might be open to revenue positive tax reform. But for the GOP presidential hopefuls, S&P’s move was just another political hammer, regardless of S&P’s justification for its action.