Right now, 14 million unemployed Americans are struggling to make ends meet. 44.4 percent of these Americans have been struggling without a job for six months or more. While Republican lawmakers continually put off their “jobs” agenda, many of these Americans receive much needed financial support from the federal unemployment benefits program. These benefits, unfortunately, will expire at the end of 2011.

GOP presidential frontrunner Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) has been touting a “jobs” candidacy and emphatically insists that she could spur some economic recovery within the first three months of her presidency, if “not the whole turnaround.” Her powerhouse plan? Fire Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, repeal “Obamacare,” and cut taxes for the wealthy. Indeed, today on NBC’s Meet The Press, Bachmann reiterated that, to ensure “job creation,” Congress needs to cut the coporate tax rate from 34 percent to “something that is far more competitive.” But when asked whether extending the much-needed jobless benefits is part of her jobs agenda, Bachmann flatly rejected the idea. “Frankly we don’t have the money,” she said:

BACHMANN: I think we need to focus on more than anything is, what will lead to job creation. And what will lead to job creation is taking the United States down from about the top corporate tax rate in the world at 34 percent down to something that is far more competitive.

GREGORY: What about extending jobless benefits for people who are out of work. Do you think that’s a necessary step?

BACHMANN: I think it would be very difficult for us to do because we frankly don’t have the money. That’s the bottom line in the United States. We are now, according to Mark Stein, he wrote a book called “After America,” and in his book he says we are the brokest [SIC] nation history. He said we have gone from the biggest creditor nation to the biggest debtor nation in a very short period of time.

GREGORY: So no on extending jobless benefits.

BACHMANN: Right now I don’t think we can afford it.

Watch it:

Bachmann’s focus on the corporate tax rate to create jobs and spur the economy is, at best, ironic. Right now, corporations are sitting pretty on trillions in cash reserves. Corporate profits are at record highs. Still, Bachmann advocates for cutting the corporate tax rate down to nine percent, a policy that would cost the U.S. more than $2 trillion over ten years. According to the Tax Policy Center, a ten point reduction would cost $915 billion. Such a significant blow to the deficit may be justifiable if it resulted in job creation. However, as the non-partisan CBO noted, it doesn’t.

By contrast, an extension of jobless benefits for six months would cost $34 billion and will actually generate two dollars of economic growth for every dollar spent — not to mention the peace of mind it would provide to millions of jobless Americans. A fact, it seems, that Bachmann frankly does not seem to care about.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) yesterday jumped in the 2012 GOP presidential primary, saying that “it is time to get America working again.” “I will work every day to make Washington, DC, as inconsequential in your lives as I can, and free our families, small businesses and states from a burdensome and costly federal government so they can create, innovate and succeed,” he said. And Perry quickly picked up the endorsement of former Sen. Phil Gramm (R-TX):

Former senator and current banker Phil Gramm of Texas — well-connected to big donors but controversial for his role in preventing tighter regulation of Wall Street — told The Huffington Post yesterday that he is endorsing his former student and political protege, Texas Gov. Rick Perry...”I’m for Rick and I will do what I can to help,” Gramm said in an interview in Detroit. “He has been an effective governor. He is a determined guy from a small town who knows how to get things done.”

In 2008, Gramm, who was advising Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) presidential campaign (and was floated as McCain’s choice for Treasury Secretary) gained notoriety for saying that the country was “a nation of whiners” that was only in a “mental recession.”

But Gramm’s legacy goes much deeper than that. In 2001, he tucked the Commodity Futures Modernization Act into an unrelated, 11,000 page appropriations bill. That act ensured that the huge market in over-the-counter derivatives stayed unregulated, laying the groundwork for the 2008 financial crisis (and the implosions of AIG and Lehman Brothers). He also believes there should be no minimum wage and has derided the working poor by saying, “we’re the only nation in the world where all our poor people are fat.”

Perry was a student of Gramm’s at Texas A&M, and when Perry became governor “Gramm and his bank pushed a controversial proposal to allow the company to take out insurance polices on teachers and other workers, even though the workers themselves would not benefit.” If Gramm’s support is any indication, Perry’s zeal for financial deregulation will know no bounds.

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) — who last won the Ames, Iowa Republican presidential primary straw poll — has been trying to spin S&P’s downgrade of U.S. credit as something other than a “blast at Republicans.” Though S&P cited GOP intransigence on taxes, the use of the debt ceiling as a political football, and the very existence of “default deniers” (of which Bachmann is one) as reasons for the downgrade, Bachmann has claimed that S&P “essentially proved me right.”

Today, ABC’s Jake Tapper asked Bachmann what government spending she would have cut if her plan to simply not raise the debt ceiling were adopted. (Failing to raise the debt ceiling would have forced the government to cut 40 percent of its spending overnight.) Bachmann refused to answer, instead laying out the things she wouldn’t have cut, including military spending and Social Security:

TAPPER: Rick Santorum, who came in fourth in the straw poll, called your position on just refusing to raise the debt ceiling, he said it was just irresponsible and outrageous, since immediately the government would have to cut 40 percent of the government. What cuts would you make?

BACHMANN: Well, it’s not outrageous at all. What’s outrageous is turning us into the biggest debtor in the history of the world. No nation has ever been in debt to the level that we are, and it wasn;t that long ago that we were the world’s largest creditor. We have to get our house in order. This year alone, we brought in $2.2 trillion in revenue from all the taxes we pay, and then we spent not only every penny of that, but we spent $1.5 trillion more.

TAPPER: Right, so what would you cut? What would you cut?

BACHMANN: Well, immediately what need to do is recognize that we will tell the markets that we will pay the interest on the debt, don’t worry about default. Number two, we will pay our military, and anyone who’s currently on Social Security, you get paid. But beyond that, I would bring all members of Congress together — and this isn’t some project for ten years, fifteen years down the road — and we’re going to reform entitlements.

Watch it:

A 40 percent cut in government spending that exempts the military and Social Security would mean cutting all other programs, including Medicare, Medicaid, and education spending, by nearly 90 percent. Even then, depending on the amount of revenue that would be coming in on a given day, Social Security may not be safe. A report from the Bipartisan Policy Center showed that, if the debt ceiling had been breached on August 2, the government would not have enough revenue on August 3 to cover all of the Social Security checks that were due.

Bachmann has been desperately trying to spin her way out of the debt ceiling debacle’s aftermath, since S&P has unambiguously said that the slew of ideas the GOP put forward during that debate would have made U.S. creditworthiness worse. As S&P senior director Joydeep Mukherji noted about the country’s default deniers, “that a country even has such voices, albeit a minority, is something notable. This kind of rhetoric is not common amongst AAA sovereigns.”