At a recent town hall event captured by CNN, a woman stood up to ask about Romney’s views on private social security accounts like the ones proposed by former President George W. Bush. Romney said he has described the options for Social Security but that he opposed privatization in Social Security and said that he’s instead in favor of letting some people save a portion of their income tax-free:

WOMAN: If I understand it correctly, that you say part of Social Security, one way of doing it is privatizing, that people can invest their money, is that correct?
ROMNEY: I didn’t mention that. There are ideas, I didn’t mention that. I just described the three major ones. There have been other ideas about people investing. You know, the disadvantage, privatization of Social Security, that doesn’t make sense. I mean, privatizing Social Security. There have been some that have said let people save some of their money and let them invest it. The market goes up and down. I kind of like the system the way that we have in that regard. It would be nice if people could take a portion of their income and save it tax-free.

Besides the fact that people already have the option to save a portion of their income tax-free (IRAs and 401[k]s are made for this purpose), it’s important to point out that in the past Romney had praised Bush’s privatization push. In 2007, during a Republican presidential primary debate, Romney said that Bush’s plan “works“:

HUME: How about it, Governor Romney? Are you prepared to be as bold as Senator Thompson has been in making an — in addressing these extremely politically sensitive entitlement programs?

ROMNEY: I’m prepared to be entirely bold, but I’m not prepared to cut benefits for low-income Americans. We’re going to make sure that we protect these programs for our seniors. That’s number one. Number two…

HUME: How?

ROMNEY: Well, our current seniors. Currently, we’re taking more money into Social Security that we actually send out. So our current seniors, their benefits are not going to change. For people 20 and 30 and 40 years old, we have four major options, for instance, for Social Security. One is the one Democrats want: raise taxes. It’s the wrong way to go. Number two, the president said let’s have private accounts and take that surplus money that’s being gathered now in Social Security and put that into private accounts. That works.

Given Romney’s statements in 2007 and his statements this week, it is unclear where the presidential contender actually stands on introducing privatization into Social Security.

Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-TX), the co-chair of the joint supercommittee that will attempt to negotiate a debt deal this fall, told the Dallas Chamber of Commerce today that he will not take any policy options off the table before the committee begins negotiating. That includes new taxes, even though Hensarling personally opposes them, the Dallas Morning News reports:

“If I start to take something off the table, then maybe Senator [Patty] Murray takes something off the table and the talks fail before they even get started,” Hensarling said, referring to the Washington state senator who co-chairs the panel. [...]

“I have an open mind, but it is not an empty mind,” Hensarling said before addressing the Dallas Regional Chamber.”

In prior negotiations, the GOP held steadfast to its no taxes pledge, a stance that is not only opposed by a majority of Americans but also played a significant role in the downgrade of the nation’s credit rating earlier this month. Republican representatives who stonewalled every attempt to raise revenue, even as corporations and the wealthy pay low taxes and oil companies continue to benefit from huge government subsidies, have come under fire during the August recess as voters slam them for signing nonsensical tax pledges instead of listening to their constituents.

The fact that Hensarling isn’t immediately discarding the possibility of new revenues is progress, but the chance that he or the GOP have had a major change of heart on revenues is likely slim. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-MD) has urged his colleagues to ignore the implications of Standard & Poor’s downgrade report, falsely claiming that it did not smack Republicans for refusing any and all forms of revenue. More likely, Hensarling, who supports the GOP’s radical Balanced Budget Amendment and wants the supercommittee to revise the Affordable Care Act, is just positioning himself at the bargaining table before the supercommittee convenes for the first time.

Our guest blogger is Adam Hersh, an economist at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

This is the House Republican’s idea of a “jobs agenda”? They must be joking. In fact, the policy platform outlined by House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) offers a laundry list of half-baked policies that are resounding jobs killers. That’s because, across the board, the Republican “jobs agenda” reduces demand, undermines middle class families, blocks development of renewable energy industries, and recreates the possibility of future financial crises.

The Republican budget plan, for instance, is the most complete articulation of the GOP’s flawed strategy for job creation and economic growth. Passed by the House on a party-line vote in April, it was rejected by the Senate. But the plan still illustrates core party principles that voters should know are at stake in the 2012 elections. The Republican budget:

• Ends Medicare as we know it, kicking low income and middle class retirees into the Kafkaesque and inefficient private insurance market.

• Tears gaping holes in public investments in education and lifelong learning, efficiency enhancing infrastructure and energy modernization, and science research and technological R&D that create jobs today, “crowd-in” private investment, and provide a foundation for long-run sustained economic growth.

• Offers tax cuts to U.S. billionaires paid for by raising taxes on the middle class and shredding social protections for those hit hardest by the economic downturn, the most efficient policies to boost jobs and economic growth in the short-term.

All told, the Republican budget would kill an estimated 1 million jobs.

The budget, however, wasn’t the only indication of the GOP’s priorities. The Republican “jobs agenda” presents a litany of bills that in fact provide explicit subsidies for corporate oil, coal, and gas producers. Those subsidies, and the stranglehold big oil, coal, and gas companies have on national energy policy, are blocking the development of a fledgling advanced technology manufacturing industry that will create jobs right here in the United States: the renewable energy industry. While the rest of the world, including China, is fighting to develop a future based on renewable energy, the Republican “jobs agenda” would keep the U.S. mired in early 20th century technology.

But perhaps no policy is a bigger jobs-and-growth killer than the unregulated financial predation and speculation that created the housing bubble, financial crisis, and economic weakness the U.S. economy now faces. But the Republican “jobs agenda” works tirelessly to recreate the financial policy conditions that created those crises in the first place. On the GOP’s agenda are plans to:

• Gut consumer financial protections put into law by the July 2010 Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, passed with only one Republican House member dissenting

• Gut funding from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission — the regulatory body charged to make sure that derivatives and futures speculation does not metastasize as a “financial weapon of mass destruction,” derailing the U.S. economy.

Need I say more? Republicans have no job creation agenda.

In a Thursday interview with PBS NewsHour, former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman (R) indicated that as president, he would ask rich Americans to share in the sacrifice of strengthening the American economy and reducing the nation’s debt and deficits. Though that is a significant departure from the stances held by many of his fellow Republican presidential candidates, Huntsman remained attached to certain conservative lines, saying he would support means testing popular entitlement programs as opposed to raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans.

But Friday, Huntsman seemed to signal he would support raising revenues directly from some of the richest Americans when he told Bloomberg’s editorial board that he would be willing to break with Republicans on two significant areas of tax reform. Bloomberg reports:

In an on-the-record conversation at a Bloomberg View editorial meeting, the former Utah governor and ambassador to China said that in his effort to reform the tax code and reduce the deficit he would be willing to:

1.) take away the deduction for interest on home mortgages;

2.) treat capital gains as regular income;

3.) do the same with carried interest (that is, the profit share paid to hedge-fund managers and private-equity folks).

Huntsman campaign spokesman Tim Miller clarified the position later:

Governor Huntsman believes that tax reform should have no sacred cows, but as he’s said many times he does not believe in raising taxes and that any tax reform should be revenue neutral. In that vein, he does not support any policy that would increase the capital gains or carried interest rates.

The normal argument against taxing capital gains and carried interest as income is that it would discourage investment and slow economic growth, even though the evidence to support that notion is lacking, as economic guru Warren Buffett notes:

I have worked with investors for 60 years and I have yet to see anyone — not even when capital gains rates were 39.9 percent in 1976-77 — shy away from a sensible investment because of the tax rate on the potential gain. People invest to make money, and potential taxes have never scared them off.

Taxing capital gains as ordinary income could bring in $38 billion in revenues that would come primarily from corporations and wealthy American investors. Likewise, taxing carried interest as income would primarily affect wealthy hedge-fund managers and those in the private-equity sector.

The GOP has continually opposed raising tax rates on the rich in favor of new taxes on the poor and middle class, even as the top-tier of American income earners continue to see their incomes go up while their tax rates go down. That Huntsman initially supported treating capital gains and carried interest as income again seemed to illustrate that he is the most reasonable candidate in the Republican field. The fact that he had to so quickly walk it back, however, seemingly indicates how little room that field has for a “reasonable” candidate.

A new report by the investigative website Pro Publica has revealed that Congress diverted $30 billion in bailout money allocated to help struggling homeowners prevent foreclosure in order to pay down the national debt instead.

There were more than 1 million foreclosure filings in the first half of 2011 alone, yet only a fraction of the government aid that was supposed to reach homeowners has been spent:

Instead, Congress has mandated that the leftover money be used to pay down the debt.

Of the $45.6 billion in Trouble Asset Relief Program funds meant to aid homeowners, the most recent numbers available show that only about $2 billion has actually gone out the door.

The low number reflects how little the government’s home loan modification and other programs have actually helped homeowners deal with the foreclosure crisis.

Pro Publica notes that in November, the CBO lowered their estimate of the total amount of money the government would spend on its foreclosure relief programs from $22 billion to $12 billion.

The original TARP legislation stipulated that unused bailout money should be returned to the Treasury to reduce the debt. However, Congress has the power to “re-route” these funds so that they fulfill their original purpose of helping homeowners through loan modification programs and other plans. But it’s unthinkable that Republicans will take such action, even to help struggling families stay in their homes.

GOP lawmakers have consistently prioritized reducing the deficit over the more pressing concerns of chronically high unemployment and foreclosure. Their willingness to let billions that could be used to aid homeowners go to paying down the debt instead is perhaps the clearest illustration to date of their skewed priorities.

Writing for the Huffington Post, reporters Jason Cherkis and Zach Carter published a jaw-dropping story yesterday about a scheme by Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX) to “set up a business of teacher death speculation.” Perry and his officials entered negotiations in 2003 with the Switzerland-based multinational bank UBS to allow the firm to buy life insurance policies on public teachers, then package the policies into securities that could be sold to speculators across the world. As teachers died, the securities would become profitable, and the money from the plans would be split between UBS and the Texas government.

According to sources and notes provided to the Huffington Post, the Perry administration solicited support for the idea from teacher associations, and pressed a deal where teachers would receive between $50 and $100 to sign a contract granting UBS the right to bet on their death using life insurance policies. Perry’s budget director Mike Morrissey said it would take up to 12 years for Texas to “earn” money from the scheme, but eventually the state would gain a $700 million windfall if the system could recruit 40,000 retired teachers.

An intriguing twist to the story is former Sen. Phil Gramm (R-TX), who joined UBS as a top executive after he left the Senate and has served as a political mentor to Perry since the late ’80s. Gramm, an architect of Wall Street deregulation while in Congress, aggressively lobbied the “gruesome” deal:

Gramm and UBS had concocted a gruesome combination of what are now regarded as two of the most infamous Wall Street scams on record. The resulting package closely resembled the growing market for mortgage-backed securities, but instead of allowing Wall Street to bet on peoples’ homes, it would enable bets on peoples’ lives. [...]

The plan was to have UBS buy the life insurance policies with mega-insurer AIG, then bundle those policies into securities, and sell them off to a small group of investors. By keeping the investor group small, Gramm could avoid the public and regulatory scrutiny required by standard public securities sales. He wouldn’t even have to disclose details of the scheme to the Securities and Exchange Commission. [...]

In one ghoulish section from the meeting notes, Gramm emphasized that the actual payments to the state would depend on who died, and when. “These amounts depend on interest rates and deaths,” the notes read. “They can’t price it yet, or estimate the amount of money available annually to TRS until the bank looks at the universe of those participating.”

Gramm endorsed Perry earlier this month and hinted at a major role in his campaign, and perhaps presidency. Although Perry failed at enacting his dead-teachers speculation scheme as governor, its not clear if he will try again with a similar plot if takes the White House in 2012.

Read the full story at the Huffington Post.