Taking the GOP’s anti-tax ideology to its logical conclusion, Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) introduced today his own “American Jobs Act” — giving his bill the same name as President Obama’s plan — which would completely eliminate corporate income taxes. Gohmert claims this will create jobs:

It is a very simple bill, which will eliminate the corporate tax which serves as a tariff that our American companies pay on goods they produce here in America. This bill will actually create jobs in America

The two-page bill changes the tax code to replace any mention of the current “35 percent” tax rate with “0 percent.” Corporations are already sitting on trillions in cash, so cutting their taxes would likely do very little to help the economy, but would balloon the deficit by depriving the government of about $300 billions in revenues annually. As the CBO found, cutting taxes on businesses “typically does not create an incentive for them to spend more on labor or to produce more, because production depends on the ability to sell output.”

But Gohmert’s plan is even more irksome considering that he’s spent the last few days attacking Obama’s jobs plan because it would prohibit employers from discriminating against people who have been unemployed. Gohmert appeared on various conservative media outlets to expose this “devilish detail,” saying on Sean Hannity’s radio show yesterday, via Political Correction:

GOHMERT: We have created in this bill a newly protected class, not on race, creed, color, sex — not even sexual orientation, this is a new one. It’s not religion, it’s a prohibition of discrimination in employment on the basis of an individual’s status as unemployed. By golly, if you apply for a job and you’re unemployed and you feel like you got discriminated against and not hired because you were unemployed, see a lawyer. You’ve got a claim under this bill.

So Gohmert wants to help unemployed Americans get jobs by eliminating taxes for corporations, but thinks helping those jobless directly is “devilish.” But at least his plan isn’t as half-baked as his colleagues’ plan to create jobs by curbing regulations on snakes.

During an interview with Glenn Beck just two and a half months ago, Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX) claimed it’s impossible for the government to create jobs. “Government doesn’t create any jobs. They can actually run jobs away,” Perry said.

Leaving aside the fact that Perry is a government employee himself, he has had to change his tune now that he’s running for president. In fact, Perry bragged during a speech today that, as governor, he’s helped create lots of jobs:

[President Obama] has failed to create jobs by relying on bigger government. I’ve helped create a million jobs during my tenure as Governor of the state of Texas.

Watch it:

Of course, Perry left out the darker side of job creation during his tenure as governor. Texas has the nation’s worst job creation record when adjusted for labor force growth, and between 2008 and 2010, jobs actually grew at a faster pace in Massachusetts than in Texas. In fact, 26 states have lower unemployment rates than Texas, and “Texas has done worse than the rest of the country since the peak of national unemployment in October 2009.”

Perry’s state does, however, lead the nation by having the highest percentage of minimum wage jobs. And when it comes to government jobs, Texas is in no short supply, as between 2007 and 2010, 47 percent of all government jobs were created in Texas. In fact, under Perry’s watchful eye, government jobs grew twice as much as private sector jobs.

But any way its sliced, Perry is now taking credit for creating jobs, when just a few months ago he thought he had no power to create jobs.

Sherman Minton Bridge in Louisville, KY

The Sherman Minton Bridge, one of three major bridges spanning the Ohio River between Louisville, Kentucky and southern Indiana, was closed Friday after cracks were found in its structure. Roughly a quarter of America’s bridges, and more than a third of Kentucky’s, are considered structurally deficient or functionally obsolete, a problem highlighted by recent reports that the country needs an immediate $2 trillion investment just to bring its infrastructure up to date.

The bridge closure came just days after Sen. Mitch McConnell (R), whose Kentucky home is less than 13 miles from the bridge, derided President Obama’s jobs plan — largely based on infrastructure investment — as a “re-election plan.” McConnell doubled down on those claims Tuesday, saying the plan contained proposals both parties had “already rejected.” Kentucky Rep. John Yarmuth (D), who represents Louisville, slammed McConnell’s lack of leadership last night, telling Rachel Maddow that McConnell should “come back to the district” and tell Louisvillians himself that America can’t afford to invest in its roads and bridges:

YARMUTH: What he needs to do is he needs come back to the district, he needs to stand there and talk to the people who are waiting in line and say, ‘You know, we don’t need to be investing in infrastructure, we can’t afford it right now. And ask them to make the sacrifice.’ He’s not willing to do that. Again, to portray what the president has said as just another political act defies reality. He’s staring in the face of something that is of enormous consequence to hundreds of thousands of his constituents. … This affects everybody. Mitch needs to take a leadership role in the Senate to help get this kind of investment adopted by Congress. If he doesn’t step forward, I don’t know how we can get it done. But he needs to. These are his people.

Watch it:

Despite claims that he supports investing in infrastructure, McConnell has continually opposed proposals to do just that. And while he chides Democrats for pushing a plan he claims won’t stimulate the economy, the closing of the Sherman Minton Bridge highlights the costs of not investing in such projects, as it is already extracting huge costs from state governments and private companies.

Industrial trucking companies have estimated the closure is costing them as much as $4,400 a day, while local companies have had to accommodate employees whose commute times have increased by more than an hour in some instances. Extra costs and potential drops in productivity will have an untold negative impact on the local economy. Kentucky and Indiana, meanwhile, may pay for repairs by diverting funds from other infrastructure projects, including a new Ohio River bridge.

Republicans, under the leadership of McConnell, have claimed that America simply can’t afford to pay for roads, bridges, and infrastructure. In reality, however, putting off such investments costs rather than saves money. America’s roads and bridges must be fixed. The only question is how long Republicans will put off such investments, and how costly the economic impact of their intransigence will become.

Take action and tell Congress it’s time to rebuild America.

During Monday night’s GOP presidential primary debate, several the candidates called for privatizing Social Security, with former corporate CEO Herman Cain pointing to a system of privatized accounts for government employees that was implemented by Galveston, Texas. “In 1981, the Galveston County employees, they opted out because that was a very short window of opportunity. They took it. Today, when people retire in Galveston County, Texas, they retire making at least 50 percent more than they would ever get out of Social Security,” Cain claimed.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry has also praised the Galveston system, saying in his 2010 book Fed Up! that “employees in those private plans, having exercised their liberty at Washington’s sufferance, are reaping the benefits,” and adding in Monday’s debate “the issue is, are there ways to move the states into Social Security for state employees or for retirees? We did in the state of Texas back in the 1980s.”

As it turns out, this system did work well for some people: the wealthy. Everyone else would have been better off sticking with Social Security:

For the highest-earning workers in the Gulf Coast county, the personal accounts have yielded nearly double what they might have collected under Social Security. But according to independent studies, the results have been less favorable to those on the lower end of the income spectrum.

In 1999, the Social Security Administration and the General Accounting Office (now the Government Accountability Office) separately examined the program adopted by Galveston and surrounding counties and found that its benefits depended on income and longevity: The lower one’s income and the longer one lived after retirement, the less advantage there was to participating in the program compared with Social Security. Also, Social Security payments increased with inflation, while payments under the Galveston plan did not.

“If you’re single, if you’re well off and you die within 10 years [of retirement], maybe you’ve done better,” said Eric Kingson, a professor of social work at Syracuse University and a vocal critic of the Galveston alternative. “For most people, it’s somewhere between ‘very bad’ and ‘not very good.’ ”

“Low-income working persons do not receive anything approaching the kind of protection they receive under Social Security” under the Galveston plan, said Syracuse University professor Eric Kingson. Keith Brainard, the research director for the National Association of State Retirement Administrators, added that the problem “lies in Cain’s implication that Social Security should be a wealth-producing vehicle, when that’s not what it’s supposed to be. Social Security is supposed to be old-age insurance. That should be the emphasis of the program, not ‘retiring with a lot more money.’”

But for the GOP, it seems, Social Security (which kept 14 million seniors out of poverty last year) should no longer be a guarantee, but a program subjected to the whims of the stock market. And that would mean real trouble for retirees.

Claudia Rendon with her son Alex, whose life she was fired for saving.

In late June, Philadelphia mayor Michael Nutter vetoed a bill that would’ve guaranteed paid sick days to employees of many small businesses within the City of Brotherly Love. Nutter justified his action by saying that the bill would have been be too burdensome on businesses.

Now, a Philadelphia woman has lost her job for taking time off to undergo a medical operation that helped save her son’s life. Mother Claudia Rendon had already used up her vacation days for the year after the death of both her mother and uncle and finding out her father had leukemia. But when doctors told her that her son needed a kidney for a life-saving operation, she didn’t hesitate to take some time off from her job at the Aviation Institute of Maintenance for the procedure.

Before she went under the knife, her employer made her sign a paper saying her job would not be guaranteed when she returned. And after she returned to work, she was told that she was fired. Her son, whose life was saved by the operation, is thankful for Rendon’s sacrifice. “She saved my life basically,” he noted. “Who else can say their mom gave them life two times?” The local Fox affiliate covered Rendon’s story. Watch it:

According to research by University of Missouri-St. Louis Associate Professor Kenneth Thomas, the U.S. has the weakest labor protections in the developed world. The U.S. is the only developed country that does not require employers to provide their employees with some paid time off to deal with illness. It is estimated that the lack of paid sick leave costs the United States $180 billion annually in productivity, due to workers coming to work sick and infecting their colleagues.

Earlier this year, Connecticut lawmakers made their state the first in the nation to guarantee sick leave for hundreds of thousands of workers. This week, the Seattle city council voted 8-1 to mandate paid sick days for all firms with more than five employees. The Philadelphia city council is looking for ways to get around the mayor’s veto of the sick day’s legislation, including amending the city’s living wage law to require sick days for city contractors.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) has led the charge against approving emergency disaster relief funds without matching spending offsets since May, when he opposed relief funds for Missouri tornado victims until the House made sufficient spending cuts. Cantor has more recently opposed disaster funds for tornadoes in Alabama, Hurricane Irene in multiple states, and the recent East Coast earthquake that centered in his own district, unless equal spending cuts were made. On the eve of 9/11′s 10th anniversary, Cantor even insisted on spending cuts to first responders to pay for disaster relief.

Despite allegations from both Democrats and Republicans that Cantor is holding disaster relief funding hostage to extract further spending reductions, Cantor asserted yesterday at the American Action Forum in Washington D.C. that “no one” is holding any disaster relief funding “hostage”:

CANTOR: It’s important to get relief to the people who need it. No one is holding any money hostage. I also think we can do it in a responsible way.

Mere hours before his comments, however, Senate Republicans did just that, filibustering a $7 billion disaster relief package in the Senate because it did not contain spending offsets. Sen. John Thune (R-SD) last week told reporters, “We have got to find a way to pay for these things,” and other Republican senators said they wouldn’t support a plan without offsets.

Asked why the GOP would oppose that funding, Cantor explained that the party was blocking those funds both on procedural grounds and because the cuts had not been offset, saying lawmakers should “responsibly” approve the funding:

CANTOR: I have asked what are the details in the bill, and I have also said that the president has not requested that amount of money. There’s a process in place, whereby the states and localities go through an assessment as to their potential obligations and need and whether the need exceeds the capacity. Once that determination is made at the local and state level then the federal government comes in with FEMA and decides to make a recommendation whether to extend assistance. The initial estimates are nowhere near $7 billion for what we just went through. Again, I believe strongly you ought to get relief to the people who need it and no one should be standing in the way of that and we should do that responsibly.

Watch it:

Governors of states that have been affected by the most recent disasters disagree with Cantor, as did former Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX), who argued in 2005 that disaster relief funds in the wake of Hurricane Katrina did not need to be offset by spending reductions. Tuesday, 40 members of Congress, including 12 Republicans, sent a letter to Congressional leaders calling on them to “pass disaster assistance immediately.”

Our guest blogger is Desmond Brown, a consultant for the Half in Ten campaign at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Yesterday, the U.S. Census Bureau released its latest data, which shows that 15.1 percent of Americans were living in poverty in 2010. (The government defined poverty as a family of four with annual earnings less than $22,314.) Last year, some 46 million Americans fell into poverty, an increase of 2.6 million people over 2009, and the largest number in 52 years.

The Census data also showed a decline in income and a rise in economic hardship in the United States, with real median income falling 2.3 percent to $49,445 and 50 million people going without health care coverage.

But the data did include a positive sign that shows the impact of government intervention in supporting low-income people. The earned income tax credit and unemployment insurance kept 8.6 million people out of poverty – showing the ongoing need for these critical safety net programs. The EITC kept 3 million children alone out of poverty:

The overall 2010 poverty data offer a bleak outlook for the fragile U.S. economy, but they also provide a clear sign to policymakers that government interventions work to keep families from falling deeper into poverty and facing further economic hardship. As policymakers on Capitol Hill continue to debate how to fix the nation’s deficit crisis, the 2010 data highlight the need for ongoing investments into programs that can get more Americans back to work.