Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL)

Senate Republicans, in their zeal to prevent the new Consumer Financial Protection Agency from ever getting off the ground, have said that they won’t confirm anybody to be the agency’s director unless Democrats and the Obama administration agree to changes that would deal a body blow to the CFPB’s ability to protect consumers. The Republican members of the Senate Banking Committee — led by ranking member Richard Shelby (R-AL) — all voted against former Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordry’s nomination to head the agency.

The Constitution, of course, provides the president with a way to handle this sort of obstruction: the recess appointment power. But Shelby, in an interview with the conservative Heritage Foundation, said that Obama using this constitutionally sanctioned power to give the CFPB a director would be “devastating“:

Q: Will Senate Republicans block his ability, President Obama’s ability, to make a recess appointment in this case?

SHELBY: That would be up to the leadership, Sen. McConnell will make that call with the caucus. I would hope they would. We have thus far, and I hope we will in the future. I think it would be devastating if we let [Obama] make a recess appointment, but that’s the call of the leadership.

Watch it:

Shelby doesn’t explain how allowing an agency that was approved by law to get up and running would be devastating. But obstructing the confirmation of the CFPB nominee is just one of several ways in which the GOP is looking to prevent the implementation of the Dodd-Frank financial reform law, even as banks go back to making record profits and paying huge bonuses.

When the GOP was obstructing President Obama’s nominees to the National Labor Relations Board, even corporatist Chief Justice John Roberts asked why on Earth Obama wasn’t using his recess appointment power to circumvent Republican intransigence. It would be an even more valid question when it comes to the CFPB, since the GOP has decided that they can prevent any director from taking office, regardless of qualifications, because they disagree with the agency’s very existence.

Former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman (R) has had no issue taking stances contrary to those held by his Republican primary opponents, whether on climate change, civil unions, or immigration. But one area in which Huntsman has stood firm with his colleagues is in his opposition to the Dodd-Frank financial reform law that President Obama signed in 2009 in an effort to rein in big banks and prevent another financial crisis. The jobs plan Huntsman proposed would repeal Dodd-Frank, and he has said the law is “making it impossible to get our life blood to small businesses.”

But after Tuesday’s Republican debate, Huntsman seemingly endorsed the financial reform plan that came out of the Great Depression — a law Republicans have fought, sometimes successfully, for decades — saying he wants to “return to the spirit” of the Glass-Steagall Act, the Huffington Post’s Alex Becker reports:

“I want to return to the spirit of Glass Steagall,” Huntsman said after tonight’s debate. “You’ve got to look at, fundamentally look at, downsizing some of our banks, looking at some sort of a cap requirement on the size of things. When you have financial institutions of which there are six and any one of them collapsing could cause such dire reverberations in the global economy that it could be catastrophic, it becomes too big to fail.”

“Not Glass-Steagall from the 1930s but something in the spirit of Glass-Steagall, something that would ultimately right-size banks,” he added.

It’s unclear what Huntsman means by “something in the spirit of Glass-Steagall,” but the portion of the Glass-Steagall Act that worked to “right-size banks” was repealed by the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act — named after its three Republican sponsors — in 1999. Gramm-Leach-Bliley removed the portion of Glass-Steagall that prohibited bank holdings companies from owning other financial companies. Put simply, before 1999, a deposit bank like Chase couldn’t be owned by an investment and trading company like JP Morgan, or vice versa. This type of entanglement eventually led to the creation of the companies that were at the center of the 2008 financial crisis, bailed out by the federal government because they were deemed “too big to fail.”

In the aftermath of the financial crisis, former Federal Reserve Chair Paul Volcker and some Democrats advocated for the repeal of Gramm-Leach-Bliley, thus returning to the era in which a firewall existed between deposit and investment banks. Even John Reed, the former Citigroup CEO whose lobbying efforts led to the repeal of Glass-Steagall, said that re-instating such requirements would “go a long way toward building a more robust financial sector.” With the exception of Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), however, such a policy is anathema to Republicans, as is reforming Wall Street in any form or fashion.

By issuing a jobs plan that would repeal Dodd-Frank, Huntsman took the popular position within his party. But now, by calling for something “in the spirit of Glass-Steagall” that would put a “cap requirement on the size” of financial institutions, Huntsman has seemingly endorsed a plan that goes even farther than the financial reform law that contains Obama’s signature.

Our guest blogger is Michael Linden, Director of Tax and Budget Policy at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Herman Cain’s 999 plan was the star of the GOP’s primary debate this week, and with the increased attention has come increased scrutiny. Cain has been slow to let the details of his plan dribble out, but in an attempt to back up his claims that the plan is revenue-neutral and not regressive, his campaign finally revealed some specifics yesterday. With those new details, here is an updated analysis, with the three main things you need to know about 999:

1) 999 Will Raise Taxes On Middle- And Low-Income Americans, By A Lot:

Cain’s tax plan consists of three different 9 percent taxes — one on wage income (investment income is exempt), one on sales of goods and services (including food, housing, and medicine), and one on business income (investments and purchases from other businesses are deductible; wages, however, are not). But most Americans will end up paying all three of those taxes, for a combined tax rate of 27 percent of their income.

That’s because middle and low-income Americans get all, or nearly all, of their income from ordinary wages — all of which would be subject to Cain’s 9 percent wage tax — and then they spend all of their income, which means it would be taxed again by the 9 percent sales tax. Finally, the burden of the 9 percent business income tax would be passed on to them as well, either in the form of lower wages — since wages are not deductible — or in the form of higher prices for goods and services.

The bottom line is that most Americans will pay all three of Cain’s taxes, making their real federal tax rate 27 percent. Compare that to the current tax code, under which someone in the bottom quintile pays two percent of their income in federal taxes and someone in the middle quintile pays 15 percent. The fact is that pretty much everyone making up to around $100,000 a year would pay more under Cain’s plan than they do now.

2) 999 Will Give The Rich A HUGE Tax Cut:

Because the 999 plan will operate, in practice, as a 9 percent tax on wages, and an 18 percent tax on goods and services, only a fraction of a wealthy household’s income will end up subject to these taxes. That’s because wealthy people get a lot of their income from capital gains — which are exempt from the wage tax — and they don’t spend all of their income, so anything they save won’t be subject to taxes either.

Today, someone in the richest 1 percent typically pays about 30 percent of his or her income in federal taxes. Since people at the top of the income ladder make about half of their income from capital gains, and only spend about half of their income in a given year, their tax rate would drop all the way down to 13.5 percent. That’s even lower than what middle-income people pay today.

3) 999 Would Cause Massive Deficits, Enormous Amounts Of New Debt:

Despite the Cain campaign’s claims to the contrary, 999 would not raise nearly enough revenue to close the budget deficit. In an earlier analysis that mistakenly assumed his 9 percent business tax would operate like our current corporate income tax, we underestimated how much revenue it would raise. But even accounting for the new specifics, the 999 plan would still only generate around 14 percent of GDP in revenue. That’s even less than we are collecting now, when revenue levels are at historic lows. Even if Cain adopted all of the draconian spending cuts contained in the House Republican Budget, 14 percent of GDP in revenue would still result in $11.5 trillion in added debt from 2013 through 2021.

Hopefully Cain will spend a few minutes giving this analysis a read, since he has “no idea” how his plan would actually work.

North Carolina House Speaker Thom Tillis (R)

Speaking to a crowd at Mars Hill College last week, North Carolina state House Speaker Thom Tillis (R) extolled the virtues of drug testing low-income people who need welfare benefits, declaring that they need to be “conquer[ed]” because “the money’s not getting to the right people.” “You go in and you see a woman in a wheelchair — she’s from here, she’s from Asheville — who’s on the brink of losing her benefits, and you know that Health and Human Services is sending checks to a woman who has chosen to have three or four kids out of wedlock,” he said. Aghast at such decisions, he declared that government must “find a way to divide and conquer the people who are on assistance”:

TILLIS: At some point, we’ll say, ‘First kid, we’ll give you a pass. Second, third or fourth kid, you’re on your own. But what we have to do is find a way to divide and conquer the people who are on [public] assistance. We have to show respect that woman who has cerebral palsy and had no choice in her condition, that needs help, and we should help.

And we need those folks to look down at these people who choose to get into a condition that makes them dependent on the government and say at some point you’re on your own. We may end up taking care of those babies, but we’re not going to take care of you. [...] One of the reasons why I may never run for another elected out of office because some of these things might get be railroaded out of town. But in 2013, I honestly believe we have to do this.

Watch it via BlueNC:

Backlash to his callous attitude about who is more worthy of help was swift. “By trying to humiliate our most underprivileged and poverty-stricken citizens, it’s clear that Thom Tillis is nothing more than a schoolyard bully,” said the state Democratic Chairman David Parker. “He should be ashamed of himself.” As Center for American Progress’s Half in Ten project notes, North Carolina faces an above-average 17.5 percent poverty rate with 27.5 percent of households struggling with hunger. More than 1.5 million North Carolinians live without health insurance.

The single-mother with three kids that he demonized can only earn only $8,172 a year or less to qualify for federal cash assistance. In 2011, over 37,000 children and around 23,000 families receive the much-needed funds. 1.6 million North Carolinians received food stamp benefits in August alone. To Tillis, the state must start determining which of these struggling families are morally worth the aid.

Tillis said yesterday that perhaps he made a “poor choice of words” when he suggested dividing and conquering his constituents. However, he maintains that his broader point to “place a priority” on certain people stands. He even suggested drug-testing the more than 450,000 unemployed before they receive unemployment benefits. “All of this is about running [government] more efficiently and getting money to people most deserving,” he said.

Conservative darling Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) hasn’t been a terribly active freshman lawmaker, finally giving his maiden speech on the Senate floor in June, but he recently roused himself to co-sponsor legislation that will lay off one in 10 federal employees in the next four years:

Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., recently announced that he is cosponsoring a bill that would drastically cut public sector jobs. S. 1611, or the “Reducing the Size of the Federal Government Through Attrition Act,” would reduce the federal workforce by 10 percent by 2015.

According to a press release from Rubio’s office, the bill “would save approximately $139 billion over ten years.”

The bill is one example in a long line of legislation introduced by conservative policymakers in Congress this year aimed at making a political statement about the role of the federal government. Rubio himself has introduced S.726, the “Decrease Spending Now Act,” which has similar aims. The bill would impose deeper cuts to public sector jobs around the country. Public sector jobs, in particular, are already in sharp decline.

Since the federal workforce is 4.4 million people, Rubio’s bill would leave 440,000 Americans out of work at a time when unemployment is still about 9 percent nationally. Although the title of the bill misleadingly suggests that the elimination of 10 percent of the federal workforce would occur “through attrition,” the language of the bill, and its short timeline, make it clear that Rubio has mass layoffs in mind.

The bill assigns the dirty work of actually firing people to the president, mandating, “The President, through the Office of Management and Budget… shall take appropriate measures to ensure that, effective beginning in fiscal year 2015, the total number of Federal employees…shall not exceed 90 percent of the total number of Federal employees as of September 30, 2011 (as so determined).” To accomplish such a drastic reduction in just four years would necessarily require massive layoffs.

At least 600,000 government workers have lost their jobs since the recession began, but Republicans nevertheless keep scapegoating public employees who have shouldered more than their fair share of economic pain.

In fact, massive job losses in the public sector are one of the main factors keeping national unemployment so high. In August, a gain of 17,000 private sector jobs was completely negated by 17,000 public sector job losses. According to David Leonhardt, if state and local governments had continued to hire at their previous pace, they would have added half a million jobs to the economy. In other words, government austerity over the past two years “has cost the economy about one million jobs.”

Federal payrolls have been mostly flat for years, even as the population has been growing. In November, President Obama announced a two-year pay freeze for 1.9 million federal workers.

President Obama’s “Buffett Rule” is aimed at ensuring that wealthy Americans pay their fair share in taxes. As it stands today, a wealthy individual can take advantage of preferential tax treatment of investment income and various tax loopholes to drastically lower his or her tax rate and effectively pay lower taxes than middle-class families. To prove the point behind his namesake, billionaire Warren Buffett revealed to Republicans yesterday that he made more than $62 million last year while only paying a 17 percent tax rate.

It is not surprising that Republicans like GOP candidate Mitt Romney who slam the Buffett Rule as “class warfare” simultaneously benefit from the same sort of preferential treatment. In fact, a new report by the non-partisan Congressional Research Service finds that 25 percent of the nation’s millionaires have a lower effective tax rate than 10.4 million middle-class Americans:

About 25 percent of millionaires in the U.S. pay federal taxes at lower effective rates than a significant portion of middle-income taxpayers, according to a legislative analysis.

Preferential treatment of investment income and the reduced impact of payroll taxes on high earners lets about 94,500 millionaires pay taxes at a lower rate than 10.4 million “moderate-income taxpayers,” representing about 10 percent of those making less than $100,000 a year, according to the report by the non-partisan Congressional Research Service dated Oct. 7.

In direct conflict with a favorite Republican talking point, the report also found that very few business owners are millionaires and “played down the impact of higher tax rates on job creation.” “The small share of taxpayers with small-business income in the millionaire category suggests that tax reform policies designed to ensure adherence to the Buffett Rule will affect few small businesses,” it said. This bolsters the claims from economists and business owners alike that higher tax rates on the rich make “zero difference” in hiring.

Numerous polls continually show that Americans support raising the tax rate on millionaires. But rather than raise the rates on those who should pay their fair share, Republicans respond with even more tax increases on the middle class. “Class warfare,” indeed.

Former Godfather’s Pizza CEO Herman Cain’s 999 plan — which would scrap the current tax code in favor of a nine percent personal income tax, nine percent corporate income tax, and nine percent sales tax (on everything, including food) — was the undeniable star of the GOP’s primary debate this week, with the number nine warranting 85 mentions during the course of the evening. As we’ve been reporting, the plan would entail a huge tax increase on the poor while slashing taxes on the rich.

Cain, when faced with analyses showing how much his plan would wallop the low-income Americans, dismisses them, calling them “erroneous.” But as it turns out, Cain isn’t particularly well-versed in the nuances of his plan. Asked how his proposed corporate income tax would apply to products built in other countries and designed and sold in the U.S., Cain replied “I have no idea“:

Mr. Cain made it clear Wednesday his plan remained a work in progress. Visiting Concord, N.H., he added several new wrinkles. He would preserve the deduction for charitable donations, making the flat income tax not so flat; he would exempt any used goods, including previously owned homes and cars, from the national sales tax; and he would allow businesses to deduct new equipment purchases from their 9% corporate income tax, as long as the goods were U.S.-made.

Asked how that would apply to a computer designed domestically but containing Malaysian components and assembled in China, he replied, “I have no idea.”

Even the Cain campaign’s own economist said the 999 plan “wouldn’t be the one I picked” to run with. Remember, the plan was crafted by a Koch-affiliated financial adviser from a Wells Fargo branch in Ohio, not an actual economist.

As ABC reported today, a long list of economists “say Cain’s plan would be a tax hike for the lower middle class and a tax windfall for the wealthy.” Conservative economist Bruce Bartlett wrote that, “at a minimum, the Cain plan is a distributional monstrosity.” Cain would surely dispute these assertions, but how seriously can his protests be taken if he freely admits he has “no idea” how the plan would even function?