During this week’s GOP primary debate, Newt Gingrich asked Mitt Romney why he has proposed eliminating capital gains taxes for only those making less than $200,000 annually (which is a key component of Romney’s economic plan). “If I’m going to use precious dollars to reduce taxes, I want to focus on where the people are hurting the most, and that’s the middle class,” Romney said. “The people in the middle, the hard-working Americans, are the people who need a break, and that is why I focused my tax cut right there.”

Romney may think he focused his tax cut on the middle-class, but according to a ThinkProgress analysis of Tax Policy Center data*, nearly three-fourths of households that make $200,000 or less annually would get literally nothing from Romney’s tax cut, due to the simple fact that most of those households have no capital gains income

To be exact, 73.9 percent of the households upon which Romney “focused” his tax cut will see zero benefit from it. The table below shows how few households in each income bracket would be affected by Romney’s cut:

For families making between $40,000 and $50,000 annually, Romney’s tax cut comes out to a whopping $216 per year. Meanwhile, the payroll tax cut enacted by the Obama administration in 2011, which Romney derided as a “temporary little Band-Aid,” gave those same households a tax cut of $800 to $1,000.

According to the Tax Policy Center, 67 percent of the entire benefit from lower capital gains tax rates goes to millionaires. 75 percent of the benefit goes to richest 1 percent of Americans. So lowering the capital gains rate for those making less than $200,000 doesn’t do many people any good at all. In a tax plan that costs nearly $7 trillion, you’d think Romney would have found a way to focus his “focused” middle-class tax cut a bit better.

*Of the 155,943,000 households making $200,000 or below, just 40,703,051, or 26.1 percent, would see any tax cut under Romney’s plan. TPC’s data is based on “cash income,” while Romney’s tax is based on adjusted gross income, but widely speaking, the distribution is the same.

Amtrak officials announced yesterday that “Amtrak trains carried more than 30 million passengers in the past 12 months, the most in one year since the passenger railroad was created four decades ago.” Ridership is up 5 percent over a year ago, and ticket revenue is up 8 percent.

“Amtrak is fulfilling its national mission and is part of the solution to meet America’s growing transportation and energy needs,” said Joseph Boardman, Amtrak’s CEO. However, Republicans in Congress are ready to take Amtrak out at the knees:

A House appropriations subcommittee passed a bill [in September] that provides Amtrak with $227 million for operations in 2012, down from $563 million in each of the past two years. Amtrak also would get $899 million for capital expenditures, down $25 million.

In addition to this 60 percent cut, the bill “would prohibit using Amtrak’s federal funding to operate state-supported train service.” Earlier this year, House Transportation Committee Chairman John Mica (R-FL) “proposed soliciting bids from other railroads for the right to service the 456-mile Northeast Corridor, which is the heart of Amtrak’s operations.”

“Americans are returning to the rails in record numbers, yet Republicans are pulling out all of the stops in their rush to auction off Amtrak’s assets to the highest bidder on Wall Street,” said Rep. Nick Rahall (D-WV). The National Association of Railroad Passengers has warned that the GOP’s cuts “would be tantamount to shutting down the entire Amtrak network, because the remaining routes could not cover the system’s overhead costs.”

Yesterday, Senate Republicans unveiled their much-hyped alternative to President Obama’s jobs plan. The “Jobs Through Growth Act” is heavy on Republicans’ favorite policies like cutting corporate taxes and reducing regulation, but light on details. Nevertheless, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) declared that it would create 5 million jobs.

Moody’s Analytics estimated that Obama’s American Jobs Act would create 1.9 million jobs, grow the economy by 2 percent and cut unemployment by a percentage point. Their review of the Republicans’ plan is not nearly as favorable. In fact, the Washington Post’s Greg Sargent reports that one Moody’s economist thinks it may damage the economy even more:

But an economist I spoke to just now said there isn’t enough information in the plan to evaluate whether it could even achieve its goals as Republicans themselves have defined them. He said it won’t help the economy in the short term, and could even make matters worse.

“I don’t have enough detail to evaluate how many jobs this would create,” Gus Faucher, the director of macroeconomics at Moody’s Analytics, told me. [...]

“Should we look at regulations and make sure they make sense from a cost benefit standpoint? Certainly. Should we reduce the budget deficit over the long run? Certainly,” Faucher said. “But in the short term, demand is weak, businesses aren’t hiring, and consumers aren’t spending. That’s the cause of the current weakness — and Republican Senate proposals aren’t going to address that in the short term.”

Republicans’ lofty claims about what their jobs bill will accomplish have centered around “reducing uncertainty” and “restoring confidence,” but Faucher points out “that’s not an economic argument” and there’s no way to evaluate how or if the plan would have any impact on employers’ confidence. Furthermore, Faucher says Republicans’ insistence on including a Balanced Budget Amendment is “likely to push the economy back into recession.” This week, Senate Republicans officially filibustered Obama’s jobs act.

Herman Cain economic adviser Rich Lowrie — who helped the presidential candidate write his “999″ economic plan despite having no formal training in economics — appeared on Fox News today where he made some pretty optimistic promises about Cain’s tax scheme:

LOWRIE: What will happen, economically, is that the economy will expand by two trillion dollars. Six million jobs are going to be created, bringing the unemployment rate back down to a more typical or natural rate of four, four and a half percent. Wages are going to go up by 10 percent. Business investment will go up by a third.

Watch it:

Lowrie — who is an investment adviser at Wells Fargo, not a macroeconomist — offers nothing to back up these rosy assertions, which sound almost too good to be true. The unemployment rate has dropped to levels Lowrie promises just a handful of times in last 100 years, and only during the most robust periods of economic growth. Moreover, wages for most Americans have fallen or stagnated in recent years, making his claim of 10 percent increases sound idealistic at best and naive at worst.

Last fall, Republicans attempted to block a jobs bill proposed by congressional Democrats that would have prevented tens of thousands of teachers across the country from being laid off. Though Democrats were able to overcome Republican objections and pass the legislation, many conservatives were less than enthusiastic about saving teachers’ jobs.

One such voice was former pizza executive and current Republican presidential frontrunner Herman Cain. Cain, a radio host in Atlanta, Georgia for three years, blasted the proposal to save teachers’ jobs during his radio show on Aug. 11, 2010. The former Godfather’s Pizza CEO mocked those who “[d]idn’t want to lay off teeeeachers” and called the move a “$26 billion bailout of teeeeachers.” Cain then went on to deride then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, referring to her as “Princess Nancy”:

CAIN: You heard about the $26 billion bailout of teeeeachers. Didn’t want to lay off teeeeachers. Here’s what I want to share with you in this segment tonight. It’s called, “beneath the $26 billion bailout.” [...]

What I want to do this segment is peel back the onion on the $26 billion bailout that they rushed back to Congress in an emergency session called by “Princess Nancy!” “This is an absolute national congressional emergency!” They rushed back to pass this $26 billion emergency jobs bill. It was a $26 billion spending bill.

Listen to it:

Cain’s dismissal of the teachers’ jobs bill as a “bailout” is absurd for two reasons. First, Cain was among the 2008 bailout’s biggest supporters. Second, ensuring that educators continue to receive a paycheck isn’t a “bailout,” it’s a salary. Wall Street bankers deserve to be rescued, in Cain’s worldview, but attempts to save teachers’ jobs are met with scorn.

Considering the rhetoric Cain has employed regarding the recent Wall Street protests — “if you don’t have a job and you’re not rich, blame yourself!” — it’s no surprise that the former pizza executive would mock attempts to save teachers’ jobs.

Gov. Rick Scott (R-FL) campaigned on a promise to create jobs in Florida — his campaign mantras were even “Let’s get to work!” and “jobs, jobs, jobs.” However, recently he’s backed off his earlier pledge to create 700,000 jobs in addition to the 1 million jobs Florida is expected to generate as part of the state’s natural growth, absurdly claiming “I don’t know who said that.”

Now the St. Petersburg Times is reporting that Scott is scaling back his promises even further, claiming, “I could argue that I don’t have to create any jobs”:

Gov. Rick Scott on Thursday added more nuance to his campaign promise to create jobs, questioning the validity of the state’s economic forecast and saying he just has to stop unemployment from rising.

“The bottom line is, I could argue that I don’t have to create any jobs,” Scott said on 540-AM in Maitland. “I just have to make sure we don’t lose jobs.“

Florida has a 10.7 percent unemployment rate that is higher than the national average. Yet Scott recently bragged about laying off 15,000 government workers, while deep education cuts will cost many teachers and school employees their jobs. Scott also rejected $2.4 billion in federal money for a high-speed rail project that supporters say would have created 24,000 jobs.

Putting ideology over the welfare of Floridians, Scott has also indicated that he will reject the billions in federal aid that could flow to the state under President Obama’s jobs act. The state is slated to receive more than $7.5 billion for schools, roads and other projects under the American Jobs Act. The White House estimates that the funds under the plan would support more than 60,000 jobs in Florida, including those held by teachers, cops, and firefighters.

The Texas Enterprise Fund (TEF) — a pot of taxpayer dollars that Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX) used to try enticing companies to move to the Lone Star State — has already come under scrutiny for outsized jobs claims. As the Wall Street Journal reported, Perry’s claim that the fund has created more than 50,000 jobs “[has] been inflated by counting employment gains far removed from the actual projects.”

In fact, according to a new report from Texans for Public Justice, Perry’s enterprise fund seems to have done more for his campaign coffers than Texas job creation:

This report finds that 43 companies that landed a total of $333 million in TEF awards contributed almost $7 million to Perry’s campaign and the Perry-affiliated Republican Governors Association (RGA). TEF companies sometimes made corporate contributions directly to the RGA, while company PACs, owners or executives gave to both the RGA and to Perry’s campaign (which cannot accept corporate funds).2 These contributions included $1,652,159 to Perry’s gubernatorial campaigns and $5,331,701 to the RGA. The 43 TEF recipients that contributed to Perry and/or the RGA represent about half of the 90 companies that received TEF awards but received 76 percent of all TEF-awarded funds.

In one glaring example, General Electric received TEF money, donated more than half a million to Perry, but has yet to create the jobs in Texas that it promised:

TEF awarded $4.2 million in 2011 to General Electric ($640,700 to Perry/RGA ) for a Fort Worth train factory that promised to create 775 jobs. GE’s new TEF project has yet to face job-creation targets. GE also is a junior partner involved with the $25 million that TEF awarded in 2005 to the University of Texas System’s MD Anderson Cancer Center to create the Center for Advanced Biomedical Imaging. This project pledged to create 2,252 jobs. To pump up job-creation numbers, however, this TEF project does not just count new jobs at the TEF-funded imaging center.

Much of Perry’s job creation record breaks down upon close inspection. It certainly seems like the TEF is no exception.