With income inequality at its highest level in the U.S. since the Great Depression, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) finally agreed this week that “there is too much income disparity.” On Friday, he will deliver a speech on income inequality and “how Republicans believe the government could help fix it.”

Currently, his two major ideas center on relying on the wealthy and “mak[ing] sure the people at the the top stay there.” But in case he’s legitimately considering the issue, we’d like to be helpful and offer five tangible ways Cantor and Congress could effectively address income disparity:

1. Promote Unionization: Unions are a key building block of a strong middle-class, ensuring fair wages and treatment of working families. Research shows that today’s union workers make about $2.50 more per hour than their non-union counterparts. However, union membership has seen a sharp decline in membership over the past forty years, matched by an significant drop in the middle class’s share of the nation’s income, while America’s wealthy take their largest share of national income in over 80 years. If unionization rates were just 10 percent higher, the Center for American Progress found that a “typical middle class household would earn $1,479 more every year.” Cantor’s home state of Virginia’s unionization rate currently stands at 4.7 percent. If it was 10 percent, Virginia’s middle class families would gain over $3 billion in income.

2. Rein in CEO Pay: Executive pay continues to greatly outpace worker’s wages, with CEOs at America’s largest companies earning 343 times more than the typical worker. Indeed, “the largest single chunk of the highest-income earners, it turns out, are executives and other managers in firms.” And while executive pay has “more than quadrupled” since the 1970s, pay for a typical worker “has dropped more than 10 percent” over the same period. 90 percent of major U.S. companies “expressly set their executive pay targets at or above the median pay,” which for “top executives” stands at about $4.9 million.

3. Fair, Progressive Tax Reform: Preferential tax treatment for America’s wealthy is a driving force behind income inequality. The Bush tax cuts that Republicans continually fight for increased the economic divide “by delivering more than half of their benefits in 2010 to the top 10 percent of earners, who make over $170,000 a year.” In fact, 25 percent of millionaires in the U.S. pay a lower effective tax rate than 10.4 million middle-class Americans because of favorable tax treatment. Overall, the working poor are actually paying a higher percentage of their income in state and local taxes than the wealthy in 49 states. If Cantor would champion progressive tax policies like the Buffett rule, it would put every taxpayer on a more equal footing and help to alleviate the income disparity.

4. Increase the Capital Gains Tax Rate: As TP Economy editor Pat Garofalo notes, capital gains (including stock, bonds, and real estate profits) “are almost exclusively made by the very wealthy and are taxed at lower rates than wages and salaries,” which serves to drive income inequality. Over the past 20 years, more than 80 percent of capital gains income in the U.S. has gone to the top 5 percent. Because the capital gains tax is capped at 15 percent, “anyone making more than $34,500 a year in wages and salary is taxed at a higher rate than a billionaire is taxed on untold millions in capital gains.” If Cantor — who currently champions reducing this tax rate — really wants to address the disparity, he’ll reconsider this position.

5. Promote Economic Mobility Through Education: Economic mobility is a bedrock principle of American society. But a recent report found that Americans face widespread “downward mobility,” with one in three middle-class Americans slipping down the income ladder. This trend, along with general income inequality, stifles economic growth which, in turn, hampers mobility. As the Brookings Institute notes, promoting education is a vital way to “boost the mobility of children from poor and low-income families.” Cantor — who voted against bolstering Pell Grants, reducing student loan payment rates, and believes preventing teacher layoffs is not a priority — may ignore this as well.

Most of these policies would require Cantor to reject the entire portfolio of GOP talking points and thus are unlikely to make it into his speech. However, if he is serious about finding a solution for income disparity, he should start by recognizing the problems behind it.

The latest GOP presidential primary debate will take place in Nevada tonight, one of the state’s hardest hit by the housing crisis. In fact, Nevada has had the highest foreclosure rate in the nation for 56 consecutive months, according to data from RealtyTrac. More than 80 percent of Nevada homeowners are underwater, owing more on their mortgage than their home is worth.

Mitt Romney already unveiled an economic platform in Nevada while managing to neglect housing entirely. But perhaps that was for the best, as when he does talk about it, he makes it abundantly clear that he cares not a whit for the millions of Americans losing their homes due to the financial crisis. During a discussion with the editorial board of the Las Vegas Review Journal, Romney said one of his rules for the government is “don’t try and stop the foreclosure process“:

As for what to do for the housing industry specifically, and are there things that you can do to encourage housing? One is don’t try and stop the foreclosure process. Let it run its course and hit the bottom, allow investors to buy homes, put renters in them, fix the homes up and let it turn around and come back up. The Obama administration has slow-walked the foreclosure processes that have long existed and as a result we still have a foreclosure overhang.

I think the idea of helping people refinance homes to stay in them is one that’s worth further consideration, but I’m not signing on until I find out who’s going to pay and who’s going to get bailed out and that’s not something which we know all the answers to yet.

Watch it:

Romney’s callous disregard for families losing their homes through no fault of their own is bad enough. But it’s also not true that speeding foreclosures is good for the economy, as every foreclosure drags down the value of the homes around it. The Roosevelt Institute Mike Konczal has pointed to research showing that “foreclosures were responsible for 15% to 30% of the decline in residential investment from 2007 to 2009 and 20% to 40% of the decline in auto sales over the same period.”

And, of course, focusing only on those homeowners entering the foreclosure process legally ignores the vas amounts of fraud that banks perpetrated in order to speed foreclosures, such as robo-signing and fake notarization of documents. Romney already has the lobbyist for a notorious foreclosure mill fundraising for his campaign — perhaps he should take a moment, while he’s in Nevada, to talk to those who are on the other side of the equation.

(HT: Ben Smith)

Rep. John Mica (R-FL)

In late July, House Republicans forced a nearly two-week shutdown of the Federal Aviation Administration, furloughing thousands of federal employees and bringing construction projects supporting tens of thousands of jobs to a grinding halt. Airline inspectors were forced to work without pay during the shutdown.

The GOP refused to reauthorize funding for the FAA without including in the legislation a union-busting provision that had nothing to do with aviation. In the aftermath of the shutdown, House Transportation Committee Chairman John Mica (R-FL) — who helped engineer the shutdown — attempted the play the victim, whining that he’d “had a brutal week, getting beat up by everybody” after putting thousands out of work.

And now, evidently believing that everyone has forgotten the contempt that he showed for the FAA, Mica is touting an FAA grant to the airport in his district:

Congressman John L. Mica (R-Sanford) today announced that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has awarded the Orlando Sanford International Airport a $10.6 million grant to assist in the purchase of land needed to expand runway 9L.

“Orlando Sanford International Airport is a significant contributor to the local economy of Seminole County,” says Congressman John Mica. “By acquiring the land to improve and expand the runway at the airport, we can bring in newer quieter passenger aircraft and improve safety. This will further allow us to expand business and economic activity at the airport, creating more jobs for the region.”

Of course, just a few months ago Mica seemed far more concerned with union-busting, and doing the bidding of some of his biggest campaign contributors, than in the FAA’s ability to generate economic activity and jobs. Adding insult to injury, the anti-union provision that Mica wanted to make law (which would change the way union elections operate) was so nonsensical that, if the same rule applied to congressional elections, Mica wouldn’t be in Congress in the first place.

In addition to his FAA shenanigans, Mica has proposed slashing overall transportation infrastructure funding, “even though our current infrastructure spending as a percentage of GDP (2 percent) is already at half what it was in 1960 and less than one-quarter of what China spends today (9 percent).” But he’s more than happy to wholeheartedly cheer the job creation potential of projects in his own district.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) built his national notoriety on scapegoating public employees, who he falsely blamed for his state’s precarious financial situation. In his radical union-busting bill that effectively eliminated collective bargaining rights, Walker forced workers to pay more for their pensions and health coverage (effectively dealing them a pay cut).

During his campaign for governor, Walker promised that, as a government employee himself, he would immediately pay the full costs of his pension when he took office. But documents obtained by the Associated Press in response to an open records request reveal that Walker did not keep his promise and didn’t start paying the fully cost of his pension until state law forced him to:

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who forced public workers to pay more for their pensions as part of a push to curb union rights, broke his campaign promise to pay the full cost of his state pension immediately after taking office in January.

The Associated Press requested copies of the governor’s pay stubs to see if he had fulfilled the campaign promise he made in June 2010. Walker said then he would begin paying the cost immediately in order to lead by example since he was proposing all state employees do the same.

“As governor, I’ll pay my share toward my retirement because everyone should pay their own way, including me,” Walker said during the campaign.

AP notes that Lieutenant Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch (R) made the same pledge and also didn’t pay as promised. Walker didn’t pay anything between January and August, when the law kicked, and he was not paying his own pension costs during the bitter fight with unions over the new law in February and March.

Walker’s spokesman Cullen Werwie admitted Walker did not start paying the full cost for seven months. He did not have an explanation for why Walker failed to keep his word.

This isn’t the first time Walker has reneged on promises related to his pension. After winning election as Milwaukee County executive in 2002, Walker pledged that any staff under his control would waive all salary and benefit increases enacted after 2000. But in 2004, it came out that Walker’s staff had been taking higher pension benefits for two years. Walker also promised to return $60,000 of his $130,000 annual salary as county executive, but after winning reelection, he started giving back only $10,000 a year. Walker also collected more pension benefits based on his higher salary for two years.

Wisconsin Democrats say it’s outrageous that Walker is forcing other government employees to do what he won’t do himself. “It is indefensible Scott Walker promised to live by these rules and then broke his word to Wisconsin,” said Scot Ross, head of the group One Wisconsin Now.

Herman Cain

Listen to Herman Cain on the campaign trail, and you’ll hear him mock President Obama’s stimulus program a dozen different ways. Cain calls the program “a waste of money” that “didn’t stimulate anything other than bigger government” and a failure. One problem with Cain’s barrage of attacks? He sat on the board of directors of American corporations that applied for and received millions in stimulus money.

According to his personal financial disclosure (view a copy here), Cain supplements his income by being a board member for several large corporations. As a board member, he collected $202,500 from Agco Corporation, a farm products company, and $259,008 from Whirlpool Corporation (including options and a board salary). A review of stimulus spending records reveal that Cain’s companies have eagerly accepted stimulus money:

– Agco Corporation received up to $5 million of stimulus grants to develop “supply systems to handle and deliver high tonnage biomass feedstocks for cellulosic biofuels production.”

– Whirlpool Corporation received a $19,330,000 stimulus grant from the Department of Energy to develop SmartGrid solutions.

– Whirlpool launched a special offer to encourage customers to take advantage of the stimulus program’s energy efficient appliance program. The company advertised that certain Whirlpool, Maytag and KitchenAid appliances are available for rebate through the $300 million rebate program authorized by the stimulus.

– Whirlpool also received two stimulus grants of $2,042,700 to develop next generation energy efficient refrigerators.

Luckily for Cain, one of his corporations did not appear to receive any tainted stimulus money. According to his disclosure, Cain received $120,000 for his role on the board of Hallmark Cards Inc, the holiday greeting card company. A search by ThinkProgress reveals zero stimulus dollars directed to Hallmark.