On Tuesday, the GOP presidential contenders squared off for a debate in Nevada, the state with both the highest unemployment and highest foreclosure rates in the country. More than 80 percent of Nevada homeowners are underwater, owing more on their mortgage than their home is worth.

But before the debate, Mitt Romney told the Las Vegas Review Journal that he doesn’t have a plan to help homeowners struggling to keep their homes. Government, he said, should not “try and stop the foreclosure process. Let it run its course and hit the bottom.”

As ThinkProgress noted earlier, Gov.Brian Sandoval (R-NV) said that Romney doesn’t “fully understand” what’s happening in Nevada. And he’s not alone amongst the state’s Republican lawmakers in hastily trying to distance himself from Romney’s toxic position:

In a state where the loss of a family home perhaps has been the most painful outcome of the stressed economy, Mitt Romney took hits Tuesday from Nevada leaders of both parties after commenting that the government should let the foreclosure process “run its course and hit the bottom.”[...]

Sen. Dean Heller, R-Nev., distanced himself from the Republican presidential contender.

“Senator Heller does not agree with Mitt Romney,” spokesman Stewart Bybee said. “His plan could take up to six to eight years for recovery, and that is time that Nevada just does not have.”

Rep. Joe Heck (R-NV) seemed to be the only Republican who did not completely repudiate Romney’s position. A Romney endorser, Heck thinks the housing market “does need to reach bottom,” according to a spokesman, but supports “a soft landing rather than a hard crash” by having the government continue to offer refinancing help.

Nevada has had the highest foreclosure rate in the nation for 56 consecutive months. In September, 9,622 properties were in foreclosed upon — a rate of one foreclosure for every 118 homes.

Yet when Romney unveiled his economic plan in Nevada in September, he did not make a single mention of the housing crisis. The New York Times reported just this week that the collapse of housing prices is a major impediment to economic recovery that continues to undermine consumer confidence.

Romney, a multimillionaire and former corporate executive who’s owned several lavish properties across the country, may have trouble grasping the plight of average Americans who are struggling to stay in their homes. In August, Romney applied for a permit to quadruple the size of his 3,000-square-foot, $12 million home in La Jolla, California. A campaign official explained that the mansion was too small and “inadequate for their needs.”

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) is pushing a new amendment that would make it more difficult for people to receive food stamps by restricting eligibility requirements and eliminating a planned $9 billion funding increase for the program. Sessions says his plan is intended to reduce the deficit and combat fraud, which he claims is rampant. From ABC News’ Top Line today:

SESSIONS: No program in our government has surged out of control more dramatically than food stamps. And nothing is being done about it. [...] Multimillion dollar lottery winners are getting food stamps because the money is considered to be an asset not an income. One of the fast and furious gun buyers –

HOST: But hold on, for ever lottery winner that has food stamps, there’s probably a lot more people who really need them who have them, right?

SESSIONS: Well look, do you think there are four times as many people who need food stamps today as in 2001. That answers itself. [...] We cannot do this. We do not have the money. Congress doesn’t understand that we can’t afford to double the program every three years.

Watch it:

It’s shockingly ignorant at best and dishonest at worst for Sessions — the ranking GOP member of the Senate Budget Committee — to completely ignore the role the economy has played on food stamp usage. The cost of the program has jumped because more Americans are out of work and wages are down, thus more people need assistance. Food prices have also gone up, adding additional costs. But the cost of the program will come down on its own as the economy recovers and more people can afford to feed themselves.

In fact, the food stamp program has been critical for reducing poverty and pumping money into local economies during the down economy, so cutting it now would not only take food out of peoples’ mouths, but could slow down the recovery. No one is trying to “double the program every three years” as Sessions claims. (Currently, nearly one in five Alabamians is on Food Stamps.)

And while the senator suggests the program has grown due to fraud, in fact, errors in the food stamp program — the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) –are currently at an all-time low, accounting for less than three percent of the program’s cost. According to the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities:

To ensure that benefits are provided only to eligible households and in the proper amounts, SNAP has one of the most rigorous quality control systems of any public benefit program and, in recent years, has achieved its lowest error rates on record. In fiscal year 2009, even as caseloads were rising, states set new record lows for error rates. The net loss due to errors equaled only 2.7 percent of program costs in 2009. There is no evidence that program errors are driving up SNAP spending.

It’s worth noting that while Sessions claims the country can’t afford to feed the hungry, he has fought to preserve the Bush tax cuts for wealthy, subsides for big oil companies, and demanded new tax cuts for corporations, all of which also contribute to the deficit.

ThinkProgress filed this report from the Western Republican Leadership Conference in Las Vegas, Nevada.

In an interview with the Las Vegas Review Journal, presidential candidate and former Gov. Mitt Romney (R-MA) said he believes that the government doesn’t have a right to “try and stop the foreclosure process.“ Romney, apparently ambivalent about widespread fraudulent foreclosures and the robo-signing scandal, seemed to be echoing Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan, who made similar comments earlier this month.

At an event at the Venetian hotel in Las Vegas, Gov. Brian Sandoval (R-NV) — who oversees the state that has led the nation in foreclosures for years — rebuked Romney’s comments. Romney “didn’t fully understand what was going on in the state of Nevada,” Sandoval said, before adding that the government should require programs like mandatory mediation to ensure a fair foreclosure process:

REPORTER: Gov. Romney said the other day that he thinks the government shouldn’t interfere with people getting foreclosed upon. What is your opinion of that?

SANDOVAL: Well we have a different process in the state of Nevada. We have a model program, and it’s a program that requires mediation between the homeowners and the financial institution. That system has been working very, very well and I want to continue to encourage that.

REPORTER: Do you think Gov. Romney was wrong to say that?

SANDOVAL: Well, I think he didn’t fully understand what was going on in the state of Nevada in this process that we have. [...] That’s part of the debate. And I look forward to hearing each of the candidates, talking about what their solutions are going to be. But I’m proud of the system we set up in Nevada.

Watch it:

Asked about what the federal government should do about the mortgage crisis, Sandoval said, “Well, I think they should look at Nevada.” The first-term governor encouraged Republican candidates to put forward ideas on how to deal with the foreclosure issue, and said he hopes to hear their ideas in the coming weeks. But Sandoval made clear that Nevada’s model works the best.

Sandoval is right that Nevada has a model program. ThinkProgress’ Pat Garofalo, writing for the Nation, outlined the idea of mandatory mediation between borrowers and banks as a way to find “an alternate arrangement before putting the borrower’s home into foreclosure.” The low-cost idea has worked in Philadelphia and other areas where it has been tried.

ThinkProgress filed this report from a town hall event in Muskego, Wisconsin.

When the Occupy Wall Street protests first started, they were met with near universal derision from Republican politicians, with Mitt Romney calling them “dangerous,” House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) claiming they were a “mob,” Herman Cain denouncing them as “un-American,” and Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA) saying the protests are an “attack upon freedom.”

However, as the protests have gained size and media attention, the GOP has been shifting its tune. Today, one of the most prominent Republicans in Congress, House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI), when asked about the protests replied, “I don’t disparage anybody who wants to air their grievances.” “If there’s frustration aimed at crony capitalism, corporate welfare, at bailing out connected corporations, I agree with them,” he said:

I don’t disparage anybody who wants to air their grievances, petition their government. As long as nobody gets hurt, and as long no property is destroyed, I think it’s fine people demonstrate to organize themselves. I’m not exactly sure what it is they’re calling for, but if there’s frustration aimed at crony capitalism, corporate welfare, at bailing out connected corporations, I agree with them. We shouldn’t have any more Solyndras, we shouldn’t be picking winners and losers with federal tax dollars by subsidizing, regulating or tax loopholing people with preferences. Let’s get rid of all of that.

Watch it:

Ryan evidently couldn’t resist getting in a dig at Solyndra, the GOP’s favorite faux-scandal of the moment. However, if he truly agrees with the protesters about ending crony capitalism, perhaps he can sort out whether or not he approves of oil subsidies and explain why he is against reining in too-big-to-fail banks. It’s also worth noting that Ryan’s budget plan would dramatically reduce taxes for the wealthy and corporations, placing the brunt of deficit reduction onto low- and middle-income Americans. That’s not exactly the approach that jives with the ideals of the 99 Percent Movement.

During this week’s Republican presidential primary debate in Las Vegas, both Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX) and Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) slammed the very idea of subsidizing any energy source. “Quite frankly, the government shouldn’t be in the business of subsidizing any form of energy,” Paul said. “So I would say, the more the free market handles this and the more you deal with property rights and no subsidies to any form of energy, the easier this problem would be solved.” Perry added later, “we don’t need to be subsidizing energy in any form or fashion.”

But as it turns out, both Perry and Paul have sought federal energy subsidies with gusto, as the Washington Post noted today:

Texas Gov. Rick Perry and Rep. Ron Paul (Tex.) pressed the energy secretary in 2008 to approve a federal loan guarantee to help an energy company hoping to expand a nuclear facility in Texas. NRG Energy was among the many firms vying for a slice of $18.5 billion in federal loan guarantees set aside for nuclear production, according to letters obtained by The Washington Post. That led to a rush of appeals from Congress members and other elected officials, including Perry and Paul, hoping to win support for their projects.

Perry and Paul both said “their earlier advocacy for a specific Texas project does not contradict their fundamental beliefs.” But for Perry at least, this is just the latest in a long line of instances where he embraced federal spending that he claimed to oppose.

For instance, he railed against the 2009 stimulus package, before using it to balance his budget. He claimed that he was against a bill meant to save teachers’ jobs, and then accepted the funding anyway. He even said he was a “vocal opponent” of No Child Left Behind, after trumpeting the money he received under the law.

Instead of energy subsidies, “Perry cites Texas’s ‘enterprise fund’ for emerging energy companies as a model.” That fund — in addition to not creating the number of jobs Perry says it has — has basically been a slush fund for him to dole out money to companies that donated to his campaigns.

Each year, the Social Security Administration puts out data collected from every single W-2 employment form, totaling the nation’s salaries, bonuses, and other compensation added to. Last year’s data, released yesterday, are “in a word, awful,” as Reuters’ David Cay Johnston writes.

The data show that there were fewer jobs last year for most Americans and those jobs that did exist paid less — wages were down to the lowest level in 11 years. Meanwhile, “the number of people making more than $1 million increased by 20 percent over 2009“:

The median paycheck — half made more, half less — fell again in 2010, down 1.2 percent to $26,364. That works out to $507 a week, the lowest level, after adjusting for inflation, since 1999.

The number of Americans with any work fell again last year, down by more than a half million from 2009 to less than 150.4 million. [...]

The number of workers making $1 million or more rose to almost 94,000 from 78,000 in 2009. However, that was still below some earlier years, including 2007, when more than 110,000 workers made more than $1 million each.

At the very top, the number of workers making more than $50 million rose in 2010 to 81, up from 72 the year before. But average pay in this group declined $4.5 million to $79.6 million.

This is, of course, in line with lots of other data we have on income inequality. Median wages have been stagnant for years — with wage growth in the last decade worse than it was during the Great Depression — while executive compensation has gone up disproportionately. But the data are perhaps the most detailed look at 2010 and, as Johnston notes, “show why protests like Occupy Wall Street have so quickly gained momentum around the country.”

ThinkProgress filed this report from the Western Republican Leadership Conference in Las Vegas, Nevada.

The centerpiece of Herman Cain’s economic agenda, the 999 Plan, has vaulted the former pizza executive to the top of the Republican presidential field. Multiple independent analyses of the plan, however, have shown that it will significantly increase taxes on the poor and middle class – 84 percent of households, according to the Tax Policy Center — while giving humongous tax breaks to the wealthiest one percent.

Cain, hammered by economists, budget wonks, and even his Republican opponents for the proposing such a regressive tax plan, told the Western Republican Leadership Conference on Wednesday that his campaign had come up with a “fix” to make 999 more equitable, but he “just [hasn't] told the public and my opponents about it yet.”

CAIN: The other thing that they try to say – “well it’s going to be regressive on the poor.” No it’s not. We anticipated that attack, but I didn’t tell them how I was going to fix it yet. I wanted to wait until I get attacked on that for a while. We already have a plan for that. But I wanted to see if they would come at that. They thought it was going to be dead in the water. We are a compassionate nation. We do want to help those that are doing all they can to help themselves, but they might need a little bit of help. So we’re not going to throw the people at the poverty level under the bus. No, we’re not going to do that. But we’ve already made provisions for that, but I just haven’t told the public and my opponents about it yet.

Watch it:

As it stands currently, Cain’s 999 plan is extraordinarily regressive, resulting in tax increases for everyone making less than $200,000. Millionaires would be far-and-away the biggest beneficiaries under Cain’s plan. And Cain’s remarks Wednesday did little to combat the impression that his campaign is simply making up the plan’s details as they go along. In fact, he openly admitted that 999 was being modified in the face of persistent criticisms.

Cain’s decision to keep the “fix” a secret for the time being is becoming a recurring theme for his campaign. Cain has repeatedly discussed consulting advisors on various issues, but would not reveal their identities. Many of his staffers’ names have been kept secret. He said he has already identified two people who he could nominate to head the Federal Reserve, but can’t say who they are. And in a move reminiscent of Richard Nixon’s secret plan to end the Vietnam War, even Cain’s energy plan has been kept under wraps because he “doesn’t want to tip anybody off.”

Given the inherently regressive nature of Cain’s tax proposal, nothing short of a massive “fix” would prevent the 999 plan from, in the former pizza executive’s words, “throw[ing] the people at the poverty level under the bus.”