2012 GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney today is test driving a new tactic against Texas Gov. Rick Perry, accusing Perry of being insufficiently concerned with the nation’s deficit. “If Rick Perry thinks deficits don’t matter, then he’s no different than President Obama. Deficits matter,” said Lanhee Chen, policy director for Romney for President, said in a press release. “His opinion shouldn’t surprise anyone, though — in Texas, Governor Perry covered up his massive budget deficit with billions of dollars from the very same Obama stimulus he claimed to oppose.”

Romney is absolutely right that Perry mismanaged Texas’ finances and used the Recovery Act to balance his budget. But if Romney is so concerned about the deficit, his own economic plan should be keeping him up at night. After all, as Center for American Progress Director for Tax and Budget Policy Michael Linden found, Romney’s plan would blow a big hole in the federal budget:

[Romney's plan] would result in federal revenue averaging just 16.7 percent of gross domestic product. That’s far below the 20 percent of GDP that Romney says he wants to spend (though, of course, he neglected to lay out what he would cut to get there). It’s even below the levels suggested by House Republican Budget, which abolished Medicare as we know it, slashed Medicaid, and still didn’t balance the budget until 2040.

Taken together, Romney’s fiscal policies would be even worse than the House Budget. His spending levels are the same — though he provides few details as to what he would cut to accomplish this — but his revenue levels are even lower. The result would be continued unsustainable deficits and more debt. In fact, Romney’s plan would yield approximately $6.5 trillion in deficits from 2013 through 2021.

Romney’s plan is a huge giveaway to the wealthy and corporations. And it would cause the very problem that Romney is claiming to care so deeply about to grow significantly worse.

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), who is campaigning for the 2012 GOP presidential nod, has already made it quite clear that she intends to raise taxes on the poorest Americans if elected. Today, she rolled out a new plan to hike taxes on those at the bottom of the income scale: eliminating the Earned Income Tax Credit.

In an interview with Fox News’ Neil Cavuto, Bachmann said she would “do away with the EITC,” and force someone who made only $3 to pay taxes on it:

This would be through the income tax system because the problem is, and this is where I deviate from Reagan, he instituted the Earned Income Tax Credit, it’s known as the EITC, and that effectively took many many Americans out of even having to pay any tax liability at all. I would do away with the EITC and if a person has $3 in income they would be subject to something. Obviously, no one has $3 in income. But they would have to pay something through that system.

Watch it:

The EITC is a tax credit for those at the lowest end of the income scale, going to families with children that make less than $36,000 per year (though the income level can vary depending on year and number of dependents). Individuals making less than $18,000 annually can also qualify for a small credit.

President Reagan called the EITC “the best antipoverty, the best pro-family, the best job creation measure to come out of Congress.” According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, “research indicates that families mostly use the EITC to pay for necessities, repair homes, maintain vehicles that are needed to commute to work, and in some cases, obtain additional education or training to boost their employability and earning power.” And in recent years, the EITC has been essential in lifting families out of poverty:

The EITC reduces poverty by supplementing the earnings of workers with low wages and low earnings. There has been broad bipartisan agreement that a two-parent family with two children with a full-time, minimum-wage worker should not have to raise its children in poverty. At the federal minimum wage’s current level, such a family can move above the poverty line for an average family of four only if it receives the EITC as well as SNAP (food stamp) benefits.

In each of the last two years, the EITC kept 3 million children out of poverty. But Bachmann would eliminate it in order to tax those who make the least amount of money. At the same time, she has said that she is “open to” eliminating the corporate income tax.

Mitt Romney speaking at a Koch summit in previous years; David Koch speaking at his own gala

Tomorrow, 2012 GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney is slated to give a “major spending policy speech” at Americans For Prosperity’s Defending the American Dream Summit. Both the conference and AFP itself are funded by money from the billionaire Koch Brothers.

Romney has, of late, been trying to claim the economic plan he put forth is meant to aid the middle-class, not those in the Koch brothers’ tax bracket. “I want to focus on where the people are hurting the most, and that’s the middle class. I’m not worried about rich people. They are doing just fine,” Romney said at a GOP debate last month. Yesterday, he even tried to claim “I’m proposing no tax cuts for the rich.”

Leaving aside that Romney intends to extend the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, he has proposed a huge giveaway to the very rich by suggesting the complete elimination of the estate tax. Only the very richest households in the country ever have to pay the estate tax, since, right now, an estate must be worth more than $5 million (or $10 million for a couple) to pay any estate tax at all.

Currently, more than half of the estate tax is paid by the richest 0.1 percent of households. And according to a quick back-of-the-envelope calculation, the Koch brothers heirs’ would save a combined $17.4 billion in estate taxes thanks to Romney’s plan.

Each of the Koch brothers — Charles and David — is worth about $25 billion. They are each married, so they would receive an exemption on the first $10 million that they pass down, and then theirs heirs would pay a 35 percent tax, or $8.7 billion, on the rest of their vast fortunes.

Now, this is an exceedingly rough calculation, as it’s almost certain that the Koch’s have engaged in extensive estate planning and would pay nowhere near that amount. But 35 percent is the rate on the books, and Romney’s plan to eliminate the estate tax entirely would undeniably save the Kochs a boatload of money.

David Koch actually hosted one of the first fundraisers of Romney’s current bid for the White House, and according to the Romney campaign, the Kochs are the “financial engines of the Tea Party.” Though Romney claims to be “not worried” about the rich, the actual policies he’s proposed would do a lot to ensure that the Kochs’ never have to pay their fair share.

Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY) is outraged that executives at the government-seized mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will receive a combined $12.8 million in bonuses after meeting only “modest goals.” He even held a press conference this week demanding the bonuses be undone. And last night, Barrasso told Fox News that it’s “absolutely wrong” and almost un-American for the bailed out firms to be handing out such large bonuses. Watch it:

Democratic lawmakers have been rightly upset by the bonuses as well, with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) saying yesterday that they induced his “gag reflex.” But while it’s welcome to see a Republican senator care about excessive executive compensation, especially at a bailed out firm, where was Barrasso when this happened back in 2009?

Back then, President Obama wanted to cap executive compensation at banks bailed out by taxpayers, but “Republicans hate[d] the idea.” “[I]s this still America? Do we really tell people how to run [a business], and who to pay and how much to pay?” Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) asked at the time. Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) explained, “I really don’t want the government to take over these businesses and start telling them everything about what they can do.”

Had Barrasso broken with his party at the time to take a stance similar to the one he is now espousing, he could have helped tip the political balance in favor of reigning in executive compensation at bailed out firms, whether they be banks or Fannie and Freddie.

Today, the Senate is scheduled to vote on the infrastructure investment portion of President Obama’s American Jobs Act. Senate Republicans are planning to block the bill, objecting to the fact that it is paid for by a surtax that affects no more than the richest 0.1 percent of people in most states.

The Senate GOP, instead, is offering its own “jobs bill.” The GOP’s legislation, in addition to providing some highway funding, would cut $40 billion in discretionary spending and implement a cockamamie House Republican proposal known as the REINS Act. As ThinkProgress Justice editor Ian Millhiser wrote, the REINS Act would cripple the government’s ability to regulate just about anything:

House Republicans claim that REINS will simply provide an additional layer of congressional oversight before a federal agency can improve vehicle safety standards or reduce greenhouse emissions or streamline the FDA’s process for approving new drugs, but the actual effect of REINS would be to completely freeze much of the federal regulatory structure in place — permanently.

For one thing, while REINS’ chief sponsor claims that it would prevent new regulations from being filibustered in the Senate, the bill does not account for a loophole in the Senate rules. As a result, all but the most insignificant new federal regulations would be shut down completely unless they could somehow earn supermajority support in the Senate.

While the GOP seems to be aiming this plan at preventing new regulations, it would also effectively make it impossible to get rid of old regulations. Sally Katzen, a former chief overseer of the federal regulatory process, pointed out that “agencies sometimes propose eliminating outdated rules. But even these efforts at regulatory streamlining would nonetheless get caught in the REINS Act net, as deregulatory rules are nevertheless still rules.”

Former Reagan administration economist Bruce Bartlett explained this week that the GOP’s belief in deregulation as a job creation measure is “nonsense.” “It’s just made up,” he said. McClatchy spoke with small business owners, and found “little evidence” that regulation is hurting job creation. So instead of passing the infrastructure bill and putting Americans back to work on projects vital to the country, the GOP is proposing a nonsense solution to a non-existent problem.

While Republicans resist any attempt to address growing income inequality, more and more of America’s wealthy are asking to pay their fair share. Joining billionaire Warren Buffet, Microsoft founder Bill Gates recently issued his support for “millionaires and billionaires” paying more in taxes.

Now, Gates is taking it a step further and traveling to the G-20 meeting in Cannes, France today to champion the “Robin Hood tax” — a small financial transaction tax on each stock and bond trade — in order to help financially strapped developed nations meet their global aid pledges to the poor. Aware that countries like the U.S. are not currently receptive to this or any taxes, Gates told the Guardian that hopes his “credibility” lends credence to the idea that such taxes work:

Speaking to the Guardian on the eve of the summit, Gates said: “It is very plausible that certain kinds of FTTs could work. I am lending some credibility to that. This money could be well spent and make a difference. An FTT is more possible now than it was a year ago, but it won’t be at rates that magically raise gigantic sums of money.” [...]

[His] report identifies an FTT as one of three ways of raising money. Gates will tell the G20 that it could garner almost $11bn for health aid projects if all members levied tobacco excise taxes of at least 70% of the pack price and earmarked a slice of the revenue for development. Small taxes on shipping and aviation fuel could raise $37bn and $27bn respectively, the report says.

Gates is not alone in his effort. Yesterday, Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) and Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-OR) introduced legislation that proposes a 0.03 percent tax on financial transactions that could raise $150 billion to “invest in our future, our infrastructure and our middle class.” As TP Economy editor Pat Garofalo notes, the tax — which has been embraced by the Occupy Wall Street protests, the governments of France and Germany, and even the Archbishop of Canterbury — could raise serious revenue while slowing down some of the high frequency trading that “mega-banks like Goldman Sachs employ to churn up quick profits.”

DeFazio told ThinkProgress that while Gates’ stated purpose for the tax may be different, he welcomes Gates’ support for an idea already proven to work. He noted that the United Kingdom already imposes a 0.25 percent transaction tax on the sale or purchase of stocks which, as Center For Economic Policy and Research notes, “has very little impact on people who buy stock with the intent of holding it for a long period of time” but will deter those who high frequency trades that exacerbate or lead to market crashes. The policy helps return Wall Street to its days as a place “where people with good ideas go to raise capital” for production rather than a place for “gambling” schemes, said DeFazio.

Several GOP 2012 presidential hopefuls have released tax plans that clearly deliver the lion’s share of their benefits to the very richest Americans. Both former pizza magnate Herman Cain and Texas Gov. Rick Perry, through their embrace of flat income taxes and their elimination of all investment taxes, would deliver huge tax breaks worth millions of dollars to those at the top of the income scale.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, meanwhile, is trying to claim the mantle of defender of the middle class, saying during a GOP debate that “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. I’m not worried about rich people. They are doing just fine.” During an interview yesterday with WTVT in Tampa, Romney even claimed “I’m proposing no tax cuts for the rich”:

You’re buying into President Obama’s line and the Democratic Party line that my party is the party of tax cuts for the rich. That just doesn’t happen to be the case. The policies I’ve put forward are tax cuts for the middle-class . I’m proposing no tax cuts for the rich.

Watch it:

Romney’s claim is simply absurd on its face. His tax plan consists of $6.6 trillion in tax cuts, the vast majority of which goes to the wealthy and corporations. In fact, Romney dedicates an entire section of his economic plan to discussing elimination of the estate tax, which only the very richest households in the country ever have to pay (since, right now, an estate must be worth more than $5 million to pay any estate tax at all). Currently, more than half of the estate tax is paid by the richest 0.1 percent of households.

Meanwhile, Romney’s claim that his tax plan cuts taxes for the middle-class has little basis in reality. A ThinkProgress analysis found that the vast majority of middle-class households would get no benefit from Romney’s tax plan, since its based on a capital gains tax cut when most middle-class families have no capital gains.

Romney’s tax plan, while not as generous to the rich as those of his competitors, still delivers its benefits to the top while ignoring those in the middle who haven’t seen their income rise in years. He might try to deny it, but the proposals that he’s put on paper make it very clear where his priorities lie.

Photo by Flickr user Joseph Seal

One of the driving forces behind the ongoing Occupy Wall Street protests is the fact that corporations have not been paying their fair share in taxes. A new report from Citizens for Tax Justice will no nothing to alleviate the protesters’ frustration.

CTJ looked at 280 companies, all of them members of the Fortune 500, and found that “while the federal corporate tax code ostensibly requires big corporations to pay a 35 percent corporate income tax rate, on average, the 280 corporations in our study paid only about half that amount.” And those who paid even half the statutory corporate tax rate paid far more than many of their competitors.

In fact, in the last three years, 78 corporations had at least one year where they paid no federal income tax at all, while 30 corporations paid not a dime over the entire three years. Those 30 corporations paid nothing, even though they made $160 billion in profits over that period:

– Seventy-eight of the 280 companies paid zero or less in federal income taxes in at least one year from 2008 to 2010…In the years they paid no income tax, these companies earned $156 billion in pretax U.S. profits. But instead of paying $55 billion in income taxes as the 35 percent corporate tax rate seems to require, these companies generated so many excess tax breaks that they reported negative taxes (often receiving outright tax rebate checks from the U.S. Treasury), totaling $21.8 billion. These companies’ “negative tax rates” mean that they made more after taxes than before taxes in those no-tax years.

– Thirty corporations paid less than nothing in aggregate federal income taxes over the entire 2008-10 period. These companies, whose pretax U.S. profits totaled $160 billion over the three years, included: Pepco Holdings (–57.6% tax rate), General Electric (–45.3%), DuPont (–3.4%), Verizon (–2.9%), Boeing (–1.8%), Wells Fargo (–1.4%) and Honeywell (–0.7%).

As CTJ’s report put it, “just as workers pay their fair share of taxes on their earnings, so should successful businesses pay their fair share on their success. But today corporate tax loopholes are so out of control that most Americans can rightfully complain, ‘I pay more federal income taxes than General Electric, Boeing, DuPont, Wells Fargo, Verizon, etc., etc., all put together.’ That’s an unacceptable situation.” And its one that lawmakers could fix, if they were willing to stand up to the nation’s biggest corporations.