The coalition of corporations pushing for a temporary repatriation tax holiday on money that companies have stashed offshore renewed its efforts in a letter to Congress and the White House today, a day after the Congressional Budget Office released a study showing that such a holiday would have a minimal impact on job creation. Executives at Microsoft, Oracle, Cisco Systems, and Pfizer are among the 15 executives that signed the letter, which asserts that Congress can’t wait any longer to push the holiday through, the Wall Street Journal reports:

CEOs seeking a tax holiday on their overseas earnings are sending a not-so-subtle message to Congress and the White House: We can spend the money here in the U.S. or we can spend it over there.

In a letter released Wednesday, the CEOs write that “the simple truth is that the longer we wait, the more money will be spent overseas, and these foreign investments are unlikely to return to the U.S. even if our tax policies are changed to encourage domestic investment in the future.”

Just yesterday, the CBO found that the repatriation holiday would have the weakest effect on job creation of all the major policy proposals made by both parties.

That analysis echoes the effects of the last such holiday, which was also sold as a job creation measure. According to President Bush’s own economic advisers, however, the 2004 holiday “didn’t accomplish its stated goals of bringing jobs and investment to the U.S.,” as large corporations used the repatriated funds to pay dividends and purchase stock before actually cutting jobs and moving even more money overseas.

In his book Fed Up!, 2012 GOP presidential contender Rick Perry wrote that the government has no role in education, a position he has proudly touted on the campaign trail. “I don’t think the federal government has a role in your children’s education,” he said at an event in August. “I know there’s probably a few of you in here who have not read my book ‘Fed Up.’ But I talk about the intrusion into our lives by the federal government in a host of different areas. Education is one of them.”

However, when he released his tax and budget plan in October, Perry has abandoned his desire to eliminate the Education Department, merely calling for cutting its funding in half. But in a new plan that he released yesterday that is meant to “uproot and overhaul Washington,” Perry is back to his old tricks:

Work with Congress to dismantle, reform, and restructure wasteful, overbearing, and redundant federal agencies: The Department of Commerce, Department of Education and the Department of Energy would be completely eliminated. Essential duties – such as DoE’s Nuclear Security Administration, would be transferred to other agencies.

Perry doesn’t lay out what he thinks would be an “essential duty” of the Education Department, but he could start with student loans, Title I education funding for low-income students, federal special needs funding, and the Teacher Incentive Fund. And of course, while saying you’ll eliminate entire departments sounds nice on the campaign trail, actually getting it done, as Joy Resmovits explained, is much more difficult and could have disastrous consequences:

Practically speaking, turning federal education funding into block grants would demand the overturning of court decisions that require nondiscriminatory protections for disadvantaged groups. Most importantly, the idea of leaving states entirely to their own devices makes both liberal and conservative education experts worry that poor, special education and minority students would be underserved by public schools even more than they already are.

Given his past history, it’s likely only a matter of time before Perry switches to some other position, but the truth of the matter is that promising to abolish the Education Department is pandering to the conservative base while paying no attention to the practical implications of such a move. (HT: Alyson Klein)

Congressional Republicans are still trying to persuade Americans that they are focused on job creation, but each time they propose another piece of legislation, it is exposed as a gimmick that will do little, if anything, to create jobs. Such was the case with their anti-regulatory policies, their attempts to repeal health care reform, and virtually every other policy proposal they have brought forth.

Next up in that line, unfortunately, is a rehashed form of a radical Balanced Budget Amendment, a plan that according to recent analyses would actually cost America 15 million jobs. But thanks to the conservative wing of the Democratic Party, the Republicans won’t be alone in their chase for a radical budget amendment that could help push the country back into the throes of recession.

Despite the fact that House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-MD) said yesterday he would encourage his party to vote against the radical plan, Blue Dog Democrats endorsed the amendment on a press call today, Politico’s Marin Cogan reported on Twitter. ThinkProgress confirmed that endorsement with a spokesperson for Rep. Mike Ross (D-AR), the Blue Dog Coalition’s co-chair for communications. According to the Hill, Ross said on the call that Blue Dogs favored such an amendment “before balanced budget amendments were cool”:

“We were advancing a balanced budget amendment when balanced budget amendments weren’t cool,” a co-chairman of the coalition, Rep. Mike Ross (D-Ark.), told reporters on a conference call. [...]

“If any Blue Dog does not vote for it, I’d have to question how much they’re a Blue Dog,” [Blue Dog Rep. Jim] Matheson [D-UT] said.

It’s hard to overestimate the negative effects such an amendment would have on the country’s economy. In addition to destroying millions of jobs, it would force such massive spending cuts that House Republicans’ own budget would be unconstitutional. According to a recent study by Macroeconomic Advisers, enacting a BBA now would double the nation’s unemployment rate and cause the economy to shrink by 17 percent — a far cry from the 2 percent projected growth that would occur with no such amendment.

Unfortunately, according to another analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the consequences get worse. The draconian budget cuts caused by a Balanced Budget Amendment would forice lawmakers to gut Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), among other programs, the analysis found:

“The constitutional balanced budget amendment that the House is expected to consider this week could force Congress to cut all programs by an average of 17.3 percent by 2018.

“If revenues are not raised (the House-passed budget resolution assumes no increase above current-policy levels) and all programs are cut by the same percentage, Social Security would be cut $184 billion in 2018 alone and almost $1.2 trillion through 2021; Medicare would be cut $117 billion in 2018 and about $750 billion through 2021; and Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) would be cut $80 billion in 2018 and about $500 billion through 2021.”

In order to preserve those programs, Congress would have to cut ridiculously deep into every other program. Yesterday, economists around the country warned Congress that enacting widespread budget cuts and other austerity measures now would have perilous consequences for the American economy, pushing the country to the brink of a second deep recession. Today, unfortunately, Blue Dog Democrats decided not only to ignore those warnings, but to endorse an even bigger, deeper austerity plan.

House Republicans have tried over and over again to cut the Pell Grant program, which provides higher education grants to low- and middle-income students. Though the grants are not even keeping up with the ever-climbing cost of tuition, Republicans have repeatedly tried to take an axe to the program, with the latest example being a budget bill that would cause 1 million students to lose their access to Pell entirely.

But their straightforward attempts to reduce Pell have not gotten through the Senate, so the House GOP is now talking an alternative route — gaming the budget process to force cuts in the program. As Stephen Steigleder and Julie Margetta Morgan noted, House Republicans are trying to unilaterally change the budget scoring rules used for the Pell Grant program to make it look like the program has a large shortfall, thus necessitating giant cuts:

According to existing Pell scoring rules, Congress is required to enact sufficient funding to cover the full cost of Pell Grants for the upcoming award year — in this case, award year 2012-2013 — along with any funding shortfall incurred in prior years. [...]

But the House Budget Committee is blatantly ignoring the Pell scoring rule and threatening to substitute its own partisan analysis. The committee claims that all budget authority for Pell Grants in award year 2012‑2013 must originate in fiscal year 2012. The committee’s flawed interpretation of Pell scoring rules would exclude $896 million in savings from fiscal year 2013—even though savings from fiscal year 2013 would accrue at the same time Pell Grant funding is expended in award year 2012-2013.

Put simply, the House Budget Committee is inventing new rules as it goes along. The committee is trying to change the Pell scoring rule to exclude $896 million in legitimate offsets—thereby forcing Congress to cut an equal amount of funding from the Pell Grant program.

Looking at the calendar for both the government’s fiscal year and the Pell Grant award year, it’s clear that the GOP’s claim that all funding for Pell’s 2012-2013 year must come from 2012 is nonsensical. In fact, large portions of the 2012-2013 Pell awards will have to be paid out right in the midst of the government’s 2013 fiscal year, making the 2013 budget an entirely appropriate place to budget for them:

In short, there is no reason for the GOP to force all of the offsets for the 2012-2013 Pell program to come from the 2012 budget, other than their desire to make it look like Pell has a huge shortfall and needs to be scaled back. But with college debt heading towards record heights and America’s educational attainment beginning to trail other nations, there is no excuse for cutting aid to students.

Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-TX) next to Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-AL)

Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-TX), a co-chair of the congressional supercommittee tasked with crafting a $1.5 trillion deficit reduction package, suggested that he would reject “any penny” of further tax increases in the deal currently being negotiated. Republicans on the committee so far have only offered $300 billion in revenue-increases in the form of eliminating tax deductions. Even with revenues at a 60 year low, Hensarling, who was speaking with CNBC’s Larry Kudlow, bristled at increasing static revenues (meaning he only wants revenue increases that come due to economic expansion):

HENSARLING: But listen, any penny of increased static revenue is a step in the wrong direction. We can only balance that with pro-growth reforms, and frankly the Democrats have never agreed to that. So I don’t know how many times I can tell you, that agreement’s not going to happen.

KUDLOW: I appreciate the honesty.

Watch it:

Despite new reports showing how the government subsidizes the rich, Hensarling makes clear that he would oppose efforts to close loopholes in the tax code or raise tax rates on billionaires as part of a deficit reduction package. Bloomberg News reported today that Democrats on the committee are already scaling back their revenue demands.