With income inequality in the U.S. at its highest level since the Great Depression, Americans from every end of the income spectrum are clamoring for corporations and the wealthy to pay their fair share in taxes. But because of the numerous tax loopholes and credits worked into the tax code, corporate taxes are at historical lows.

Bank of America paid nothing in federal taxes in 2009. While earning billions in profit, companies like Boeing, Exxon-Mobil, and Wells Fargo also paid nothing in recent years. Other corporations, like Google and Pfizer, dramatically lower their tax rates by deferring profits they make overseas. After making more than $14 billion in profits last year, General Electric not only got a pass on paying any corporate income taxes, but actually received a tax benefit of $3.2 billion.

Thanks to this propitious tax code, corporations kept $222.7 billion in federal revenue from 2008 to 2010. But the loss of that revenue comes at a cost, a cost being paid by middle class and low-income Americans who are already reeling from a sluggish economy — most notably, students. According to a new report from the National Education Association, $9.8 billion of the lost revenue from corporation would have gone to public schools and colleges over the same period. Those funds would have added over 100,000 jobs in public education and ensured that an extra 400,000 kids living in poverty could enroll in preschool. NEA breaks down that $9.8 billion by the numbers:

– $1,092: The average amount in extra academic support to help 9 million students in poverty catch up to their peers.

– $1,474: The average savings for school districts for each disabled student as a result of greater federal cost sharing.

– $1,276: The average amount in additional financial aid to ensure 7.7 million students in need continue or complete their post-secondary studies.

– 446,655: The number of additional children in poverty enrolled in preschool.

– 126,568: The number of jobs created in the field of education.

With that $9.8 billion, Ohio would have gained 4,363 jobs, Virginia would get 2,794 jobs, Kentucky would have 2,175 jobs, and Arizona would see more 4,094 jobs. Incidentally, these states are also home to Republican leaders in Congress who are singularly dedicated to maintaining this corporate welfare.

As TP Economy editor Pat Garofalo reported, Republican lawmakers continue to aid and abet corporate tax avoidance by protecting offshore profit deferral, which allows corporations to claim domestic tax credits for profits they earn overseas; by proposing to gut the Internal Revenue Service, whose every dollar used to audit tax cheats brings in more than $10 in revenue; by pushing for tax havens in free trade agreements; by enacting repatriation holidays that allow corporations to bring money earned overseas back into the country at a drastically lower rate, even with its negligible effect on job creation; by endorsing taxpayer giveaways like big oil subsidies; and by publicly defending corporate tax dodgers.

Working on behalf of corporations at the expense of American students and families is quickly becoming part of the Republican orthodoxy. This, however, should not be surprising because after all, for Republicans, “corporations are people too.”

With his ear to the ground in Massachusetts, Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) is bolstering his Wall Street reform cred with a new bill to stop members of Congress from participating in insider trading. Responding to a 60 Minutes report citing lawmakers who earned thousands from trading on information learned in private briefings, Brown’s Stop Trading On Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) Act of 2011 requires lawmakers to report transactions of at least $1,000 in bonds, commodities or stocks within 90 days. Today, Sen. Kristin Gillibrand (D-NY) took it one step further with a bill that will not only ban insider trading for congressional members but will “empower the Securities and Exchange Commission to prosecute lawmakers for insider-trading cases as well as make insider trading against the rules of the House and the Senate.”

Noting that “the American people don’t have a lot of trust in Congress,” Gillibrand told CBS’ Early Show host Chris Wagge that “it’s incumbent upon us to make the kinds of changes that the American people would expect we would make so that we live by the exact same exact rules that everyone else does.” While there is disclosure now, she said, “it has to be illegal, just like it’s illegal for everyone else.” Watch it:

House Speaker John Boehner (R), however, thinks that such laws are unnecessary as “there are already guidelines for congressional investments,” adding, “I have not made any decisions on day-to-day trading activities in my account and haven’t for years.”

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) is one of many Republican politicians swept into office last year promising to focus on job creation. Many of those Republicans, Walker included, have instead relentlessly pushed a conservative social agenda and policies that destroy jobs.

After months of union-busting and eliminating public sector jobs, Walker is now focused on his latest “jobs” idea: forcing public schools to teach abstinence-only sex education, Mother Jones reports:

[W]alker and the GOP-led Legislature have a plan: First, they curtailed collective-bargaining rights and threatened to lay off government workers, including teachers, cops, and firefighters. Then Walker called a special jobs-focused session of the Legislature, which he dubbed “Back to Work Wisconsin,” to pass even more “job-creating” laws. At the top of the jobs agenda? Gutting the state’s sex ed standards and replacing them with abstinence-only education.

A bill launched during Walker’s jobs session and nearing passage in the Legislature would repeal significant portions of the state law that requires schools to provide comprehensive, scientifically accurate, and age-appropriate sex ed. [...]

Republicans hold big majorities on the education committee and the Assembly overall, so the bill is expected to pass easily.

Multiple studies have confirmed that abstinence-only education does not decrease sexual activity among teens, but alarmingly reduces the number of teens who have safe sex. Virginity pledge programs increase pledge-takers’ risk for sexually transmitted infections and unplanned pregnancy. Yet social conservatives continue to insist it’s the only morally acceptable sex curriculum. Abstinence-only programs jeopardize public health, and substitute religious dogma for science and sound policy.

The Healthy Youth Act just took effect this school year, and has been hailed as “an incredible public health victory in the state,” in the words of Sara Finger, executive director of the Wisconsin Alliance for Women’s Health. Yet Wisconsin Republicans want to remove requirements that schools teach about “the health benefits, side effects, and proper use of contraceptives.” The repeal legislation also nixes the recommendation that schools teach about “puberty, pregnancy, parenting, body image, and gender stereotypes.”

The new law would require instructors to “identify the skills necessary to remain abstinent” for their students. It does not specify what those “skills” might be, but Tamara Grigsby, the Democratic assemblywoman who wrote the Healthy Youth Act, puts it bluntly: teenagers are “having sex, whether we like it or not. I would hope that a responsible public policy would be to give them comprehensive and accurate information about how to protect themselves rather than pretending it’s not happening.”

Kate Sheppard notes that at a Wisconsin Right to Life convention, Walker praised a district attorney who claimed that teachers who taught the new curriculum were promoting the “sexualization—and sexual assault—of our children.” The DA also threatened those teachers with criminal charges.

Super committee Republicans proposed a deal last week that includes only $300 billion in revenue increases, all in the form of deduction eliminations, a paltry concession that was vastly outweighed by the massive tax cut for the rich the plan also included. While the proposal was an attempt to make Republicans look like they were actually considering revenue increases as part of a deal, it was quickly dismissed by Democrats. Even anti-tax advocate Grover Norquist saw through the plan, dismissing it as nothing more than a “negotiating position.”

Super committee co-chair Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-TX) made that clear yesterday, suggesting to CNBC’s Larry Kudlow that “any penny” in revenue increases would be a deal-breaker for the committee’s Republican members. “But listen, any penny of increased static revenue is a step in the wrong direction,” Hensarling said.

Now, however, with Democrats rebuking Hensarling’s comments as “unhelpful,” and even some Republicans agreeing that the party may need to concede on taxes, Hensarling has walked back those comments, suggesting the GOP would consider new revenues in exchange for deeper concessions — in the form of entitlement cuts — from Democrats, the Hill reports:

Republicans on Wednesday signaled they would consider higher tax revenues to win a supercommittee deal if Democrats offer deeper cuts to entitlement spending. [...]

Briefing reporters on Wednesday, Hensarling said Republicans would be “more than happy to negotiate” around a new offer from Democrats, pointedly declining to say whether $250 billion was the maximum in new revenue the GOP could accept.

“I’m waiting for the Democrats to put fundamental reform on the table,” Hensarling said.

According to the Washington Post, the GOP is beginning to undergo an “identity crisis” when it comes to taxes, as members have realized that reaching a super committee deal and balancing the country’s budget is impossible without raising new revenue.

But while Hensarling’s new position may seem reasonable on its face, it’s unfortunate that he and his party continue to hold vital entitlement programs like Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security hostage while supporting massive tax cuts for the rich, even as a growing number of millionaires are begging the GOP to raise their taxes to help address the nation’s debt. Those actions are particularly troubling in the face of recent reports from economists who warned that such austerity measures will only push the country closer to the brink of another recession.

With Republicans attempting to hold firm to their anti-tax platform, a group of millionaires advocating for higher taxes on the super rich visited Congress yesterday to urge super committee members and congressional leadership to reject any deal that doesn’t include such revenue increases.

The group, Patriotic Millionaires for Fiscal Strength, planned visits to six super committee members, Tea Party representatives, Democratic leadership, and conservative anti-tax maven Grover Norquist, the head of Americans for Tax Reform. Among the millionaires’ top priorities is persuading Congress to repeal the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, which blew a hole in the nation’s budget and left the country with unsustainable levels of debt, CNN Money reports:

“We want to pay more taxes,” said California millionaire Doug Edwards, a former marketing director for Google. “If you’re fortunate, and you make more than a million dollars a year, you ought to pay more taxes.” [...]

“If the super committee bill doesn’t raise our taxes, we will ask our fellow citizens to consider killing the bill,” said Eric Schoenberg of Franklin Lakes, N.J., an adjunct professor of marketing at Columbia Business School.

Even as surveys have shown that millionaires support higher taxes on the rich, the GOP has remained opposed. The budget passed by the House earlier this year protected huge tax breaks for the wealthy even while gutting Medicaid and Medicare, and Republicans defended such tax cuts at town halls throughout the summer, even in the face of opposition from their constituents. Super committee co-chair Jeb Hensarling (R-TX) said the party will oppose a deal that includes “any penny” in tax increases, and even as a split emerges around the party’s staunch anti-tax advocacy, much of the party opposes raising taxes to help reduce the nation’s debt.

Instead of taxing those who can afford it, however, the GOP has unfortunately decided that the only tax increase it supports its one on the poorest Americans.