GOP contender Rick Santorum picked up an important endorsement today with the official backing of Iowa kingmaker Bob vander Plaats of the FAMiLY Leader. Campaigning at the organization’s headquarters in Pella, Iowa, Santorum made some surprising remarks in support of income inequality:

“They talk about income inequality. I’m for income inequality. I think some people should make more than other people, because some people work harder and have better ideas and take more risk, and they should be rewarded for it. I have no problem with income inequality..

“President Obama is for income equality. That’s socialism. It’s worse yet, it’s Marxism,” Sanoturm said. “I’m not for income equality. I’m not for equality of result – I’m for equality of opportunity.”

Oddly, Santorum acknowledged that social and income mobility is lagging in America — a key reason income inequality exists, through no fault of workers who find themselves working harder and longer for less money. The decline of social mobility contradicts Santorum’s assertion that people making more money deserve it because they work harder.

The Occupy Wall Street movement has put America’s staggering wealth gap front and center in the national debate. Between 1979 and 2007, average after-tax incomes for the top 1 percent rose by 281 percent while middle class wages stagnated. The top 1 percent controls roughly 40 percent of the nation’s wealth. At the very top of the income scale, the 400 richest Americans have seen their share of income quadruple in the last 12 years, while their effective tax rates were halved.

A recent poll found that Americans’ fears about income inequality are growing, with two-thirds of likely voters saying the middle class is shrinking, and 55 percent saying that income inequality has become a big problem for the country. Santorum, evidently, thinks more of the same is what they need.

This afternoon, House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) appointed eight Republican lawmakers to serve on a bicameral conference committee meant to resolve the impasse over the soon-to-expire payroll tax cut, after the House rejected the Senate’s version of an extension today. It’s unclear whether a committee will even convene, as House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) have said they’ll refuse to appoint anyone to the committee unless Boehner allows a normal up-or-down vote in the House on the Senate bill (so far, they’ve only voted on a measure to reject the bill).

Boehner and the Republican leadership say they want a full year extension of the payroll tax holiday, but as Senate Democratic aide Brian Fallon pointed out, many of the members Boehner appointed to the conference committee have voiced opposition to the concept of a payroll tax cut in the past:

Reps. Dave Camp (R-MI): Asked about a payroll tax holiday extension in June, Camp said, “I’m not in favor of that. I don’t think that’s a good idea. We need a more overarching approach to our tax policy,” Camp said, calling the holiday “piecemeal.”

Rep Kevin Brady (R-TX): Last week on Bloomberg News, Brady said, “I’m not as big a fan of the payroll tax cut, or any frankly, temporary cuts do no have the economic bang for the buck. And the payroll tax cut, just like the other rebates, has had a marginal impact, at best.”

Rep. Tom Price (R-GA): Asked about the payroll tax cut in September, Price replied, “it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. It’s a good nugget from a rhetorical standpoint, for the class warfare that he seems intent on fighting.”

Rep. Renee Ellmers (R-NC): In late November, Ellmers said, “Payroll tax holiday, yeah sure, that’s okay… We don’t need more gimmicks.”

Rep. Tom Reed (R-NY): Earlier this month, Reed said, “I would like us to look at alternative options. Such as reducing income tax rates so that middle class, hard working Americans get the benefit of a lower tax burden so we preserve social security and Medicare.”

And it’s not just the conferees. House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) called the payroll tax holiday “sugar-high economics,” while House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) said he “has never believed that this type of temporary tax relief is the best way to grow the economy.”

Appearing on PBS last night with Charlie Rose, GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney suggested President Obama is risking the very prosperity of the country and the middle class when he criticizes Wall Street and insurance executives:

ROMNEY: He has been the most divisive president I’ve ever seen. He has attacked one American after another, one group after another. He creates these straw men and says that Republicans believe this terrible thing, and aren’t they awful. He went after insurance company executives, Wall Street, all these bad people he finds out there. Look, Americans are not going to be a powerful and vibrant economic engine with a powerful middle class if we attack one another.

Romney doesn’t seem to be concerned with whether there’s any merit to Obama’s criticisms or not; he objects to the mere fact that the president would criticize anyone. For instance, Romney’s defense ignores the fact that Wall Street helped cause the financial crisis and ensuring recession. Obama’s main “attack” on Wall Street was the Dodd-Frank financial reform law, which has hardly hurt the industry.

Of course, Romney himself made hundreds-of-million of dollars in a Wall Street-like investment company. Asked about that company, Bain Capital, later in the interview, Romney said that attacking Bain for laying off thousands of workers is almost tantamount to an attack on capitalism itself:

ROSE: Did you sometimes destroy jobs [at Bain]?

ROMNEY: I’m sure the administration will use every weapon they can think of, some will be accurate, some inaccurate. [But] if they attack the free-enterprise system and capitalism, I think they’ll find themselves on the short end of that argument. I am proud of the fact in the years when I was at the firm that I helped found, Bain capital, every investment we made was designed to grow the enterprise and make it more successfull.

Watch it:

The comments likely won’t help Romney beat the rap off being “Mr. 1 percent.”

The Occupy Wall Street protests, since they began, have received a fair bit of ire from the 1 percent, as some of the richest Americans have taken exception to the protesters’ focus on growing income inequality and the political power of corporations. Bloomberg today rounded up a series of billionaires and wealthy CEOs griping about how unfair the criticism of them has been, likening the Occupy protesters to imbeciles and saying that the protesters’ call for the rich to pay their fair share is vomit-inducing:

– HOME DEPOT CO-FOUNDER BERNIE MARCUS: “Who gives a crap about some imbecile? Are you kidding me?”

– HOME DEPOT CO-FOUNDER KEN LANGONE: “I am a fat cat, I’m not ashamed…If you mean by fat cat that I’ve succeeded, yeah, then I’m a fat cat. I stand guilty of being a fat cat.”

– FORMER BB&T BANK CEO JOHN ALLISON: “Instead of an attack on the 1 percent, let’s call it an attack on the very productive. This attack is destructive.”

– PAYCHECX INC. FOUNDER TOM GOLISANO: “If I hear a politician use the term ‘paying your fair share’ one more time, I’m going to vomit.“

But it’s simply undeniable that the richest 1 percent have seen their income explode in the last few decades, and that many of them are not paying their fair share in taxes, taking advantage of loopholes, tax havens, and the preferential tax treatment of investment income to drive their tax rates down below the rate paid by middle-class families. In just the last few decades, taxes on the richest one percent sunk dramatically. At the very top of the income scale, share of income of the 400 richest Americans quadrupled in the last 12 years, while their effective tax rates were halved:

As Reuters’ Felix Salmon put it, “let’s not kid ourselves that the men with the billions…are in any way hard done by. Not when there’s so much real hardship in America.” Indeed, last week the Census Bureau reported that about half of Americans are either living in poverty or qualify as low-income.

Moments ago, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives voted 229-193 to walk away from a bipartisan compromise that would have extended for two months both the payroll tax cut for 160 million working Americans and long-term unemployment benefits for millions of jobless Americans, as well as stopped automatic cuts to Medicare reimbursement rates for doctors that are scheduled for Jan. 1, 2012. Seven Republicans joined every Democrat in opposing the motion to abandon the Senate’s compromise plan and instead move to a House-Senate conference committee.

A straight up-or-down vote on the Senate compromise was originally scheduled for last night, but Republican leaders were forced to abandon the vote after it became clear that the compromise plan, which passed the Senate 89-10 on Saturday, might pass with the overwhelming majority of Democrats and some Republicans voting in favor. Instead, the House Republican leadership, under pressure from the Tea Party, used a procedural maneuver to avoid an up-or-down vote on the bipartisan deal.

2012 GOP presidential contender Newt Gingrich has been claiming that one of his qualifications for office is that the budget was balanced for four years in the 1990s, two of which overlapped with his time as speaker of the House. “If you look at my record, the only speaker in your lifetime to get to four balanced budgets,” he said during a Fox interview.

However, Gingrich claiming that he or his House Republican majority had much of anything to do with the ’90s budget surpluses is a stretch. During an interview on NBC’s Today Show, former President Bill Clinton agreed with that assessment, responding “not really” when asked if Gingrich deserves credit for balancing the budget:

Q: Do you believe that Gingrich deserved the credit that he’s taking for balancing the budget when you were president?

CLINTON: Not really…The vast lion’s share of balancing the budget was done by the budget in 1993 that he led the opposition to. And 90 percent of the budget was before the Balanced Budget Act [of 1997].

Watch it:

Legislation passed by Gingrich’s House Republicans actually made the budget picture worse in the ’90s, not better, by cutting taxes and thus revenue. It was the 1993 budget — which Republicans universally opposed — that led to the balanced budgets later on.

While House Republicans couldn’t get their act together to approve an extension of the payroll tax holiday and unemployment benefits last night, they were able to do something far more frivolousness — commission a bust of former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill to be placed in the Capitol. The House “adjourned moments after” passing the bill, which directs:

That the Architect of the Capitol place an appropriate statue or bust of Sir Winston Churchill in the United States Capitol at a location directed by the House Fine Arts Board in consultation with the Speaker.

The resolution was seen as a rebuke to the White House, which returned a bust of Churchill to the British Embassy in 2009.

House Speaker John Bohener (R-OH) shocked Washington Sunday when he said his caucus would reject the Senate’s compromise on the payroll tax package, even though it passed with an overwhelming bipartisan majority of 89-10. The House planned to reject the Senate bill last night, but postponed the vote after it became clear that some Republicans were going to agree with the Senate. Now, a $1,000 tax break for 160 million Americans hangs in the balance.

The Churchill bill was approved via unanimous consent, meaning the House didn’t have to waste much time considering it, but it underscores the absurdity of Boehner’s gaming of the payroll tax holiday vote.

After Republicans took over the House of Representatives in November 2010, the incoming House Financial Services Chairman, Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-AL), said he believes Washington’s role is to “serve the banks.” And the GOP has done its best this year to follow that directive, by denying regulators the money they need to implement the Dodd-Frank financial reform law, trying to repeal or water down some of the law’s key provisions, and blocking Obama administration nominations to regulatory posts.

In the budget deal that averted a government shutdown last week, the GOP kept it up. While the Securities and Exchange Commission was granted a desperately needed increase in funding, the Commodity Futures and Trading Commission, which is given the Herculean task of policing the derivatives market by Dodd-Frank, was not so lucky:

Under the new deal, the Commodities Futures Trading Commission will get $10 million more for staffing, thus making layoffs for the agency less likely in 2012. But that money won’t come through a funding increase: In the end, Republicans refused to budge on the overall funding level for the agency, which will stay at $205 million. Instead, $10 million for staffing will be shifted out of the agency’s budget for information technology. The overall level of funding falls significantly short of President Obama’s own request for the CFTC — $308 million, which would be an increase of almost 50 percent — as well as the Senate Democrats’ request for $240 million.

Senate Republicans have also put a hold on a slew of nominations to fill financial regulatory positions, ostensibly to ensure that President Obama doesn’t make recess appointments:

Several of Obama’s picks are waiting to be confirmed by the Senate, including Martin Gruenberg to be chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp, Thomas Hoenig to be the FDIC’s vice chair and Thomas Curry to lead the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.

But Republicans refused to sign off on the list, complaining that the White House did not give them assurances Obama would not use a long congressional recess to make temporary appointments.

These kinds of actions have the effect of undermining Wall Street reform and preventing regulators from ensuring that the 2008n financial crisis doesn’t have a sequel. The end result is that Bachus’ marching order gets fulfilled, as the GOP helps the banks go right back to the same practices that brought down the economy in the first place.