The House Republican budget, as the GOP has been hinting it would, reneges on the deal made to avoid a debt ceiling calamity back in August. The bill to raise the debt ceiling, known as the Budget Control Act, set a level for discretionary spending for 2013. However, the GOP budget cuts $19 billion below that level.

Since the current round of government funding runs out in September, the GOP’s decision to cut deeper than the Budget Control Act sets up another round of budget brinkmanship, with a government shutdown as a possible consequence. But back in September, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) seemed to believe that such brinkmanship should be avoided, saying during a pen and pad briefing that the GOP should stick to the spending level agreed to in August, at least when it came to a continuing resolution that was under consideration at the time:

Q: On the CR next week, will you do it at the level that you agreed to in August, the 1.043?

CANTOR: As Republicans, we believe strongly we ought to be reducing spending more than we have been able to. The other side has demonstrated unwillingness to join us in that. We did reach an agreement at the CR level and I am supportive of a CR being written at that level.

Q: So you would not go below it?

CANTOR: I think my colleague here would say we would try always to go below it. But the risk of bringing about brinksmanship or another potential shutdown is not something that we need right now, it is not something that would be helpful, that would create jobs and regain confidence, which is why I have taken the position I have.

During a December press conference, Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) also promised that “the 1.043 [trillion] is going to happen,” referring to the spending level set by the Budget Control Act. But in the intervening few months, it seems that the GOP leadership has decided that yet another drive at the edge of the proverbial shutdown cliff is preferable to abiding by the terms of a deal passed just last year.

The women who work in Idaho Gov. Butch Otter’s (R) cabinet make substantially less than their male colleagues, according to a McClatchy analysis of state salary data. Despite chairing the state Agriculture Department, for instance, Director Celia Gould makes less than male directors.

Gould has been with the administration since its first day in 2007 and oversees 259 employees; Commerce Director Jeffrey Sayer, by contrast, joined the administration in October and oversees 53. And yet, Sayer makes nearly $40,000 a year more than Gould, the highest-paid female employee. In fact, across Otter’s administration, the median wage for women is nearly $20,000 less than the median wage for men, McClatchy found:

She is the highest-paid of the women in Otter’s Cabinet but ranks just 16th among all top full-time officials. The median salary for 11 women in the Cabinet is $85,446; the median for the 33 men is $103,002.

“We really do have a glass ceiling in Idaho,” said Rep. Wendy Jaquet of Ketchum, the senior Democrat in the Legislature and a member of the budget committee.

While the pay gap between Otter’s male and female employees is substantial — the women make roughly 82 cents for every dollar earned by men — it isn’t as large as the overall pay gap between men and women in America. American women make about 77 percent of what men make, and the gap is even larger for minorities. In 2010, black women made 67.7 percent of all male earnings, while Latino women made just 58.7 percent. That wage gap costs women huge sums of money — a woman with a college degree, for instance, will earn $723,000 less over a 40-year career.

Despite legislative efforts, the gap isn’t closing. President Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which made it easier for women to sue for pay discrimination, in 2009. Senate Republican, however, blocked the Paycheck Fairness Act, which would have updated the Equal Pay Act, closed many of its loopholes, and strengthened incentives to reduce pay discrimination, earlier this year.

In the wake of the Great Recession, wages have stagnated while CEO pay has soared. Case in point, Sears last year paid its chief executive millions of dollars, and piled on hundreds of thousands of dollars in assorted perks, including charter airfare and covering some of his income tax bill:

Sears Holdings Corp. paid its chief executive $9.9 million last year, including incentives the ailing department store operator offered to lure the former technology executive, according to an Associated Press analysis of a regulatory filing.

Lou D’Ambrosio, who became Sears’ CEO in February 2011, received a signing bonus of $150,000 plus a base salary of $930,769 and $8 million in stock awards, according to a filing the company made Friday with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

D’Ambrosio got another $852,037 in perks, including $803,856 for charter and commercial airfare and ground transportation to commute from greater Philadelphia, where he lives, to Hoffman Estates, Ill., where Sears is based. And he received $29,985 for temporary housing in Hoffman Estates. Sears paid part of the income taxes due on those benefits.

Of course, it’s the company’s prerogative to pay its CEO this much. But at the same time that it was doling out perks to D’Ambrosio, Sears was planning to lay off thousands of workers. Sears has announced that it will be closing 173 stores this year — up from previous estimates of 120 stores — which means that nearly 14,000 workers could be seeing a pink slip.

Adding insult to injury, Sears was also pocketing millions of dollars in tax incentives from the state of Illinois, even as it fired Illinois workers. In fact, under the terrible deal that the state signed with the retail giant, Sears can lay off another 1,750 Illinois workers without losing its taxpayer largesse. But perhaps bilking a state of its needed tax revenue is what Sears pays D’Ambrosio the big bucks for.

The House Republican budget that was released yesterday, in addition to blowing up the deficit and the national debt and shredding the social safety net, would repeal a key provision in the Dodd-Frank financial reform law. In response to the 2008 financial crisis and the ad-hoc bailouts to which the government was forced to resort, Dodd-Frank gives the government the ability to unwind failing financial firms. But the House Republican budget would take this important power away:

While the authors of the Dodd-­‐Frank Act went to great lengths to denounce bailouts, this law only sustains them. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) now has the authority to draw on taxpayer dollars to bail out the creditors of large, “systemically significant” financial institutions. CBO’s expected cost for this new authority is $33 billion, although the office recognizes that “the cost of the program will depend on future economic and financial events that are inherently unpredictable.” In other words, another large-­‐scale financial crisis in which creditors are guaranteed to get government bailouts would cost taxpayers much, much more…This budget would end the bailout regime enshrined into law by the Dodd-­‐Frank Act.

House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) has done this before, dressing up his opposition to the power known as “resolution authority” in the Dodd-Frank law as a principled stand against bailouts. But make no mistake: repealing the power would return the nation’s regulatory framework to where it was in 2008, leaving the government with little choice when large interconnected financial firms fail other than bailing them out or risking the implosion of the financial system.

Resolution authority is meant for firms that can’t go through traditional bankruptcy, due to their size and importance to the financial system. Under that authority, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. unwinds such a firm when it fails, and then recoups any losses to the taxpayer by selling off assets from the dissolved firm. Importantly, Dodd-Frank bars the use of taxpayer money to preserve a financial firm: the money can only be used to ease a firm through its dissolution, with all of the funds paid back. As Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA), whose name graces the law, said, resolution authority is a “death panel” for banks.

Former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, who oversaw the 2008 bank bailout, said he “would have loved to have” resolution authority to take apart failing firms. House Republicans, instead, would prefer to just holler about bailouts, while taking away the government’s ability to prevent them, thus dooming the country to a repeat of 2008, should the financial system ever face such a systemic shock again.

When House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) released his Medicare-ending, safety net-gutting 2012 budget plan last year, he was slammed by faith leaders who denounced his cuts to programs that aid the poor and middle class. Ryan released the 2013 version of that budget yesterday, and he is again facing criticism from a diverse group of faith leaders.

Ryan often says it is “morally wrong” not to address America’s debt, but faith leaders like Bishop Gene Robinson said the budget Ryan crafted fails basic moral tests. “The Ryan budget robs the poor, the marginalized and the vulnerable of the safety net so integral to their survival,” Robinson said. “By any measure of civility and regard for one’s neighbor, it is an immoral disaster.”

Father Thomas Kelly, a Catholic priest and constituent of Ryan’s, felt similarly:

“As a constituent of Congressman Ryan and a Catholic priest, I’m disappointed by his cruel budget plan and outraged that he defends it on moral grounds. Ryan is Catholic, and he knows that justice for the poor and economic fairness are core elements of our church’s social teaching. It’s shameful that he disregarded these principles in his budget.”

That the GOP cuts vital programs like Medicare, Medicaid, and other safety net programs while giving tax breaks to the richest Americans is “immoral” and “unconscionable,” other leaders said. “The poor are not statistics,” Rabbi Jackie Moline said. “Whatever one thinks of Congressman Ryan’s ideas, it is unimaginable to look into the face of a child who would go hungry without government assistance and say, ‘Sorry — we need to reduce the deficit.’”