The Senate today, by an overwhelming vote of 96-3, passed the STOCK Act, a bill crafted in response to a 60 Minutes investigation showing that members of Congress had personally profited from insider information. Most notably, House Financial Services Chairman Spencer Bachus (R-AL) made tens of thousands of dollars trading on information he received during private economic briefings at the height of the 2008 economic crisis.

However, the bill that the Senate adopted is the same one that the House passed last month, not a stronger version that the Senate had written earlier and approved by a huge margin. The earlier version included a provision, championed by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), that would have required Washington insiders who sell intelligence to corporate America to register as lobbyists. Grassley, who was one of the three votes against the bill, today took to the Senate floor to blast Congress for adopting the watered down House version:

On Tuesday the Republican Majority Leader of the House and the Democrat [sic] Majority Leader of the Senate worked together to thwart the will of 60 Senators and 286 Members of Congress. This is not the kind of bipartisan cooperation we need.

I won’t ascribe motives to anyone in this body, but I know that today’s actions only serve the desires of obscure and powerful Wall Street interests and undercut the will of an overwhelming majority of Congress. [...]

There are over 2,000 people working in the completely unregulated world of political intelligence, or political espionage as I call it. Right now, they are celebrating. They are celebrating because they know that its business as usual. They can continue to pass along tips they get from Members of Congress, Senators and staff and no one will be the wiser. They pass along these tips to hedge funds, private equity firms and other investors who pay them top dollar.

The lobbyists get rich. Wall Street traders get rich. But the American people lose.

The weaker House version of the bill was drawn up by House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA), who had earlier blocked the GOP from moving an anti-insider trading bill at all. Last month, Grassley reacted to the House removing his political intelligence provision by saying, “it’s astonishing and extremely disappointing that the House would fulfill Wall Street’s wishes by killing this provision.”

ThinkProgress reported Tuesday that the House Republican budget, authored by Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI), would give away $3 trillion in tax breaks to corporations and the wealthiest Americans. Roughly $2 trillion of those breaks are aimed at the rich, thanks to the repeal of multiple taxes that primarily affect the rich and the dropping of the top marginal tax rate from 35 percent to 25 percent.

Ryan insisted those breaks won’t blow holes in the federal budget, first by claiming a level of revenue that borders on pure fantasy, and second by promising to close tax loopholes. Even in the unlikely scenario that the GOP managed to close every tax loophole available to the wealthy, each millionaire would pay an average of $187,000 less under Ryan’s plan than they would under current law (which assumes an end to the Bush tax cuts), according to a study from Citizens for Tax Justice:

While Rep. Ryan does not specify which tax provisions he would repeal, these calculations assume he would repeal all itemized deductions, all tax credits, the exclusion for employer-provided health insurance, and the deduction for health insurance for the self-employed.

Even under these assumptions, over 92 percent of these very high-income taxpayers would enjoy a net tax cut, and the average income tax change for these taxpayers would be a reduction of $187,000 in 2014.

Dropping the top income rate to 25 percent “would provide a benefit to millionaire’s that would far exceed their loss of any deductions, credits, or breaks for health care.” Ryan said Tuesday that he designed the tax plan to bring in as much revenue as the government currently collects. But even if the Bush tax cuts were extended for everyone, that likely wouldn’t happen. “This is a very low revenue goal,” CTJ notes. “But [Ryan's] tax proposal would almost certainly fail to meet it nonetheless.”

Conservatives across the nation have claimed in recent months that progressive attempts to reduce the burden of budget state budget cuts by raising taxes on millionaires will do nothing but cause the to lower-tax states. “Ladies and gentlemen, if you tax [millionaires], they will leave,” said Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ), who vetoed a millionaire’s tax not once, but twice.

But a new study from the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst throws cold water on these claims, showing that millionaires don’t, in fact, move to avoid higher taxes (though they will engage in more tax avoidance, like shifting the composition of their income):

The evidence available in the research literature suggests that the worst fears of the policy debates over raising additional revenue from high-income households to sustain spending on public services are unlikely to materialize. The rich will not go on strike. They will not cease working, stop investing, or even move, but they likely will find ways to shift the timing and composition of their income in order to avoid paying taxes. The immediate result of this likely outcome is that revenue collections will fall below projected levels from static models that do not take tax avoidance into account. Tax revenue will certainly rise, as the elasticity of taxable income falls well below one, and is actually very low for many high-income groups. [...]

But against these considerations of the size of potential waste from increases in tax avoidance of rich households, policy makers need to weigh the real and current costs associated with underinvesting in basic services that matter to people and the region’s economic growth. Faced with several years of budget shortfalls, and more to come yet, state and local governments have cuts the budget of K-12 education, universities, and public safety. These basic services play a fundamental role in promoting economic growth, by training the future workforce, and making neighborhoods and businesses safe.

In the wake of the Great Recession, nearly every state has had to cut vital investments in education and infrastructure, and the study shows that the importance of these is outweighed by a possible increase in tax avoidance on the part oft he rich (and that avoidance can always be mitigated by proper tax enforcement). But while some states have tried to responsibly raise revenue to offset some of their cuts, others have pushed the pain entirely onto those who depend on government services, relying on claims that it turns out aren’t based in reality.

House Republicans last night rejected the Senate’s bipartisan transportation reauthorization bill and said they would instead adopt a short-term resolution that would maintain current funding levels for 90 days. With just 10 days until the current short-term authorization plan expires, that means House Republicans have made possible a transportation shutdown that could force more than 1.9 million workers off the job.

The Senate approved MAP-21, its transportation bill, 74-22 last week. The bill “is the biggest jobs bill that Congress will consider this year,” according to its main Democratic sponsor, California Sen. Barbara Boxer. The bill is also fully paid for. A long-term House bill that was rife with problems — not least that it would have bankrupted the Highway Trust Fund — has already been defeated.

According to the Department of Transportation, MAP-21, which continues the current levels of funding plus inflation, would save 1.9 million transportation jobs that would temporarily disappear during a shutdown. The bill would also create roughly 1 million new jobs, according to Democratic estimates, bringing the total number of jobs in jeopardy to nearly 3 million, Boxer told the Washington Post:

“The clock is ticking on the shutdown of our transportation programs,” said Boxer, who was floor leader in crafting bipartisan support for the Senate bill. “We’re talking about almost 3 million jobs, and the House is playing games. This is a jobs bill — make no mistake about it.”

If Congress fails to authorize a new transportation package, it wouldn’t be the first time House Republicans have forced workers off the job. Last August, the GOP skipped town after voting on a debt package without reauthorizing the Federal Aviation Administration, forcing the agency to temporarily furlough 4,000 workers while others worked without pay.

Budget cuts proposed last year by Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R) forced cities and towns across Ohio to layoff public safety officials and close fire stations. This year, cuts in Kasich’s budget are again causing ripple effects in the area of public safety — this time by forcing one town near Cincinnati to choose between raising taxes or privatizing its fire and EMS services.

Sycamore Township lost 25 percent of its revenue, including half of its fire and EMS budget, thanks to Kasich’s budget, forcing it to choose to either levy a new tax on local residents or privatize its public safety services, Plunderbund reports:

According to a video released by Township Trustee Tom Weidman at the beginning of the process, the Township’s financial problems can be tied directly to Kasich’s budget. Local officials were shocked and amazed when Kasich and the legislature “abruptly ended” the “important source of income” from the Local Government Fund, the Tangible Personal Property Tax and the Estate Tax.

According to Plunderbund, the 0.8 percent tax the city needed to cover the lost revenue would have been one of the largest in recent memory for Ohio townships. Sycamore’s board, however, decided not to put the tax to a vote, opting instead for privatization, though Weidman claims the sell-off isn’t restricted to private companies. Still, the decision was met with backlash by local residents. “This fire department has saved my father’s life twice,” one local resident told the Cincinnati Enquirer. “You can’t put a price on a person’s life.”

And while towns like Sycamore are forced to sell off public safety, Kasich’s latest economic plan provides a break for the richest Ohioans. Under his proposed income tax cuts, the state’s top one percent would receive a quarter of the benefits. The middle class, meanwhile, wouldn’t receive enough to pay for a tank of gas.

The House Republican’s 2013 budget authored by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) would cut the social safety net to ribbons while handing trillions of dollars in tax breaks to the rich and corporations. And one of the bigger casualties — in addition to high-profile Ryan targets like Medicaid and Medicare — would be the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), known as food stamps.

Ryan’s budget would turn food stamps into a block grant program, sending it back to the states to do with as they see fit. The plan also cuts SNAP by 17 percent, or more than $133 billion. As the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities noted, this proposal could cut millions of low-income people off from vital food assistance:

If the cuts were to come solely from eliminating eligibility for categories of currently eligible households or individuals, more than 8 million people would need to be cut from the program, if the cuts began taking effect in 2013. If the cuts did not begin until 2016, an average of almost 10 million people would have to be cut from the program in the years from 2016 through 2022 to achieve the required savings. [...]

Cuts in benefits: If the cuts were to come solely from across-the-board benefit cuts, SNAP benefits would have to be cut by about $22 to $27 per person per month in 2016 dollars….The impact of such a change would be pronounced. All families of four — including the poorest — would see their benefits cut by about $90 a month in fiscal year 2016, or more than $1,100 on an annual basis. All families of three would be subject to cuts of more than $70 per month, or almost $900 on an annual basis.

Republicans, including Ryan himself, have been attacking the food stamp program by falsely claiming that it is “rife with fraud.” But in addition to having an incredibly low rate of payment error (at 1 percent), SNAP is a vital poverty fighting tool. Last year, food stamps reduced the number of children living in extreme poverty by half. Overall, more than 5 million people were lifted out of poverty by food stamps in 2010.

Our guest blogger is Seth Hanlon, Director of Fiscal Reform at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Conservative politicians and opinion writers are mischaracterizing an official budget estimate to argue that President Obama’s “Buffett Rule” would not raise much revenue. Don’t be fooled. A Buffett Rule would raise substantial revenue.

The Buffett Rule, of course, is the principle that no millionaire should pay lower taxes than middle-class families. Our current tax code fails on that score: Millionaires’ tax rates have dropped sharply in recent years largely because of the Bush tax cuts, and many millionaires are paying lower tax rates than people well below them on the income scale.

Last month, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) introduced the Paying a Fair Share Act, a bill to codify the Buffett Rule. The bill requires that millionaires pay at least 30 percent of their income in taxes.

Naturally, congressional Republicans are opposed. Earlier this week, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) gleefully trotted out a revenue estimate from Congress’s Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) and claimed it showed that Whitehouse’s bill, S. 2059, would generate a “meager” $47 billion in revenue over ten years.

But as Senator Hatch surely knows, official estimates like JCT’s are done against a “current law” baseline that assumes that Congress will let all of the Bush tax cuts expire on schedule. If that actually happened, many fewer millionaires would be paying super low rates. In other words, the $47 billion from the Buffett rule would be on top of the hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue that would result from getting rid of the Bush tax cuts for the rich, which are a major reason we need the Buffett Rule in the first place. (Even with the same baseline, another estimate shows S. 2059 raising $171 billion in revenue, much more than the JCT score.)

Of course, Hatch and his Republican colleagues have fought successfully to protect the high-end Bush tax cuts. Against a “current policy” baseline that assumes that Republicans continue to block the expiration of the Bush tax cuts, Whitehouse’s bill has been estimated to raise $264 billion — more than five times as much. That is not a “meager” amount of revenue. In fact, it’s twice the amount needed to restore all of the cuts to federal nutrition assistance in the House Republican budget unveiled this week.

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On Monday, House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) released a video introducing his budget proposal. In it, Ryan narrates his plan as the video cuts to various shots of Americana, as well as members of Congress examining the budget. At 2:12 in the video, Rep. Reid Ribble (R-WI) discusses the plan with Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R-KS), who nods approvingly:

Last night, Huelskamp had a chance to vote on Ryan’s proposal as a member of the House Budget Committee. Apparently, the Kansas Republican did not like what he saw. The Tea Partier broke ranks with all but one other Republican on the committee and voted against Ryan’s budget. Democrats were unanimous in their opposition.

Huelskamp explained his opposition to the budget during a panel on Tuesday. “It’s not good enough,” the Tea Party freshman said. “Its just another promise that I’m afraid will be broken.”

Though just a few days old, cracks are already emerging in the Republican dam. Despite a 22-16 advantage on the Budget Committee, the bill eked out of the Budget Committee by just a single vote (19-18) after Huelskamp and fellow freshman Rep. Justin Amash (R-MI) voted with the Democrats. Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) missed the vote. Another freshman, Rep. Mick Mulvaney (R-SC), backed the budget last night and ensured it would not die in committee, but told The Hill that he may vote against it once it comes to the floor.

It’s plain to see why Ryan’s plan would be a disaster for the country. The budget is a reverse-Robin Hood plan that takes from the poor in order to give $3 trillion to corporations and the rich. It purports to reduce the debt while actually increasing it. It ends Medicare as we know it, takes away health coverage for 30 million Americans, and forces seniors to pay even more for their health care. Though Huelskamp, Amash, and Mulvaney may have their own objections to the Ryan budget, there are certainly plenty to go around.