The women who serve as CEOs for lobbying firms earn $1 million less than men who hold the same job. In fact, the few women who head up major trade groups groups in Washington make 57 cents for every man’s dollar.

ThinkProgress reported earlier this month on the gender pay gap on Wall Street, but a new analysis out from Bloomberg News shows that the women who hold major roles at trade associations in our nation’s capital face pay discrimination that’s just as serious. And, out of the top 30 trade associations, there were only four women’s salaries to analyze:

The average annual compensation of the women who lead four of the capital’s most politically active industry groups lags behind that of male peers by more than $1 million, according to data in tax filings compiled by Bloomberg. The female CEOs took home an average $1.43 million in 2010, compared with $2.48 million paid to the other 26 executives — 57 cents for every dollar earned by a man.

Lobbying does not hold a stellar reputation, and we’ve certainly seen fit to criticize it, and the amount of money that lobbyists are paid, on many occasions. But fair pay is a right, regardless of industry. And those who are purported to be top movers-and-shakers of policy and politics are putting up poor numbers: The gap between male and female CEOs at lobbying shops is even worse than the gap between white males and Latina women in the United States overall.

Because it doles out trillions of dollars in tax cuts to the rich and corporations, the budget approved by House Republicans today — authored by Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) — would increase deficits and drive up the national debt. In fact, under the plan, “deficits would never drop below 4.4 percent of GDP, and would rise to more than 5 percent of GDP by 2022.”

Those increases would come despite the gigantic spending cuts that Ryan has in mind, which would eviscerate the social safety net and non-defense discretionary spending (even while the budget increases defense spending). As the Economic Policy Institute noted today, the plan Republicans adopted would drive discretionary spending down to its lowest level in more than 50 years.

EPI pointed out that the non-defense discretionary portion of the budget includes a whole host of things, including, “spending on areas like homeland security, veterans, nuclear weapons, and foreign operations; safety net programs like housing vouchers and nutrition assistance for women and infants; most of the funding for the enforcement of consumer protection, environmental protection, and financial regulation; and practically all of the federal government’s civilian public investments.”

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) defended the GOP’s proposed tax cuts for millionaires in response to a question from ThinkProgress today at a policy summit. The House Budget Committee chairman and author of the GOP’s 2013 budget claimed, as Republicans typically do whenever this question comes up, that, “When we think of millionaires in the tax code, we often think of Aaron Rogers or Prince Fielder or a movie star… It’s mostly small businesses.”

That in itself is a strange case to make. Whatever their profession, millionaires are by definition doing much better than the low-income Americans from whom Ryan extracts two-thirds of his spending cuts. But then Ryan dove into another defense of the $187,000 tax cut his budget would provide to millionaires:

RYAN: 65 percent of our net new jobs in America don’t come from the big corporations in America, they come from successful small businesses. Half of the people in this country work for these successful small businesses. Where I come from, it’s the business out in the industrial park outside of your town that has 50 to 250 employees. The job shops, the manufacturers. Those are the people who are struggling right now to create jobs. And their tax rate is scheduled to go up to as high as 44.8 percent in January, when most of our national competitors — China, India, England, Ireland, Canada — are lowering their tax rates on their businesses. So we’re looking at raising our tax rate on these businesses to as high as 45 percent when the international average is about 25 percent.

In short, this is not true. According to estimates in 2009 by the Urban Institute and Brookings Institute Tax Policy Center, a mere 1.9 percent of American tax filers reporting any small-business income would have been subject to the top two personal income tax brackets. Those are the only brackets which — when taxes levied by the Affordable Care Act are added in, as Ryan does above — come anywhere close to the 44.8 percent tax rate Ryan is predicting. By contrast, 34 percent of small-business filers were subject to the 10 percent tax bracket, and 14.5 percent had income so low they were able to claim the Earned Income Tax Credit.

Finally, a look into the OECD tax database reveals that three of the countries Ryan brought up as international competitors — England, Ireland and Canada — had higher marginal personal income tax rates in 2011 than the American rate Ryan fears: 50 percent, 48 percent, and 46.4 percent respectively. Hardly a portrait of an America about to spiral into international competitive oblivion.

Our guest blogger is John Griffith, a policy analyst with the economic policy team at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

There’s a growing consensus that more principal reduction — the writing off of a portion of an underwater mortgage in exchange for a higher likelihood of repayment — can help avoid another wave of costly and economy-crushing foreclosures. But the country’s two biggest mortgage companies are not convinced.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (the GSEs), both under government conservatorship since 2008, have yet to embrace principal reduction as a viable foreclosure mitigation tool. In fact, the mortgage giants are forbidden from lowering principal on any loans they own or guarantee by their regulator, the Federal Housing Finance Agency, or FHFA.

We think it’s time for Fannie, Freddie, and FHFA to rethink that position. Here’s the basic argument in a new report.

Reams of economic evidence show that principal reduction is often the most cost-effective way to avoid unnecessary foreclosure, especially when a borrower is deeply underwater — owing significantly more on their mortgage than their home is worth — and facing a long-term economic hardship. That’s because reducing principal is the only way to rebuild an underwater borrower’s equity while permanently lowering monthly mortgage payments.

Fewer foreclosures help more than just struggling homeowners. Local housing markets are better off, as each foreclosure decreases the value of every other home in the neighborhood. And since the average foreclosure costs more than $50,000 to the lender or investor, avoiding default often helps the books of Fannie and Freddie, which in turn benefits every taxpayer on the hook for their losses.

So while principal reduction will give more struggling homeowners a fighting chance at staying in their homes, this is not a matter of charity. It’s good business. That’s why roughly one in four modifications on bank-held loans involved some principal reduction in the last quarter of 2011, according to data released yesterday by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.

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2012 GOP presidential frontrunner Mitt Romney seems unable to help himself from reminding everyone, over and over, just how rich he is. From talking about his NASCAR and pro football team owner friends to referencing his wife’s two Cadillacs, Romney continually reaffirms the stereotype that he’s an out-of-touch wealthy elite.

And his campaign certainly isn’t helping, bemoaning in today’s Wall Street Journal the “tax problem” created by Romney’s massive $100 million retirement account:

In any case, swelling the IRA to the size Mr. Romney’s reached has “created a tax problem” for the former Massachusetts governor, said a Romney campaign official. Tax-law changes since Mr. Romney’s Bain tenure mean that long-term capital gains in regular accounts now are taxed at 15%. But IRA gains are taxed at ordinary-income rates upon withdrawal, which for Mr. Romney, under current law, would be 35%.

“Who wants to have $100 million in an IRA?” said the campaign official.

Surely most people would happily accept a $100 million IRA, and all of its associated “tax problems,” if Romney is looking to offload it.

Furthermore, Romney’s own tax plan would alleviate his “problem” by implementing a 20 percent reduction in the top income tax rate. Even before he rolled out the second version of his tax plan, which took his absurd tax cuts for the rich even further, Romney’s tax plan would have cut his own taxes nearly in half.

When Congress was fighting over disaster relief funding in 2011, House Republicans passed a watered down funding bill and warned Senate Democrats not to block it. “Time for the Senate to do it’s [sic] job, stop threatening shutdown, stop playing politics, fund FEMA, and pass the CR,” Brad Dayspring, then a spokesperson for House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA), tweeted. There was only one catch: the Senate had already passed a bill funding disaster relief.

House Republicans are attempting a similar strategy now, just two days before the government’s spending authority for transportation expires. The Senate passed a bipartisan transportation bill last week, while House Republican leadership has struggled to get its conservative flank on board with any of its proposals.

Democrats have indeed blocked versions of the House’s disastrous transportation bill in an effort to get the bipartisan Senate bill, which garnered 22 Republican votes, passed through the House. But Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) has ignored the Senate bill and has been unable to line up Republicans behind any of his proposals. Now, his spokesperson is attempting to blame Democrats for the GOP leadership’s inability to pass an extension, The Hill reports:

A spokesman for Boehner said Wednesday that the GOP had only moved to consideration of a 60-day extension because Democrats had said they would support it. The spokesman, Michael Steel, said that the fate of the extension of transportation funding is now “up to Democratic leadership.”

“It’s their choice as to whether to work in a bipartisan fashion or play political games with our country’s economy,” Steel said in a statement.

At least one Republican recognizes how ridiculous the GOP’s attempts to blame Democrats are. Rep. Steven LaTourette (R-OH) told reporters Wednesday that the GOP’s strategy was to “pray the Senate doesn’t call our bluff.”

The Senate’s two-year package would save an estimated 1.9 million jobs and create as many as 1 million more, according to the bill’s bipartisan sponsors. In the event of a shutdown, the Highway Trust Fund, which funds infrastructure projects, would lose $110 million a day in gas tax revenues, and states would be forced to delay entire transportation projects. Instead of passing that bill, though, House Republicans are planning to pass a short-term extension before skipping town for recess, leaving the Senate to clean up their mess.