Rep. Connie Mack IV (R-FL), who is running for the Senate, strongly criticized the House Republican budget authored by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) this weekend.

At a Tea Party forum in Orlando, Mack explained why he didn’t vote on the Ryan budget. “I was here in Florida campaigning,” Mack said. “You know that budget was a joke, doesn’t balance the budget for years.”

His campaign is already trying to walk back the claim, saying Mack was merely criticizing the budget process, not the budget’s substance. “He supports they Ryan plan but the process is a joke when the GOP House continues to do the right things and the liberal Senate….continues to kill fiscally responsible measures,” spokesman David James said. But that seems very difficult to square with what Mack actually said.

And while the Florida congressman will likely be pilloried by fellow Republicans, as presidential candidate Newt Gingrich was when he called Ryan’s budget “right-wing social engineering” last year, Mack is right. The GOP budget doesn’t actually balance the budget. In fact, it makes the debt worse. “[D]eficits would never drop below 4.4 percent of GDP, and would rise to more than 5 percent of GDP by 2022,” Center for American Progress Tax and Budget Policy Director Michael Linden noted.

The Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed regulations to limit coal-fired power plants will have the same effect on the coal industry that the American military had on Osama bin Laden, the president of the nation’s largest mining labor union said Tuesday.

The rules seek to limit emissions from new power plants, forcing new plants to install carbon capturing technology to comply. United Mine Workers of America President Cecil Roberts opposes those rules, saying that if enacted, they would kill the coal industry the way Navy SEALs killed bin Laden, The Hill reports:

“The Navy SEALs shot Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan and Lisa Jackson shot us in Washington,” Cecil Roberts, president of the powerful union, said during an interview Tuesday on the West Virginia radio show MetroNews Talkline. [...]

“I noticed this past week the vice president was talking about the campaign and he mentioned that Osama Bin Laden was dead and General Motors was alive,” Roberts said. “He should have gone on to say that the coal industry is not far behind with respect to what happened with Osama Bin Laden.”

Roberts’ preposterous comparison aside, the new rules wouldn’t affect clean coal, which the industry and its backers — like Roberts — claim exists. Roberts also ignores that despite falling coal production in the nation’s biggest coal producing region — Appalachia is rapidly approaching its peak coal capacity — coal employment rose to a 15-year high in 2011, largely due to EPA regulations.

While the UMWA will most likely avoid challenging President Obama on the issue during the 2012 presidential election, the new EPA rules could cost the president an endorsement. Still, Roberts thinks Obama has “done a lot of great things for the country,” though it isn’t clear whether Roberts considers bringing about the death of the world’s most notorious terrorist to be one of them.

Santa Monica College, a public community college in California, has been so strained by cuts to state education funding that it has had to turn away students, increase tuition, and charge higher fees for classes. The school recently announced a plan to raise prices on its most popular courses, creating an unequal, two-track cost system and raising problems for cash-strapped students who are already struggling to keep up with rising tuition rates.

Santa Monica students attempted to attend a Board of Trustees meeting yesterday but were largely denied, with only a limited number of students allowed in and requests to move to a larger venue rejected. When more students attempted to enter the meeting, about 30 were pepper sprayed by police, the Associated Press reports:

Two officers were apparently backed up against a wall, and began using force to keep the students out of the room. Steinman said both officers used pepper spray. “People were gasping and choking,” he said.

Marioly Gomez said she was standing in a hallway outside the meeting with several hundred other students who wanted to get into the meeting. “I got pepper-sprayed without warning,” she said.

Tuition has skyrocketed across the country, but the increase has been incredibly sharp in California over the last decade. After being virtually free for California residents for decades, budget cuts and changes to the University of California and Cal State systems have caused a rise in prices resembling the housing bubble:

Students and university faculty have vowed to continue protesting to preserve education funding for the UC and Cal State systems, each of which is facing threats of further budget cuts after losing $750 million in state funding during the 2011-2012 school year.

ALGONA, Iowa — The latest Republican to vacillate on Grover Norquist’s anti-tax pledge was found yesterday in rural western Iowa, where Rep. Steve King (R-IA) told a town hall that although he’d signed the pledge, he didn’t know what he would do if taxes were cut too much.

King was pressed by Algona resident Blair Redenius on why Congress continues to give tax breaks for the wealthy during a time of war. Redenius’ son served three tours in Iraq. After King defended the Bush tax cuts, Redenius noted that the Iowa congressman had signed Norquist’s pledge.

Though nobody’s idea of a moderate, King showed surprising sensibility on the issue of taxes. “I signed this pledge, but what do we do when we get taxes down to where they need to be?” King asked. “At some point we’re going to cut taxes too much. What’s the answer then?”

REDENIUS: One I know you signed is the Norquist pledge, no new taxes. If President Bush would have raised effort for the war effort, would you have voted for that?

KING: [...] I don’t know if I would have or not. I would have to look at the configuration of it and see what it would have been. But I talk to Grover Norquist and I told him this: I signed this pledge, but what do we do when we get taxes down to where they need to be? At some point we’re going to cut taxes too much. What’s the answer then? I’m thinking about that. I haven’t made a public statement on that. That’s as far as I’m willing to go on that.

Watch it:

Still, Redenius remained unconvinced that King would actually break his pledge to Norquist. “I felt he wouldn’t have voted for it because he signed that pledge,” Redenius told ThinkProgress. “The only pledge he should take is the one when he takes office.”

King is just the latest Republican to waver on Norquist’s anti-tax pledge. Others include Reps. Timothy Johnson (R-IL), Jeff Fortenberry (R-NE), Charles Boustany (R-LA), Mike Simpson (R-ID), Frank Wolf (R-VA), and Pennsylvania state Rep. John Bear.