House Republicans have already shown that they’re willing to sacrifice health care, food stamps, and education upon the altar of deficit reduction in their latest budget. Now financial regulation can be added to the list, courtesy of a proposal unveiled today by the House Financial Services Committee today.

House Republicans on that committee — which has become the second most lucrative committee for fundraising — today released their plan to come up with the cuts mandated by the budget authored by Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI). Their proposed cuts include:

– ELIMINATING RESOLUTION AUTHORITY: This is a power included in the Dodd-Frank financial reform law of 2008 that allows the government to dissolve a failed financial firm without resorting to the ad hoc bailouts of 2008. Ryan explicitly called for its repeal in the budget, even though it would leave the government powerless to act should another big bank bring the economy to the brink of disaster, other than handing it a bailout.

– ELIMINATING FORECLOSURE PREVENTION PROGRAM: The Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) has undoubtedly fallen woefully short of its goals, reaching far fewer homeowners than it was supposed to. But House Republicans want to eliminate it entirely, even with 3.6 homeowners estimated to go into foreclosure in the next two years.

– CUTTING THE CONSUMER PROTECTION BUREAU’S BUDGET BY TWO-THIRDS: The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has a budget of just shy of $600 million for fiscal year 2013. House Republicans propose , even as the agency begins reining in abuses in the student loan and home mortgage industries.

House Republicans have been trying to water down Dodd-Frank ever since it passed. This budget proposal from the Financial Services Committee is just the latest round in the effort to ensure that the committee follows its chairman’s order to “serve the banks.”

With the housing crisis still plaguing America’s economic recovery and the Obama administration’s housing programs not doing much to help, Congressional Democrats and progressive groups have recently upped their calls for a broad mortgage relief program that reduces the amount struggling homeowners owe on their loans.

Thursday, those calls got a boost from International Monetary Fund chief Christine Lagarde. Speaking at the Brookings Institution in Washington, Lagarde reiterated that mortgage relief was a “long-standing position” for the IMF, and that the U.S. should institute such a plan in order to return consumption and the appropriate level of indebtedness back to the American economy:

LAGARDE: This is something that the IMF has had a long-standing position of. The housing problem is something that needs to be addressed as a matter of urgency. And measures have been taken, there are proposals made by the administration. The big boys and girls, Fannie and Freddie, have to be a part of the equation. Because clearly, American households have to be able to unload a bit. Just in the way we’ve encouraged banks to lend, the households have to helped to borrow, so that consumption and appropriate indebtedness can be reinitiated. That’s our position.

The IMF has, indeed, had a long-standing position on mortgage relief for homeowners in the United States and around the world. In April 2011, it issued a report calling for mortgage relief, noting that American banks could withstand the losses principal reduction would bring about, despite their claims to the contrary. Lagarde called for mortgage relief in her initial speech as IMF head in August, and the IMF has made similar calls for struggling economies in Ireland and other countries, and recently issued another report calling for such a program in the United States.

Federal Housing Finance Agency head Edward DeMarco has thus far resisted calls for principal reduction, claiming that it “would protect big banks” at taxpayer expense, despite studies showing that it would save taxpayers money in the long-term. With progressive Democrats calling for DeMarco’s ouster and outside analysts criticizing his opposition to principal reduction, however, he has started to change his tune. Tuesday, DeMarco finally showed openness to principal reduction, and he is expected to make a decision on such a program sometime this month.

President Obama and Vice President Biden today released their 2011 tax returns, ahead of Tuesday’s tax filing deadline. The returns show that Obama paid a 20.5 percent tax rate last year on $789,674 in income. About half of that income came from Obama’s presidential salary, while the rest came from book royalties.

As White House Press Secretary Jay Carney noted in a blog post, “under the President’s own tax proposals, including the expiration of the high-income tax cuts and limitations on the value of tax preferences for high-income households, he would pay more in taxes.” Obama, indeed, would see his tax rate go up due to his called for expiration of the Bush tax cuts above $250,000 in income. Obama would not, however, have been affected by the Buffett Rule — which he is stumping for this week — in 2011, as he did not have $1 million in income.

The likely Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, meanwhile, would do the opposite with his tax plan, cutting his taxes on his already sky high income. Romney’s first, more restrained tax plan, would have cut his own taxes nearly in half. And that was before he included a 20 percent reduction in the top tax rate. In 2010, Romney paid a 13.9 percent tax rate. He has released his estimated tax bill for 2011, which shows him paying about a 15 percent rate on more than $20 million in income.

Romney also supports the House Republican budget authored by Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI), which would give millionaires a tax break worth $187,000 on top of the break they would get from extending the Bush tax cuts. The GOP budget, meanwhile, would actually raise taxes on low-income working Americans, according to an analysis released yesterday by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

A California woman is facing foreclosure from Bank of America after taking out a loan to make her home more accessible for her disabled daughter, shining light on yet another improper foreclosure practice perpetuated by America’s largest banks.

Dirma Rodriguez fell behind on her original loan after spending thousands of dollars installing tile floors and a wheelchair ramp to make it easier for Ingrid Ortiz, her daughter who has cerebral palsy, to move around the house. When Rodriguez fell behind on her original loan, Bank of America offered her a trial modification. Even though Rodriguez kept up with those payments for more than a year, the bank sold her home at auction, and the new owner is pursuing eviction, the Los Angeles Times reports:

Rodriguez took out a loan to retrofit her house for her special-needs daughter. After she fell behind on her payments, the Bank of America lowered her monthly obligation, but then sold the house at a foreclosure auction last September. The new owner, a house flipper from El Segundo called West Ridge Rentals, moved to evict the family. [...]

Bank of America inherited Rodriguez’s loan from Countrywide. After her payment jumped, and she fell behind, the bank placed her in a trial loan modification. She made her payments faithfully for 13 months and was awaiting a permanent modification package when the bank sold her home out from under her, she says.

Rodriguez’s story, unfortunately, is not unique. Thanks to the process known as dual-tracking, banks have thrown thousands of homeowners into foreclosure even while offering those same homeowners loan modifications. As a result, homeowners who were willing to make new, lower payments to stay in their homes are often evicted anyway. Dual tracking, along discriminatory, fraudulent, and deceptive practices, led Bank of America and other Wall Street banks to settle a $25 billion suit with the federal government last month.

Trial modifications like the one given to Rodriguez, whose loan is backed by Freddie Mac, are supposed to last three months before the terms of the modification are made permanent if all payments are made. Rodriguez says she made 13 consecutive payments, but Bank of America told the Times that it still wants to be sure she can afford the payments before it makes the modification permanent. “I don’t want a free house,” Rodriguez told the Times. “I just want to make my payments.”

Luckily for Rodriguez, local activists have taken up her cause. Occupy Fights Foreclosure helped her stave off a scheduled eviction on March 26, and the company that bought her home at auction is willing to return it if Bank of America pays it back. The bank, which set the whole process in motion, is now considering giving her a modification that would allow her to keep the home.

A favorite Republican pastime recently has been to demonize the unemployed by proposing that they submit to drug tests before collecting their unemployment insurance. Both at the federal and state level, Republicans have pushed for such a policy, even though, as it turns out, such requirements save barely any money and only prove that those on unemployment insurance are less likely than the public at large to be using drugs.

One Iowa Republican this week decided that such measures are not enough. During debate over Iowa’s budget, state Sen. Mark Chelgren (R) proposed that people who receive child support payments also be forced to submit to drug tests on the whims of the person making the payments:

The proposal came from Sen. Mark Chelgren, R-Ottumwa who said he was pushing the idea on behalf of an unidentified constituent who believed his ex was using child support money for illegal drugs.

A person paying child support under Chelgren’s proposal could require the recipient to a drug test every six months as long as they pay the costs.

“We shouldn’t be ducking our head and running away every time there’s a difficult issue coming up,” Chelgren said. However, following open laughter in the Iowa Senate chamber, Chelgren withdrew his amendment.

The Iowa Senate’s next task will be debating yet another Chelgren amendment. This one goes back to the standard Republican aim of forcing those collecting from state welfare programs to undergo drug tests. In Indiana, just 1 percent of those tested before collecting unemployment insurance or entering the state’s job training program during the final six months of 2011 failed their drug tests.