2012 GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney, speaking at a Business Roundtable event in Washington DC today, called for the repeal of the tax on corporate profits that is levied when those profits are returned (repatriated) to America. Repealing the tax, Romney said, would drive investment in the United States and spur job creation. In the past, however, temporary tax holidays for profits stored overseas have not led to the job creation that proponents promised.

Instead of creating jobs, companies used a 2004 repatriation tax holiday to line their executives’ pockets, paying stock dividends and buying back shares. The holiday “didn’t accomplish the stated goals of bringing jobs and investment to the US,” according to former member of President Bush’s Council on Economic Advisers.

That failure evidently means nothing to Romney, who seemed to call today for permanently exempting repatriated profits from taxation:

ROMNEY: We have this tax, as you know, the repatriation tax. If you make a lot of money in some other foreign country and you want to leave it there, we don’t tax you. But if you want to bring it home, to invest here, then we do tax you, up to 35 percent. That doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. If you want to bring your money home, please bring it home. Bring that trillion-plus dollars, bring it here. Invest in new plants and equipment and hire people. And I know some people say, ‘Yeah but, companies might put it out as dividends.’ Well that’s OK too! I’d rather have you invest in– but get it out to people, get it out to retirees. I mean, what’s happened to the interest rate on their CDs? Get money out there. Let them use that money out there to buy things and put more Americans to work.

Watch it:

The repatriation gimmick didn’t just fail to create jobs the last time it was tried — it was followed by job destruction. The companies that benefited most laid off tens of thousands of workers after the holiday ended. And though Romney today claimed that he would balance the budget in eight to 10 years, repealing the tax on repatriated profits wouldn’t help him there either. The House GOP’s repatriation holiday would have cost $80 billion over 10 years — getting rid of the tax altogether, as Romney seemed to suggest today, would carry an even larger price tag.

But Romney is right that it makes little sense to let corporations dodge taxes by holding money overseas. Another solution that has been proposed, however, is to adopt a global tax system that taxes multinational corporations no matter where their profits are made and provides credits to avoid double taxation. This type of system would prevent corporations like Apple from dodging billions in taxes by opening subsidiaries in low-tax (or no-tax) countries, raising valuable revenue for the government.

Our guest blogger is Brian Frederick, Executive Director of the Sports Fans Coalition, the country’s largest nonprofit fan advocacy organization, which fights to give fans a voice on public policy issues.

In May, the city of Glendale, Arizona, home to Jobing.com Arena, where the National Hockey League’s Phoenix Coyotes play, faced a $35 million budget shortfall. Why? For the past two seasons, the city has paid the NHL $25 million per season to manage the Coyotes — a team that the NHL owns — in order to keep the team from moving. The league has owned the team since 2009, when owner Jerry Moyes declared bankruptcy, and has prevented any sale of the team that would have resulted in relocation.

In order to close its enormous budget gap, Glendale laid off 49 employees — two percent of the workforce – and, last night, the City Council passed a final budget that includes cutting social services and raising the city sales tax and secondary property taxes. The Tucson Citizen reported that the layoffs included:

– Community Development, six employees.

– Parks, recreation and library, 15 employees.

– Management and budget, one employee.

– Field operations, 20 employees.

– Police, 5 (non-sworn) employees.

– Transportation, one employee.

– Human resources, one employee.

There’s still the matter of the future of the Coyotes, however, and Glendale is doubling down on its “investment” in the franchise. Last Friday, the City Council voted for a lease agreement that would give any future Coyotes owner an average of $15 million per year for 20 years. It also agreed to pay $24 million in capital improvements to Jobing.com Arena, which is only nine years old. And keep in mind that the city still has to pay over $12 million in annual debt payment for construction of the arena.

So what’s the payoff? “$2.2 million in annual rent payments, ticket surcharges, sales taxes and other fees,” according to the Arizona Republic. Glendale officials also point to the usual intangibles such as jobs provided by the arena and increased tourism. But still, the price seems steep, particularly when the city is laying off workers and cutting social services. As The Arizona Republic’s editorial board wrote:

An analysis revealed that even if the Coyotes went to the Stanley Cup Finals for years, Glendale could still expect to lose about $9 million annually. It also is obligated to make debt payments on the arena, which will average about $12.6 million a year over the next 20 years.

Of course, money being spent on the Coyotes is money not being spent on other things, like capital improvements elsewhere in the city. According to the Arizona Republic, there are no new capital improvements funded in the next budget; plans to finish the city’s courthouse and build a new library are being pushed back until 2017.

The city of Glendale did, though, set up a “transition center” to help out the laid off employees. No word if it simply referred them to Jobing.com.

JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon appeared before the Senate Banking Committee today to discuss the bungled trade that has cost his bank billions and reignited interest in the Volcker Rule, which is meant to rein in risky bank trading. During the course of the questioning, Dimon denied that he had called new bank capital requirements “anti-American,” which he had, and explained that he would be happy to get an apartment in Washington, D.C., so that Congress could consult him on financial regulations.

For the most part, the questions Dimon faced were not of the tough variety. In fact, Republicans on the committee were more interested in asking Dimon how Congress could make regulation more accommodating to the banks. Sen. Mike Crapo (R-ID) even asked “what should the function of our regulators be?” Here are several other examples of Republican senators asking Dimon how he’d like his bank to be regulated:

SEN. BOB CORKER (R-TN): We’re here quizzing you. If you were sitting on this side of the dais, what would you do to make our system safer than it is and still meet the needs of a global economy like we have?

SEN. MIKE CRAPO (R-ID): Many people say our primary focus from our perspective in terms of policy should be to make sure the banks are properly capitalized. Should that be our primary focus and what other areas of oversight would be the most effective for us in terms of our regulatory structure?

SEN. JIM DEMINT (R-SC): I would like to come away from the hearing today with some ideas on what you think we need to do, what we maybe need to take apart that we’ve already done, to allow the industry to operate better.

SEN. ROGER WICKER (R-MS): And you said something else that really sort caught me by surprise, and that was this testimony that nobody got all the parties in a room with people in your industry — Democrats, Republicans, and folks affected — and talked about what was needed and what really needed to be fixed. Did I hear you correctly there? Did you volunteer to be part of that conversation?

Watch it:

Just a few senators, including Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ), took the opportunity to press Dimon on what went wrong at JP Morgan. If nothing else, the bank’s trading disaster makes the case for strengthening the Volcker Rule so that banks can’t gamble with taxpayer-backed money.

A new study released by the the American Medical Association shows that the gender wage gap applies even to highly educated women in well-paying professions. Specifically, researchers calculated that over her career, the average female doctor will make about $350,000 less than a male doctor doing similar work.

Dr. Reshman Jagsi, the lead author of the new study and a professor of radiation oncology at the University of Michigan, controlled for work hours, area of specialty, and all other career and life choices. Her team’s research indicated that women still made about $12,000 less each year than similarly qualified men doing the exact same type and amount of work:

Disturbingly, even after we controlled for all those other factors, we found that male doctors were paid more than female doctors for doing the same work.

This study is the latest in a number of research projects that have produced stark findings on gender inequality in the workplace. By no means is the gap restricted to only the medical profession or low-paying jobs. In recent months, studies have shown that the gender pay disparity extends to women in other lucrative and high-paying positions, such as CEOs, CFOs, lobbyists, and financial analysts.

On average, women make 77 cents less than men. Over her lifetime, a woman loses enough in earnings to feed a family of four for 37 years.

The news comes less than a week after Senate Republicans blocked the Paycheck Fairness Act. Despite unequivocal findings regarding the extent of the problem, Republicans have consistently opposed any measure to diminish the pay gap. From framing the Paycheck Fairness Act as a useless roadblock which would destroy small businesses to denying the pay gap altogether, Republican politicians have refused to act to address this important problem.

–Angela Guo

JP Morgan Chase chief executive Jamie Dimon told the Senate Banking Committee today that he has not called heightened global banking regulations requiring banks to hold more capital “anti-American.” Dimon did, however, make that exact assertion last September when he claimed that the new global rules were aimed specifically at American banks and were thus “anti-American.”

Dimon denied that he had made the claim in response to a question from New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez (D). Dimon said earlier in the hearing that he believes it’s a good thing that banks are more capitalized today than they were ahead the financial crisis. Menendez — who also challenged Dimon on whether the trade that caused JP Morgan’s massive loss had morphed into “Russian roulette” — asked if Dimon therefore regretted calling higher capital requirements anti-American. “No, I don’t think what you said is true,” Dimon replied:

MENENDEZ: When you reduce a hedge, or hedge a hedge, isn’t that really gambling?

DIMON: I don’t believe so, no.

MENENDEZ: So, this transaction that you said morphed, what did it morph into, Russian roulette?

DIMON: It morphed into something that I just can’t justify, that was just too risky for our company. […]

MENENDEZ: I’ve heard you talk about the ‘fortress balance sheet.’ And I’m glad to hear you say to Senator Schumer that we should take comfort that banks are more collateralized, but in saying so, one way to think about this is I wonder what your views, do you regret calling the efforts to require banks to hold more money quote ‘Un-American’ and quote ‘putting the nail in our coffin.’ Today you cite the fortress balance sheet of your bank as a way to prevent against the challenges, but you railed against us when we were in fact trying to pursue greater capitalization of these banks. Is that a regret you have of those comments then?

DIMON: No, I don’t think what you said is true.

Watch the exchange:

Dimon’s point at the time may have been that the requirements were disproportionately aimed at American banks, but that’s because it was largely big American banks that put the world financial system in jeopardy. The requirements were aimed at JP Morgan, not America, as Matt Yglesias pointed out at the time: “There’s nothing ‘American’ about an ‘American’ bank like JP Morgan that should make us think that a regulation that’s bad for JP Morgan is somehow an attack on ‘America.’”

The Obama administration last year introduced a rule that would extend minimum wage protections to home health workers who, up to that point, had received no guarantee of a liveable wage or fair overtime pay. But Senate Republicans are attempting to block the rule from going into effect:

A group of Republican senators on Thursday introduced legislation aimed at blocking the Obama administration’s controversial efforts to extend minimum wage and overtime protections to 2 million in-home care providers through Department of Labor regulations.

Sens. Mike Johanns, R-Neb., and Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., along with 11 other lawmakers, introduced a bill known as the Companionship Exemption Protection Act, to amend the Fair Labor Standards Act to preserve the current state of the law’s so-called companionship services exemption.

The bizarre name for the bill — the Companionship Exemption Protection Act — alludes to the fact that the Fair Labor Standards Act exempts two groups of workers: casual baby-sitters and those “who provide ‘companionship services’ to people with disabilities and the elderly,” which has come to mean home health workers. But, of course, home health care workers today do far more than provide “companionship.” As ThinkProgress has noted, “Home care workers today provide everything from help with eating and dressing to monitoring blood pressure and vital signs.”

Employment in the home health industry is expected to expand 69 percent by 2020, adding 1.3 million positions. And if the Republicans have their way, it will remain legal to pay those workers below a minimum wage that already doesn’t get a family above the poverty line.