President Obama’s plan to allow the Bush tax cuts for incomes above $250,000 to expire at the end of the year has revived the Republican talking point that he is waging “class warfare” against the wealthy, a point Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl (R) drove home in an entirely new fashion today.

Speaking on the Senate floor, Kyl claimed that the president’s usage of the phrase “middle class” is “misguided and wrong and even dangerous.” Calling for an end to rhetoric about classes, Kyl blasted Obama for “incessantly” talking about class, “particularly the middle class”:

KYL: Most prominently, we have a president who talks incessantly about class, particularly the middle class. Maybe you’ve noticed that. He defines class strictly by your income. In the president’s narrative, someone who makes $199,000 a year is a member of one class and someone who makes $200,000 belongs to another class. Does that make sense? Indeed, each day the president’s out on the campaign trail championing himself as the great protector of what he calls the middle class and pitting these Americans against their fellow citizens by arguing that the wealthiest class is victimizing them through the tax code.

Watch it:

Kyl went on to explain that America doesn’t have “a true class-based society,” since we don’t have an “ingrained class system” or “noble bloodlines,” a point that seems to ignore every common usage of the “middle class” in our political system.

As ThinkProgress has repeatedly noted, the president’s plan to end the tax cuts that benefit only the wealthiest Americans doesn’t amount to class warfare — in fact, it still maintains a sizable tax cut for them too. And while Kyl claims “class is a loaded term that’s not appropriate for our debates about income,” the talk about who pays their fair share is a hot topic for the GOP too. Republicans have pushed the false notion that 47 percent of Americans don’t pay federal taxes to make it seem that it is actually the poor and middle class who aren’t paying enough in taxes, and Republicans consistently opposed an extension to the payroll tax cut, which primarily benefited middle class workers.

The House GOP budget, meanwhile, gutted the social safety net, taking 62 percent of its cuts from programs that benefit the middle and lower classes. And while the GOP maintains the idea that reducing the debt and the tax burden on the wealthy will help middle-income Americans, the last decade has proven that to be utterly false. Republicans promised prosperity and job growth when they passed the high-income Bush tax cuts in 2003; what followed was a decade of rising deficits, anemic job growth, and a massive recession that decimated middle- and lower-class families and programs that benefit them.

Nearly nine months after the Bank Transfer Day protest that resulted in millions of dollars in lost customer deposits for the nation’s biggest banks, a Fresno, California-based faith group is leading the charge to get even more customers to move their money. Faith In Community, an interdenominational group, joined with Occupy Fresno and other groups to protest predatory actions at five big banks, and thus far, their efforts have led to the removal of $750,000 from Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs, the Fresno Bee reports:

About 50 people who gathered at St. Anthony Claret Catholic Church in southeast Fresno held signs with names of people who have transferred or will transfer their money from the targeted banks to credit unions or local banks in the Fresno area.

Those transfers totaled nearly $750,000 since the fall, they said, money that will be invested in local communities through credit unions and small banks, rather than filling the pockets of the corporations.

Hundreds of thousands of customers moved their money from banks to credit unions last fall, with more than 40,000 joining on a single day in November. Faith groups were among the biggest activists, moving $55 million from Wall Street banks before last Thanksgiving. A San Francisco faith coalition moved $10 million from Wells Fargo in February, and more groups joined the movement during Lent. When the bank transfer movement began, a financial consulting firm estimated that it could cost big banks $185 billion in deposits by the end of this year.

Back in June, ThinkProgress noted that the manufacturing giant Caterpillar was seeking major concessions during contract negotiations with striking workers, even as it was making billions in profits and giving its CEO a 60 percent pay boost. The New York Times’ Steven Greenhouse added more details today, noting that the company wants to implement a six-year pay freeze and a pension freeze, at a time when it is making record profits:

Despite earning a record $4.9 billion profit last year and projecting even better results for 2012, the company is insisting on a six-year wage freeze and a pension freeze for most of the 780 production workers at its factory here. Caterpillar says it needs to keep its labor costs down to ensure its future competitiveness. [...]

Caterpillar, which has significantly raised its executives’ compensation because of its strong profits, defended its demands, saying many unionized workers were paid well above market rates.

“A company that earned a record $4.9 billion in 2011 and $1.586 billion in the first quarter of this year should be willing to help the workers who made those profits for them,” said Timothy O’Brien, president of Machinists Local Lodge 851. “Caterpillar believes in helping the very rich, but what they’re doing would help eliminate the middle class.” Several labor experts told the Times that Caterpillar is a pioneer in tough labor negotiations meant to drive down workers’ wages.

Last year, Caterpillar’s CEO made nearly $17 million in total compensation. At the moment in the U.S., the typical worker would have to work 244 years in order to earn what the average CEO makes in one year.

Nearly 30,000 pounds of ground beef produced by Cargill Meat Solutions have been recalled after the meat was linked to a salmonella outbreak that sickened at least 33 people across seven states. The outbreak was discovered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS), a program that oversees food inspections and is facing budget cuts under both President Obama and the House GOP’s fiscal 2013 budget plans.

Both Obama and the GOP requested $996 million for FSIS, a 9 percent decrease from 2012, according to the Appropriations Committee summary of the Republican legislation:

The legislation includes $996 million for food safety and inspection programs – which is equal to the President’s budget request and a decrease of $9 million below last year’s level. These mandatory inspection activities play a significant role in maintaining the safety and productivity of the country’s $832 billion meat and poultry industry.

Though both Obama and the GOP cut funding from FSIS, Republicans went a step further in making steep cuts to the Food and Drug Administration’s budget. Obama requested a 17 percent increase (to $4.5 billion) for the FDA as it attempts to implement and maintain the Food Safety Modernization Act, the most sweeping update of America’s food safety laws in more than a generation. The House Appropriations plan, however, provides $3.8 billion, an amount the Office of Management and Budget called “harmful” to the program in its analysis of the plan.

The savings brought about by such cuts pale in comparison to the cost of foodborne illnesses each year. One out of six Americans suffer from such an illness annually, with 128,000 resulting in hospitalization and 3,000 resulting in death. While the total cuts to FSIS and FDA in the Republican Appropriations plan would save roughly $700 million, foodborne illnesses cost the United States $152 billion each year.

According to a report from the Federal Reserve, over the last two decades the nation’s biggest banks have created thousands of subsidiaries for the purpose of dodging taxes and regulation. As Bloomberg News reported, the most prolific user of these subsidiaries is JP Morgan Chase:

The biggest U.S. banks created more than 10,000 subsidiaries in the past 22 years as they expanded, using legal structures to pay lower taxes and escape tighter regulation, according to a Federal Reserve study.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM), the largest U.S. lender, has the most units at 3,391, followed by Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Morgan Stanley and Bank of America Corp. (BAC) with more than 2,000 each, the study by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York shows. Citigroup Inc. (C), the third-largest lender, has 1,645. [...]

The subsidiaries in the Fed study include the banks’ overseas units. For Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs (GS) and New York- based Citigroup, about half the legal entities are based outside the U.S. At JPMorgan and Charlotte, North Carolina-based Bank of America, the ratio drops to below a quarter.

The use of corporate tax havens costs the U.S. government about $60 billion annually. In order to make up for that lost revenue, the U.S. would have to charge every one of the nation’s small businesses $2,116.

It’s likely no coincidence that the banks most focused on investment banking had more subsidiaries than commercial banks, as they’re more likely to want to help their clients shift money around to low- or no-tax jurisdictions. And as a new study from the Tax Justice Network showed, there’s at least $21 trillion in wealth held in tax havens by the world’s wealthy. Having thousands of subsidiaries surely helps the biggest banks facilitate such activity.

According to a new study, the world’s super-rich are shielding at least $21 trillion in secret offshore tax havens. Using data from the Bank of International Settlements, IMF, World Bank, and national governments, the Tax Justice Network found that an astonishing 100,000 people worldwide hold nearly $10 trillion of offshore wealth, equivalent to the size of the Chinese economy. According to the study:

1. Big banks manage the wealth. The three private banks handling the most assets offshore are UBS, Credit Suisse, and Goldman Sachs.

2. Offshore wealth is creating a global economic “black hole.” If the $21 trillion in offshore earned a conservatively-estimated 3 percent rate of return, and that income was taxed at just 30 percent, this would generate tax revenues of nearly $200 billion — roughly twice the amount OECD countries spend on international development assistance.

3. High impact on developing countries. In the 139 developing countries highlighted in the report, the richest citizens had amassed $7.3 to $9.3 trillion of unrecorded offshore wealth that is beyond the reach of local tax authorities. The report reveals that many developing “debtor” countries are actually quite wealthy, but the money is held by a few individuals.

4. Huge tax haven growth in the last few years. In 2005, the world’s top 50 banks managed $5.4 trillion in offshore money. By the end of 2010, the figure is over $12 trillion, representing an average annual growth rate of more than 16 percent.

This tax avoidance study comes at a time when many are questioning presidential hopeful Mitt Romney’s use of tax havens. As an executive at Bain Capital, Romney routed investments through companies in Bermuda or the Cayman Islands to allow investors to avoid U.S. taxes.

– Steven Perlberg