House Financial Services Chairman Spencer Bachus (R-AL) — who said that, in his view, Washington’s role is “to serve the banks” — has put out a call to the financial industry to suggest “legislative alternatives” to the Volcker Rule, which is aimed at reining in banks’ risky trading:

A top Republican lawmaker on Tuesday asked the financial industry to suggest alternatives to the hotly debated Volcker rule in advance of a planned fall hearing.

Representative Spencer Bachus urged investors and market players to submit ideas to the House of Representatives Financial Services Committee before September 7, saying that the rule as currently proposed would have a “devastating” impact on the U.S. economy.

“We must consider legislative alternatives that will not stifle economic growth and job creation,” Bachus, who is the committee chairman, said in a statement.

Bachus is looking for input on the rule from “investors, industry professionals and the public.” But it’s not like the banks haven’t had their views on the Volcker Rule heard up to this point.

In fact, CEOs of Wall Street’s major banks, led by JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, participated in “a closed-door meeting to personally lobby the Federal Reserve about softening proposed reforms that might crimp their profits.” Bloomberg News described the banks’ campaign against the Volcker Rule as a “lobbying blitz.” Shortly thereafter, JP Morgan Chase lost billions of dollars in a trading debacle.

Last month, a top Federal Reserve official called for a stronger Volcker Rule, saying, “I feel it is very important that the guard rails be strong and be set very close to the road because of the potentially severe dangers of, and costs associated with, proprietary trading by institutions that have access to the federal safety net.” But Bachus would evidently prefer that the financial industry write its own rules of the road.

America’s 10 most profitable corporations paid an average corporate income tax rate of just 9 percent in 2011, according to a study from financial site NerdWallet reported by the Huffington Post. The 10 companies include Wall Street banks like Wells Fargo and JP Morgan Chase, oil companies like ExxonMobil and Chevron, and tech companies like Apple, IBM, and Microsoft.

The two companies with the lowest tax rates were both oil companies. ExxonMobil paid $1.5 billion in taxes on $73.3 billion in earnings, a tax rate of 2 percent. Chevron’s tax rate was just 4 percent. None of the companies paid anywhere near the 35 percent top corporate tax rate, providing more evidence to debunk claims that America’s corporate tax rate is stunting economic growth and job creation (Despite the high marginal rate, American corporations pay one of the lowest effective corporate tax rates in the world).

The study also calculated the overall amount the companies owed in both domestic and foreign taxes. This includes deferred taxes that will, theoretically, be paid in the future, once the companies bring foreign profits back to the United States. Apple, for instance, avoided $2.4 billion in American taxes last year by utilizing offshore tax havens.

If Republicans have their way, however, those deferred taxes may never be paid. Switching to a territorial tax system, a policy leading Republicans have considered, would allow corporations to repatriate foreign profits back to the United States nearly free of taxation, costing the country billions of dollars and thousands of jobs.

A new report by Janelle Jones and John Schmitt for the Center for Economic and Policy Research shows that the percentage of Americans with a high school education and a good job has declined precipitously in recent decades, and even the percentage of college graduates with a good job has declined slightly. A good job was defined as one that pays at least $37,000 a year, and provides both health coverage and a retirement plan. All in all, the economy has lost about a third of its capacity to create such jobs:

One of the most common explanations for America’s rising inequality — especially amongst conservatives and centrists — is technological advancement, which dramatically shifted America’s economy in favor of higher skills and higher education. But as the report shows, the theory doesn’t square with what’s actually going on.

[T]he story the figure above tells is one where something is consistently pulling the bottom out of the labor market, not one where something is pulling the top away — at least not the top as defined by broad education categories… [T]he real culprit is the systematic decline in the bargaining power of workers — reflected in a drop in the inflation-adjusted value of the minimum wage, a collapse in the unionization rate in the private-sector, the deregulation of previously well-paying industries, the privatization of state and local government jobs, a series of business-biased trade deals, a dysfunctional immigration system, poor enforcement of already weak labor standards, and high unemployment.

A deeper dig into the report also reveals that the decrease in good jobs has been driven by precipitous declines in the number of workers receiving health coverage or retirement benefits through their employer, which suggests that current efforts to reduce how much the government provides for those safety nets will exacerbate such problems further.

This chart from the markets research firm Nanex shows the absolute explosion in high-frequency trading that has occurred over the last few years. This sort of trading, employed by large global firms like Goldman Sachs, allows for the churning up of quick profits, but with little economic benefit:

As Reuters’ Felix Salmon noted, “The stock market is clearly more dangerous than it was in 2007, with much greater tail risk; meanwhile, in return for facing that danger, society as a whole has received precious little utility.” This makes the case for a financial transactions tax, a small tax levied on stock trades that, while barely affecting normal traders, would hopefully slow down unproductive churning in the markets.

As Center for Economic and Policy Research Director Dean Baker wrote, “if a financial transactions tax reduces the volume of trading, and therefore the resources used by [the financial] sector, without harming the sector’s ability to allocate capital, then it will be making the sector more efficient and freeing up resources for more productive uses.” This summer, Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-OR) and Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) introduced legislation to establish a transactions tax.

Mitt Romney’s campaign launched a full-on attack on Tuesday accusing President Obama of gutting welfare reform. In a new ad, policy memo, and press release, Romney claims that the administration’s decision to offer waivers to states that develop innovative ways to meet the law’s work requirements is actually an attempt to “remove work participation rate requirements all together.”

“Under Obama’s plan, you wouldn’t have to work and wouldn’t have to train for a job,” the ad’s narrator says. “They just send you your welfare check.”

The ad is blatantly false — the administration’s plan specifically maintains the work requirement, but allows states to experiment with other methods of transitioning recipients from welfare to work. This is a policy that the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities says will make Temporary Assistance for Needy Families a more effective program.

But the ad is also disingenuous, as it fails to mention that as governor of Massachusetts, Romney explicitly supported the same waiver program he is now criticizing. Romney was one of 29 Republican governors to sign a 2005 letter from the Republican Governor’s Association to congressional leadership touting the benefits a waiver program would bring their states:

The Senate bill provides states with with the flexibility to manage their TANF programs and effectively serve their low-income populations. Increased waiver authority, allowable work activities, availability of partial work credit and the ability to coordinate state programs are all important aspects of moving recipients from welfare to work.

As ThinkProgress has noted, Republican governors in both Utah and Nevada still support the waiver program. Both, incidentally, have endorsed Romney. And while Romney touts TANF’s success in a release accompanying the ad — welfare “reduced the number of people receiving monthly cash benefits from 12.2 million to 4.2 million,” it says — the program’s “success” hasn’t been because its recipients are finding jobs. In fact, TANF has failed to reach the people who need it most, especially compared to the programs that came before it.

As the directive from the Department of Health and Human Services states, the waiver program is aimed at helping more recipients transition to work. “HHS is encouraging states to consider new, more effective ways to meet the goals of TANF, particularly helping parents successfully prepare for, find, and retain employment,” the directive says. “The Secretary is only interested in approving waivers if the state can explain in a compelling fashion why the proposed approach may be a more efficient or effective means to promote employment entry, retention, advancement, or access to jobs that offer opportunities for earnings and advancement that will allow participants to avoid dependence on government benefits.”

And states will still be subject to federal evaluation and basic work requirements that “focus on measurable outcomes” and furthering TANF’s purpose. Failing to do so, HHS states, could result in “termination of the waiver project.”