Wall Street firms are shedding jobs by the thousands, but total compensation isn’t falling. In fact, according to a new report from the New York state comptroller, compensation on Wall Street is nearing record levels, with the total rising to more than $60 billion in 2012, the New York Times reports:

The report showed that total compensation on Wall Street last year rose 4 percent, to more than $60 billion. That was higher than any total except those in 2007 and 2008 — before the financial crisis fully took its toll on pay.

The average pay package of securities industry employees in New York State was $362,950, up 16.6 percent over the last two years.

That number doesn’t take into account year-end bonuses; another report found that nearly half of Wall Street employees believe their bonuses will be larger than they were last year. The comptroller’s report found, however, that bonus pools were likely to shrink for the second consecutive year.

For the people running Wall Street’s biggest companies, pay isn’t always linked to performance. Wall Street executive pay rose more than 20 percent in 2011, even as 33 of the 50 biggest companies saw negative share returns. Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit, for instance, made $43 million last year even though his company’s stock price dropped 44 percent.

Republicans often portray reducing the debt — which they insist must be done entirely through spending cuts — as a matter of principle as well as good policy. “In my view, it’s not just bad economics,” GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney said in August. “It is immoral for us to pass these burdens on to coming generations.”

But a new report from the Urban Institute, flagged today in The New York Times, found that spending and tax exemptions that protect children from poverty and invest in their future will decline from 3 to 2.3 percent of the economy by 2022 — largely as a result of attempts to reduce the debt.

Much of the effect is due to the exhaustion of the 2009 stimulus combined with the spending caps imposed by the Budget Control Act of 2011, which averted the debt ceiling crisis. Some elements of support for children were exempted from the BCA, particular health care programs and income support. But other areas such as tax provisions, education, and nutrition support will see a significant hit, as this chart shows:

And this is merely spending paths as they currently stand. Half of the BCA’s cuts over the next decade fall on the military. Republicans are becoming ever more adamant about sparing the Pentagon from those reductions, and shifting them over to other agencies. Their plan would further reduce the support children receive in the coming years, most notably through a series of deep cuts to the food stamp program.

And on top of that, the budget plan proposed by Romney requires cutting everything that isn’t Medicare, Social Security and defense by 40 percent by 2016. This would level even greater cuts on the programs already hit by the BCA, as well as the spending the BCA passed over — all while leaving programs for the elderly effectively untouched.

The irony should be obvious: In the name of reducing the debt burden on our children, Mitt Romney and the Republicans would decimate the programs that provide those same children with the investments, opportunities, and support to grow into productive adults able to take on future challenges.

Amtrak, the federally-subsidized passenger rail that runs across the country, experienced a 3.5 percent jump in ridership last fiscal year, with a total of 31.2 million passengers taking the train. More people rode Amtrak trains last year than any time since 1971.

But despite the growth in rides (and the subsequent jump in profits, as revenue from tickets grew 6.8 percent), the Republican party sees Amtrak as an unprofitable venture, and called in their platform to privatize it entirely, a move that would likely cut off train service to rural Americans who don’t live on high-frequency train routes.

In fact, the National Association of Railroad Passengers believes privatization “would be tantamount to shutting down the entire Amtrak network, because the remaining routes could not cover the system’s overhead costs.”

Which isn’t to say that the system is perfect as-is. Many of the trains on Amtrak lines are more than 30 years old. Even those trains in top condition are slowed by other failing infrastructure, such as America’s crumbling bridges.

But investment, the opposite of privatization, might actually be the better option. America’s construction sector has been flat lining as the rest of the economy recovers, and a long term project to upgrade the rails would likely bring job growth to that sector:

The American Society of Civil Engineers estimates that “more than $200 billion is needed through 2035 to accommodate anticipated growth” of railroad use.

It’s proven that such investment creates jobs. The Economic Policy Institute studied a single project in Los Angeles and found that, simply on the issue of investment in new trains, “a $1.1 billion purchase of transit railcars from U.S. producers could generate as many as 8,200 jobs.”

After facing months of criticism about whether he could successfully provide a 20 percent, across-the-board tax cut to all Americans while not adding to the debt, not giving the rich a tax cut, and not raising taxes on the middle class, Mitt Romney has finally admitted that he would need “flexibility” to make his plan work.

“There’s no question if you start off with that as the premise, the math fits the premise,” Romney told the Des Moines Register editorial board Tuesday. “Meaning, I don’t start off with the math and then say, ‘Oh, does this actually help or hurt?’ No, no. I start off with a very fundamental principle, which is we want to reduce the burden on middle-income taxpayers, and we’re not going to provide a tax break to high-income taxpayers. That’s the foundation. And then there’s flexibility as to how to do that.”

Romney has proposed various tax plans and outlined numerous principles his plan should uphold once it is in place, so ThinkProgress decided to put together a timeline of Romney’s tax proposals to see just how flexible he has been:

9/6/11: Romney’s First Tax Cut For The Rich

Promising not to cut taxes for the rich, Romney proposes a plan that would extend the Bush tax cuts, eliminate capital gains taxes for those making under $200,000, cut corporate taxes, and eliminate the estate tax. In all, it adds up to a $6.6-trillion cut that would have little benefit for the middle class, which doesn’t enjoy the same benefits from a capital gains cut as the rich.

2/22/12: Romney Introduces A New Tax Plan

Under pressure from conservatives, Romney scraps his first plan in favor of the current plan, which maintains the Bush tax cuts, provides another 20-percent rate reduction for all Americans, cuts corporate taxes, and eliminates the estate tax. Romney says he will eliminate unspecified tax loopholes and deductions to pay for the plan. Romney promises he won’t cut taxes for the rich. He also promises his plan won’t add to the deficit.

2/22/12: Romney Promises To Cut Taxes For The 1 Percent

After criticism from fellow Republican presidential candidates, Romney asserts at a primary debate that “we’re going to cut taxes on everyone across the country by 20 percent, including the top 1 percent,” contradicting his previous assertion that he wouldn’t cut taxes for the rich.

3/1/12: Tax Plan Will Lead To $4.8 Trillion In Lost Revenue

The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center scores Romney’s plan, finding that it would cost $4.8 trillion over the next 10 years. TPC does not take into account Romney’s plan to pay for his tax cuts, since he hasn’t yet proposed a specific way to do so. TPC found that Romney’s plan would give the average millionaire nearly $260,000 in tax cuts.

Read more

A new study from economists Arnoud Boot at the University of Amsterdam and Lev Ratnovski at the International Monetary Fund shows that banks trade too much, so new regulation is necessary to keep the world’s biggest banks from posing a risk to the entire global economy.

Boot and Ratnovski’s study found that excess capital generated from traditional banking activities allows banks to gamble on risky trading, and since the biggest banks have more capital, they gamble even more. This causes a diversion of capital toward trading that adds instability to financial markets.

And because banks will always engage in such trading, the best way to prevent it is through regulation like the Volcker Rule, a provision in the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act that would prevent banks from making risky trades with taxpayer backed dollars:

Our results highlight the dynamic problems in universal banking and sheds light on the desirability of restricting bank activities of the type that were recently proposed by the Volcker rule in the U.S. and the Vickers report in the UK.

Originally one of the strongest provisions contained in Dodd-Frank, the Volcker Rule was watered down by Republican senators and bank lobbyists so much its namesake Paul Volcker is no longer satisfied with it. But recent trading losses like the one sustained in JP Morgan Chase’s “London Whale” trade have caused the rule’s authors to urge regulators to strengthen it before it is fully implemented.

According to Boot and Ratnovski, banks that are allowed to engage in risky trading will always do so because it allows them to gain larger profits. Because of this, the supermarket banking model — in which banks both lend and act as investing houses — “is no longer sustainable.” That’s a view shared by many former bankers, including former Citigroup CEO Sandy Weill, who helped pioneer the expansion of banking institutions into trading and other services.

Ann Romney, a breast cancer survivor, will visit the Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, Florida on Wednesday — which has received millions from the stimulus (American Recovery and Reinvestment Act). Her husband and his running mate Paul Ryan both opposed the measure, which President Obama signed into law in February of 2009.

Ann will tour the location and “meet with patients and members of their families.”

The Moffit H. Lee Cancer & Research Institute is Florida’s only Comprehensive Cancer Center that conducts “extensive research on cancer as well as providing advanced forms of treatment.” It benefits from “significant federal research funding,” including $23,920,428 from the stimulus:

Romney and Ryan have criticized the president’s stimulus and its results. Romney has said the president’s vision has failed and released a statement saying “the only thing President Obama’s stimulus has produced is a series of broken promises” on the three-year anniversary of the stimulus. These comments haven’t stopped the candidates from campaigning at sites that have benefited from the funding, however.

Romney appeared at Watson Truck & Supply in Hobbs, New Mexico, which benefitted from $400,744 in stimulus funds, fundraised at the home of a recipient of stimulus funds, and bashed the stimulus at a small Ohio college that took $80,000 in Recovery Act money.