American corporations avoid millions of dollars in taxes each year by reporting that large shares of their income are earned in five popular tax havens, even though small segments of their workforce and investment take place in those countries, according to data from the Congressional Research Service.

The report analyzed five countries — Switzerland, Ireland, the Netherlands, Bermuda, and Luxembourg — that serve as popular tax havens, compared with five countries — Canada, Germany, the United Kingdom, Australia and Mexico — where American companies typically do large shares of their business. What it found, as Citizens for Tax Justice highlighted, is that even though large shares of their workforces and investment concentrated in the “traditional economies,” large shares of their profits were reported in the five tax havens:

In 2008, American multinational companies reported earning 43 percent of their $940 billion in overseas profits in the five little tax-haven countries, even though only four percent of their foreign workforce and seven percent of their foreign investments were in these countries.

In contrast, the five “traditional economies,” where American companies had 40 percent of their foreign workers and 34 percent of their foreign investments, accounted for only 14 percent of American multinationals’ reported overseas’ profits.

American companies have become experts at routing profits overseas, with companies like Apple and Microsoft avoiding billions of dollars in taxes each year. The problem has gotten particularly bad in the last decade, as this chart from the report shows:

At the same time, many business leaders are advocating for a particular corporate tax reform, known as the territorial tax system, that would make it even easier to route profits overseas and avoid American taxes.

A bipartisan duo of senators sent a letter to the Department of Justice today to press Attorney General Eric Holder on the lack of prosecutions for employees and executives of the nation’s largest banks in the wake of financial crisis. The letter from Sens. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) and Chuck Grassley (R-IA) questioned Holder about “whether the ‘too big to fail’ status of certain Wall Street megabanks undermines the ability of the federal government to prosecute wrongdoing and impose appropriate penalties.”

“Wall Street megabanks aren’t just too big to fail, they’re increasingly too big to jail,” Brown said in a release. “Already, the nation’s six largest megabanks enjoy what amounts to taxpayer-funded guarantee by virtue of their size, making it harder for regional and community banks to compete. Now, these megabanks may also enjoy some impunity when they violate the law by laundering money or illegally foreclosing on homeowners. Wall Street should pay the full price of its wrongdoing, not pass the costs along to taxpayers.”

“Unfortunately, we’ve seen little willingness to charge these individuals criminally,” Grassley added. “The public deserves an explanation of how the Justice Department arrives at these decisions.”

Last month, Grassley criticized the “get out of jail free card” that has been given to the nation’s largest financial institutions, which have largely avoided serious prosecution since the financial crisis. Prosecutions for financial fraud hit a 20-year low in 2011. Many of the fines the banks have paid are tax-deductible, a problem Brown is currently seeking to remedy.

“Unfortunately, many of the settlements between large financial institutions and the federal government involve penalties that are disproportionately low, both in relation to the profits which resulted from those wrongful actions as well as in relation to the costs imposed upon consumers, investors, and the market,” Grassley and Brown wrote in the letter, adding that the perception that large banks are too big to face real prosecution “undermines the public’s confidence in our institutions and in the principal that the law is applied equally in all cases.”

Republicans like to portray President Obama as a big government spender, despite the fact that government spending under Obama has grown at its slowest pace since the Eisenhower administration. The GOP is also trying to pretend the spending cuts that Obama has signed into law over the last two years simply didn’t happen.

In fact, under its current trajectory, non-defense discretionary spending — everything from education to food safety to transportation to housing to veterans’ benefits — will hit historic lows in the next decade, as Center for American Progress Director of Tax and Budget Policy Michael Linden showed in these charts:

If the so-called “sequester” comes into force in March, which House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) says it will, domestic spending will fall even more. “Instead of totaling 3.2 percent of GDP in 2017, nondefense discretionary spending would total less than 3 percent of GDP and would be on its way down to 2.6 percent by 2022. This is less than two-thirds of what was previously its lowest level,” Linden wrote.

When the Senate passed the long-delayed $50.5 billion Hurricane Sandy relief package Monday, 36 Republicans voted against the bill. But of the 32 no-votes from Senators who are not brand-new members, at least 31 came from Republicans who had previously supported emergency aid efforts following disasters in their own states.

While opponents complained that the bill contained too much unrelated “pork,” each of the 30 of them who had been present earlier this month when the Senate passed the much-smaller $9 billion Sandy relief bill also voted no. All five top members of the Senate Republican leadership voted no on both.

Most incredible among the no voters were Senators Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) and Pat Toomey (R-PA). Those two had not just backed disaster aid in the past — they actually sought disaster aid for their own states for relief from Hurricane Sandy. And Sen. John Boozman (R-AR) endorsed disaster relief for snow storms damages in Arkansas just four days before casting his “nay” vote.

The “hypocritical” list includes:

1. Kelly Ayotte (R-NH): Requested disaster aid after Hurricane Sandy.
2. John Barrasso (R-WY), Republican Policy Committee Chair: Requested disaster aid after flooding.
3. Roy Blunt (R-MO), Republican Conference Vice Chair: Demanded the Senate be called back from recess to pass disaster aid during a drought and boasts: “When a disaster surpasses the ability of states and communities to rebuild, Senator Blunt believes the federal government should prioritize spending to help the people whose lives and livelihoods are impacted. During his time in the Senate, he has fought tirelessly to ensure that Missouri gets its fair share of those federal resources specifically dedicated to disaster recovery.”
4. John Boozman (R-AR): Requested disaster aid after snow storms in January 2013.
5. Richard Burr (R-NC): Requested disaster aid after severe storms.
6. Saxby Chambliss (R-GA): Requested disaster aid after flooding.
7. Dan Coats (R-IN): Requested disaster aid after tornadoes.
8. Tom Coburn (R-OK): Requested disaster aid after winter storms and for extreme drought.
9. Bob Corker (R-TN): Requested disaster aid after flooding and asked for supplemental emergency flood relief.
10. John Cornyn (R-TX), Republican Minority Whip: Demanded drought relief aid and requested disaster aid for wildfires.
11. Mike Crapo (R-ID): Boasted of obtaining a FEMA fire safety grant and pushed for a bill providing emergency drought relief.
12. Mike Enzi (R-WY): Requested disaster relief after flooding.
13. Lindsey Graham (R-SC): Requested disaster relief after freezing and boasted of obtaining emergency drought relief.
14. Chuck Grassley (R-IA): Requested disaster relief after severe hail storms.
15. Orrin Hatch (R-UT): Requested disaster relief after flooding.
16. James Inhofe (R-OK): Boasted of obtaining disaster relief after severe storms and drought.
17. Johnny Isakson (R-GA): Requested disaster aid after flooding.
18. Mike Johanns (R-NE): Requested disaster relief after flooding and blasted Democrats for “inaction on disaster relief” for drought and wildfires.
19. Ron Johnson (R-WI): Requested disaster relief after a blizzard.
20. Mark Kirk (R-IL): Appealed after FEMA denied assistance following severe storms and tornadoes.
21. Mike Lee (R-UT): After calling federal disaster relief unconstitutional, endorsed relief aid after flooding in Utah.
22. John McCain (R-AZ): Endorsed disaster relief after flooding.
23. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Republican Minority Leader: Requested disaster relief during a drought and after tornadoes.
24. Jerry Moran (R-KS): Requested disaster relief after tornadoes.
25. Rand Paul (R-KY): Requested disaster relief during a drought and after tornadoes.
26. Rob Portman (R-OH): Endorsed disaster relief during a drought and after storms.
27. Pat Roberts (R-KS): Boasted of obtaining disaster relief after drought and wildfires and criticized the Bush administration for inadequate emergency relief after a blizzard.
28. Marco Rubio (R-FL): Requested disaster relief after severe freezing.
29. Jeff Sessions (R-AL): Requested disaster relief after tornadoes and during a drought.
30. John Thune (R-SD), Republican Conference Chair: Requested disaster relief after flooding and snow storms.
31. Pat Toomey (R-PA): Requested disaster relief for Hurricane Sandy before it even hit landfall.

Not one of the opponents has co-sponsored Sen. Harry Reid’s (D-NV) “Extreme Weather Prevention and Resilience Act” which would encourage Congress to “prepare and protect communities from extreme weather, sea-level rise, drought, flooding, wildfire, and other changing conditions exacerbated by carbon pollution” and “reducing pollution, promoting the use of clean energy sources, and improving energy efficiency.”

ThinkProgrss previously reported that at least 37 House Republicans who opposed Sandy relief had also supported disaster aid for their home states.

According to a new report from the National Consumer Law Center, jobless Americans are being forced to pay millions of dollars in unnecessary fees to big banks in order to access their unemployment insurance benefits. Several states do not give beneficiaries the option of having their benefits deposited directly into their bank accounts, forcing them to instead use prepaid debt cards, which come along with a host of fees and surcharges.

As the Associated press noted, the nation’s biggest banks make a killing under this system:

Banks including JPMorgan Chase & Co., U.S. Bancorp and Bank of America Corp. seized on government payments as a business opportunity. They pitched card programs to states as a win-win: States would save millions in overhead costs because the cards would be issued for free. And people without bank accounts would avoid the big fees charged by storefront check cashers.

However, most of the people being hit with fees already have bank accounts. The bank-state partnerships effectively shifted the cost of distributing payments from governments to individuals. The money needed to cover those costs is deducted from people’s unemployment benefits in the form of fees.

Big banks have also racked up huge profits administering food stamp programs. As the NCLC noted, “Even well-designed prepaid cards impose costs on workers, though the price is likely lower than the cost of cashing paper checks. In California, which continues to have the best card in our survey, workers paid nearly $1.8 million in fees in the past year, not including ATM surcharges. Thus, offering workers the choice of direct deposit remains important even for prepaid cards with the fewest fees.”

Four years ago today, President Obama signed his first bill into law: the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, meant to address the pay gap between men and women. Ledbetter famously worked years without knowing that she was being paid less than her male co-workers for doing similar work. The Supreme Court threw out a case against her employer, saying that she had waited too long to challenge the pay disparity. The Ledbetter law is meant to ensure that women have ways to take action against pay discrimination.

But even with the passage of Ledbetter, the pay gap remains a stubbornly persistent problem. Here are some facts and figures to know:

– Women make just 77 cents for every $1 made by men. Over a woman’s career, that disparity leads to more than $430,000 in lost wages for an individual woman.

– The amount a woman loses to the pay gap could feed a family of four for 37 years. A woman could also use that money to buy seven degrees at a four-year public university or 14 new cars.

– The pay gap starts early. One year out of college, women make 82 cents for every dollar earned by their male peers for doing similar work.

– The wage gap grows over a woman’s career. For working women in their 20s, “the annual wage gap is $1,702. In the last five years before retirement, however, the annual wage gap jumps to $14,352.”

– A woman’s pay, on average, stops growing when she turns 39. For men, wage growth doesn’t stop until age 48.

– The pay gap plagues higher-paying jobs. Despite women earning more advanced degrees, the pay gap hasn’t closed for specialized professions. Female doctors earn $350,000 less than men over their careers. Female CEOs earn 69 cents for every dollar earned by their male counterparts, and female lawyers make tens of thousands of dollars less than their male peers.

President Obama mentioned the pay gap in his inauguration speech, saying, “Our journey is not complete until our wives, our mothers, and daughters can earn a living equal to their efforts.” Last week, Rep. Rose DeLauro (D-CT) and Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) reintroduced the Paycheck Fairness Act, which would close loopholes in the 1960s-era Equal Pay Act.