A group of state attorneys general have been working on a settlement with the nation’s biggest banks, under which the banks would devote a certain amount of money to foreclosure relief, in exchange for avoiding litigation over their myriad abuses that arose during the foreclosure fraud scandal (including the use of “robo-signers.”)

However, the settlement is on shaky ground after federal regulators broke with the AG’s and cut their own (weak) deal with the banks, and several Republican AG’s publicly questioned whether the banks should have to engage in any foreclosure prevention efforts at all, despite their mortgage servicing abuses.

Previously, the Republican attorneys general of Virginia, Texas, Florida, South Carolina, Oklahoma, Nebraska, and Alabama sided with the banks, with radical Republican Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli (VA) deriding foreclosure prevention as “welfare.” Now, an eighth Republican AG, Georgia’s Sam Olens, has also taken the banks’ position:

Georgia Attorney General Sam Olens said he has “significant concerns” about a proposal to reduce loan balances for some homeowners as part of a settlement of a nationwide foreclosure probe, joining at least seven other states that have criticized such a plan…“You’re declaring in advance who the winners and losers are,” Olens said. “I’m a little concerned that this process disengages the normal market forces.”

In reality, the proposed settlement lets the banks off too easy, as the loan reduction amount that has been floated (about $20 billion) wouldn’t be enough to seriously alleviate pain in the housing market. And any settlement that doesn’t involve banks reducing loans amounts to letting the banks off the hook for their prior abuses and counting on vague promises that they’ll avoid such abuse in the future.

A recent report from the International Monetary Fund showed that the effect of more aggressive loan reductions on bank balance sheets “is likely to be limited,” and several of the banks involved in the settlement discussions are back to making sky-high profits. But instead of pushing for help for homeowners, Republican AG’s are siding with the banks, advocating that they receive a slap on the wrist for their flagrant violations of the mortgage servicing process.

One year ago, Bloomberg News reported that Wachovia Corp. — one of the biggest banks in the U.S. — “had made a habit of helping move money for Mexican drug smugglers.” Wells Fargo & Co., which acquired Wachovia a couple of years ago, admitted in 2010 that it “failed to monitor and report suspected money laundering by narcotics traffickers — including the cash used to buy four planes that shipped a total of 22 tons of cocaine.” The case was later settled for about $110 million and Wachovia paid another $50 million in fines for failing to properly monitor the transfer of $378.4 billion from currency exchange houses in Mexico. The charges were dismissed.

It turns out, Wachovia had been receiving warnings for years from a senior anti-money laundering officer in its own London office, Martin Woods. Yet, Woods’ words of caution weren’t only met with indifference. Wachovia reportedly retaliated against Woods and essentially drove him out of his job. The Observer recently reported:

Rather than launch an internal investigation into Woods’s alerts over Mexico, Woods claims Wachovia hung its own money-laundering expert out to dry. [...] On 16 June Woods was told by Wachovia’s head of compliance that his latest SAR [suspicious activity report] need not have been filed, that he had no legal requirement to investigate an overseas case and no right of access to documents held overseas from Britain, even if they were held by Wachovia. [...]

“Wachovia had my résumé, they knew who I was,” says Woods. “But they did not want to know – their attitude was, ‘Why are you doing this?’ They should have been on my side, because they were compliance people, not commercial people. But really they were commercial people all along. We’re talking about hundreds of millions of dollars. This is the biggest money-laundering scandal of our time.

At some point, Woods received a letter from the bank’s compliance managing director which accused him of failing “to perform at an acceptable standard.” In 2008, Woods sued Wachovia for bullying and detrimental treatment of a whistleblower. Wachovia settled that case too and agreed to pay an undisclosed amount under the condition that Woods leave the bank.

To this day, not a single bank has been indicted for violating the anti-money-laundering Bank Secrecy Act. Meanwhile, foreign government agencies in the United Kingdom, Mexico, and Colombia, along with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime have all reportedly documented money laundering by the banking industry. According to Al Día, financial institutions such as Bank of America, American Express, Western Union, the Mexican offices of Citigroup, the European HSBC and Banco Santander have all “helped move money for Mexican cartels.”

Meanwhile, the drug war has claimed the lives of at least 35,000 people since 2006 in Mexico alone. Senior U.S. commanders told the Senate Armed Services Committee last week that Mexico and Central America make up one of the most dangerous regions in the world, rivaling the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. And as the U.S. continues to pour millions of dollars into fighting the drug war in Mexico, U.S. drug users contribute approximately $40 billion a year to Latin American cartels — money which apparently often ends up passing through U.S. banks.

Writing today in the Nation, Mark Ames and Mike Elk reveal that Koch Industries mailed a letters to 50,000 employees instructing them on who to vote for in the 2010 midterm elections. The Koch packet given to employees included candidate names, a letter from a Koch lobbyist, and a right-wing screed from the company and the Washington Examiner, an outlet owned by Phil Anschutz, a billionaire who is close to the Koch family. (View a copy of the packet here.)

Corporate coercion of employees is perhaps the most profound repercussion from the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision last year. The Nation spoke to several law experts who noted that “Citizens United frees Koch Industries and other corporations to propagandize their employees with their political preferences.” Before the decision, businesses were prohibited from instructing their employees to vote a certain way.

Not only was Koch active in helping push the Citizens United decision (several of the groups filing amicus briefs supporting unlimited corporate spending were funded by Koch), but Koch actively planned for exploiting the decision. When we exposed a memo outlining the 2010 secret Koch political strategy meeting with fellow right-wing donors, we noted that the summit included a presentation from Karl Crow. Crow is a Koch operative who had penned a memo calling for corporations to exploit Citizens United and aggressively use “employees, vendors, and customers” as tools for advancing business interests in the political sphere:

She predicts the Citizens United decision will correct the law’s imbalance and open the door for businesses to educate “their employees, vendors and customers about candidates and officeholders whose philosophies and voting records would destroy or permanently damage America’s free enterprise system.” For many nonprofits the Citizens United decision creates a host of new political opportunities in the 2010 elections and beyond. Under the ruling, trade associations like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, classified as a 501(c)(6) group by the IRS, and 501(c)(4) grassroots advocacy groups like Americans for Prosperity can now use general treasury funds to produce communications materials opposing or supporting specific candidates and legislation. In a memorandum Mitchell outlined the new communications possibilities for 501(c)(4)s and 501(c)(6)s. They include voter guides, candidate questionnaires, voting records and public advertising.

Currently, Crow is heading up a vast new Koch-funded project called “Themis” to mobilize voters for the 2012 election cycle.

ThinkProgress has covered this disturbing trend of corporate political coercion since 2009. While researching the health insurance industry’s efforts to kill health reform, we discovered that a consulting firm called Democracy, Data and Communications (DDC) that actually specializes in helping large corporations organize their employees into mini-lobbyists. DDC currently consults for Koch, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, several banks, the tobacco industry, and health insurance companies.

During his budget speech last week, President Obama revived his proposal to allow the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest two percent of Americans to expire, prompting a predictable backlash from Republican members of Congress. But some House Republicans, in an effort to justify extending tax cuts for the very wealthiest Americans, have resurrected a lie about the amount of taxes paid by the wealthy. These Republicans have been falsely claiming that the richest one percent of Americans pay 40 percent of all federal taxes:

REP. MICHELE BACHMANN (R-MN): Well, remember, again, already the top 1 percent of income earners pay about 40 percent of all taxes into the federal government.

REP. JAMES LANKFORD (R-OK): They are saying our budget is completely imbalanced because we don’t tax major corporations more and we don’t tax wealthy individuals more. I’m thinking the top 1 percent already pays 40 percent of the taxes in America.

While the richest one percent of Americans do pay about 40 percent of the total federal income taxes paid in the country, that’s a far cry from 40 percent of overall taxes. Even those working Americans who don’t make enough money to have federal income tax liability pay federal payroll and excise taxes, which fall much harder on the middle-class and low-income individuals than those at the upper end of the income scale.

Once all taxes are taken into account, according to the Congressional Budget Office, the richest one percent of Americans pay about 28 percent of total federal taxes, which is right in line with their 25 percent share of total income. And therein lies the real story: the richest one percent of Americans pay such a large share of federal income taxes because they make such a large share of the overall income:

Income inequality in the U.S. is currently the worst its been since the 1920s. Just the richest 400 Americans hold more wealth than the bottom 50 percent of Americans combined, and the richest 10 percent of Americans control two-thirds of the country’s net worth.

To House Republicans, though, this wealth concentration is a reason not to raise taxes on the very rich. A new Washington Post-ABC News poll out today shows that 72 percent of Americans support Obama’s proposal to raise taxes on the richest Americans to reduce the deficit, while large majorities oppose the GOP’s proposals to cut Medicare and Medicaid.

Republicans in both chambers of Congress have been laying out various demands that they want in return for raising the nation’s debt ceiling, even though failure to raise the debt ceiling would have widespread negative consequences for both the U.S. and the world economy (which many in the Republican leadership have admitted). Republicans have demanded everything from amorphous spending cuts and caps to corporate income tax cuts and reductions in Social Security.

2012 Republican presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich was on CNBC last night, laying out his own ideas for what the GOP should hold out for when it comes to the debt ceiling. He suggested that Republicans should not vote to raise the debt ceiling unless Medicaid is converted into a block grant system:

If I was looking at one big decision for the debt ceiling, I would put on there block granting Medicaid. If we sent Medicaid back to the states — its the second biggest health entitlement after Medicare — we clearly don’t know how to run it at a federal level, they’re averaging over ten percent of the money going to crooks in New York State under the federal-run Medicaid. If we would send it back to the fifty states, allow them to try to develop new and better approaches, that would be a large enough change that it would justify a vote for the debt ceiling. But I would not vote for the debt ceiling without a very very significant change in the trajectory of spending.

Watch it:

It’s worth noting that Gingrich seems to think that whatever is the hot Republican priority of the moment should be attached to the debt ceiling. Back in March, he said “Republicans should attach the full repeal of ObamaCare to the debt ceiling increase bill and pass it immediately.”

As my colleague Igor Volsky noted, turning Medicaid into a block grant system would basically destroy it. Under such a plan, states would be forced into “capping enrollment, cutting eligibility, limiting mandatory benefits and lowering provider reimbursements.” Currently, two-thirds of Medicaid’s costs go towards care for seniors and people with disabilities.

A new Washington Post-ABC News poll released this morning shows that 69 percent of Americans oppose cutting Medicaid to reduce the deficit. 52 percent of Americans strongly oppose such cuts. But Gingrich wants Republicans to threaten the credit-worthiness of the United States and the stability of the global economy in order to force these widely unpopular and destructive cuts through.

A Washington Post/ABC News poll released this morning finds that 44 percent, a plurality, of Americans think the economy is getting worse, rather than staying the same or getting better. With unemployment hovering around 9.6 percent while economic inequality is at levels not seen since the Depression, many Americans feel as if the economy is leaving them behind.

The Wall Street Journal reports today that Corporate America certainly isn’t doing its part to help bring America out of its economic malaise. The paper surveyed employment data by some of the nation’s largest corporations — General Electric, Caterpillar, Microsoft, Wal-Mart, Chevron, Cisco, Intel, Stanley Works, Merck, United Technologies, and Oracle — and found that they cut their workforces by 2.9 million people over the last decade while hiring 2.4 million people overseas.

The paper notes that this is actually a sharp reversal from trends in the late 1990s, when these major companies were creating more jobs in the United States than overseas. Yet by 2001, things took a turn for the worse, and these corporations have been adding more jobs abroad than at home, as is illustrated here:

As you can see from the chart, the economic recession has had little impact on Corporate America’s patriotism. In fact, in 2009, representatives of many of the nation’s most powerful corporations attended the “2009 Strategic Outsourcing Conference” to talk about how to send American jobs overseas. Conference organizers polled the more than 70 senior executives who attended the conference about the behavior of their companies in response to the recession. The majority said their companies increased outsourcing in response to the downturn, with only 9 percent saying they terminated some outsourcing agreements:

Another question asked of the executives found that the top reason for companies to outsource was to “reduce operating costs” (46 percent of respondents). Only 12 percent of respondents said their reason for outsourcing was “access to world class capabilities.” This means companies are outsourcing to save themselves money, not make better products.

Unfortunately, for some of these companies, sending American jobs overseas isn’t enough. They also want to bring the profits back into the United States with as little tax liability as possible. Cisco Systems, which had 26 percent of its workforce abroad at the start of the decade but 46 percent of its workforce abroad by the end, is currently involved in a lobbying campaign titled “Win America” calling for a tax repatriation holiday that would let big corporations “bring money they have stashed overseas back to the U.S. at a dramatically lower tax rate.” A similar tax break in 2004 actually increased the amount of money companies store overseas.

House Republicans led a long, factually-challenged, and ultimately unsuccessful attempt to prevent the Dodd-Frank financial reform law from being enacted. But now that they have a majority in the House, they have been attacking the law on a variety of fronts, evidently content to have the financial system governed by the same regulatory structure that failed to prevent the 2008 financial crisis (but allowed banks to reap huge profits at the expense of the middle-class).

The first way in which House Republicans tried to undermine Dodd-Frank came during the budget process, when they simply refused to give two of the important federal regulators — the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission — funding to implement the law. The continuing resolution for the remainder of 2011 that was passed last week alleviated some (but nowhere close to all) of that pressure, as it included modest increases in funding for those two agencies.

But the GOP has not given up on trying to undermine Dodd-Frank. Here are three more ways in which House Republicans are trying to weaken the landmark law:

– REPEALING RESOLUTION AUTHORITY: The 2012 Republican budget that was approved last week (with no Democratic votes) aims to repeal a provision in Dodd-Frank that allows the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. to unwind failing financial firms that, because they are so large and interconnected, can’t go through traditional bankruptcy. The FDIC recoups any costs incurred by selling off the assets of the company that was dissolved. The big bank lobbying groups — including the American Bankers Association and the Financial Services Roundtable — oppose resolution authority. Former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said he “would have loved to have” the resolution authority in Dodd-Frank.

– BLOCKING STRONGER REGULATIONS ON TOO-BIG-TO-FAIL BANKS: Dodd-Frank allows federal regulators to deem large, interconnected financial firms (banks or otherwise) as systemically significant and therefore subject to enhanced regulation (such as higher capital requirements). House Republicans want to remove this power, which, as CAP’s David Min pointed out, “would allow the largest U.S. financial institutions to essentially operate as they did before.”

– SLOW-WALKING DERIVATIVES REFORM: House Republicans introduced legislation that would push the implementation of new derivatives regulations back by 18 months “following financial-industry complaints.” These complex financial instruments were found by the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission to be “at the center of the storm” in 2008. The legislation is tentatively scheduled for markup next month.

Any of these steps, if implemented, would accomplish House Financial Services Chairman Spencer Bachus’ goal of having Washington “serve the banks.”

Today is Tax Day, the day when federal income tax returns are due. Federal income tax returns are projected to be about 6.2 percent of GDP, which would be the lowest total since 1950.

These low revenue numbers are in large part generated by the economic recession. Widespread joblessness depressed revenues and as the economy rebounds, revenues will start to inch back up. But low revenue is also a consequence of the conservative push to enact ever-lower tax rates on the rich and corporations, along with the growing use of tax havens and tax loopholes that the wealthy and multinational corporations use to minimize or eliminate tax liability altogether.

But tax dodging doesn’t only result in lower revenues: it inflicts a price on those Americans who don’t employ such strategies, through higher taxes now or in the future and through decreased government services. According to a new report by the California Public Interest Research Group (CALPIRG), a $100 billion burden is shifted onto taxpaying Americans by tax avoidance:

The United States loses approximately $100 billion in tax revenues every year due to corporations and individuals sending their money to offshore tax havens…In 2010, making up for this lost revenue cost the average U.S. tax filer $434. That’s enough money to feed a family of four for three weeks.

To get a sense of how widespread this problem is, consider that, according to the Office of Management and Budget, “corporate tax receipts will account for just 7.2% of federal revenues in 2010.” Fifty years ago corporate tax receipts were 23 percent of federal revenue. Several corporations pay literally nothing into the federal treasury. Others, such as Google, drive their effective tax rate all the way down into single digits through the use of tax havens. Wealthy individuals can employ similar tactics to minimize or eliminate their tax bill.

When faced with corporations paying little to nothing in taxes, several conservatives have said that such avoidance means that the corporate tax rate should be cut. Republicans have also proposed cutting the IRS budget, even though every dollar spent on tax enforcement yields $10 in revenue. Either of these policies would further exacerbate the already problematic trend that is pushing more of the responsibility for financing the government onto middle-class Americans.

Republicans have, for months, been laying out various demands that they want in exchange for voting to raise the nation’s debt ceiling, even though failure to do so would have widespread and disastrous consequences. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner estimates that the country will reach its legal borrowing limit around May 16.

Calling it a “leverage moment,” some of the demands Republicans have cited are a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution and various versions of spending caps or cuts. Today on ABC’s This Week, Rep. Allen West (R-FL) added one more demand to the list — cutting the corporate tax rate in half:

AMANPOUR: Congressman West, do you believe it when the Secretary of the Treasury, the Chairman of the Fed, say that the stakes [regarding the debt ceiling] are this high?

WEST: Well, one of the things, having served 22 years in the United States military, I don’t believe in leadership by fear and intimidation. I think that leaders have to come up with viable solutions. I agree with one of the things [Rep.] Joe Walsh just brought up, we need to have a balanced budget amendment…But I think also, now is a great time, when we can cut our corporate business tax rate in half. Bring it from 35 percent to 20 to 22 percent because there’s a lot of capital just sitting out there that we could use to invest in long-term sustainable job growth…This is not about a debt ceiling being raised, this really comes down to a debt suggestion.

Watch it:

At the moment, corporations are making record profits and sitting on nearly $2 trillion in cash reserves. At the same time, corporate tax revenues are at historical lows and many corporations — including GE and Boeing — pay no federal corporate income tax at all. According to the Office of Management and Budget, “corporate tax receipts will account for just 7.2% of federal revenues in 2010, with large corporations contributing less than one-sixth as much as small business and individual taxpayers to the Federal Treasury.” In comparison, fifty years ago corporate tax receipts were 23 percent of federal revenue.

But West would take the credit-worthiness of the entire country hostage to drive already low corporate tax revenue even lower, making the U.S. deficit worse, not better. Several key members of the House Republican leadership — including Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) — have already admitted that the debt ceiling needs to be raised, so, as Matt Yglesias put it, “when one side favors raising the debt ceiling and the other side also favors raising the debt ceiling, the most reasonable compromise is to raise the debt ceiling.”

Rising oil prices have pushed gas prices above $4 per gallon in many places, inflating prices on everything from food to airfare, imperiling the fragile economic recovery. Experts have been a bit befuddled by the steep rise in gas prices this early in the year, as global oil supplies have remained steady despite unrest in the Middle East.

Among other factors, experts are increasingly concerned about the prevalence of speculators in the global oil market which may be artificially inflating prices. Speculation on energy futures, including oil, is at an all-time high, jumping 64 percent since 2008. Everyone from Goldman Sachs to Republican lawmakers have acknowledged the role of speculation in artificially driving up prices. Energies futures markets used to be the domain of companies like airlines and shippers, which appropriately use trades to hedge against price volatility, but the markets are increasingly dominated by speculators who are only interested in making profits.

On Wednesday, ThinkProgress sat down with a handful of progressive House Democrats who also warned about the increasing prevalence of oil speculation and called for doing more to address it:

REP. PETE DEFAZIO (D-OR): A member of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission said…a significant portion of what we’re paying here is due the speculation, I’m going to ask him if I can publically release his letter. … And this is a member of the commission saying this has got to stop.

REP. BRAD MILLER (D-NC): There is also, obviously, a lot of manipulation. It’s a little hard to detect it. But there actually been articles in the last couple weeks talking about the Koch Brothers, in addition to all their other good works, have been involved in oil speculation over the years. So there is an an international market that is subject to manipulation.

REP. CHELLIE PINGREE (D-ME): I still feel like speculation drives up the prices. And I would he happy to see us do more about that.

Watch it:

The Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform law passed last year actually calls for regulators in the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) to crack down on speculation, but conservative commissioners have thus far blocked the implementation of the law. Meanwhile, Republicans in Congress have tried to defund and defang the CFTC, which would leave the markets at the mercy of speculators.

The House yesterday approved — by a vote of 235 to 193 — House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) radical budget. Most of the attention paid to Ryan’s budget has, deservedly, focused upon its proposals to dismantle Medicare and Medicaid, slash the social safety net, and raise middle taxes (while ignoring the bloated Department of Defense and cutting taxes for the rich).

But the plan also includes substantial cuts in important investments in education (cut by 53 percent), transportation infrastructure (cut by 37 percent) and scientific research (cut by 28 percent):

As CAP economist Adam Hersh and research associate Sarah Ayres wrote, “in total, the Ryan-Republican budget proposal would strip more than $1.4 trillion from public investments in education, infrastructure, and science and technology that create a foundation to support private investments…By disinvesting in the sources of productivity and competitiveness to pay for tax cuts for the rich, the Ryan-Republican budget plan puts little value on America’s economic future.”

Today, Ryan wrote in a Washington Post op-ed that the GOP’s budget has been crafted “to meet 21st-century needs.” Evidently Ryan and the House Republicans don’t believe that the 21st century will require adequately funded schools, roads, or scientific research.

The House today will vote on House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) 2012 budget, his radical plan to dismantle Medicare and Medicaid while providing a healthy tax cut for the rich and corporations. Ryan’s budget has received a fair amount of criticism — and is making some House Republicans queasy — so Ryan took to the Washington Post today to defend himself:

Our budget offers a compassionate and optimistic contrast to a future of health-care rationing and unbearably high taxes. We lift the crushing burden of debt, repair the safety net, make America’s tax system fair and competitive, and ensure that our health and retirement programs have a strong and lasting future.

This so-called “compassionate” plan would double health-care costs for seniors, endanger vital Medicaid services, and likely increase taxes on the middle-class to finance tax cuts for the rich. But it would also undermine another important part of the social safety net: the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (food stamps):

Converting SNAP to a block grant, as Chairman Ryan proposes to do beginning in 2015, would hurt the tens of millions of Americans who rely on the program. SNAP would largely lose the ability to respond to rising need, forcing states during economic downturns to cut benefits or create waiting lists for needy families.

Turning SNAP into a block grant to states would severely restrict the program during an economic downturn when it is most necessary. There was little increase in household hunger between 2008 and 2009 — despite the economy’s weakness — because of SNAP and the food safety net. Currently, three-quarters of SNAP benefits go to households with children and nearly one-third go to households with a senior citizen or person with a disability.

As the economy improves, SNAP spending will decrease back to its normal levels. And the SNAP program in its current form is hardly generous. The benefits breaks down to about $4.50 per person per day. Currently, one in seven residents of Ryan’s own district did not have enough money to provide adequate food at some point in 2010.

SNAP is an effective anti-poverty program that is most important when the economy takes a turn for the worse. The budget that the House will vote on today would kick the legs out from underneath the program, with no clear benefits.

The continuing resolution approving spending limits for the remainder of fiscal year 2011 passed the House today and is expected to pass the Senate, setting the stage for the next big budgetary task in Congress: raising the nation’s debt ceiling. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner said that U.S. will reach its legal borrowing limit around May 16th.

Several Republican members of Congress have taken the debt ceiling — and thus the credit worthiness of the United States — hostage for various demands. For instance, many Republicans say that they will refuse to raise the debt ceiling unless Congress approves a balanced budget amendment or agrees to cut Social Security benefits.

Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) said on Sunday that, “I will not support an increase in the debt ceiling without real and meaningful changes in spending in the short-term and in the long-term.” However, back in 2002 Pence felt very differently about the debt ceiling. During a speech on the House floor, Pence said that the debt ceiling needs to be increased because failure to do so could threaten Social Security benefits. “I truly believe if you owe debts, pay debts,” Pence said:

I rise today as a conservative Member of this institution, Mr. Speaker. I did not come here to increase the government’s debt. I came here believing, as so many people I represent believe, that if you owe debts, pay debts.

I spoke to an elderly woman on a radio program in Richmond, Indiana, today, in the heart of the heartland district that I represent. And Mr. Speaker, she said with fear in her voice that she was worried that a conservative like me would not support raising the debt ceiling and would put at risk her Social Security check. She assumed that my loathing of red ink would cause me to vote in such a way or fail to act in such a way that it would jeopardize her benefits and the benefits of people that she loves.

Well, I assured her then and I rise today to assure all those that are listening, Mr. Speaker, that I will not do that. I truly believe if you owe debts, pay debts.

Watch it:

Pence is far from the only Republican who once found raising the debt ceiling to be a noncontroversial task worthy of wide support, but now wants to extract concessions in return for doing it. Senate Republicans also raised the debt ceiling immediately after passing the 2003 Bush tax cut.

A cadre of state attorneys general — led by Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller (D) — have been negotiating a settlement with the nation’s biggest banks over the foreclosure fraud scandal that came to light several months ago. By settling, the banks would avoid litigating over widespread allegations of fraudulent documents and improper foreclosure procedures (including the infamous use of “robo-signers“).

While the attorneys general and the federal bank regulators — including the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) and the Federal Reserve — were seemingly united in these talks at the beginning, the regulators broke off and have come to their own settlement with the banks. And as CAP Housing Policy Adviser Alon Cohen notes, the regulators’ settlement is a weak one:

There is no mention of penalties, and the servicers’ repeated focus on “processes” is replaced by the terms “policies and procedures” and “internal controls,” nearly all of which presumably should already be in place. While the AG settlement required oversight by a third party monitor appointed by the AGs and the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the federal regulators permit the servicer to hire its own monitor with regulator approval…To believe that the terms of the federal consent orders will change how servicers operate would mean placing our faith in the same regulators who have monitored and been on site at banks throughout this crisis.

As The Atlantic’s Daniel Indiviglio put it, the regulators made an “attempt to ensure that foreclosures are processed accurately and fairly in the future, but they fail to penalize banks and servicers for any wrongdoing that may have occurred in the past.” The regulators said that they will come back later to assess monetary fines.

This isn’t necessarily the end of the process, as the AG’s insist they are still moving forward, but there’s a chance that any real reform in foreclosure practices that the AG’s get into an agreement could be pre-empted by the deal struck by federal regulators. Several Republican attorneys general have also broken away from the settlement talks, saying that banks shouldn’t have to pay for their role in the foreclosure crisis.

The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations released a scathing 650-page report yesterday detailing some glaring examples of Wall Street’s malfeasance leading up to the 2008 financial crisis. Two of the highest-profile culprits in the report are Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank, as emails from both institutions reveal that they were selling securities that they knew were toxic and then shorting those same securities to turn a profit.

For instance, one Deutcshe Bank trader, Greg Lippman, described the assets his bank was peddling as “crap” and “an absolute pig”:

– Email regarding GSAMP 06-NC2 M8, an RMBS security that contained New Century loans and was issued by Goldman Sachs: “[T]his is an absolute pig.” (12/8/2006)

– Email describing ABSHE 2006-HE1 M7, a subprime RMBS security issued by Asset Backed Securities Corporation Home Equity Loan Trust, as a “crap deal”; and describing ACE 2006 HE2 M7, a subprime RMBS securitization issued by ACE Securities Corp., as: “[D]eal is a pig!” (3/1/2007)

Goldman Sachs did the same thing (in less colorful language), going so far as to tell investors that it’s interests “were aligned” with their own, even as it was spending billions betting against the very securities that it was selling. In all, Goldman “generated net revenues of $3.7 billion” betting against securities.

Aspects of the Dodd-Frank financial reform law were “designed to address and reduce these conflicts.” The most important of these provisions is known as the Volcker Rule, which would limit the ability of large investment banks like Goldman Sachs to trade for their own account, outside of doing business for their customers. But these very provisions are under attack by Republicans in Congress.

In a hearing today, House Republicans are expected to push the Financial Stability Oversight Council — the new body tasked with monitoring systemic risk in the financial system — to water down the Volcker Rule. Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) said earlier this week that he is concerned that trading restrictions, including the Volcker rule, will simply be “unduly burdensome regulations.” Over at ThinkProgress, Ian Millhiser goes over the potentially criminal aspects of Goldman’s actions.

Yesterday, a Senate subcommittee investigating Wall Street’s role in the recent financial collapse released a massive, 639-page report documenting the role mortgage lenders, investment bankers, and insufficient regulatory checks on Wall Street played in creating America’s worst economic disaster since the Great Depression. But this congressional investigation could lead to much more public scrutiny into one of Wall Street’s biggest players. In a statement announcing the report’s findings, subcommittee chair Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) suggested that Goldman Sachs could face criminal charges:

Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) said on Wednesday that he plans to refer Goldman officials, and potentially officials from other organizations, to the Justice Department for possible prosecution and to the Securities and Exchange Commission for possible civil proceedings.

“In my judgment, Goldman clearly misled their clients and they misled the Congress,” said Levin, the chairman of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. [...]

Levin said prosecutors should look at not only Goldman’s statements to the public about its investment products, but also the statements officials made to Congress. Goldman officials, including chief executive Lloyd Blankfein, gave testimony that was “inaccurate,” Levin said. It is a crime under federal law to make a false statement to Congress or to obstruct congressional proceedings.

Levin’s investigation drew headlines after he grilled a top Goldman executive for continuing to push investors to purchase an investment that Goldman described as a “shitty deal” in its internal emails. As the Levin report explains, Goldman’s management “sent out numerous sales directives or ‘axes’ to the Goldman sales force, stressing that [selling the shitty deal] was a priority for the firm.”

This deal was just one example of Goldman “profit[ing] from the failure of many of the…securities it had underwritten and sold.” As the report explains, Goldman frequently touted securities that it expected to fail to outside investors, and then bet against those securities by taking a “short position” on them. In total, Goldman “generated net revenues of $3.7 billion” by betting against securities, while their alleged victims were left with an investment that was worth only a fraction of what they paid for it.

Shortly after helping to elect Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI), Koch Industries opened a new lobbying office in Madison near the state capitol. However, little has been disclosed about the Koch lobbying agenda in Madison. The New York Times reported that Koch political operatives privately pressured Walker to crush public employee unions. But Walker’s major payback to Koch relates to environmental deregulation.

ThinkProgress has learned that the Walker administration, along with state Supreme Court judge David Prosser, has quietly worked to allow Koch’s many Georgia Pacific paper plants to pollute Wisconsin by pouring thousands of pounds of phosphorus into the water.

Koch’s Georgia Pacific plants are well known for releasing large amounts of phosphorus into Wisconsin’s waterways. A report by the state government showed that Georgia Pacific is responsible for about 9% of total phosphorus pollution in the Lower Fox River near Green Bay.

In 2005, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources’ (DNR) issued a permit to Koch’s Georgia Pacific company to nearly double its phosphorus pollution in the Fox River. A group of Wisconsin citizens challenged the permit the following year, claiming the DNR’s permit violated the Clean Water Act. In 2010, the Wisconsin Third District Court of Appeals ruled that the public has a right to challenge the permit, and that the DNR did not appropriately hold public hearings. Around the same time, the Wisconsin Natural Resources Board adopted “sweeping regulations” to control phosphorus pollution to slow down “runaway algae growth.”

To fight the challenge to the permit, as well as new regulations on phosphorus, Koch’s close allies in the Walker administration and the Wisconsin Supreme Court went into action:

– Rewriting Environmental Regulations For Koch: Last year, the Wisconsin Natural Resources Board called for strict numeric limits on phosphorus pollution. The regulations, which were supposed to be implemented in January, were delayed by Walker’s administration. Hidden inside his infamous budget bill passed in March, Walker then inserted a provision to revise and reduce the phosphorus limits proposed by the Natural Resources Board. Walker’s budget bill was rushed through the legislative process without public hearings.

– Ruling In Favor Of Koch And Other Polluters: In March, the Wisconsin Supreme Court, with Justice David Prosser voting with the majority, overturned the lower court decision allowing a public challenge to the permit giving Koch’s Georgia Pacific plants more leeway in dumping phosphorus into waterways.

– Delaying Environmental Regulations For Koch: Earlier this month, the Walker administration announced a two year delay of all phosphorus regulations passed last year. Not only has Walker’s administration called for reduced phosphorus dumping rules, they now have made it clear that no rules will be implemented until 2013.

During this three month period of Koch-enriching policy and legal action, the Koch political largesse has flowed to both Walker and Prosser. The Koch political machine spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in ads supporting Walker during the budget showdown, organized pro-Walker Tea Party rallies, and mobilized a pro-Walker bus tour. During his recent reelection campaign, Prosser too was boosted by two Koch-linked groups, Citizens for a Strong America and Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, which ran about $1 million in advertising. A top Georgia Pacific executive overseeing plants responsible for dumping phosphorus in the Fox River sits on the board of the pro-Posser group, Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce.

Today, President Obama delivered a budget address during which he introduced his vision for getting the nation’s budget back into balance, while also, importantly, noting the reasons for the nation’s precarious long-term fiscal position. “After Democrats and Republicans committed to fiscal discipline during the 1990s, we lost our way in the decade that followed. We increased spending dramatically for two wars and an expensive prescription drug program — but we didn’t pay for any of this new spending. Instead, we made the problem worse with trillions of dollars in unpaid-for tax cuts,” Obama said.

Indeed, the nation’s $14 trillion debt is largely a result of “the cost of two wars, a runaway defense budget, the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, taxes on the richest Americans being the lowest in a generation, and a recession caused by the lack of regulation of Wall Street.” The Bush administration followed wars with huge regressive tax cuts and an unpaid for prescription drug benefit.

But in his first major address to Congress, President George W. Bush promised that his “responsible” budget would pay off the national debt in ten years:

My budget has funded a responsible increase in our ongoing operations. It has funded our Nation’s important priorities. It has protected Social Security and Medicare. And our surpluses are big enough that there is still money left over.

Many of you have talked about the need to pay down our national debt. I listened, and I agree. We owe it to our children and our grandchildren to act now, and I hope you will join me to pay down $2 trillion in debt during the next 10 years. At the end of those 10 years, we will have paid down all the debt that is available to retire. That is more debt repaid more quickly than has ever been repaid by any nation at any time in history.

Of course, the opposite occurred, with debt held by the public increasing from $3.5 trillion to nearly $6 trillion and gross federal debt going from $5.6 trillion to nearly $10 trillion. In fact, conservatives argued in 2001 that the very existence of a budget surplus was a valid reason to enact large, regressive tax cuts. But this is precisely what happens when you have an administration that believes “deficits don’t matter.”

Our guest blogger is Desmond Brown, a consultant for the Half in Ten campaign at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Last week, House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) released his fiscal 2012 budget. While Ryan couches his proposal in nice language, his plan would erode the health care safety net for seniors and low-income Americans, eliminate employment and training programs for millions of workers, shrink access to higher education for low-income students, and enforce harsh restrictions on nutrition assistance for families struggling to find employment during this fragile economic recovery.

His plan would do more to push fragile families into poverty than promote the type of prosperity that it rhetorically claims. The Wonk Room has assembled this chart showing where Ryan’s rhetoric doesn’t match his budget’s reality:

Ryan’s Rhetoric	Reality
“Protecting Assistance for Those in Need”	The plan block grants and places time limits on the nation’s most effective nutrition safety net, SNAP, which was extremely effective in meeting the nutrition needs of families hard hit by unemployment during the recent recession. $127 billion in SNAP funding would be cut over ten years.
“Preparing the Workforce for a 21st Century Economy”	The plan proposes cuts to Pell grants, even though they are one of the most effective programs to help low-income students gain a foothold on the middle class through higher education. The plan would “consolidate” job-training programs, code for cutting job training opportunities, as was illustrated in House Republicans’ fiscal 2011 proposal to eliminate funding for Workforce Investment Act (WIA) services for program year 2011.
“Repairing a Broken Medicaid System”	The plan block grants the program, which will result in reduced services for the most vulnerable families as capped federal resources would not respond to meet growing health care demands in states during economic downturns.
“Saving Medicare”	The plan creates a new voucher system that will dramatically increase the cost of health care services for seniors.
“State Flexibility to Develop Programs”	The plan would simply shift more federal responsibility to economically challenged states. For states with high rates of poverty and deficits, this plan would limit their ability to leverage federal resources to provide necessary services to assist people in need.

Ryan’s plan will not lead to prosperity. The plan would further expand the gap between wealthy Americans and those trying to get a foothold on the middle class. At a time when our country should be focusing on investments for jobs in new innovative industries, strengthening our health care system, and rebuilding our infrastructure, the plan attacks all of these progressive strategies by scaling back access to higher education, workforce training, and demolishing the nation’s health care safety net.

As ThinkProgress has been reporting, while Main Street Americans are having their services gutted and public investment is being slashed, some of the country’s most profitable corporations are getting away with paying little to nothing in taxes.

A new report by Public Campaign examines how these major corporations have influenced Congress to craft a tax code that lets them get away with making so much money and paying so little taxes in return. In its report, “The Artful Dodgers,” Public Campaign juxtaposes the limited tax liability of dozen major corporations with the companies’ campaign contributions and lobbying expenditures, which amount to more than a billion dollars over the last decade:

EXXON MOBIL: The oil giant that was the world’s most profitable corporation in 2008 has spent $5.7 million in campaign contributions over the last ten years and $138 million in lobbying expenditures. Its federal corporate income tax liabilities for 2009? Absolutely nothing. Not only did it pay nothing, but it also received a tax rebate the same year of $156 million.

CHEVRON: Chevron spent $4.4 million in campaign contributions and $91 million in lobbying expenditures over the last decade. It received a tax refund of $19 million in 2009 while making $10 billion in profits and $324 million in government contracts in 2008.

CONOCOPHILLIPS: The Texas-based gasoline giant spent $2.5 million in campaign contributions and $63 million in lobbying expenditures over the last decade. It received “$451 million through the oil and gas manufacturing deduction,” a special tax break, between 2007 and 2009, despite $16 billion in profits over the same period of time.

VALERO ENERGY: Valero spent $4.1 million in campaign contributions and $4.8 million in lobbying expenditures from 2001 to 2010. It received a $157 million tax rebate in 2009 despite $68 billion in sales during the same year. It received “$134 million through the oil and gas manufacturing deduction” over the last three years.

BANK OF AMERICA: Bank of America employees contributed $11 million to federal political campaigns from 2001 to 2010 and spent $24 million lobbying over the same period of time. It made $4.4 billion in profits in 2010 while receiving a tax refund of $1.9 billion.

CITIGROUP: Citigroup employees contributed $15 million to federal political campaigns from 2001 to 2010 and spent $62 million lobbying over the same period of time. It made $4 billion in profits in 2010 while paying absolutely nothing in federal corporate income taxes. It also received a $1.9 billion tax refund.

GOLDMAN SACHS: The mega-bank Goldman Sachs, which is often called “Government Sachs” in insider circles because of its clout over Washington, spent $22 million in campaign contributions and $21 million in lobbying over the last decade. It paid an ultra-low tax rate of 1.1 percent in 2008, while also receiving $800 billion in governmentloans to help weather the financial crisis.

BOEING: The aviation and defense contractor giant gave $10 million in contributions and $115 million in lobbying expenditures over the last decade. It paid a grand total of nothing in federal corporate income taxes in 2010 and received a $124 million tax refund.

FEDEX: FedEx spent $8.7 million in campaign contributions and $71 million in lobbying expenditures from 2001 to 2010. It paid a .0005 percent effective tax rate recently, actually spending 42 times as much on lobbying Congress as it did paying taxes. To do this it utilizes 21 tax havens.

CARNIVAL: The cruise line paid $1.7 million in campaign contributions and $1.6 million in lobbying over the past ten years. Despite the relatively low amount of money it spent influencing Washington, it has gotten away with a super-low tax rate. Over the past five years, its federal corporate income tax rate has been an effective 1.1 percent.

VERIZON: Verizon spent $12 million in campaign contributions and $131 million in lobbying expenditures over the past decade. It paid absolutely nothing in federal corporate income taxes over the past two years and $488 million in government contracts in 2008; in 2010, it made $12 billion in profits.

GENERAL ELECTRIC: General Electric spent $13 million in campaign contributions and $205 million in lobbying expenditures over the last decade while netting a tax refund of $4.1 billion over the past five years. It made $26 billion in profits over the same time period.

The amount of money that taxpayers are losing from the tax dodging by these major corporations is enormous. For example, if five of the nation’s biggest banks paid their taxes at the full rate, we could re-hire every single one of the 132,000 teachers laid off during the recession — twice.