by Daniel J. Weiss

President Obama’s proposed 2013 budget invests in clean energy to help power the engine of economic growth. The budget would direct funds to efficiency and renewable electricity technologies to create jobs and boost domestic manufacturing, and would also make manufacturing more efficient. The cleaner energy that will result from these investments will reduce pollution and protect public health. In addition, the budget would make taxes fairer by eliminating $40 billion in unnecessary breaks for Big Oil companies, which made record profits in 2011.

This clean energy vision would benefit middle-class Americans and the rest of the 99 percent. It is a stark contrast to the “drill, baby, drill” policies promoted by the American Petroleum Institute and other Big Oil allies.

Here are 11 important clean energy provisions in the president’s proposed 2013 budget:

1. Extends the production tax credit for wind energy. Wind projects currently receive a tax credit of 2.2 cents per kilowatt hour of electricity. Thanks to this production tax credit, enough new wind energy was built in 2011 to power more than 2 million homes. The credit is set to expire, however, at the end of this year. Without an extension, 37,000 jobs could be lost. The budget would extend the production tax credit through 2013.

2. Extends the Treasury Cash Grant Program (Section 1603 of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act) to assist small renewable companies. This program provided grants in lieu of tax credits to small renewable companies that were unable to utilize the credits, but it expired at the end of 2011. Extending it for one year would create 37,000 jobs in the solar industry alone. The budget would extend the credit for one year and then convert the program into a refundable tax credit through 2016.

3. Increases R&D funding for advanced energy technologies. The Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, or ARPA-E, would receive $350 million for investments in potentially game-changing energy technologies. The Department of Energy reports that “11 projects that received $40 million from ARPA-E over the last two years have attracted more than $200 million in private capital following successful research breakthroughs.”

This funding would also boost domestic manufacturing, as investments in innovative R&D would lead to the development of clean-tech products that can be made in the United States.

4. Invests in clean domestic manufacturing. The Advanced Manufacturing Partnership helps domestic manufacturers become more competitive and create jobs by reducing energy use and saving money. The budget would provide $290 million for R&D for more efficient industrial processes and materials.

The budget would also provide $5 billion for the “48C” clean energy manufacturing tax credit for companies that manufacture clean-tech products, including energy efficiency equipment, renewable energy equipment, and “a wide range of clean energy products.” The original $2.3 billion program that was oversubscribed in 2009 leveraged $2 of private investment for $1 of tax credit, and created 58,000 jobs.

5. Invests in solar and wind energy. The Department of Energy budget provides $310 million for the SunShot Initiative, designed to make solar electricity cost-competitive with dirtier fossil fuel energy without subsidies by 2020. It also includes $95 million for wind energy, including offshore wind technologies.

The Department of the Interior budget expands the program to review and issue permits for renewable energy projects on public lands to meet the president’s goal of 11,000 gigawatts by the end of 2013. This is enough to power an estimated 2.5 million homes.

6. Invests in energy efficiency. Using less energy is an effective way to lower electricity bills and cut pollution. In addition to helping manufacturers save, the budget would also target buildings for energy savings. The Washington Post reports that the “proposed budget includes an 80 percent increase in money to promote energy efficiency in commercial buildings and industries.”

As part of this effort, the budget increases the DOE Building Technologies Program by 40 percent to “[s]upport accelerated research and development for innovative building efficiency technologies and the continued introduction of consensus-driven appliance efficiency standards.”

The budget also anticipates congressional enactment of the Home Star program to help owners retrofit their houses to become more energy efficient and lower their energy bills.

7. Increases funds for environmental enforcement. Environmental enforcement is a key element to ensure compliance with safeguards to reduce mercury, lead, smog, acid rain, and other toxic pollutants. But the fewer green cops on the beat, the less likely it is that some firms will comply with pollution reduction requirements.

The proposed 2013 Environmental Protection Agency budget includes increased funding for “[c]ore priorities, such as the agency’s operating budget which includes funds for the enforcement of environmental and public health protections.” States would receive 10 percent more funds for implementation and enforcement of federal environmental safeguards.

The Department of the Interior budget also includes $222 million for its new Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement. This includes 13 percent more money, and would pay for oil spill response planning and safety inspections, and enforcement and investigations to prevent another oil disaster like the BP Deepwater Horizon blowout.

8. Reduces global warming pollution and impacts. The administration plans to undertake a number of actions to “reduce GHG [greenhouse gases] before it is too late.” This includes implementing its second round of fuel economy and carbon dioxide pollution standards for cars and light trucks, which will reduce fuel use by 12 million barrels of oil and cut carbon dioxide pollution by 6 billion metric tons from cars built through 2025. In addition, the EPA plans to “continue to develop regulatory strategies to control GHG emissions from major stationary sources.”

The budget also includes a 6 percent increase in funds to build on our base of scientific knowledge about global warming and “accurately project climate change and its impacts.”

Finally, there is a modest increase in funds to help public lands managers measure climate change impacts and adopt appropriate management practices.

9. Invests in energy and money savings by the military. The Department of Defense “consumes almost three-fourths of all Federal energy resources.” The proposed budget would double spending on clean energy compared to 2012 by investing $1 billion in clean energy, including efficiency retrofits for buildings and meeting efficiency standards for new facilities.

The National Journal reports other investments include:

[Replacement of] traditional jet fuel with biofuels, supply troops on the front lines with solar-powered electronic equipment, build hybrid engine tanks and aircraft carriers, and increase renewable energy use on military bases.

Although some conservatives have attacked clean energy investments in the private sector, some leaders support these military clean energy investments. Rep. Jack Kingston (R-GA), a member of the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, noted “that it [clean energy investments] has grown as a culture and a practice and it’s a good thing.”

10. Maintains funding for international climate finance. The budget includes at least $833 million for international climate investments to support sustainable landscapes, clean energy, and adaptation to climate change in developing countries. The funds, consistent with last year’s spending, invest in programs at the State Department, the Treasury Department, and the U.S. Agency for International Development.

These investments demonstrate ongoing U.S. commitment to international climate involvement beyond the U.S. pledge for fast start financing for adaptation and mitigation in developing countries. The administration understands these additional investments are critical to curb dangerous climate pollution, enhance national security, create American jobs, and secure leadership abroad.

11. Cuts oil-and-gas tax breaks by $40 billion over a decade. The 2013 budget would make taxes fairer by eliminating $40 billion in tax breaks over 10 years for oil-and-gas companies. And about one-fourth of the savings would be invested in domestic manufacturing, which would create jobs. The five largest oil companies made a record $137 billion in profits in 2011, so they don’t need $4 billion in annual tax breaks. (see “President Obama’s Oil Change: Cut Tax Breaks, Invest in Jobs”)

Some of these proposals are familiar because the president proposed them in previous budgets. Although House Republican leaders have previously rejected them to benefit their Big Oil and coal allies, these proposals remain good ideas that would benefit the middle class and the entire 99 percent.

Unfortunately, public support for these proposals has not been enough to overcome special interest opposition, aiding the 1 percent who profit from the energy status quo—high oil and gasoline prices, toxic air pollution, and record profits for oil companies. President Obama’s budget, instead, would propel us along a clean energy path with more jobs, less pollution, and fairer taxes.

Daniel J. Weiss is a Senior Fellow and the Director of Climate Strategy at the Center for American Progress.

Thanks to Kiley Kroh, Associate Director for Ocean Communications; Richard Caperton, Director of Clean Energy Investment; and Rebecca Lefton, Policy Analyst, all at the Center for American Progress.

In Britain, a large package of budget cuts and austerity measures which rolled out in 2010 has not unleashed the proverbial job creators in the private market. Instead, the country is still shackled with an economic growth trend that’s even worse that what it suffered in the aftermath of the Great Depression.

In the Eurozone as a whole, the European Central Bank and other relevant authorities have so far insisted on massive austerity measures from struggling countries in exchange for fiscal aid. Here, too, the result has not been a revitalized economy but a continuance of dismal growth rates.

Here at home, the effect of 2009′s recovery package and the tax deal in December 2010 was more than offset by cuts in state budgets. By the end of 2009, the combined budgets of the federal and state governments had entered a period of fiscal contraction from which they have yet to emerge.

The portions of Obama’s economic policy which actually passed simply made the economic hole created by state-level cuts less deep. Which was a valuable and necessary function, but insufficient to actually boost the economy back to healthy growth. Contrary to Republicans’ claim that Obama’s first two years were a period of unbound Keynesian experimentation, austerity is the budgetary policy reality which has accompanied America’s stagnant economic growth.

This matters because, now that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are winding down, the Bush tax cuts and the lingering effects of the recession remain the two primary drivers of the U.S. federal deficit. While the Republicans insist on not only maintaining all the tax cuts, but blowing an even larger hole in our revenue with added tax relief for the wealthy, Obama has proposed raising new revenue by allowing the Bush cuts for the top income rates to expire and by eliminating other injustices in the code which go to the benefit of the wealthiest Americans.

Even more importantly, because our tax system pulls in a percentage of the country’s overall wealth production, tax revenues will continue to underperform as long as our GDP production remains below capacity. The perverse irony of austerity as an immediate response to economic recession is that it drives down demand and GDP, thus driving down revenues and deepening the deficit hole it seeks to mend. In the opposite direction, a sudden positive jump in GDP could bring our economy back into line with its pre-recession trend and bring tax revenues back up without any change in tax rates or policy at all. The policy history in Britain, Europe, and here in America since the end of 2008 shows the Republicans’ austerity fixation won’t deliver this reinvigoration. But a recommitment by the government to boost demand could do the trick.

Obama’s budget, while imperfect, aims for the proper balance and the proper order of repairs: Investment now in jobs, infrastructure, state aid, extensions for the payroll tax cut and unemployment insurance, and other immediate boosts to demand, followed by longer-term deficit cutting once the economy is again firing on all cylinders. If the GOP had not been using every political tool at their disposal to undermine this approach during the last four years, the president could probably have done considerably more.

President Obama submitted his budget for fiscal year 2013 to Congress this morning, with the explicit goal of “rebuild(ing) our economy and strengthen(ing) the middle class.” The $3.8 trillion budget includes $5 million to help individual states launch paid leave programs – similar to those in California and New Jersey – that allow workers to take paid time off from work to provide care to a new child or ailing family member.

While some have argued that government intervention into work-family policies will only increase the cost of employing women, and that the marketplace will respond by voluntarily providing policies in order to retain valuable employees, the evidence does not support these arguments. At present, there are huge gaps in access to maternity leave for working women. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, between 2006 and 2008 about two-thirds of mothers with a bachelor’s degree or higher received paid maternity leave, but only 18.5 percent of those with less than a high school degree did. New mothers who have access to paid maternity leave are more likely to return to their previous employer, and 97.6 percent of those who return to the same employer do so at their previous pay level or higher. When women have to change employers after giving birth, often times because they are forced to quit or are fired in the absence of paid maternity leave, more than 30 percent experience a drop in pay.

New research on California’s Family Disability Insurance program illustrates how offering paid leave to women after childbirth helps individual workers and the economy as a whole. California’s program was passed in 2002, and became available to workers in July of 2004. Paid leave is administered through the State Disability Insurance program, and is funded through payroll taxes on employees. Eligible workers in California who take leave receive 55 percent of their regular pay, up to a maximum of $928 per week, for up to 6 weeks to bond with a new child or to care for a seriously ill family member.

California’s program has increased both job retention and the number of hours worked by employed mothers. More than 95 percent of workers who took leave in 2009 and 2010 returned to work; 80 percent returned to the same employer. Workers who made $20 an hour, meanwhile, returned to the same employer 83 percent of the time. And according to researchers from the University of Virginia and Columbia University, paid leave increased hours worked by mothers six to nine percent.

Working mothers are often the ones keeping their families afloat. The typical working wife now brings home 42.2 percent of her family’s earnings, and while married families with a male breadwinner and a female homemaker haven’t seen incomes rise since the 1970s (when adjusted for inflation), families with a working wife have seen incomes grow by 30 percent. Families where wives work, work longer hours, and receive higher pay are thus more likely to maintain their position on the income ladder or move up.

If every woman in America had access to paid leave when she had a baby, estimates are that this would increase employment by approximately 40,000 new mothers each year. Imagine how many families that would help raise up into the middle class, or secure their foothold there. If we are serious about repairing the economy, we must remember that a rebuilding a strong middle class is not just about helping the unemployed find work, but also about helping workers keep the jobs they already have. Paid family leave is one policy that can help us meet those goals.

by Daniel J. Weiss

President Barack Obama’s proposed budget for fiscal year 2013 sets a responsible course for rebuilding the economy so that it works for everyone, not just the privileged few. Our middle class is the engine of economic growth, but is threatened by dwindling public investments, a tax system increasingly rigged to benefit the wealthy, a fraying safety net, and assaults on what should be the bedrock guarantees of Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.

The president’s budget protects those guarantees, boosts critical investments, and takes steps toward rebalancing the tax code so that all pay their fair share. And it does this in a fiscally responsible way, charting a path that nurtures the economic recovery while reducing the federal deficit, all without asking the middle class to shoulder a disproportionate share of the burden.

President Obama’s proposed fiscal year 2013 budget would make taxes fairer by, among other things, eliminating $40 billion in tax breaks over 10 years for oil and gas companies. About one-fourth of the savings would be invested in domestic manufacturing, which would create jobs.

Oil and gas companies are raking in record profits and clearly do not need these tax breaks. The big five oil companies—BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, and Shell—made a combined profit of $137 billion in 2011. This beats their previous 21st century record of $136 billion (2011$) in 2008, and ExxonMobil, Chevron, and ConocoPhillips were the first, fourth, and 15th most profitable companies on the Fortune 100 List in 2011.

Despite these humongous earnings, however, the American Petroleum Institute—Big Oil’s political arm—will likely trot out its tired excuses about why hugely profitable oil companies need $40 billion in tax breaks while middle-class Americans are paying higher gasoline prices.

Let’s review their arguments for keeping these unfair tax breaks:

• The companies can’t afford to lose these tax breaks? Please. The total revenue loss for the entire industry is about 1 percent over the next decade.
• Removing tax breaks will cost jobs? Nope. Despite more than $1 trillion in profits between 2001 and 2011, the big five oil companies have shed more than 11,000 U.S. jobs over the past few years, according to “Profits and Pink Slips: How Big Oil and Gas Companies Are Not Creating U.S. Jobs or Paying Their Fair Share” by the House Natural Resource Committee Democrats.
• Giving taxpayers’ money to oil companies will help increase oil production? Unlikely. The big five oil companies actually produced 4 percent less oil in 2011 compared to 2010 despite earning 75 percent more in profits. (Or 36 percent more compared to 2010 if BP is excluded due to its huge 2010 losses from the BP oil disaster.)
• Big Oil companies need as much revenue as possible for exploration? Wrong again. In 2011 the big five companies spent $38 billion—or 28 percent of their profits—buying back their own stock to enrich their top executives, board of directors, and biggest shareholders instead of using these revenues to produce oil and gas from thousands of undeveloped leases. The big five companies also had $58 billion in cash reserves at the end of 2011.
• Big Oil companies already pay their fair share of taxes? Not always. ExxonMobil said that it paid an effective federal tax rate of 18 percent in 2010. The average family’s effective federal rate is 21 percent.
• Huge Big Oil earnings provide big benefits to Americans whose retirement plans own oil stock? Quite an exaggeration. For instance, an American Petroleum Institute spokesman notes that the California government employees’ pension plan held more than 4 percent of its investments in oil stock. But removing $4 billion in annual tax breaks from companies that made $138 billion in 2011 would have such a tiny impact on middle-class retirees’ accounts that it would have almost no fiscal effect.

These tax break funds should be used to benefit middle-class Americans—our engine of economic growth—instead of just a handful of extremely wealthy oil companies. The administration would use about one-fourth of the $40 billion in savings to create jobs and build up domestic manufacturing companies with investments in energy efficiency and advanced manufacturing.

We face many economic challenges. The United States must make investments in industries that can rebuild the middle class, build companies that can compete with other nations, reduce pollution from oil and coal, and shrink a huge federal budget deficit. A relatively painless way to further these goals is to eliminate $40 billion of tax breaks for some of the richest companies in the land. As President Obama said today, “That’s not class warfare. That’s common sense.”

Daniel J. Weiss is a Senior Fellow and Director of Climate Strategy at the Center for American Progress. This piece was originally published at the Center for American Progress website.

Like any budget, Obama’s is complicated, containing investments and cuts to various programs. With that in mind, ThinkProgress compiled 10 facts about the Obama budget based on the White House fact sheet and other reports:

1. The budget includes $350 billion in short-term measures to encourage job growth, including $50 billion in immediate infrastructure investment, $30 billion to rebuild schools, and year-long extensions of the payroll tax holiday and unemployment insurance.

2. The implementation of the Buffett Rule and the repeal of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy helps reduce the deficit by $1.5 trillion over the next 10 years.

3. For every $1 in new revenue from those making more than $250,000 per year and from closing corporate loopholes, the budget has $2.50 in spending cuts including the deficit reduction enacted over the last year.

4. The total budget reduces the deficit by $4 trillion over the next decade.

5. Obama preserves the maximum Pell Grant award, a key difference from the GOP budget, and makes permanent then Americans Opportunity Tax Credit, which helps 9 million families afford the costs of college.

6. Unlike the last two GOP budgets, Obama’s budget protects Medicare and Medicaid from structural changes, and through small tweaks, saves $360 billion from those programs.

7. States will receive $30 billion in aid to prevent further layoffs of firefighters, teachers, and police officers, some of the hardest-hit workforces in the nation.

8. The budget eliminates 12 tax breaks to oil, gas, and coal companies, saving $41 billion over 10 years.

9. Obama preserves planned cuts to the Defense Department negotiated in the debt limit deal last August.

10. The budget maintains goals of putting one million electric vehicles on the road by 2015; doubling share of electricity from clean energy sources by 2035; and reducing buildings’ energy use by 20 percent by 2020.

As the Center for American Progress’ Michael Linden notes, Obama’s budget is far from perfect. It’s spending caps are too low, it’s defense cuts are too small, and it contains less new revenue than bipartisan plans like Simpson-Bowles and Rivlin-Domenici. But it prioritizes job creation and economic development and keeps America on the path to recovery, something Republican plans, unfortunately, fail to do.

Under Obama’s approach, for instance, higher-income seniors would pay more for doctors visits and prescription coverage beginning in 2017 and all new enrollees will pay a $25 deductible as part of their Part B premiums. But for the most part, the budget is similar to the administration’s September 2011 deficit reduction plan and recoups the greatest savings from drug rebates and modernizing provider payments to achieve greater efficiency. Here is a chart showing where all the savings come from:

Given that Ryan’s Medicare savings don’t kick in until 2022, it’s hard to make a direct comparison with Obama’s proposal. But suffice it to say, Ryan would cut about 1.4 trillion from Medicaid alone and another $30 billion in net Medicare savings using last year’s 10-year budget window.

– 4 percent increase to strengthen anti-discrimination enforcement: The Budget also proposes an increase for the Community Relations Service in the Department of Justice to fight hate crimes and provides a $14 million, or 4 percent, increase over the 2012 enacted level for the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission (EEOC), which is responsible for enforcing Federal laws that make it illegal to discriminate against a job applicant or an employee.

– Funding boost to combat hate crimes: In addition to the protections on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity under the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, the Budget also proposes an increase for the Community Relations Service to fight hate crime.

– $86 million to combat bullying: The Budget provides $86 million for grants to States and local educational agencies under the Department of Education’s Successful, Safe, and Healthy Students program to fund activities aimed at preventing and reducing substance use, violence, harassment or bullying, and promoting student mental, physical, and emotional health.

– Increases funding for HIV/AIDS research and prevention to $28.5 billion: The Budget prioritizes HIV/AIDS resources within high-burden communities and among high-risk groups, including gay and bisexual men, Black Americans, Latino Americans and substance users. Compared to 2012, the Budget increases domestic discretionary HIV/AIDS funding at HHS by $119 million and Veterans Affairs (VA) HIV/AIDS funding by $74 million. Overall, total U.S. Government-wide spending on HIV/AIDS increases from $27.7 billion in 2012 to approximately $28.5 billion in 2013.

– Expands the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program by $75 million: The Budget includes an increase of $75 million for care and treatment through the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program. The Budget includes $1 billion for AIDS drug assistance programs, an increase of $67 million above 2012 levels to expand access to life saving HIV-related medications for uninsured and underinsured people living with HIV/AIDS. Based on current projections, this increase in funding for ADAP, combined with sufficient state contributions, will eliminate ADAP waiting lists in 2013.

– $330 million for housing assistance for people with HIV/AIDS: The President’s Budget requests $330 million for HUD’s Housing Opportunities for Persons with AIDS (HOPWA) program, to address housing needs among people living with HIV/AIDS and their families.

– Support global AIDS prevention and treatment: The Budget fully funds the balance of the Administration’s historic three-year, $4 billion pledge to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria, in recognition of this multilateral partner’s key role in global health and its progress in instituting reform.

While Obama noted that the strategy calls for a “leaner” military, he, Panetta and Dempsey assured that the United States will still be able to confront multiple military challenges around the globe simultaneously. And presuming to be responding to right-wing critics that the U.S. is not spending enough on the military, the president noted that in ten years, the U.S. will still spend more than the next several countries combined:

OBAMA: Over the past 10 years since 9/11, our defense budget grew at an extraordinary pace. Over the next 10 years, the growth in the defense budget will slow but the fact of the matter is this, it will still grow because we have global responsibilities that demand our leadership. In fact the defense budget will still be larger than it was toward the end of the Bush administration. …

PANETTA: Make no mistake, we will have the capability to confront and defeat more than one adversary at a time. …

DEMPSEY: There has been much made and I’m sure there will be made about whether this strategy moves away from a force structure explicitly designed to fight and win two wars simultaneously. Fundamentally, our strategy has always been about our ability to respond to global contingencies where ever and whenever they occur. This won’t change. … We can and will always be able to do more than one thing at a time. More importantly, wherever we are confronted and in whatever sequence, we will win. … I’m pleased with the outcome. … and I’m hear today to assure you that it has real buy-in among our senior military and civilian leadership.

Watch clips of their comments:

While Dempsey noted that the new strategy won’t change the military’s ability to fight multiple wars at the same time, the National Security Network’s Heather Hurlburt writes that this so-called two war strategy “hasn’t been true, or truly doctrine, for a long time.”

“If it were a strategy, it doesn’t describe any strategy or capability we’ve had for decades,” says defense budget expert Winslow Wheeler. “People who declare coming off the two MRC [Major Regional Conflicts] ‘strategy’ as unraveling our defenses (eg. Dov Zakheim) are dilettantes.”

However, Gingrich claiming that he or his House Republican majority had much of anything to do with the ’90s budget surpluses is a stretch. During an interview on NBC’s Today Show, former President Bill Clinton agreed with that assessment, responding “not really” when asked if Gingrich deserves credit for balancing the budget:

Q: Do you believe that Gingrich deserved the credit that he’s taking for balancing the budget when you were president?

CLINTON: Not really…The vast lion’s share of balancing the budget was done by the budget in 1993 that he led the opposition to. And 90 percent of the budget was before the Balanced Budget Act [of 1997].

Watch it:

Legislation passed by Gingrich’s House Republicans actually made the budget picture worse in the ’90s, not better, by cutting taxes and thus revenue. It was the 1993 budget — which Republicans universally opposed — that led to the balanced budgets later on.

The senators claim that these reductions are simply “real, sustainable spending cuts.” However, as McClatchy reported, about 70 percent of the deficit reduction in DeMint’s plan is placed right onto the backs of low-income Americans:

A plan by Republican U.S. Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina to slash the federal budget deficit would hit the poorest Americans especially hard, directing 70 percent of its $4.2 trillion in spending cuts at safety-net programs intended to help tens of millions of low-income people.

The plan proposes $20 billion in cuts that would affect the affluent. It suggests almost $3 trillion in cuts that would affect low-income Americans, leading one liberal economist to call the plan “cruel.”

“It’s cruel,” said Andrew Fieldhouse of the Economic Policy Institute. “It’s inexcusable to cut supports that help those adversely affected by the economic downturn.” Alan Viard, who was on the White House Council of Economic Advisers under President George W. Bush, added that “this plan places a disproportionate burden on low-income groups.”

Even with tax revenue at a 60 year low, DeMint proposes no new revenue other than from one-time sale of government assets, which is obviously not a sustainable revenue source. Interestingly, he also does nothing on Medicare, even while walloping Medicaid and means testing Social Security.

This is hardly the first time that DeMint has been the right-wing id on economic policy, as he also put forth the Senate Republican stimulus plan, which consisted of nothing but huge tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy. He simply shows what the right-wing would do if it had absolute control of the budget: gut the social safety net while largely sparing the richest Americans any pain.

This is a point that Gingrich drills home in interviews all the time. “If you look at my record, the only Speaker in your lifetime to get to four balanced budgets,” he said during a Fox interview. Watch a compilation:

However, this talking point is much more fiction than fact. For starters, as USA Today noted, “Gingrich was in office for only two of those budget years (fiscal 1998 and 1999). But he continues to claim credit for two balanced budgets that were passed after he left office (fiscal 2000 and 2001).” Furthermore, as Citizens for Tax Justice’s Bob McIntyre wrote, it was actually the 1993 budget, which all Republicans opposed, that laid the groundwork for the balanced budgets that occurred under President Bill Clinton:

Gingrich’s argument comes down to this: In August 1997, Congress passed a bill called the “Balanced Budget Act,” which promised to balance the federal budget five years later, in fiscal 2002. Soon after the bill was signed, the budget was balanced. Therefore, the balanced budget act balanced the budget. But that’s demonstrably false.

In fact, the budget surpluses that we enjoyed from 1998 to 2001 had nothing to do with the balanced budget act. Instead, the surpluses stemmed from a dramatic surge in federal revenues, mainly personal income taxes. Here’s what really happened.

In 1993, Bill Clinton undid some of the Reagan tax cuts for the wealthy, in a bill that every Republican in Congress opposed…Clinton’s 1993 increase in tax rates on high earners applied to a new wave of taxable income from corporate executives cashing in their lucrative stock options (which are taxed as wages). In fiscal 2000, the surplus peaked at $237 billion, and it remained a robust $128 billion in fiscal 2001 (Clinton’s last budget year).

All of these surpluses would have occurred if the Balanced Budget Act had never been enacted.

Gingrich told anyone who would listen that Clinton’s 1993 tax increase would destroy the economy, but just the opposite happened.

Center for American Progress Director for Tax and Budget Policy Michael Linden has actually found that legislation passed by Gingrich’s House Republicans made the budget picture worse in the 90s, not better. “Gingrich and his Republican Congress had nothing at all to do with balancing the budget in 1998. In fact, the net effect of their efforts was to make the fiscal situation slightly worse,” Linden noted. But that hasn’t stopped Gingrich from trotting out the fact that budgets were balanced while he was Speaker in an attempt to bolster his fiscal bona fides.

The GOP is voting to make Paul Ryan's budget unconstitutional.

Here’s a simple question for the 235 House Republicans who voted for House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) budget, and who also plan on supporting an amendment to the U.S. constitution that would mandate balanced budgets when it comes up for a vote this week: Why did you support a budget plan that you also think should be considered unconstitutional?

This is a serious question. Last April, Republicans in the House of Representatives passed a budget that made a lot of dramatic changes. It slashed Medicaid, ended Medicare as we know it, gutted public investments in education, transportation and science research, cut huge holes in the safety net, and dramatically cut taxes for rich people, while raising them for everyone else. But there’s one thing it didn’t do. It did not balance the budget — not for nearly 30 years anyway.

And yet, those same House Republicans are now poised to vote for a constitutional amendment that would require the budget to be fully balanced as soon as 2018. If they get their way and the constitution is changed, the Ryan budget plan — the same one that they supported just months ago — would produce more than 20 years of budget deficits, each and every one in violation of the highest law in the land.

Of course, this push to change the constitution is just the latest twist on an old idea. Back in the 1990s, congressional Republicans also thought that the only way to get to a balanced budget was by constitutional fiat. That belief proved false, as Congress balanced the budget just fine by 1998 without having to change the constitution. But as with so many other right-wing economic ideas that should have perished long ago from exposure to facts, this one just won’t die.

A balanced budget amendment might sound good in a press release, but it’s not a serious budget proposal. You can’t fix the country’s fiscal problems by simply deeming them to be “unconstitutional.” You have to actually change the tax code so that it raises more revenue. You have to identify specific programs and services and benefits that will be cut to reduce spending. And you have to implement policies that will directly address underlying economic weaknesses like extremely high unemployment, a struggling middle class, and increasing income inequality. Passing a balanced budget amendment accomplishes precisely none of those goals (and, in fact, makes accomplishing them even harder).

But this week’s debate over a balanced budget amendment isn’t really about fiscal policy. It’s about scoring political points. Otherwise, how can anyone who voted for the Ryan budget plan possibly vote for a bill that would make their preferred budget path unconstitutional?

House Republicans then turned around and blamed Senate Democrats for holding disaster aid hostage, with a spokesman for Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) saying “any political games from Senate Dems will only delay FEMA money that disaster victims desperately need.” Fox pundit Brit Hume picked up on this theme today on Fox News Sunday:

HUME: Let’s just take look at this latest skirmish. You need a continuing resolution to keep the government open and there’s a need for some relief funding because it’s almost been exhausted. So the Republicans pass a bill that has the disaster relief funding in it, to the tune of several billion dollars and they pay for it with cuts in green jobs funding. Well, green job funding ought to be by now a very low priority given the history of it and the fact that its utterly failed to produce meaningful jobs.

They sent it to the Senate. What does the Senate do? The Senate blocks it and then does, so far, nothing. Now, it may be that with the media coverage and the political statements that will be made about this, that if the government shuts down the Republicans will get the blame. But I ask you in this: who’s being responsible? And who’s playing politics?

Watch it:

The only problem with this storyline developed by the GOP and its friends at Fox News? On September 15, the Senate passed a bill containing $7 billion in disaster aid. The bipartisan 62-37 vote took place days before the House ever got around to advancing its own package.

The government’s funding runs out on Friday, so the prospect of another government shutdown is looming. But at the moment, the right seems more interested in trying to pretend that the Senate has not passed something that it most certainly has.

For Sale: $100 Million

On Wednesday night, House Republicans failed to pass a continuing resolution to keep the government funded beyond Sept. 30, as 48 Republicans cut ranks with their leadership and voted against the measure (as did all but six Democrats, who object to the bill’s level of disaster aid and cuts to a clean vehicle manufacturing program). House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) was reportedly incensed at the members who abandoned him on the vote, deriding them as “know-it-alls who have all the right answers.”

But early this morning, the House was able to pass a CR, after Boehner and the Republican leadership added a $100 million cut to a Department of Energy clean-energy loan program. Other than that cut, the bill was exactly the same as the one the House defeated on Wednesday. But the additional cut was enough to entice 23 Republican members into flipping their votes. They were:

Wednesday’s roll call vote is here and today’s is here. Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) did not vote Wednesday night but voted for the CR today. Six of the flippers are members of the official Tea Party caucus.

Not only did these Republicans switch their vote due to the addition of a single $100 million spending cut to a $1 trillion bill, but the cut is to a program that, until recently, Republicans supported. The motivation for including the cut is that it’s from the program that funded the tech company Solyndra, the right’s favorite punching bag at the moment.

The Senate has already approved a continuing resolution that funds disaster aid at a higher level than the House and doesn’t cut vehicle manufacturing. But instead of attempting to forge a compromise, Boehner and the House GOP decided to buy 23 votes via a single spending cut.

Former Sen. Phil "mental recession" Gramm (R-TX)

The House Budget Committee — which is led by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) — is holding a hearing today titled “The Broken Budget Process: Perspectives From Budget Experts.” The lead witness at the hearing is former Sen. Phil Gramm (R-TX).

For those who don’t remember, Gramm gained notoriety in 2008 when he, as an adviser to Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) presidential campaign, said America was only in a “mental recession.” “We have sort of become a nation of whiners,” he said. “You just hear this constant whining.”

That “mental recession,” of course, has cost 14 million Americans their jobs.

But Gramm has made far worse contributions to the nation’s economy. In 2000, he snuck the Commodity Futures Modernization Act into an unrelated, 11,000 page appropriations bill. That act ensured that the huge market in over-the-counter derivatives stayed unregulated, laying the groundwork for the 2008 financial crisis (and the implosions of AIG and Lehman Brothers). He then left Congress for a posh job with mega-bank UBS (where a rogue trader just lost more than $2 billion).

On budget-related matters, Gramm “lent his name and energy to passage of the first Reagan budget in 1981, whose sweeping tax cuts failed to prevent recession — and eventually required a long series of tax increases, beginning in 1982, to stanch the enormous deficits they created.” Gramm’s also believes that there should be no minimum wage and has derided the working poor by saying, “we’re the only nation in the world where all our poor people are fat.”

This is not the first time that the House GOP has sought Gramm’s input on budget matters. And with the nation facing a jobs crisis and a structural deficit that needs to be brought down over the next several years, sage budget advice would indeed be useful for Congress. Instead, the House GOP has turned to a man who played an outsized role in blowing up the federal deficit before he turned his efforts to blowing up the global economy.