Republicans have spent the last month blocking the reauthorization of the U.S. Export-Import Bank, which helps companies access capital to help boost their exports to other countries, under the guise that it represents government intrusion into free markets. Despite conservative claims, the Ex-Im Bank isn’t financed by taxpayers (federal dollars are only used to guarantee its loans), but that hasn’t stopped the GOP from blocking Democratic efforts to reauthorize the bank for another four years while boosting its lending capacity from $100 billion to $140 billion.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) instead proposed a one-year, $113-billion reauthorization earlier this year — and today, Cantor and Minority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) are reportedly nearing a compromise that would reauthorize the bank, though details of the plan aren’t yet clear, The Hill reports:

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) and House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) are close to striking a deal on reauthorizing the Export-Import Bank, sources said Thursday.

Although the deal was not finalized as of Thursday, a House vote is considered likely next week.

Cantor has been among the GOP’s leaders in the fight against Ex-Im, pushing an agenda favored by Delta Airlines, with which he is a “close friend and supporter.” Reauthorization of Ex-Im has in the past been largely uncontroversial, and the Obama administration made lifting the loan limit a priority to help small businesses boost their exports and create jobs (Ex-Im also helps large businesses like Boeing, but it is especially crucial for small businesses that are trying to access financing in a tough economy). Cantor has also suggested reaching agreements with major trading partners to end export programs like Ex-Im, though as the Center for American Progress’ Sabina Dewan notes, that plan is hardly feasible.

Though details of the compromise aren’t yet clear, falling well short of the $140 billion target so Cantor can throw Delta another bone would, as Dewan has noted, jeopardizes Ex-Im’s expanded efforts to help America’s small businesses.

Our guest blogger is Seth Hanlon, Director of Fiscal Reform at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

The House GOP has scheduled a vote for later today on a $46 billion tax giveaway. H.R. 9, sponsored by Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA), would give a massive, deficit-financed windfall to hedge fund managers, sports team owners, celebrities and other wealthy people. It would increase tax compliance burdens on small businesses and actually incentivize businesses to put off making investments and new hires until 2013 or later. (For our full analysis, click here.) The White House has issued a veto threat.

In arguing that his bill would create jobs, Cantor is now touting an analysis by Gary Robbins of Fiscal Associates. Robbins, a leading purveyor of supply-side economics for decades, appears to be the only economist that Cantor could find to help sell his bill. Robbins was last heard from using recycled supply-side arguments to sing the praises of Herman Cain’s tremendously ill-conceived “9-9-9” tax plan as a paid consultant to the Cain campaign.

So if anyone is likely to conclude that Cantor’s tax cut is a good way to create jobs, it’s Robbins. But even his analysis finds that Cantor’s bill is a dud.

Robbins predicts that Cantor’s tax cut — a one-year, 20 percent deduction for businesses that qualify — would add $42.6 billion to the federal budget deficit. (That’s a little less than Congress’s official estimate of $46 billion because Robbins’ revenue estimates are based on his own assumptions about economic growth.) Robbins also estimates that such a one-year tax cut would create 39,000 jobs. So according to the analysis that Cantor is touting on his own website, H.R. 9 would increase the federal deficit by $1.1 million for every job created.

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House Republicans this week plan to vote on a bill proposed that Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) that is supposedly aimed at “small businesses,” but in reality would cut taxes for millionaires. Due to its non-existent targeting to actual small businesses, the cut would benefit hedge fund managers, wealthy lawyers, professional sports teams, and Oprah’s production company.

Despite all this, Cantor is still “puzzled” that President Obama would threaten to veto the bill, which he did yesterday. On CNBC this morning, Cantor accused Obama of not caring about small businesses due to his opposition to the tax giveaway:

Well, listen, the President’s now issued a veto threat against the bill, which is kind of puzzling, because the President has continued to say he’s for small business, he’s for the middle class, and yet he’s now denying any help to small businesses, who frankly could use a 20 percent tax cut.

Watch it:

Cantor’s tax boondoggle would cost $46 billion and gives millionaires an average tax cut of $45,000. Meanwhile, for actual small businesses that can’t afford a platoon of accountants and lawyers, the tax cut will add another layer of complexity to the tax code. The IRS says that the tax cut would increase tax compliance costs and require businesses to perform additional analyses.

After years of saying that tax cuts never needed to be offset by spending cuts, Republicans changed their tune last fall and demanded that the extension of the payroll tax cut had to be offset by budget reductions elsewhere. It was a new position for the GOP, and it lasted as long as it took for them to propose their next tax cut for millionaires.

Despite calls from some conservative members of the party, GOP leadership won’t demand spending cuts to offset the “small business” tax cut that is being proposed by Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA), Politico reports:

Several Republican leadership aides say they have no plans to offset the tax cut, which a centerpiece of their agenda during these next two weeks in session.

The payroll tax cut, which Republicans did everything to block until it became politically impossible to continue, primarily benefited working class Americans and has real economic benefits. Cantor’s tax cut, on the other hand, is supposedly targeted at small businesses, but will largely aid millionaires like Oprah Winfrey and the owners of professional sports franchises. According to the Center for American Progress’ Seth Hanlon, the bill gives millionaires an average tax cut of $45,000.

Cantor’s bill is hardly the only Republican-sponsored legislation that is no longer subject to the orthodoxy the party claimed was so important just six months ago. The House GOP’s budget provides $3 trillion in tax cuts to the wealthy and corporations, and though its author, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), claims his plan will maintain current revenue levels, the budget would actually make the nation’s debt worse.

Our guest blogger is Seth Hanlon, Director of Fiscal Reform at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

With Tax Day approaching, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor and the House GOP are pushing a $46 billion boondoggle they call the “Small Business Tax Cut Act of 2012.” As ThinkProgress has previously reported, the bill is really just a windfall for rich people, many of whom, like hedge fund managers, owners of sports teams, celebrities, lawyers, and lobbyists are not most people’s idea of “small businesses.” Cantor’s tax giveaway, half of which goes to millionaires, is also among the least effective ways to create jobs. (Our full analysis is here.)

So what do actual small businesses get? A big headache, according to a new “tax complexity analysis” of Cantor’s bill from the Joint Committee on Taxation (Congress’s nonpartisan tax experts) and the IRS. By adding a complicated new provision to the tax code, Cantor’s bill would mean small businesses would have more paperwork, more time wasted on tax filing, and more disputes with the IRS:

It is anticipated that small businesses that elect to apply the provision will need to keep additional records due to this provision, and that additional regulatory guidance will be needed…It is anticipated that the provision will result in an increase in disputes between small businesses and the IRS. [...]

The provision likely will increase the tax preparation costs for most affected small businesses. Small businesses will have to perform additional analysis concerning whether the small business has 500 or fewer employees and which income qualifies for the deduction allowed under the provision. For income that is determined to be eligible for the deduction under the provision, small businesses will be required to perform additional calculations to determine the amount of the deduction…[S]mall businesses will be required to undertake calculations to determine the amounts of costs that are allocable to domestic business gross receipts. In some cases, small businesses would not have been required otherwise to perform these calculations but for the provision.

Due to the detailed calculations required by the provision, it is anticipated that the Secretary of the Treasury will have to create a new form for qualified small businesses to compute the deduction and will have to make appropriate revisions to several types of income tax forms and instructions. In addition, the Secretary of the Treasury will have to issue guidance to carry out the purposes of the provision.

The IRS adds that the new tax form required by Cantor’s bill, Form 8903-A, “would be complicated.”

By creating a complicated new loophole, available to some business but not to others according to arbitrary rules, and favoring the very rich, the Cantor bill epitomizes everything that is wrong about the tax code.

Ironically, the House GOP just passed a budget bemoaning the tax code’s “labyrinth of deductions” and promising tax reform to close special loopholes and carveouts (though it did not identify a single loophole that it would close). In less than three weeks, House Republicans have done a complete 180, abandoning their showy commitment to tax reform and carving out a new $46 billion loophole. The Cantor bill is the “antithesis of tax reform” according to Rep. Sandy Levin (D-MI), the top Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee.

But at least the GOP budget and the Cantor bill are consistent about one thing – more windfall tax cuts for the rich.