Last month, Tea Party favorite Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) released a budget plan along with GOP Sens. Rand Paul (KY) and Mike Lee (UT) that purports to cut $5 trillion out of the federal budget over 10 years. The plan included about $4.2 trillion in direct spending cuts (with the rest coming from reduced interest payments on the debt and the sale of government assets).

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.

As some Republicans, including Majority Leader Eric Cantor (VA), are growing worried that opposing a payroll tax cut extension will undercut their message as anti-tax zealots, other Republicans have opposed the extension at every turn. Despite their staunch opposition to raising taxes on millionaires, these Republicans have cycled through the reasons to avoid providing a tax cut to the middle class that would allow the average family to pocket an extra $1,000 a year.

The latest argument to emerge from the GOP has been that extending the payroll tax cut would undermine Social Security, since payroll tax revenue goes directly into the Social Security Trust Fund. Multiple Congressional Republicans have adopted that theory of late, including South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint (R), who put it to use on CNBC last night:

DEMINT: Republicans are always ready to cut taxes, as you know. We don’t think it’s a good idea to do it by raiding Social Security.

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul (R) made the same argument on Fox News earlier in the day:

PAUL: Well, you know, Social Security is $6 trillion short of money. So the president is advocating reducing the amount of funding to Social Security when they’re already $6 trillion short. So it doesn’t really make any sense and it really argues that he’s going to bankrupt Social Security even quicker by reducing it’s funding.

Watch a compilation:

That argument, which has been adopted by members of both parties and perpetuated by news outlets like NPR, has one problem: it’s not true. Each of the plans under consideration is fully paid for, replacing revenue the Social Security Trust Fund would have lost from lower payroll tax receipts with money made up from either alternative revenue sources or spending cuts. The earlier payroll tax holiday, set to expire this month, was also fully-funded, and the program has thus far “been held harmless” from the holiday, as Reuters noted today.

And while the opposition from Republicans may seem like an impassioned defense of a vital and popular program, a look at their history with the program shows it is not. DeMint has supported privatizing the program while Paul is a proponent of means testing — “solutions” that are both bad policy and unnecessary. Despite Paul’s $6 trillion assertion, Social Security actually has a $2.6 trillion surplus and is solvent through at least 2037.

And if Republicans truly want to use the payroll tax to shore up its long-term viability, there is an easy way to do that. The payroll tax is currently collected only on the first $106,800 in income; raising or eliminating that cap would make the program fully solvent for the next 75 years.

If Republicans have a cogent reason for opposing a tax cut for the middle class that is meant to stimulate the economy, they should provide it, because their current line — that such a tax cut will weaken a program many of them have sought to undermine for years — simply isn’t true.

As the Aug. 2 deadline to raise the debt ceiling approaches, Republicans lawmakers are inching closer to the economic cliff over their stubborn refusal to close unfair tax loopholes and raise tax rates on the wealthy. The GOP’s lead lemming is Tea Party leader Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC). Last night on Fox’s Freedom Watch with host Andrew Napolitano, DeMint blamed the Obama administration for purposefully “burning time” to bring about this fiscal crisis. Urging Republicans to maintain their intransigence on the debt ceiling, DeMint said he’d be “willing to” cause “serious disruptions” in the economy to secure significant cuts and a balanced budget:

DEMINT: The reason the president hasn’t addressed the issue even though we knew it was facing us, and this is the fourth time he’s asked for an increase in the debt limit, he has been burning time — that’s what [Vice President Joe] Biden was supposed to do is get the Republicans behind closed doors — is burn the clock up until we have a crisis. So now we’re at the point where there would have to be some serious disruptions in order not to raise it. I’m willing to do that, I just don’t think we can find enough of Republicans and Democrats to say it’s time to stop spending.

Watch it:

A brief survey of such “disruptions” include an immediate cut of nearly 40 percent from the federal budget, a 2.3 percent drop in GDP, a freeze on billions in Social Security payments, a disruption of payments for Medicare, Medicaid, and military active duty pay, a “double-dip contraction” in the already fragile U.S. housing market, a severe blow to America’s creditworthiness, an inevitable increase in unemployment, and ultimately, a direct shove back into a recession.

DeMint and his Republican colleagues, however, view all of this as no big deal. Nonetheless, DeMint’s complete dismissal of the looming economic disaster he’s willing to cause will earn him nothing but blame from the American people.

It’s an often-repeated talking point among Republicans as Washington debates taxes and spending: “We don’t have a revenue problem, we have a spending problem.” It’s recycled, like much of today’s Republican thinking, from President Reagan, but Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) stretched the argument to its breaking point on MSNBC this morning when he said that government revenues are currently at “record” highs:

DEMINT: Four of the last five years, we’ve had record levels of revenue. And next year we have projected the highest revenue levels in history. We don’t have a revenue problem.

Watch it:

The GOP talking point on spending vs. revenue fundamentally un-serious, as both are flip sides of the same balance sheet. But even so, DeMint is just wrong.

DeMint appears to be using nominal dollars to measure revenues, instead of revenue as a percentage of GDP, which is used by all official arbiters on revenue matters, including the Congressional Budget Office. And as a percentage of GDP, government revenue is nowhere near a “record” high. In 2010, it was at its lowest level in more than 60 years, according to data from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), at just at 14.9 percent.

Next year, revenues will still be at just 16.6 percent of GDP, several points below the average rates under every president since Franklin Roosevelt, including Reagan. The record high was 20.6 percent in 2000, which coincided with a balanced budget.

This makes sense — on top of lost revenue from the massive Bush tax cuts, the recession devastated economic output and thus the American tax base.

And DeMint seems to know this, choosing to qualify his statements about revenue with the odd time frame of five years to completely mislead viewers. He’s right that revenues in terms of dollars were at an all time high at one point in the last five years — 2007 — but he seems to intentionally ignore the fact that revenues fell of a cliff in 2009. In terms of actual dollars, in 2010, the government brought in $2.16 trillion dollars — down from $2.56 trillion in 2007.

Republicans in both the House and the Senate have been using various avenues to undermine the Dodd-Frank financial reform law, which was signed last year to rein in the financial industry following the 2008 financial crisis. House Republicans have been attempting to use the budget process to render federal regulators incapable of implementing the law, while Senate Republicans are refusing to confirm nominees to key posts, most notably the director of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) confirmed yesterday that Senate Republicans will filibuster any CFPB nominee.

Meanwhile, Senate Republicans have hijacked non-controversial legislation to push their pro-Wall Street agenda. As the Wall Street Journal reports, three Senate Republicans — Sens. Jim DeMint (SC), Jerry Moran (KS), and David Vitter (LA) — have stuck amendments onto an economic development bill aiming to weaken Dodd-Frank or, in DeMint’s case, repeal it outright:

A fairly noncontroversial U.S. Senate bill to support economic-development projects could quickly become contentious next week if Republican critics of the Dodd-Frank financial overhaul have their way. [...]

One amendment filed by tea-party Sen. Jim DeMint (R., S.C.) would repeal the whole financial law…Meanwhile, Sen. Jerry Moran (R, Kan.) has filed an amendment that would replace the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau — a centerpiece of Dodd-Frank that would have broad powers over the financial industry — with a six-person board…A third amendment, filed by Sen. David Vitter (R, La.) would repeal parts of the Dodd-Frank law that give a council of regulators, known as the Financial Stability Oversight Council, the authority to decide if a company is “too big to fail.”

The amendments suggested by Moran and Vitter are right in line with other GOP efforts to weaken Dodd-Frank. Moran’s amendment would turn the CFPB into an ineffective commission, rather than the strong independent regulator consumers need and deserve, while Vitter’s would prevent regulators from forcing the nation’s biggest banks into abiding by heightened regulations.

Wall Street has actually spent as much to undermine Dodd-Frank this year as it spent trying to shape the bill at the height of the financial reform debate. And Republicans have dutifully played along, attempting to block or undo key parts of the bill. However, this week at least, the banks did not get their way, as an amendment that would have delayed new regulations capping the amount banks can charge merchants for debit card transactions failed to pass the Senate.

In late 2009, as Americans across the country were still grappling with the effects of the Great Recession, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) advocated reviving President George W. Bush’s plan to privatize Social Security, blasting the current structure of Social Security as “socialistic.” He has described Social Security as a “failed program,” and thinks Medicare is unconstitutional.

So, of course, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) is considering assigning DeMint to fill an open spot on the Senate Finance Committee, which oversees the very programs DeMint believes violate the Constitution:

In a sign of the growing power of conservatives within the Senate Republican Conference, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) held a rare meeting with Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) on Monday evening. The topic: an opening on the most powerful committee in the Senate, the Finance Committee, which has jurisdiction over taxes, trade, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

“It was a very positive meeting,” DeMint said. “It did come up and I expressed an interest — it’s where all the issues I came to work on in Congress are,” DeMint said.

As Ian Milhiser has noted, the conservative notion that Medicare is unconstitutional is absurd, as the Constitution explicitly provides Congress the power “to lay and collect taxes” and to “provide for the…general welfare of the United States.” DeMint has also turned to fringe right-wing constitutional theory in an attempt to find justification for his position that the Affordable Care Act is unconstitutional.

The upshot is that Senate Republicans are considering placing DeMint on a committee overseeing programs that he believes violate the Constitution or that he wants to privatize and turn over to the private sector. The ultra-conservative, anti-tax group Club for Growth is pushing for DeMint to be seated on the Finance Committee so that he can influence corporate tax reform.