Earlier this month, the California Legislature approved the final version of a bill that would effectively end tax-dodging by online retailers like Amazon.com and Overstock.com, requiring them to collect sales taxes just like any other retailer.

Now, the provision is sitting on the desk of California Gov. Jerry Brown (D), who has to decide whether he will approve it or veto it. As of Friday, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that lawmakers who are pushing for ending the tax loophole currently are unsure of what Brown will do.

As the Associated Press reports today, ending the online sales tax loophole nationwide could bring in $23 billion of revenue annually. In California, ending this loophole for just one retailer — Amazon.com — would bring in enough revenue to reverse the state’s cuts to child welfare services:

State governments across the country are laying off teachers, closing public libraries and parks, and reducing health care services, but there is one place they could get $23 billion a year if they could only agree how to do it: Internet retailers such as Amazon.com. That’s enough to pay for the salaries of more than 46,000 teachers, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. In California, the amount of uncollected taxes from Amazon sales alone is roughly the same amount cut from child welfare services in the current state budget.

Amazon has previously responded to legislative efforts to close the tax loophole by threatening to cut ties to affiliates in the state of California. Some estimates say that California could collect as much as $1.1 billion annually from online retailers if it closed the online sales tax loophole.

As ThinkProgress Economy editor Pat Garofalo noted last week, GOP presidential hopeful Rep. Michelle Bachmann (MN) has assembled a tax plan that would involve a massive corporate tax cut and tax increase on the working poor. Meanwhile, Bachmann would continue to cut taxes on the richest income-earners among us.

But Bachmann’s plan would do even worse things than simply continuing to hand out tax cuts for the rich and corporations. As Dan Baneman of the Tax Policy Center found, Bachmann’s proposal to repeal taxes on capital gains would actually remove 23,000 millionaires from the tax rolls altogether. Meanwhile, the Tax Policy Center’s Howard Gleckman estimates that “this largess would add about $25 billion to the deficit in one year.”

This is particularly shocking in light of the fact that the richest Americans are currently paying the some of the lowest effective tax rates in American history. As this chart from from Wealth for the Common Good shows, the top 400 taxpayers — who have more wealth than half of all Americans combined — are paying lower taxes than they have in a generation, as their tax responsibilities have slowly collapsed since the New Deal era as working families have been asked to pay more and more:

Although it is impossible to surmise their exact intentions, it appears that Bachmann’s campaign is operating under the notion that the rich in America don’t have it good enough and that expanding the deficit is not a problem — as long as you’re continuing to cut taxes for the richest Americans.

Louisiana, like most states, is struggling with its budget, as the recession continues to take its toll on the state’s coffers. Recent estimates place next year’s budget deficit at a whopping $1.6 billion.

Recognizing the need to raise revenues, the mostly Republican Louisiana Legislature voted earlier this week to renew part of the state’s cigarette tax, which brings in $12 million a year. But Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) is expected to veto the legislation this week:

It’s a bad habit that helps bolster the state budget. Smokers in Louisiana pay an extra 36 cents in state taxes every time they buy a pack. But part of that tax is set to expire next year. And while lawmakers voted to renew it, Governor Bobby Jindal is expected to veto the tax extension early this week. “It’s going to be a very tough fight on both sides,” said Clancy DuBos, WWL-TV political analyst and Gambit political columnist.

The segment of the tax that the legislature voted to renew would maintain a tax of 36 cents on every pack of cigarettes bought. If vetoed, the taxes per-pack would fall by four pennies to be 32 cents per pack. WWL-TV covered the debate over the tax. Watch it:

Jindal has until tomorrow to decide to sign or veto the cigarette tax legislation. “I think it’s a mistake to lower the tax on cigarettes,” says House Speaker Jim Tucker (R). “Louisiana is accused of being backwards all the time. This vote (to eliminate the tax) would easily support that position.” Interestingly, while Jindal wants to lower taxes on cigarettes, he has endorsed raising tuition and fees on students.

Today marks the 10th anniversary of former President George W. Bush signing into law his 2001 tax cuts (he passed a second round in 2003). While doing so, Bush promised prosperity and growth, but the nation got neither.

The cost of these budget-busting 2001 and 2003 tax cuts was, as estimated by Citizens for Tax Justice, roughly $2.5 trillion through 2010. But America didn’t have to go down this route of cutting taxes and hoping for growth to miraculously appear. There were other policy options available to policymakers.

ThinkProgress, using data on various social spending projects from the National Priorities Project — which does these calculations for the cost of the Iraq and Afghan wars — has estimated ten other possible policies we could’ve paid for at the same $2.5 trillion price of the Bush tax cuts. While not all of these policies are currently performed by the federal government, they do represent an accurate calculation of the monetary tradeoffs, and each one individually would cost the same as the Bush tax cuts. Here are ten alternatives we could’ve pursued instead:

- Give 122.7 Million Children Low-Income Health Care Every Year For Ten Years

- Give 49.2 Million People Access To Low-Income Healthcare Every Year For Ten Years

- Provide 43.1 Million Students With Pell Grants Worth $5,500 Every Year For Ten Years

- Provide 31.5 Million Head Start Slots For Children Every Year For Ten Years

- Provide VA Care For 30.7 Million Military Veterans Every Year For Ten Years

- Provide 30.4 Million Scholarships For University Students Every Year For Ten Years

- Hire 4.19 Million Firefighters Every Year For Ten Years

- Hire 3.67 Million Elementary School Teachers Every Year For Ten Years

- Hire 3.6 Million Police Officers Every Year For Ten Years

- Retrofit 144.6 Million Households For Wind Power Every Year For Ten Years

- Retrofit 54.2 Million Households For Solar Photovoltaic Energy Every Year For Ten Years

The tradeoffs paint a stark picture. For the same price as the Bush tax cuts, which did little to help the economy, we could’ve sent tens of millions of students to college, retrofitted every household in America with the capacity to generate alternative energy, hired millions of firefighters and police officers, effectively ended our national shame of having kids who lack health care coverage, or put millions of more teachers into classrooms. But instead, Congress passed budget-breaking tax cuts, and then went on to pass even more in 2003. In 2010, Congress then went on to renew the Bush tax cuts for an additional two years, and the political will for the sort of public investments listed above appears to have dried up.