As was to be expected after this summer’s debt-deal deadlock, members of the congressional “supercommittee” remain hung up on tax and entitlement reform.

At the moment, Republicans and Democrats are divided by their respective plans, with each offering a mixture of spending cuts and tax revenue increases. Republicans have offered a $1.2 trillion deficit-reduction package with roughly $750 billion in spending cuts over the next decade and a $300 billion tax proposal mostly comprised of deduction eliminations. Democrats have offered to trim $2 trillion, with their proposal calling for an almost equal mix of spending cuts and tax increases. The committee was assigned to come up with $1.2 trillion in deficit savings.

Attention now has turned to other courses of action available to the committee to try and avoid the “trigger mechanism,” a fail-safe that would result in deep military and across-the-board cuts in the case a deal is not made.

Texas Rep. Jeb Hensarling, the panel’s Republican co-chair, told CNN’s “State of the Union” that supercommittee may punt some of the decisions about deficit reduction to individual committees — “a two-step process,” as he described it. In that scenario, the supercommittee would set the amount of increased tax revenue to be met, and individual congressional committees would then draft legislation to meet it.

The chairmen of the relevant committees — the House Ways and Means Committee and the Senate Finance Committee — have said that they would accept that arrangement, according to reporting this morning from the New York Times.

But even if no deal is agreed to and the “trigger” is pulled, there’s still reason to believe the heavy cuts it calls for will be avoided.

The trigger’s cuts do not go into effect until January, 2013, so Congress would have a year to legislate their reversal. That would likely “launch a heavy lobbying effort on K Street, where defense firms in particular would be eager to prevent automatic cuts,” according to The Hill. Senator Pat Toomey (R-Penn.) addressed the possibility on “Fox News Sunday,” saying, “In the very, very unfortunate event that we don’t [make a deal] I think it’s very likely that Congress would reconsider the configuration.”

President Obama has told the committee that it needs to “bite the bullet,” and has floated the possibility that he may block any attempt to create a workaround from next week’s Thanksgiving deadline.

Nearing the bottom of the pile is Herman Cain — only 25 percent of the former pizza chain magnate’s donations above $200 have come from women. Both Michele Bachmann and Ron Paul have collected less from women (about 24 percent and 16 percent, respectively). About 33.5 percent and 29.6 percent of Texas Gov. Rick Perry and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney’s donations have come from women, respectively.

Fittingly, the tax proposals released by the leading GOP candidates — Cain, Perry and Romney — disproportionately affect women in the way they raise taxes on lower- and middle-income Americans, eliminate poverty aids and cut child-insurance programs, according to various analyses of the plans and expert input gathered by The American Independent.

Thus far, only Cain and Perry have revealed the most detailed plans, and because women are disproportionately likely to be single parents and to have lower wages, smaller pensions and more medical problems, they are expected to fare worse under these plans than their male counterparts.

The gender-wage gap and its relevancy to tax-policy discussions

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (PDF), in 2010, women who were full-time wage and salary workers earned 81 percent of what men earned (median weekly earnings for women were $669, and $824 for men). The female-to-male earnings ratio has hovered around 80 to 81 percent since 2004, up from 62 percent in 1979.

Last week, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report (PDF) showing women make up 49 percent of the total workforce but represent 59 percent of low-wage workers -– this despite the fact that more women than men finish high school and earn bachelor’s degrees. And according to a new report (PDF) by the Martin Prosperity Institute, women hold 52.3 percent of “creative class” jobs –- engineers, doctors, lawyers, journalists, teachers, etc. -– but in these jobs, earn an average of $48,007, while men earn an average of $82,009. Controlling for hours worked and education, creative class men out-earn creative class women by 49.2 percent.

According to the 2008-2010 American Community Survey, about 29.2 percent of families whose income in the past 12 months was below the federal poverty level were families headed by single women. It gets worse depending on the presence of young children: 38.1 percent of women-run households with children under 18 were below poverty; 46.1 percent of households with children under 5 were below poverty. In comparison, only 10.5 percent of all American families — and only 5.1 percent of married-couple families — in this survey were making below the poverty level. The aforementioned GAO report found single women with children had an average household income of about $27,000.

Income disparities do not stop at wages, however. Women tend to live longer, they are more likely to outlive their savings and less likely to have significant retirement plans or to have the type of jobs that incur significant pensions. Thus, they disproportionately benefit from Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

According to the Social Security Administration (SSA), women represent about 57 percent of all Social Security beneficiaries age 62 and older and about 69 percent of beneficiaries over 85. In 2008, women 65 and older received an average of $11,377, compared with $14,822 for men.

According to the Kaiser Family Foundation (PDF), about 56 percent of all Medicare beneficiaries are women, and women are more likely than men to report having three or more chronic conditions.

How do women fare under ‘9-9-9’?

“The ‘9-9-9 Plan’ is a jobs plan! It is revenue, it does not raise taxes on those in need.” -- from the donation page on Herman Cain’s campaign website (AreFlaten, Flickr)

THE PLAN: ‘9-9-9’

With the nation’s attention focused on Cain’s old sexual harassment charges, scrutiny of Cain’s infamous “9-9-9″ Plan is stalled for the moment. According to an analysis by the Tax Policy Center, Cain’s plan would make those earning under $50,000 pay a few thousand dollars more in taxes, while those making between half a million and $1 million would pay nearly $100,000 less in taxes. According to an analysis by the left-leaning Citizens for Tax Justice (PDF), if Cain’s plan were to go into effect today, the richest 1 percent of taxpayers would pay $210,000 less in annual taxes, while the poorest 60 percent of taxpayers would pay $2,000 more in annual taxes.

At the same time, Cain’s proposed plan is expected to raise about the same -– or potentially less –- revenue as the current tax system. Still, a recent poll of likely Iowa Caucus-goers conducted last month shows the average American making under $50,000 annually doesn’t understand the plan and believes he or she would fare better under “9-9-9.”

Cain’s plan is actually a complicated three-step process. Replacing the current tax code with a 9-percent business flat tax (or value-added tax), a 9-percent individual flat tax and a 9-percent national sales tax is only the second step in the process. And as the Tax Policy Center summarizes, combined, the three taxes are equivalent to a 25.4-percent national sales tax, with adjustments for dividends paid to tax-exempt entities and charitable contributions.

The first step in Cain’s plan, explained by The Washington Post, would actually be to cut individual and corporate tax rates to a top-25-percent rate, down from the current high of 35 percent. The third step would be to replace all federal taxes with a national sales tax.

Cain claims under “9-9-9,” Americans who fall under the federal government’s poverty level would be exempt from paying the individual income tax; however, he would eliminate the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), designed to help the working poor, and the Child Tax Credit (CTC). Additionally, he would eliminate payroll tax deductions for employers (except in unspecified “Opportunity Zones”), which currently serve as a hiring incentive. Helping out the wealthy, Cain would get rid of the estate tax and capital gains taxes. His plan, according to Edward D. Kleinbard of the Gould University of Southern California School of Law, involves a “disguised one-time 9 percent tax on existing wealth.”

More from TaxVox, the Tax Policy Center blog:

A middle income household making between about $64,000 and $110,000 would get hit with an average tax increase of about $4,300, lowering its after-tax income by more than 6 percent and increasing its average federal tax rate (including income, payroll, estate and its share of the corporate income tax) from 18.8 percent to 23.7 percent. … In Cain’s world, a typical household making more than $2.7 million would pay a smaller share of its income in federal taxes than one making less than $18,000. This would give Warren Buffet severe heartburn.

EFFECT ON WOMEN

Cain’s plan would eliminate the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), which is a refundable credit designed to offset federal payroll and income taxes for low- and moderate-income working people.

According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), this year, working families with children with annual incomes below $36,000 to $49,000 (depending on marital status and dependents) may be eligible for the EITC. Single individuals without children who make less than $13,600 annually and married couples making less than $18,700 annually would qualify for a small EITC. In 2009, the average EITC was $2,770 for a household with children and $259 for a childless household. According to CBPP, families mostly use this tax credit to pay for necessities, home and vehicle repairs and, sometimes, additional education.

Cain would also kill the Child Tax Credit (CTC), which helps working families pay for child care costs.

According to the Urban Institute, high-working, low-income families spend $3,135 annually, or 12 percent of their income. The Institute estimates that 69 percent of children under 5 with low-income working mothers are cared for regularly by someone other than a parent, and 39 percent of these children are in child care for at least 35 hours per week.

“It would be horrifying to lose [the Earned Income Tax Credit and the Child Tax Credit],” said Elizabeth Lower-Basch, a senior policy analyst for the Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP). “That would particularly affect women.

“We have a basically progressive tax code,” she told TAI. “If we go to a flat code, it would significantly hurt low-income workers.”

Joan Entmacher, vice president for Family Economic Security at the National Women’s Law Center, where she works at promoting policies aimed at improving the economic security of low-income women and their families, told TAI that Cain’s tax proposal appears to affect women worse than the other candidates because his plan is “much harder on lower-income Americans” in the way it would raise taxes on low- and middle-income earners.

Under Cain’s plan, millionaires would get a 17.9-percent tax rate, or a 22-percent boost after taxes. But a single mother earning between $20,000 and $30,000? Her tax rate would be 24.9 percent. In other words, a single mom making $25,000 a year will have to give 25 percent of her income, or $6,250, to taxes.

Cain has proposed creating tax benefits to certain geographic areas in what he calls “Opportunity Zones” (PDF), but he has not been specific about where these zones would be or how they would work.

“Overall, you’re going to be better off if you’re making over $1 million in income, better than single mom trying to raise kids on $25,000 per year,” Entmacher said.

Terry O’Neill, an attorney and professor who is the president of the National Organization for Women (NOW), told TAI that Cain is turning his back on women, many whom depend on the tax programs he wants to eliminate.

“When Mr. Cain wants to take away the Earned Income Tax Credit, he is punishing women who sometimes work two jobs full-time, minimum-wage jobs, just to pay for food and rent,” O’Neill said.

Perry’s postcard proposal cuts more than it balances

“American families deserve a system that is low, flat and fair. They should be able to file their taxes on a postcard instead of a massive novel-length document." -- from Governor Rick Perry’s "2020 Vision: Cut, Balance & Grow" (Gage Skidmore, Flickr)

During his speech at the Corner Stone Action Dinner in Manchester, N.H., on Oct. 28, Perry repeatedly waved a blank postcard in explaining his tax and economic-policy plan. Like Cain’s plan, Perry’s plan (PDF) is more complicated than he lets on in speeches. Where they differ is in Perry’s explicit details in how Americans would pay for the substantial tax breaks on the highest earners — by eliminating deductions and cutting specific entitlement programs that especially benefit lower-income earners, and women.

THE PLAN: ‘Cut, Balance & Grow’

Taxpayers would be able to choose whether to file their taxes under the current tax code or under a new 20-percent “flat tax.” What Perry has not emphasized is that taxpayers will have to spend time — and potentially money — calculating which plan benefits them more.

Like Cain, Perry has countered claims his plan will result in disproportionately higher taxes for lower- and middle-income families. As an example, Perry points to the provision in his 20-percent flat-tax plan, where families will be eligible for “generous” exemptions of $12,500.

In his proposal, Perry takes a dig at Cain’s proposal to introduce a federal sales tax and a business value-added tax, which he calls “highly regressive,” and uses the working poor to make his case:

When added to existing federal income taxes and state and local income sales taxes, a national sales tax would be highly regressive. Low-income families spend a much higher percentage of their incomes on food and gas than do those with considerable wealth. For example, a household earning $25,000 each year would spend roughly 40% of its income on food, utilities, and health care, while a household earning $130,000 each year would pay less than 15% of its income on those three items.

But because Perry would eliminate the EITC, lower- and middle-income earners would still pay more under his plan than they do now. Using calculations made by the Tax Policy Center, The New York Times estimates single parents with two children making $9,700 annually would pay no income taxes under Perry’s plan but would not receive the $4,885 tax credit they receive under current tax law.

Perry, like Cain, would eliminate the capital gains tax.

EFFECT ON WOMEN

To pay for the plan, Perry has suggested cuts in education and nutritional programs for poor children. He has offered various suggestions for reforming Medicare, which include gradually raising the age of Medicare eligibility, alongside a gradual retirement-age increase under Social Security; paying Medicare benefits on a sliding scale based on income; or by creating bundled premium support payments that would go directly to the individual. He has also proposed block-granting Medicaid payments.

Entmacher told TAI that under Perry’s plan, taxes would go up for the working poor and what she calls the “true middle class” — households making no more than $75,000 per year.

“The Perry plan is particularly hard on single heads of households,” Entmacher said. “They do worse than the working poor.”

The others

As for the remaining GOP candidates in the pack, the one expected to win the nomination, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, has a vague plan. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Rep. Michele Bachmann (Minn.) have stated support for a flat tax, and all the candidates support eliminating the estate tax.

Romney’s main tax proposal is to end taxes on interest and dividend income for people who earn less than $200,000 a year, but otherwise keep the existing tax system in place. Romney does not support a flat tax or a national sales tax, stating they would largely hurt the middle class. He supports extending most, if not all, of the Bush-era tax cuts.

All of the experts TAI spoke with agreed the tax code needs reforming. With GOP candidates vying for shorter rules in the name of simplicity, Lower-Basch thinks what the tax code actually needs is more tiers and brackets to be more fair, reasoning that households making $250,000 a year should not be taxed the same as those making $1 or $2 million a year.

The bipartisan committee must come up with a plan for up to $1.5 trillion in budget cuts in the next 10 years by Thanksgiving, but the donations they receive won’t be disclosed to the Federal Election Commission until January –- long after the budget cuts are identified.

“There should be greater transparency about who these folks are meeting with and who they’re taking money from,” said Bill Allison, editorial director at the Sunlight Foundation. “I don’t think the special interests should have special access.”

A bill targeting this issue, that would require supercommittee members to reveal any campaign contributions or lobbying contracts immediately, was introduced in the House on Wednesday by Reps. David Loebsack (D-Iowa), Mike Quigley (D-Ill.) and James B. Renacci (R-Ohio).

Members of the supercommittee are no strangers to corporate donations –- most have received millions from industry groups and corporate PACS in the past -– but the size of the budget cuts “has set off a frenzy among lobbyists on K Street, including nearly 100 identified by The Washington Post as former employees of supercommittee members.”

Rep. James E. Clyburn (D-S.C.) is the most active fundraiser on the panel –- he has five fundraising events scheduled between now and Thanksgiving, according to the Sunlight Foundation, including a “healthcare breakfast” scheduled for the first public hearing put on by the subcommittee.

Stephanopoulos asked Huntsman to expand on his perspective of domestic spending policy, specifically inquiring whether he regrets calling the president’s 2009 stimulus package insufficient.

George Stephanopoulos: Let’s talk some domestic issues. A lot of Republicans — again, Republican primary voters —  are going to wonder about your decision as governor of Utah to take the stimulus funds, President Obama’s stimulus funds. And when you were asked about it, you suggested that one of the problems with the stimulus is that it wasn’t big enough. Is that what you still believe?

Jon Huntsman: If you read on in that interview, you will find that I was specifically referring to corporate tax cuts, payroll tax deductions, and focusing the stimulus in infrastructure projects that would improve our economic future.

George Stephanopoulos:But you also aligned yourself with Mark Zandi, who said the stimulus … had to be about a trillion dollars.

Jon Huntsman: That was his take. And my take was, let’s stimulate business. Let’s look at tax cuts, let’s look at payroll tax deductions. If you read on in the interview, that’s exactly what I said. But more than that, George, a specific focus as opposed to just giving dollars to states. And let’s face it, every governor took it.

The interview in question is this Politico Q&A session with the then-Utah Gov. Huntsman during a National Governors Association meeting:

Q: How long before you see the stimulus money kick in?

A: I’m not sure it’s the stimulus money that will necessarily allow the economy to recover…It will help to fortify our budgets, frankly, to ensure that there isn’t as much backsliding in the areas of education and healthcare, for example. But economic recovery must be earned. And it will be earned by entrepreneurs and it will be earned by small businesses.

Q: You said the stimulus wasn’t large enough. In addition to the tax cuts that you mentioned, are there other measures you would have liked to see included in the bill?

A: Well, the size of about a trillion dollars was floated by Mark Zandi, who’s a very respected economist. I tend to believe what he is saying about the size of the package, which didn’t necessarily hit the mark in terms of size.

Q: How realistic is President Obama’s expected pledge to cut the deficit in half?

A: You can slice it any number of ways. The question becomes, how deleterious are these budget-balancing measures to our long-term competitiveness? And I think we have to be very sensitive to our need to compete, moving forward, and a lot of that is tied to tax policy.

At the end of the day, capital is a coward. It’s going to flee from wherever it perceives risk to be present in the marketplace…In a day and age of global competition and instantaneous financial flows, you have to be highly sensitive to the way in which tax policy impacts your overall competitiveness as a country. That’s the only flag of caution I think we ought to be waving at this point.

Without too much extrapolation, Huntsman’s views on spending in 2009 put an emphasis on funding social welfare provisions and borrowing money for tax relief and public projects that would counter the effects of the recession. He seems to imply drastic balancing measures can have a negative impact on overall economic demand. The language he uses in the 2009 interview appear less equivocal on the issue of deficit spending than the statements he provided during Thursday’s programming.

Huntsman, most recently the U.S. ambassador to China, backpedals more noticeably from his 2009 position by throwing his support behind the Paul Ryan budget plan, telling Stephanopoulos he would have voted for the Wisconsin representative’s spending reduction bill that, among other things, would privatize Medicare and increase military spending. Support for the congressman’s extreme cuts runs counter to Huntsman’s 2009 wish to provide states stopgap funds. Moreover, in light of his being in favor of pulling out of Libya and Afghanistan, backing a budget plan that allocates more dollars to defense spending is counterintuitive.

Huntsman refused to change his qualified support for civil unions, nor would he change his position on immigration, telling the GM host, “And I don’t believe in penalizing the younger generation coming across our borders who have no say whatsoever over their journey and destiny. They want to integrate into the American system. If they’re willing what needs to do be done and work hard, then I think if we’re giving them an in-house tuition break, that integrates them into the system, and makes them part of ultimately contributing to our country.”

West’s speech to WIN cited instances from the movies 300 and The Last Samurai (“That’s a true story! That’s historical fiction,” he said) as examples of how women in American society should be treating men in order to cultivate a strong polity. His remarks about the dangers of liberal women’s group came later in the speech:

We need you to come in and lock shields, and strengthen up the men who are going to the fight for you. To let these other women know on the other side — these Planned Parenthood women, the Code Pink women, and all of these women that have been neutering American men and bringing us to the point of this incredible weakness — to let them know that we are not going to have our men become subservient. That’s what we need you to do. Because if you don’t, then the debt will continue to grow…deficits will continue to grow.

ThinkProgress has video of the passage from West’s address:

The complete video, courtesy of rightwing blog The Right Scoop, appears in two parts, both embedded at the bottom of this post.

As The American Independent has previously reported, taking away all federal Planned Parenthood funding would make a .02 percent dent in the estimated $1.48 trillion federal deficit, and a .0002 percent dent in the nearly $14.3 trillion national debt.

It’s unclear how Code Pink, a women’s anti-war organization in favor of making major cuts to military spending, which accounts for between $670 billion and $1.2 trillion in annual government expenses, is contributing to deficits or the debt, in West’s view.

Incidentally, the largest increases in both federal spending and national debt levels in history came during the administration of George W. Bush (PDF).

Blogger Emi Kolawole attempts to describe what will happen by answering reader questions. At least a couple of his answers are sure to play badly in GOP conservative stalwart Doug Lamborn’s defense-industry-dependent and Tea Party friendly Colorado Springs district, for example :

“A shutdown would also affect pay for members of the military, said senior government officials familiar with the planning. If the current funding expires on Friday, in the middle of the military’s two-week pay period, the Defense Department would distribute paychecks [only] for the first week…”

And this one:

“Veterans of previous shutdowns are reminding [government] contractors that they could be locked out of their offices or forced to cut short any government-funded travel. During a shutdown, experts suggest contracting firms should ask employees to complete overdue training programs, take vacations or temporarily reassign them to other projects. Worst case, some firms may need to furlough employees. Boehner on Friday said any shutdown could interrupt contracts and force the government to pay more in eventual overtime costs.”

Given the nearly apocalyptic deficit and anti-government rhetoric that fueled the Tea Party movement over the last two years, the prospect of a government shut down has been looming for a lot longer than the last month. The “shut ‘er down” rhetoric of today was discernible in the “throw-the-socialists-out” rhetoric of the anti-health care reform battle of 2009 and the election campaigns that ended in November 2010. Republican candidates and officeholders who fueled or at least benefited from that rhetoric can’t now turn their back on the narrow positions that rhetoric carved out for them in office. The shut down is coming. It came with the Tea Party to Capitol Hill in January.

Got a tip? Story pitch? Send us an e-mail. Follow The Colorado Independent on Twitter.

This is a shift from just four months ago, when the same question, asked in December, found 36 percent of respondents advocating spending cuts alone and 60 percent advocated tax increases and spending cuts together (the precise numbers are now 31 to 64 percent). Increasing taxes alone remained by far the least popular option, with just 3 percent of those polled supporting such a tactic, up 1 percentage point from December.

The overwhelming popularity of combining the traditionally liberal notion of tax increases with the traditionally conservative notion of spending reductions cut across party lines, though it was more popular with Democrats than Republicans. Nearly half — 47 percent — of Republicans chose that option, compared to 77 percent of Democrats. Independents were right in line with the overall picture, with 64 percent of them choosing the twofold approach to fixing the deficit.

That wasn’t the only indication in the poll that the majority of Americans are more moderate than vocal extremists on either side of the political divide would have it. A full 71 percent of those polled said that Republicans have not been willing enough to compromise with President Obama over the budget, while only 16 percent said Republicans were too willing to compromise.

The American Independent previously reported on the poll’s findings that more than half of all Americans are now in support of legalizing same-sex marriage.

Despite the fact that Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.) and others have tried to encourage all GOPers to refuse to approve a spending plan that doesn’t have certain social riders, such as the amendment to defund Planned Parenthood, the bill passed with 55 House Republicans voting against and 85 Democrats voting for it.

Anti-abortion rights group Family Research Council released a statement praising the Republicans who voted against today’s continuing resolution. Of the vote, FRC President Tony Perkins said:

“We thank Representatives Mike Pence, Jim Jordan and their colleagues who refused to vote for a spending bill that continues to use taxpayer dollars to directly pay for abortions in Washington, D.C. and continues to fund scandal-plagued Planned Parenthood. The time to bring our fiscal house in order is now, and ending the federal gravy train for Planned Parenthood and other Left-wing groups is the first step to show that this Congress is serious about doing so.”

That 2003 Oklahoma law was one of several around the country modeled after Texas’ 2001 DREAM Act, for which the failed federal bill that would grant residency to any undocumented alien “of good moral character” who works toward getting a college degree was named. Now, just months after the federal DREAM Act fell apart in the U.S. Senate, the Texas law that started it all 10 years ago may be in danger. No fewer than three bills have been introduced in the Texas legislature that propose to follow Oklahoma’s lead and roll back in-state tuition benefits to undocumented students.

The Texas Independent reported back in December that state Rep. Tim Kleinschmidt (R-Lexington) had filed House Bill 464, which would bar any non-legal resident of the U.S. from seeking in-state tuition at a Texas college or university. The bill has been in the House State Affairs Committee since February. It’s joined in that committee by HB 623, introduced by state Rep. Dennis Bonnen (R-Angleton). Bonnen’s bill, in addition to advocating immigration enforcement by state police and declaring English the state language (More than 31 percent of Texans speak a language other than English at home, according to the U.S. Census), would require all college applicants to provide documentation of legal residence in the U.S. in order to be considered a resident of the state of Texas. And HB 1927, filed by state Rep. Bill Zedler (R-Arlington), would set the tuition rate for undocumented aliens at the highest tuition rate a given college offers. It, too, is in the State Affairs committee.

If any one of those bills passes, Texas would join Oklahoma, Arizona, Colorado, Georgia and South Carolina, which all currently have laws specifically barring undocumented aliens from qualifying for in-state tuition rates. At present, California, New York, Utah, Washington, Illinois, Kansas, New Mexico, Nebraska and Wisconsin all have Texas-inspired laws that grant in-state tuition to undocumented students, and Connecticut’s Democratic-controlled legislature and governor’s office may be set to pass a similar law very soon.  Nebraska’s law was recently threatened by a bill similar to the three in Texas, but it was overwhelmingly voted down in committee last month. Nebraska state Sen. Charlie Janssen (R-Fremont) said that the law is in violation of federal regulations; opponents of DREAM Acts in Texas and other states have often instead attacked in-state tuition for undocumented aliens as a misuse of state money.

Texas Rep. Leo Berman (R-Tyler), a major opponent of the Texas DREAM Act, has repeatedly stated that the annual economic impact of the DREAM Act is negative $42 million in state money. This is about one-seventh of 1 percent of Texas’s estimated $27 billion deficit and pales in comparison to, for example, the nearly $10 billion and rising that obesity costs Texas each year.

Though $42 million is still a sizable sum — if it’s accurate. Berman has not provided any information as to where this number comes from, but there are some publicly available statistics that his team might be drawing from. The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board estimated that in the fall 2009 semester, 12,138 students in the state benefited from the state DREAM Act. Not all of them are illegal immigrants, but presumably all of them would be impacted by the repeal of the law, so any attempt to look at the financial impact of repeal would have to include them.

The Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) estimates that, based on the average breakdown between community college and four-year university enrollment among illegal immigrants and the tuition differences at both types of institutions in Texas, the average undocumented student in Texas gets $3,370 in taxpayer money toward tuition each year. If all 12,138 affected students were to pay the difference following a repeal, Texas would be looking at an additional $40,905,060 in revenue each year — pretty close to Berman’s number.  And yet the notion that Texas could earn back more than $40 million in tax dollars each year by repealing its DREAM Act is deeply flawed.

The CIS has also done studies on income among illegal immigrants, and it has found that 65 percent of illegal immigrants in Texas live in or near poverty. Certainly, it is possible that the remaining 35 percent of illegal immigrants not living in or near poverty are overrepresented among those who go to college. But the $8.4 million that undocumented students get in financial aid each year means that they still qualify for financial need at almost twice the rate of the general student population — and may indeed do so at a considerably higher rate, as the figure of $8.4 million dates back to an average from 2004 to 2008, while the total amount of financial aid more than quintupled between 2000 and 2010.

Following a repeal of the DREAM Act, undocumented students would have to either count on a much larger amount of financial aid, which would deeply cut into Berman’s estimated $42 million windfall, or simply give up on higher education. Also throwing a wrench into Berman’s numbers is the fact that Texas does not have state income tax. The biggest state contributor by far to Texas revenue is sales tax, which of course applies equally to all consumers regardless of immigration status. If Berman wants to say that taxpayers shouldn’t have to pay for non-taxpayers’ education, he should limit his argument to the federal income tax the state of Texas receives, accounting for 42.2 percent of its total revenue. His $42 million is therefore funded to the tune of about $17.7 million by payers of income tax in Texas. Given a population of almost 24.8 million people, repealing the DREAM Act would save the average Texan about 72 cents on their tax returns.

On the other hand, if a federal DREAM Act were to eventually pass in U.S. Congress and undocumented immigrants were allowed to legally live and work in Texas or any other state after getting degrees, the presence of thousands more educated members of the workforce in Texas could have some major long-term benefits for the state. The University of Virginia’s Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service estimates that each dollar a state spends on higher education produces more than $13 in job-creating economic activity and an additional $1.39 in tax revenue.

Politifact started with President Obama.

“We will not be adding more to the national debt,” President Obama said, after he released his budget for fiscal year 2012, starting in October.”

We looked at the numbers, though, and found that the debt continues to grow because of interest on the debt service. The White House didn’t count the interest in their estimates. We rated his statement False.

“The federal government has added 200,000 new federal jobs,” Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-Ohio) said, referring to growth in the last two years.

We rated this False, because it counts temporary Census workers as new federal jobs. Those Census jobs are temporary and go away when the once-a-decade Census is over.

“We can save $125 billion in simply not giving out money to Medicare recipients that don’t exist for procedures that didn’t happen,” from Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif).

We looked into that number, though, and found the total also included improper payments for programs including Medicaid, food stamps, unemployment insurance, Social Security and the school lunch program. Medicare is the government agency with the largest chunk of improper payments, but it’s still less than half the total. We rated his statement False.

PolitiFact confirmed other statements:

“The debt will soon eclipse our entire economy,” from Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.).

We found that the United States’ total debt at the start of the year was $14 trillion. We also found that the size of the U.S. economy, measured by the gross domestic product, or the value of all goods and services, was about $14.745 trillion last year. After discussing the nuances of the data and different ways to look at the public debt, we concluded Ryan’s statement was True.

“One of the biggest causes of our soaring debt and economic insecurity ends up being Pentagon spending. The budget for the Pentagon consumes more than half of our discretionary spending,” from Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio).

Our partners at PolitiFact Ohio rated that True, keeping in mind that total discretionary spending includes both domestic and international spending.

“Eliminating earmarks does not reduce spending,” from Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.).

Ending earmarks would stop pet projects for lawmakers, but it wouldn’t directly reduce overall spending. We rated Lugar’s statement Mostly True.