Beyond the images, the ad paints a fairly dark portrait of illegal immigration: “Waves of illegal aliens streaming across our border, joining violent gangs, forcing families to live in fear,” the voice-over says. “And what’s Harry Reid doing about it? Voting to give illegal aliens Social Security benefits.”

Here’s the ad:

Several of the ad’s claims are questionable. Studies have found that crime often drops as more immigrants settle in a city. Likewise with the charges leveled at Reid: In addition to Social Security for undocumented immigrants (barely true, according to PolitiFact), the ad claims Reid voted to give them tax breaks (false) and college tuition (not really). The only fully truthful statement seems to be on Reid’s opposition to Arizona’s SB 1070 immigration law.

But since much of the outrage over the previous ad focused on how it portrayed immigrants, let’s compare images. Here’s a screenshot from her last ad, which was eventually taken down from YouTube because of a claim by Getty Images. (The photographer who took the below image — of Mexicans in Mexico — said the photo was not licensed to be used for advertising.)

And here are the “illegal immigrants” depicted in her newest ad (red bandanas seem to be a common theme):

Angle’s recent doubling down on illegal immigration might drive away Latino voters, according to recent polling, which showed less enthusiasm for the midterms among Republican Latino voters than among Democratic Latino voters. Polling experts have said this might be due to anti-immigration ads and rhetoric from candidates such as Angle.

In fiscal year 2009 alone, the federal government spent nearly $400 billion on policies that help families buy homes, start businesses, put their children through college, and retire comfortably.

But these policies, administered largely through the tax code, are terribly skewed. They tend to subsidize wealth building for the wealthiest among us, rewarding them for size of their homes and investment portfolios. Low-income households, who don’t make enough money to itemize deductions or even to accrue much tax liability, receive next to nothing from these strategies. For the poorest families, federal policy actually penalizes efforts to save money by cutting off benefits to those who manage to create even the smallest financial cushion.

The inequities extend beyond poor families. A typical middle-class household making $50,000 a year receives less than $500 in benefits from the most expansive of these federal policies annually; families making $100,000 get about $2,000. By contrast, taxpayers bringing in more than $1 million enjoy $95,820 in annual support through mortgage and property tax deductions and investment tax breaks.

Expressed differently, more than half of the $400 billion in benefits go to the top 5 percent of taxpayers, those earning more than $167,000. Meanwhile, low-income families get next to nothing.

Of course, in 2009, the Obama administration’s spending did disproportionately benefit millions of low-income Americans.  The expansion of the federal social-safety net through the recession — from the additional unemployment insurance benefits to the bump in Social Security payments to the more generous food stamp benefits — helped keep 3.3 million at least from poverty. Still, the point about taxes remains.

“At a time when small business owners are still struggling to make payroll and they’re still holding off hiring, we put together a plan that would give them some tax relief and make it easier for them to take out loans,” President Obama said, speaking about the bill this week.

Republicans had held the relatively noncontroversial legislation up since July — demanding to propose non-germane amendments, then refusing the closure of a tax loophole for large companies as a pay-for. More recently, Republicans argued that the tax cuts in the bill weren’t big enough. Ultimately, Sens. George Voinovich (Ohio) and George LeMieux (Fla.) crossed the aisle.

The bill passed 61 to 38, and now goes onto the House, which approved similar legislation in June and is expected to pass the bill within the next few working days.

But now it seems that Democrats might propose a new compromise: A tax hike on millionaires, or a millionaire’s tax bracket.

TPM has confirmed the rumors with a House aide: “Some Democrats want to create a tax bracket for people earning $1 million and up, a shift that could give the party the rhetorical edge this fall.” (I will update as soon as I know who is proposing what.)

And there is some movement on the Senate side as well. Sen. Jim Webb’s (D-Va.) office confirmed to me that the senator, who previously said he does not support raising taxes for households making more than $250,000, might support raising taxes for households earning some larger amount. (His office did not have any more details than that.)

That means the millionaire’s tax bracket might get some traction. It is an issue that polls well — most Americans support letting taxes rise for the wealthiest two percent. And while some might argue a family making $250,000 a year is not “really rich” — really? — it is hard to argue millionaires can’t afford a slight hike in their top marginal rate.

Obama said that he and Congressional leaders will find a way to make the measures deficit-neutral. But where will the $300 billion come from? In The Washington Post, Anne Kornblut and Lori Montgomery write: “It would be paid for by closing other corporate tax loopholes, said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity because the policy has not yet been unveiled.”

But closing loopholes on big, multinational corporations will pose a number of problems. First of all, finding $300 billion in tax increases itself will pose a challenge — many of the easy fixes are already gone, used to fund other priorities. Then, even if Democrats find a way to make the bill deficit-neutral, groups like the Chamber of Commerce might decide to object to it, and might lobby against it, since it raises taxes on big businesses. So too might moderate Senate Republicans, who have objected to the small-business bill largely on the grounds that it raises taxes for a small number of companies. Moreover, Republicans will likely oppose the proposal for just shifting the tax burden around — I can imagine Republicans arguing that the bill does nothing other than pick winners and losers.

Indeed, Republicans have already opposed Obama’s proposal. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.), for one, released this statement: “After the administration pledged that a trillion dollars in borrowed stimulus money would create 4 million jobs and keep the unemployment rate under 8 percent, their latest plan for another stimulus should be met with justifiable skepticism. After failing to deliver on their economic promises for more than 18 months, the administration wants to do it again — this time with higher taxes for even more new spending.

“Americans are rightly skeptical about Washington Democrats asking for more of their money — and their patience; after all, they’re still looking for the ‘shovel-ready’ jobs they were promised more than a year ago. A last-minute, cobbled-together stimulus bill with more than $50 billion in new tax hikes will not reverse the complete lack of confidence Americans have in Washington Democrats’ ability to help this economy.”

That ought to please both environmentalists and fiscal conservatives in Congress, right? Don’t get your hopes up. From The Vine:

The president can propose whatever he wants; what really matters is whether lawmakers follow through. And the tax breaks for oil and gas producers have a lot of support in Congress—last year, in the FY2010 budget, the White House wanted to repeal $31.5 billion worth of fossil-fuel subsidies, and that idea was buried.

Remember that 12 Democratic senators just spent the weekend raising money for lobbyists, including some from oil companies.

The White House is holding a conference call on the energy and climate implications of the budget momentarily. More to come…

Update: White House officials on the call are presenting the administration’s three-pronged approach to energy issues in the budget. One element is a “focus on clean energy jobs and energy efficiency”; another is “a commitment to science research and energy innovation.” But the third, “increased funding for clean energy jobs in the nuclear sector,” will have some environmental advocates concerned. This point is largely in line with President Obama’s increased emphasis on nuclear power of late, including in his State of the Union last week. But considering that the budget will eliminate the nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, it’s bound to raise some questions about how exactly this nuclear expansion will work.

The House Ways and Means Committee approved its portion of the $825 billion stimulus package Thursday afternoon, including $275 billion in tax cuts.

While the original bill would allow businesses to recover taxes paid over the last five years based on losses suffered in 2008 and 2009, the Ways and Means panel amended the proposal so that more businesses become eligible for that break, according to the Wall Street Journal:

In a package of amendments to the recovery package unveiled Thursday, House Ways and Means Chairman Charles Rangel (D., N.Y.) proposed a series of changes that would give businesses greater flexibility to claim the credit, ensuring wider participation, congressional aides and corporate lobbyists said. [...]

To pay for the changes, which threatened to drive up the ten-year cost of $16 billion carry-back proposal, the chairman proposed to limit the overall value of the tax benefit. Under his proposal, businesses claiming the tax break would be allowed to carry back 90% of current losses, not 100%, as originally proposed.

The amended bill passed the committee by a vote of 33 to 23, strictly along party lines.

Overall, says the group’s president Gene Karpinski in a press release, “in 2008, Congress went in the wrong direction” — that is, away from reducing our country’s dependence on oil.

This year’s scorecard looks at 11 Senate votes and 13 House votes related to energy and environmental policies. Sixty-seven members of the House received a perfect rating, while 27 senators received a comparable score.  Some 70 members of the House and two senators received a zero rating.

The press release mentions “a vocal minority” in Congress, “led by Minority Leaders Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and John Boehner (R-Oh), [who] used every trick in the book to help their allies in Big Oil and Big Coal.” The League of Conservation Voters says this vocal minority has led to billions of dollars in tax subsidies for oil companies.

Meanwhile, the league praised other Republicans, including Sen. John Warner (R-Va.), for introducing and supporting legislation to fight climate change and improve the environment and public health.

View the complete scorecard.