by Jeremy Leaming
The severely conservative U.S. House of Representatives is peddling yet another effort to slash services for the poor.
As TPM’s Sahil Kapur reports “House Republicans are set to advance legislation to replace automatic defense spending cuts they agreed to last year with cuts to programs for the poor and working class.”
Yes, the House’s plan is likely only to be symbolic, as Kapur notes the legislation is expected to go nowhere in the Senate. Yet it provides, as if anyone needed it, another example of the conservative party’s extreme opposition to any policy that might raise taxes on the super wealthy.
Rep. Chris Van Hollen, (pictured) the House Budget Committee’s Ranking Member, in a May 3 report blasted the proposal for advancing “costly additional tax breaks for millionaires while finding savings by ending the Medicare guarantee for seniors, slashing investments that strengthen our economy, and shredding the social safety net.”
As noted here, a string of commentators have argued that the conservative party has been retooled to focus solely on protecting tax cuts for the wealthy, even as the middle class shrinks and poverty grows.
A recent study from political scientists at the University of Georgia and New York University reflects a drastically changed political party, noting that the “Republican Party is the most conservative it has been in a century,” NPR’s Frank James reports.
In a piece for The Huffington Post, Mike Lux said the political scientists “are underestimating.”
amendment, pushed by Rep. Robert Goodlatte (R-Va.), was defeated by a 261 – 165 vote, The Associated Press 
The AP reports that the IRS “tracks tax returns with the 400 highest adjusted gross incomes each year. The average income on those returns in 2007, the latest year for IRS data, was nearly $345 million. Their average federal income tax rate was 17 percent, down from 26 percent in 1992.”