Next time you write your tax check to the Internal Revenue Service, imagine which multibillion-dollar corporation may get some of your hard-earned pay.

How about drugmaker Abbott Laboratories, which in 2011 claimed a $586 million tax refund for its 64 subsidiaries operating in 16 countries considered tax havens?

Or maybe Chesapeake Energy, a company that last year made $2.8 billion in pre-tax U.S. profits—but whose effective tax rate over the course of its 23-year history has averaged only about 1 percent?

Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-Wis.) proposed federal budget, as we pointed out, is bad for the nation and for working people.

But it gets even worse: Ryan’s plan, which the U.S. House has approved already, would gut what little is left of state budgets by slashing funding for a range of programs. States and localities would lose $247 billion from 2013 through 2021, in addition to the cuts they would absorb because of caps on national spending, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP). (Click on chart at left to expand.)

In Maine, state employees are being forced to pay more in contributions for their pensions, but one isn’t: Gov. Paul LePage. He exempted himself from the new pension formula, reports Mike Tipping in the Kennebec Journal.

Here’s a letter to the editor in The Hill by Diann Woodard, president of the School Administrators (AFSA), the only national education union representing principals, assistant principals and school administrators.

The U.S. House this afternoon voted down, by a 261-165 vote, a balanced budget amendment that its supporters hoped would impose sweeping and permanent austerity upon the United States with massive budget cuts. It needed a two-thirds majority to pass. Click here for more from Think Progress and here for our recent coverage.

In July, 11 religious leaders were arrested for holding “pray-in” in the Capitol Rotunda protesting federal budget cuts and calling on Congress to pass a budget to meet the needs of the poor, unemployed, children, seniors  and others threatened by the cuts.

Andy Richards on our Field Communications staff highlights the anti-jobs agenda of Republican state and national lawmakers.

Earlier this year, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels sat down with NPR.  During the interview, he was asked whether he thought pushing a partisan political agenda that includes deep budget cuts were worth it even if it cost a lot of jobs.  He empathetically answered, “Yes.”  This zeal for moving extreme partisan policies at all costs has taken hold across the country with anti-working family governors and their political allies.  These lawmakers ran on promises of creating jobs but instead are leaving behind massive job loss after passing ideologically-driven budgets with cuts to education, health care and other vital services that hurt working families and local communities.

It goes like this—“We’re going broke we can’t afford it.” It’s almost a mantra from the crowd of lawmakers and policy “experts” who are loudly and continually claiming the nation must make drastic cuts in family-help government programs; cut wages, pension and health care for public-sector workers and who also suggest working families should be satisfied with three decades of stagnant wages.