Earlier this month, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) released an updated analysis of the tax gap – the difference between the total amount in federal taxes owed by people and businesses, and the total paid. What did the IRS find? In 2006, the most recent year for which information is available, Americans underpaid their taxes by $450 billion. Extended over a decade, this could represent a shortfall of trillions, robbing the country of needed funds for infrastructure and other investments.

Late Wednesday, the House Appropriations Committee released its proposed "megabus" spending bill, packaging the nine appropriations bills that have not yet been completed for Fiscal Year (FY) 2012. The House and Senate have been in negotiations to finish the nine bills before a stopgap spending bill expires on Friday.

Late last week, Congress passed the first spending bill for fiscal year (FY) 2012, 48 days after it began. The bill, known as a minibus, is a bundle of three smaller appropriations bills, and collectively, the three bills are about a billion dollars lower than their level last year. Because the remaining nine spending bills required to keep the government running have yet to be approved, the minibus includes another stopgap spending measure, designed to keep the government open until Dec. 16. However, tucked inside the minibus is a litany of restrictions on spending designed to change non-budgetary federal policy.  Even though congressional rules are supposed to prevent the practice of slipping policy initiatives into funding bills, the minibus includes 75 policy riders that affect everything from gun regulations to the weight of planes flying into New Jersey’s Teterboro Airport, and even declare that pizza is a vegetable.

Members of the Super Committee appear as far apart as ever when it comes to agreeing to a deal that would reduce the deficit by $1.2 trillion over the next ten years and the latest offer from some Democrats on the committee indicates that if a deal does actually win approval, it will be deeply irresponsible. A deal of this sort would maintain current inequities in the tax code while slashing funding for public protections and health care programs that are vital to working families and retirees.