OMB Watch is holding a conference call for bloggers on the estate tax on Wednesday, August 31, at 2:00 EST. The call will feature a discussion of this critical issue with policy experts and bloggers from around the country and will cover background information on the tax, the implications for the country and all Americans of full repeal or a "backdoor repeal" compromise proposal, where Senators currently stand, and what you and other concerned people can do to help keep the Senate from enacting another tax give-away to multi-millionaires. Please forward this announcement to those you know who are interested in joining the call and who can raise this issue on political and academic blogs around the country. If you have questions, need more information, or would like the call-in information, please contact Adam Hughes at 202.234.8494.

With Congress in recess for the month of August, it seems appropriate to sit back and prepare for what surely will be an action-packed fall in Washington, DC. The Senate, in particular, has more than a full plate for September and October with the Supreme Court nomination of John Roberts, the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act, two reconciliation bills, and more than half (7) of the appropriations bills to finish. The appropriations wrap up this year promises to be particularly dreadful, causing headaches for politicians, congressional staff, and analysts alike. This is because earlier this year, the House and Senate Appropriations Committees reorganized. In a startling display of ignorance and lack of foresight, they choose to reorganize in an inconsistent and uncoordinated way. The result is a different number of appropriations bills in the House and Senate (11 in the House and 12 in the Senate) and a committee structure that does not easily compare between the two chambers (There are only 6 appropriations bills this year with identical jurisdictions). This will cause much chaos in attempts to form and staff conference committees for the remaining 6 bills with no identical counterpart and much confusion for outside analysts and observers in attempt to track appropriations for different programs across committee jurisdictions. It will almost surely lead to delays and drag out the conference committee process at a time when Congress can least afford to waste time. Because of this incongruence and also because the Senate is woefully behind in their appropriations work with little hope of catching up, it appears Congress is headed for another round of unending, short-term continuing resolutions, and most likely another extremely large omnibus appropriations bill. As we have previously observed, omnibus appropriations bills are bad policy:

Omnibus bills are bad legislative practice: they remove transparency and accountability from the appropriations process and usually lead to fiscal irresponsibility. The bills are massive, with plenty of cover to hide extra spending, legislative changes, and special interest items that end up making the bill more fiscally irresponsible than if the bills where passed separately. Removing transparency and accountability from the process by which Congress allocates government funds, especially for other members of Congress, is troubling.- OMB Watcher June 27, 2005

In one of the year's most peculiar moments, the Innovations in American Government Award has been awarded to the Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART). The PART was among over 1,000 applicants considered for the award, given each year by the Ash Institute for Democratic Governance and Innovation at Harvard's Kenney School of Government and the Council for Excellence in Government. That PART was awarded an innovation in government award is ironic in that the ideas and goals underlying PART are certainly nothing new. The issue of government performance has been around since shortly after World War II. Past attempts to reform the management of government programs range from the 1949 recommendations of the Hoover commission to the Carter administration’s Zero Based Budgeting experiment to the Nixon Administration’s Management By Objectives initiative and the Johnson Administration’s Planning-Programming-Budgeting System. Even President Clinton jumped on the bandwagon with his Reinventing Government initiative. Most of these initiatives were short-lived and with any luck, so to will the PART. Further, PART has been criticized as having severe deficiencies including ideological and political bias and inconsistency in implementation across programs. The most egregious of the criticisms is that often times its one-size-fits-all approach actually forces programs to be evaluated tangentially or contrary to their stated purpose(s). The PART is hardly innovative and certainly not worth of praise. This is yet another step in the disasterous process of PART gaining wide and unquestioned acceptance - a step that surely will lead to fewer protections and supports for the American people.

The Government Accountability Office released a updated response to the Senate Finance Committee after an April hearing on the tax gap. The report released by GAO concerns the Internal Revenue Services' strategic approach to reducing the tax gap. The most recent IRS calculations put the tax gap - or the difference between how much should be paid in taxes and how much actually is - betwen $312 and $353 billion per year. The majority of this comes from underreporting of taxes owed by individuals and corporations. Interestingly enough, the current projections for the FY05 budget deficit fall smack in the middle of that range, at $331 billion. While there are many more problems with growing and persistent long-term budget deficits than closing the tax gap could fix, it is nonetheless an important problem needing to be addressed by Congress and the IRS.