RAT Board Officially Announces Recovery.gov Redesign Contract, CAR Sends Letter Requesting Publication of Contract

Despite the rest of the world learning about it on Wednesday, last Friday the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board (RAT Board) posted a press release announcing the General Services Administration's awarding of the contract to redesign Recovery.gov. Notwithstanding its late appearance, the post is definitely a good thing, since it is the first time Recovery.gov has even acknowledged that the current site is effectively Recovery.gov 1.0. Before this, the redesign has never even been mentioned on the site.

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Medicare is the Culprit

On July 8th, Peter R. Orszag, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, wrote a letter to Reps. George Miller (D-CA), Charles Rangel (D-NY), and Henry Waxman (D-CA), to express the Administration's support for the policy changes that have been discussed thus far.  After commending their efforts thus far to make policies deficit-neutral, Orszag writes that these changes are not enough.

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GAO Releases Second Bi-Monthly Recovery Act Report

The Government Accountability Office on Wednesday released its second bi-monthly review of the Recovery Act, which looks at how sixteen states and the District of Columbia use and track their recovery funds. This report in particular focuses on Medicaid funding, highway infrastructure, the State Fiscal Stabilization Fund, and the various accountability measures states and federal agencies have put in place. It's a long report (167 pages for the main report, plus another 736 pages [!] for the individual states appendixes), so we're still digesting it.

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CBPP: Correcting Five Stimulus Myths

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities just put out an interesting article called "Correcting Five Myths about the Stimulus Bill." The piece looks at such myths as the recent rise in unemployment means the recovery has failed, and that the Recovery Act was not designed to help states fill in budget gaps. It's a quick read, but anyway, it's always good to take a step back every once and a while to look at the bigger picture.

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GSA Announces Recovery.gov Redesign Contract

A short 27 days after announcing the RFP, yesterday the GSA awarded the Recovery.gov redesign contract to Smartronix, a Maryland firm. Smartronix was one of only three companies to submit bids, out of the 59 companies allowed to bid under the GSA's Alliant acquisition contract. The award is an exciting development, since the current iteration of Recovery.gov (built from a contract with REI Systems) is not very useful in tracking Recovery Act funds, so we're looking forward to a new and improved site. However, the project hasn't gotten off to a promising start.

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CBO Monthly Budget Review: June 2009

Yesterday, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released their monthly budget review for June.

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CBPP Calls Foul on Recent Estate Tax *Studies*

Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), a non-profit fiscal policy institute, released a report yesterday questioning the accuracy of two recent reports from the American Family Business Foundation (AFBF) that claim repeal of the federal estate tax could create upward of 1 million jobs relatively cost free.

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House Recovery Oversight Hearing: TODAY

At 10 AM today (July 8), the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee will hold a hearing on oversight of the Recovery Act. The hearing will feature testimony from Gene Dodaro from the Government Accountablility Office, Robert Nabors from the Office of Management and Budget, and governors of three states.

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Discussing New Performance Report on Federal News Radio

Building a Better Government Performance SystemI just finished up an interview about our new report Building a Better Government Performance System on Federal News Radio. The segment was a part of The Daily Debrief with Chris Dorobek and Amy Morris and I got to talk a bit about the unique process we used to develop these recommendations to the Obama administration and some of the implications of those recommendations on current performance measurement systems.

You can listen to the interview on the Federal News Radio Daily Debrief webpage or download the mp3 of the broadcast.

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CTJ and RRAN Call for Funding Health Care through Responsible Tax Reform

Citizens for Tax Justice

This morning, Citizens for Tax Justice (CTJ), in conjunction with Rebuild & Renew America Now (RRAN), a tax policy group, released a report outlining two tax reform proposals devised to help pay for the much anticipated overhaul of the U.S. health care system by Congress. The proposals, designed to place the least amount of tax burden on low and middle-income families, call for an expansion of the Medicare tax and a limitation on itemized deductions. According to CTJ, the two tax reforms could yield as much as $60.5 billion in the first year and $760 billion over the course of a decade. The report breaks down how the tax reforms would affect citizens of different income levels on a state-by-state basis. In addition to the report, Deborah Weinstein, Executive Director of the Coalition on Human Needs, which is part of RRAN, published an opinion piece on Huffington Post arguing for responsible revenues to pay for health care reform.

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