Blog: The Fine Print / Revenue & Spending

New CBPP Report Debunks Bogus Estate Tax Reform

Oct 2, 2007 by Adam Hughes*

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) has released a new analysis examining a dangerous proposal to allow for an unlimited exemption within the estate tax for farmland. CBPP believes this proposal might be offered as an amendment to the Senate Finance committee markup of the farm bill. The CBPP report finds such a proposal:
  • Would likely prove extremely costly because it would create strong incentives for wealthy individuals to convert large amounts of their estates into qualifying farmland.
  • Could undermine its own goals. If wealthy individuals seeking to shield assets from the estate tax bid up the price of farmland, that would make it more difficult for genuine family farmers to keep their farms in their families and could discourage others of ordinary means from entering farming.
Instead, CBPP states that making the current exemption ($4 million per couple) or the 2009 exemption ($7 million per couple) permanent would more than protect farm estates and would be simpler, more administrable, and less open to abuse.

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House Holds Hearing on Blackwater Contracts

Oct 2, 2007 by Matt Lewis

The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is taking up the Blackwater scandal today. You can watch the hearing on their website. Much of the discussion has been about about accountability, standards and efficiency. A new angle, being developed in this hearing, is that private contractors like Blackwater aren't effective in the sense that they harm, rather than help, military counterinsurgency campaigns. When contractors are running amok, it's harder to win hearts and minds. P.W. Singer of the Brookings Institution just recently a paper on this issue. Definitely worth a read.

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Sen. Levin Seeks to Roll Back Corporate Tax Giveaways

Oct 2, 2007 by Adam Hughes*

Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) has introduced a bill to roll back tax deductions companies claim for executive stock options. The bill would eliminate the favored tax treatment of corporate stock option deductions, which currently allows companies to deduct the value of stock options for executive at a later date when they are exercised rather than when they are offered. Companies would still be able to deduct the value in the year the options are offered. The Levin bill would also make executive stock option compensation deductions subject to the same $1 million cap on corporate deductions that applies to other types of compensation paid to the top executives of publicly held companies. When introducing the bill, Levin stated: Our bill would end the double standard of companies deducting more from their taxes than the stock option expenses shown on their books. Eliminating unwarranted and excess stock option deductions could mean as much as $5 to $10 billion annually in additional corporate tax revenues that we can't afford to lose. The bill has been refered to the Senate Finance committee. Levin's office has prepared a summary of the bill. You can also read the bill itself and Levin's comments made when introducing the bill in the Senate.

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Obey Likely to Put Off War Funding Until '08

Oct 2, 2007 by Craig Jennings

According to CongressDaily (no link, sorry), unless the president concedes to major changes in his war policy, House Appropriations Chair David Obey (D-WI) said his committee won't report an FY 2008 war supplemental. Obey: I have absolutely no intention of reporting out of committee anytime in this session any such request that simply serves to continue the status quo.

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Defense Authorization Would Change Contracting Rules

Oct 2, 2007 by Matt Lewis

The Senate overwhelmingly passed the National Defense Authorization Act of 2008 last night. The bill included the Webb/McCaskill wartime contracting commission, and, according to BNA (subscription required), these provisions on military contracting: Immediately before voting on the measure, the Senate agreed 51-42 to adopt an amendment that would impose new limits on Defense Department implementation of the public-private competition process under Office of Management and Budget Circular A-76, and eliminate OMB competitive sourcing goals.

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Feed And Forage Back Again?

Oct 2, 2007 by Matt Lewis

Loyal and long time readers of the BudgetBlog may remember the Feed and Forage Act, a budget policy as obscure as budget policies get (now that's obscure!). It gives the President the authority to obligate funding for a war without an appropriation. So even if funding runs out, soldiers will be provided for. Conceivably, the President then couldn't use a funding deadline to coerce Congress into funding wars. Calls to "support the troops" might ring hollow.

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What's Next For SCHIP?

Oct 1, 2007 by Matt Lewis

Now that the same children's health insurance bill (SCHIP) has been passed by both the House and Senate, what's happening next? Well, for one, Congress hasn't sent the bill to the President yet for his signature. That will most likely happen tomorrow. Then, the President, making good on his many promises, will probably veto the bill immediately. He'll probably try to keep it quiet. He's a little embarrassed that he's denying children health insurance.

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The Drumbeat For Benefit Cuts

Oct 1, 2007 by Matt Lewis

The drumbeat for "entitlement reform," a euphemism for Social Security and Medicare cuts, has been getting louder. The main drum circle comprises the Washington Post's editorial board, the Senate Budget Committee, and the Bush Treasury Department. When they want to, they can make a frightful lot of noise. Thankfully, Dean Baker is around to check the facts.

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Feelin' Blue?

Oct 1, 2007 by Matt Lewis

Well, I've got just the thing- an encouraging article in the Washington Post this morning on fiscal policy! Here's House Minority Leader Rep. John Boehner (R-OH), coming to grips with unequal economic growth: "There's no question the economy is good, but it's not a good for everybody," said House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio.). "When you look at family incomes, there hasn't been much rise. But there has been increased health-care costs, increased energy costs. They're nibbling up more than the family budget. It just drives more concerns. "

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OMB-OMB Watch Collaboration Improving Results?

Sep 28, 2007 by Adam Hughes*

Got a email from the nice folks over at OMB this morning about my blog post last week on the release of new PART scores and some of the shortcomings of the PART website. The email was surprising for two reasons: first, they read the BudgetBlog. (ok, so that's not so surprising as we all know everybody who is anybody reads the BudgetBlog.) Second, and perhaps more surprising, they have changed the spreadsheet that lists all PART scores that you can download from ExpectMore.gov to include a column for "Last Year Assessed." Now anyone can easily tell when the last assessment was done for each program. Fantastic! Way to go OMB! (I feel slightly more influential today than I did yesterday, which really wasn't very influential at all.) OMB also reported they are working to improve the search engine on the site so the most recent review links are returned when searching for programs. This is also excellent news, with one caveat: I'd still like to have access to the links to the older reviews available when I search, just not as the first items that are returned from the search engine. Instead of removing those links entirely from the search results (or from the site altogether), it would be better to list the reviews chronologically. Then users can tell when each assessment happened and allows them to compare between assessments to see what has changed. When I searched for our old friend - the Administration on Aging (AoA) - this afternoon, the search returned links to the 2007 review pages, but do not list those conducted in 2003. The links for the 2003 reviews no longer work. Since I suspect that OMB may read this and was very responsive in taking a previous suggestion of mine, perhaps I'll try it again. Here's what I'd like to see (click the image to enlarge):
    1) Expand the posting of "Last Year Assessed" data to the summary view for each program, in addition to listing it in the assessment details page and raw data in spreadsheets. 2) Links to older assessments from previous years (where applicable) on the most recent summary view for each program. So for the AoA, you would be able to click on a link in the 2007 review that took you to all past reviews.
So a big thank you to OMB for incorporating some user suggestions to their website, and here's hoping we can keep improving it. If this works, I'm asking for the out-year discretionary spending details from the President's budget - those always seem to get leaked eventually, but it would be nice to have them upfront. Who knows how far this might go...

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