Government Performance

Feb 8, 2016

Top 400 Taxpayers See Tax Rates Rise, But There’s More to the Story

As Americans were gathering party supplies to greet the New Year, the Internal Revenue Service released their annual report of cumulative tax data reported on the 400 tax r...

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Feb 4, 2016

Chlorine Bleach Plants Needlessly Endanger 63 Million Americans

Chlorine bleach plants across the U.S. put millions of Americans in danger of a chlorine gas release, a substance so toxic it has been used as a chemical weapon. Greenpeace’s new repo...

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Jan 25, 2016

U.S. Industrial Facilities Reported Fewer Toxic Releases in 2014

The Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) data for 2014 is now available. The good news: total toxic releases by reporting facilities decreased by nearly six percent from 2013 levels. Howe...

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Jan 22, 2016

Methane Causes Climate Change. Here's How the President Plans to Cut Emissions by 40-45 Percent.

UPDATE (Jan. 22, 2016): Today, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) released its proposed rule to reduce methane emissions...

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more news

When Contractors Attack

Jul 19, 2007 by Matt Lewis

Which contractors have racked up the most expensive misconduct charges since 1995? The answer's at Project On Government Oversight's federal contractor misconduct database, which has just been updated. Some hints: Halliburton isn't even in the top 10. And two of the top three are household names.

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Coalition of the Billing

Jul 18, 2007 by Dana Chasin

OK -- quick: how many folks are serving Uncle Sam in Iraq right now? 150,000? 200,000? Try 340,000. How's that? Per the Los Angeles Times: More than 180,000 civilians -- including Americans, foreigners and Iraqis -- are working in Iraq under U.S. contracts, according to State and Defense department figures obtained by the Los Angeles Times. Including the recent troop surge, 160,000 troops and a few thousand civilian government employees are stationed in Iraq.

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Committee Approves Bill to End IRS Privatization Program

Jul 18, 2007 by Matt Lewis

The House Ways and Means Committee has approved HR 3056- the legislative package that will end the IRS private debt collection program- by a vote of 23 to 18. Great! This morning, the Joint Committee on Taxation released its interpretation of a Chairman's amendment to the bill. if passed, it will not affect contracts that have already been issued to private debt collectors. That sounds fair, as the debt collectors who have contracts might take a loss if the program is ended wholesale.

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Private Debt Collection Fables

Jul 18, 2007 by Matt Lewis

A favorite canard put forward by the defenders of the IRS private tax collection program is that there's no other way to collect these taxes (watch a hearing on the issue here). If Congress gave IRS the resources it needed to pursue these cases, IRS administrators would instead direct the money to functions that would yield a greater return-on-investment.

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DeMint Putting Senate's Summer Vacation on "Hold"?

Jul 17, 2007 by Dana Chasin

Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) is apparently single-handedly holding up the Senate's lobbying and ethics reform bill with a hold keeping it from going to conference over a pet provision that he wants guaranteed will be included in the conference committee's final version.

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Ways and Means to Consider New Anti-Privatization Bill

Jul 17, 2007 by Matt Lewis

Tomorrow, the House Ways and Means Committee will consider a new "good government" bill to end the IRS private debt collection program. Check out the bill here. It includes virtually the same language as HR 695- Rep. Steve Rothman (D-NJ) and Rep. Chris Van Hollen's (D-MD) bill to end the program. It also includes six other measures that tweak tax laws. Previous efforts to end the program have been caught up in procedural issues. At first blush, this new bill seems get around those problems- it has proper jurisdiction and probably wouldn't violate PAYGO.

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Executive Earmarks Obscuring Executive Branch Goals?

Jul 16, 2007 by Dana Chasin

A story in The Hill today alleges that, according to Taxpayers for Common Sense (TCS), "senators have not claimed responsibility for at least $7.5 billion worth of projects approved by the Appropriations Committee." Per The Hill, the Committee claims that TCS "misinterpreted a host of appropriations requirements as earmarks... $6.5 billion requested by the Pentagon for the base realignment and closure program was considered 'undisclosed earmarks'."

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Earmark Spending Trend in the Math, Not the Headline

Jul 16, 2007 by Dana Chasin

BNA has published a trendline comparison ($) of the number and the dollar amount of actual FY05 and proposed FY08 legislative earmarks and implies that, thus far in this year's process, numbers for both are heading down. "Of the five bills for which data had been posted July 13, earmark totals were mostly down in comparison with the 2005 figures," BNA says. We looked at BNA's findings and did some math, as follows:

Financial Services -- reduction in earmarks: 65 fewer; $150 million reduction in spending
Interior and Environment -- reductions: 1000 earmarks and $600 million

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Bounty-Hunters Back on the Block

Jul 13, 2007 by Dana Chasin

By a 15-14 vote, the Senate Appropriations Committee this week OK'ed the $21.8 billion Financial Services and General Government appropriations bill, H.R. 2829, over GOP complaints that it would essentially cut the IRS private debt collection program. The bill provides a mere $1 million for the program for FY 2008 -- down by about $250 million from FY 2007. Democrats question the program's efficacy and cost, and cite concerns about the potential for abusive practices stemming from bounty-hunters' private possession of citizens' financial information.

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Earmarks II: OMB "Database" Tracks FY08 Bills

Jul 12, 2007 by Dana Chasin

A Citizen's "Consumer Report" This week, OMB announced a new feature to what it terms its "earmarks database" -- data showing estimates of the number and cost of earmarks in the individual FY 2008 Appropriations bills as they move through the legislative process. We road-tested this database here at OMB Watch and give it one thumbs-up.

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