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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House Budget Committee Hearing on PART

Feb 16, 2006 by Matthew Madia

The House Budget Committee held a hearing today on performance evaluations and spending trends. Clay Johnson of the Office of Management and Budget testified, along with Brian Reidl of the Heritage Foundation and Bob Greenstein of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Johnson spoke of the importance of accountability in government spending as well as OMB's new performance website, but refused to recognize the hypocrisy surrounding some of the budget decisions made after these programs are evaluated by OMB's standards. Testimony and opening remarks are below:

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Bush's Budget Plan Includes Hidden Cuts, Document Reveals

Feb 9, 2006 by Matthew Madia

An eye-opening article in today's Washington Post says that internal White House documents indicate that meeting the president's goal of cutting the deficit in half will involve a significant amount of cutting to domestic programs -- even to those supposedly "favored" by President Bush.

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OMB Watch Initial Analysis of President's FY 2007 Budget

Feb 7, 2006 by Adam Hughes*

Our initial analysis of the president's budget release is now available. This is just preliminary and there are many more aspects of the budget to comment on. Check back here often for additional updates and information about what's in the FY 2007 budget proposal.

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Initial Analysis of the President's 2007 Budget

The president's Fiscal Year 2007 (FY 07) budget would set the nation on a dangerous fiscal path and does nothing to honestly address the federal government's looming budgetary challenges. The budget--totaling $2.77 trillion--would make permanent the president's first-term tax cuts, which primarily benefit the wealthy, and pay for those cuts in part by cutting some entitlement programs and drastically reducing domestic discretionary spending (outside of homeland security and defense).

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PART: Finally, Someone Else Gets It

Feb 6, 2006 by Matthew Madia

At OMB Watch, we're pretty accustomed to working on issues that go under the radar. Such has long been the case with PART, the White House's tool for assessing program performance (supposedly). We have been telling anyone who will listen that PART is a political tool, not a measurement of "results" or "effectiveness," which the White House uses to justify lousy budget choices and to send management signals to agencies that would take government programs in the wrong directions.

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PARTly Sunny, PARTly Cloudy

Feb 6, 2006 by Adam Hughes*

With the release of the White House's budget submission comes, of course, the latest PART scores. In an effort to be tech-fancy, OMB created a new website, ExpectMore.Gov, to feature PART assessments. Only the homepage was working this morning, and now the pieces that are working are either not completely functional or spotty, taking you sometimes to data and other times to the 404-error page.

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State of the Union's Unmet Needs

Jan 31, 2006 by Guest Blogger

Our country must also remain on the offensive against terrorism here at home. The enemy has not lost the desire or capability to attack us.

But let's not be prepared for the worst.

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Everson: IRS Will Review Frozen Refund Program

Jan 25, 2006 by Matthew Madia

Yesterday, IRS Commissioner Mark Everson announced that the Questionable Refund Program, which is currently under scrutiny for recent practices, will undergo a review and modification process.

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White House Called Out on Manipulating Budget Forecasts

Jan 24, 2006 by Matthew Madia

Stan Collender, contributing editor of the National Journal, makes two excellent points calling out the White House for their faulty and ideological budget projections in his January 17 column Wolf! (subscription only).

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Poor Hurt By IRS Actions to Freeze Funds

Jan 10, 2006 by Matthew Madia

The Internal Revenue Service's taxpayer advocate, Nina Olson, told Congress in the annual report released today that tax refunds sought by hundreds of thousands of poor Americans were denied by the IRS and blocked for years to come. This was done because a computer program run by the criminal investigation division of the IRS selected the returns as part of the questionable refund program. Olson, whose staff looked at a sample of suspected returns, found only one in five to be questionable.

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