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

Reading First Funds Mismanaged

Sep 27, 2006 by Matt Lewis

The Department of Education's Reading First Program has let favoritism guide who gets grants. Four years ago, a nonprofit education firm called Success for All occupied four floors in a Towson office building and employed 500 people. Hundreds of schools across the country were signing up to use its highly regarded reading curriculum, which stresses phonics.

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E. Coli Outbreak Is Reason to Better Protect Food Supply

Though federal agencies responded relatively quickly to the recent outbreak of E.Coli in bagged spinach, the case highlights the need to ensure the safety of the nation's food supply and to have adequate tracking systems in place to do so.

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S. 2590 Now Law

Sep 26, 2006 by Matthew Madia

President Bush has signed S. 2590 into law (see the White House press release here). Congrats to everyone who helped push this bill through!

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Tax Expenditure Statement

Sep 26, 2006 by Matt Lewis

Today, the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs is having a hearing on the disclosure of tax expenditures. Not many people know it, but tax expenditures are a huge part of the federal budget. The Joint Committee on Taxation estimates that the federal government spent $947 billion in tax expenditures just this year. And much of that enormous sum goes to programs that are ineffective, ineffecient, and highly regressive, according to the Congressional Research Service.

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HUD Secretary Politicized Contracts

Sep 21, 2006 by Matt Lewis

The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Inspector General has found that HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson "instructed staff to award HUD contracts to President Bush’s political allies and withhold them from his political opponents." Think Progress has more. Just another reason why we need a grants and contracts database. And for backgound, see here.

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Giving Credit Where Credit is Due: IRS

Sep 20, 2006 by Adam Hughes*

We've been posting recently about some of the bizarre and downright ridiculous things going on over at the Internal Revenue Service lately concerning enforcement of the country's tax laws (see this recent analysis for more background). While these policy changes certainly deserve criticism, you have to tip your hat when things go right. Within two days last week, the IRS announced the two largest tax settlements in the agencies' history (one individual and one corporate) related to tax evasion.

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GAO Report Highlights Magnitude of Fiscal Challenge

Sep 18, 2006 by Matthew Madia

Earlier, Matt posted about a GAO report released today about the unsustainability of the federal budget. The report illustrates in six pages the enormity of the challenges the federal budget faces. And it makes clear that even if Congress allows the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts to expire, as is currently the law, the federal government will have to make serious changes to its current fiscal policy.

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Halliburton and Friends, Exposed

Sep 18, 2006 by Matt Lewis

TomPaine.com has a good article on the cost of a privatized military here.

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GAO: Fiscal Policy "Unsustainable"

Sep 18, 2006 by Matthew Madia

CBO chief Donald Marron, a month ago : "[T]he message I would send is that we've gone from a period in which the fiscal deficits we were running in this country were large and not sustainable if they had persisted, to a situation in which, at least now and for next year, for several years going forward, deficits appear to be in a range that they're sustainable.”

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Government Receives Poor Grades on Secrecy

Government secrecy continues to expand across a broad array of agencies and actions, according to a new report from OpenTheGovernment.org. The Secrecy Report Card 2006 is the third of its kind produced annually, reviewing numerous indicators to identify trends in public access to information.

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