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

Pentagon Must Clean-up Bases, Justice Department Says

Dec 5, 2008 by Matthew Madia

The Justice Department has sided with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on an intra-governmental dispute between EPA and the Department of Defense over toxic cleanup. For more than a year the Pentagon has ignored the instructions of EPA to clean up toxic sites at military bases. EPA issued final orders demanding the sites be cleaned up. EPA says the three most controversial clean-up sites (Maguire Air Force Base in New Jersey, Fort Meade in Maryland, and Tyndall Air Force Base in Florida) may present "an imminent and substantial threat" to public health and the environment.

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SIGTARP Hold Lifted

Dec 4, 2008 by Craig Jennings

It appears that the anonymous hold on Neil Barofsky, President Bush's nominee for the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program has been lifted. The Senate is expect to proceed expeditiously when they return to action next week.

There's no word, however, on the identity of the anonymous holder.

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Thomas Frank on Our Obsession with Contracting

Dec 3, 2008 by Adam Hughes*

Thomas Frank wrote an excellent column in the Wall Street Journal before Thanksgiving that is a great overview of the problems of a government contracting system run amok. The entire column is worth reading, but here's a key passage:

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$83 Billion War Funding Request in the Works

Dec 3, 2008 by Craig Jennings

Buried in this article on Secretary of Defense Robert Gates staying in office for the incoming Obama Administration, is this mention of the next war funding request from the current administration:

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TARP Oversight Continues Down Bumpy Road

Dec 2, 2008 by Craig Jennings

One of the oversight bodies created by the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) legislation is the Congressional Oversight Panel. The panel -- composed of five members appointed by Congressional leadership -- has only recently been named, but has held briefings with Treasury Department officials.

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Happy Thanksgiving!

Nov 26, 2008 by Craig Jennings

While we here in the Budget Brigade are thankful that our respective alma mates are poised to clinch BCS bowl berths (hook 'em, Horns!), we are even more thankful that President Elect Obama has serious concerns about the current BCS system. That's change we can believe in!

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Competitive Sourcing Continues to Fail

Nov 24, 2008 by Adam Hughes*

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a new report on Friday on the Bush administration's competitive sourcing initiative, which allows the federal government to hold public-private competitions for the right to deliver commercial services for the government (things like janitorial services or food preparation or maintenance). If a private sector bid can show savings of $10 million or more or 10 percent of the cost of providing those services in-house, they win the competition. /p>

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Legistorm Launches Searchable Earmarks Website

Nov 20, 2008 by Adam Hughes*

There's been a lot of buzz in Washington and around the country the last couple of years about earmarks. It's the new four letter word of politics, with practically every Senator and Representative talking publicly about how awful they are. Yet earmarks in and of themselves are really not the problem. It is the process by which they are enacted that is usually where we run into trouble.

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Orszag to head up OMB?

Nov 19, 2008 by Adam Hughes*

The National Journal has been reporting this week that current Congressional Budget Office (CBO) Director Peter Orszag is in line to head up the Office of Management and Budget in the upcoming Obama administration. Orszag formerly served as a senior economic adviser during the Clinton administration and held a post in the economics studies program at the Brookings Institution.

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Grassley Asks Treasury IG to Look Into Tax Rule Change

Nov 17, 2008 by Craig Jennings

Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA), has asked the Treasury Department's Inspector General to initiate an investigation into the "facts and circumstances" that led Treasury to issue a revised guidance to tax code section that could give banks $140 billion in tax breaks. On Thursday, we noted our indignation about this quiet change in the tax rules governing the implementation of section 382 of the tax code. Grassley, however, thinks something other than Executive overreach may be at work.

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