Congress

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

Somebody Needs a Nap

Mar 24, 2010 by Craig Jennings

Yesterday, a hearing on federal financial transparency and government accountability was curtailed, as Sen. John "Cranky" McCain (R-Kindergarten) stomped his feet and pitched a fit when his team lost a vote on a motion to proceed to debate on the health care reconciliation bill.

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President Obama's Forecast - Sunshine with More to Come

Mar 16, 2010 by Sean Moulton

President Obama just made a statement on Sunshine Week applauding the work done so far to make the government more transparent and recommitting his administration to be the most open and transparent. The statement highlights some of the accomplishments the administration has already racked up in this area including Data.gov, Recovery.gov and Executive Order on Classification. The President also states that while they "are proud of these accomplishment" that the "work is not done." This reality of progress being made but more still being needed is reflected in two reports released for Sunshine Week.

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Recovery Act Data Shows Recipients Are Learning

Feb 25, 2010 by Sam Rosen-Amy

Earlier today, the Recovery Board released the list of Recovery Act recipients who did not file during the second reporting period. According to the Board, recipients of 1,036 Recovery Act awards failed to file during this quarter, which was from Oct. 1 through Dec. 31, 2009. That number represents a whopping 76 percent decline from the first reporting cycle, which saw 4,359 missing award reports, and is less than one percent of all the award reports. Equally good news is that of the 1,036 missing reports, only 389 were from "repeat offenders," or recipients who failed to file in both quarters.

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Leaders and Laggards in Agency Open Government Webpages

Complying with requirements of the Open Government Directive (OGD), federal agencies launched transparency pages on their websites Feb. 6. The content and functionality of the pages varied from non-compliant to barely compliant to above and beyond expectations. OMB Watch conducted an assessment of the webpages between Feb. 15 and 22, based on factors that make for sound accountability and transparency.

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Commentary: Celebrating One of the Recovery Act's Legacies: Transparency

Feb. 17 marked the one-year anniversary of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, commonly called the Recovery Act. Both political parties celebrated the occasion with partisan attacks. Democrats heralded the act as having saved the nation's economy, while Republicans savaged it for being an expensive government program with little to show by way of jobs. While the two parties can argue over how effective the act actually has been, both can agree on one thing: the lasting legacy of the Recovery Act’s transparency provisions.

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What If?

Feb 17, 2010 by Craig Jennings

Today marks the one-year anniversary of the signing of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA or Recovery Act). We're going to put up some more substantive posts later, but I thought these graphs in the New York Times really get to the heart of the "did it work" question.

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Agencies Make Data More Widely Available Through Data.gov

On Jan. 22, executive agencies posted hundreds of datasets onto Data.gov as required under the Open Government Directive (OGD). Many transparency advocates have lauded the administration’s efforts while at the same time raising questions about how well this first initiative under the OGD actually worked. The release of the datasets has triggered discussions about the value of the data, how individual privacy rights are protected, whether the datasets being released are new, and the quality of the data that has been released.

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Bite Taken Out of Chemical Secrecy

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced on Jan. 21 a new practice that will prevent chemical manufacturers from hiding the identities of chemicals that have been found to pose a significant risk to environmental or public health. The policy is a small step to increase the transparency of the nation's chemical laws, and it highlights both the problem of excessive secrecy and the power of the executive branch to make government more open – even without action by Congress or the courts.

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OMB Watch Suggests Improvements for Information Policy

Jan 4, 2010 by Matthew Madia

There’s no time like the holidays – when packages are wrapped up tight with paper only to be torn apart – to talk about paperwork. That’s why OMB Watch has submitted to the White House comments on improving implementation of the Paperwork Reduction Act.

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Transparency: Change You can Trust

In 2008, we heard a lot about "change." In this 2009 year-end summary, we use another type of "change" to rate the Obama administration's transparency efforts thus far.

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