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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Government Launches New Tool to Improve Transparency of Foreign Aid Spending

Dec 16, 2010 by Gavin Baker

Today, the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) launched the Foreign Assistance Dashboard, a new tool to shed light on U.S. foreign aid spending.

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The Teas of Transparency

2010 was a banner year for government transparency, with many significant advances and only a few disappointments. However, there were other events outside the world of government openness that seeped into the collective consciousness, and one of the most notable was the rise of the Tea Party in American politics. For this year-in-review article, we decided to take a somewhat tongue-in-cheek approach to assessing and commenting on events in government openness, playing off the theme of tea. Thus, we present to you … the Teas of Transparency.

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Public Database of Product Safety Complaints Coming Next Year

Nov 24, 2010 by Gavin Baker

The Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) voted today to create a public database of product safety complaints. The database, which will be located at SaferProducts.gov, is scheduled to launch in March 2011.

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Three Months Later, Missing "Oil Budget" Methodology Released

Nov 23, 2010 by Gavin Baker

The government responders to the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill today released its report on the "oil budget" tool used to calculate what happened to the spilled oil. Unlike the version of the report released on Aug. 4, this one comes peer-reviewed and with methodology.

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Whither Transparency in the Next Congress?

When the 112th Congress convenes in January, attention will be focused on the newly Republican-controlled House. On transparency issues, House Republican leaders have sounded positive tones. However, it remains to be seen whether bipartisan consensus on meaningful transparency can be achieved or whether transparency will be wielded as a partisan weapon.

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Commentary: In Case of Bailout, Break Glass for Transparency

With the unpopular bank bailout, the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), coming to a close, policymakers should begin looking back at the program to glean lessons from its creation and execution. When TARP was created by an act of Congress in 2008, the imperative was speed, not transparency. Unfortunately, that lack of transparency and other problems plague the program nearly two years later.

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Commentary: Did OMB Block Worst-Case Estimates of Oil Spill?

A working paper by the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling has ignited a controversy about the role of the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) in controlling information about the spill. The working paper alleges that, soon after the April 20 explosion of BP's Deepwater Horizon rig, OMB blocked plans to disclose the government's worst-case models of the spill. The administration's response to the allegations leaves several key questions without clear answers, which can only be resolved by disclosing the drafts and feedback through which these critical documents were developed.

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Transparency Survey Offers Mixed Results for Federal Government

A recent transparency survey of more than 5,000 Americans found that more than three-fourths gave the government low scores (59 or lower out of 100), and only seven percent rated the government as highly transparent (a score of 80 or higher). The White House received the highest transparency score in the study, and Congress received the worst score among government entities. However, limitations of the study make any final judgment on the success or failure of the government’s transparency efforts difficult.

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