Federal Debt and Deficit

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

FMOC Holds Steady at 5.25 Percent

May 11, 2007 by Dana Chasin

We tend not to venture over into monetary policy all that much, but it and fiscal policy are closely enough related that we thought we'd try. The non-news of the Fed's Free Market Open Committee's decision this week to hold the target Fed interest rate at 5.25 percent -- where it's been for the last year -- reflects some factors below, with a fiscal consequence noted further below. The Economists' View identifies these factors and notes behind the FMOC decision:

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Economic, Fiscal Round-Up: 1Q07 and 4/07

May 7, 2007 by Dana Chasin

Some important economic barometers and commentary, mostly pointing to a slowdown in the overall economy, below.

L. Josh Bevins, Economic Policy Institute -- GDP growth continues deceleration
John Irons, Center for American Progress -- April Job Growth Disappoints
CBO -- Federal Fiscal Performance: Monthly Budget Review
Bureau of Economic Analysis -- 1Q07 GDP growth factors summarized:

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BudgetBlog - Now in RSS!

May 4, 2007 by Craig Jennings

If you use a newsreader, you can subscribe the BudgetBlog. You can find the feed here. RSS? What's that?

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1Q07 GDP Growth Estimate 1.3%; Revenue Implications?

Apr 27, 2007 by Dana Chasin

Returning to our long-standing concern about the 5-7 percent, five-year projections of federal revenue growth, we hereby put down a marker, in light of BEA's GDP growth estimate of 1.3 percent for the first quarter of 2007, released today. We will return to the question of the plausibility of the 5-7 percent revenue growth figures offered by the president, Congress, and even the CBO in about three weeks' time, when the CBO issues its next Monthly Budget Review.

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Attention, Deficit

Apr 25, 2007 by Matt Lewis

An interesting debate on deficits has sprung up...

Jared Bernstein argues against a narrow focus on balanced budgets.
Greg Anrig's response
For more on this critical debate, see the materials from this recent EPI event, our summary of it in The Watcher, and Dana's reaction.

UPDATE: Brad Plumer has a good take on the EPI event, and Ezra Klein responds. OK, that's enough.

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Deficits: Who Are the Real Maniacs?

Apr 24, 2007 by Dana Chasin

At the Agenda for Shared Prosperity's "Beyond Balanced Budget Mania" forum earlier this month, Nobel laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz gave a much-discussed 30,000-mile aerial perspective on how to look at and evaluate deficits and what we are buying with them:

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The Chunk of Your Tax Bill That Just Doesn't Matter

Apr 12, 2007 by Dana Chasin

The Chaney Fiscal Theorem, which asserts that Deficits Don't Matter, was the dominant view underlying the tax and budget policies of the nation's governing party for most of this decade.

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More on the Demise of Supply-Side Econ

Apr 6, 2007 by Craig Jennings

To follow up Dana's post about the NYT's obit for supply-side economics, I want point you to a couple of related posts. First, Kevin Drum @ Washington Monthly: I got to wondering if serious supply-siders got tired of having their entire school of thought made into a laughingstock by today's endless parade of yahoos blathering mindlessly about how tax cuts always and everywhere magically increase revenue. Surely they find such childishness embarrassing?

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CBO's Monthly Budget Update

Apr 6, 2007 by Craig Jennings

The CBO has released April's Monthly Budget Review. The short version: Revenues are higher this March than they were a year ago, thanks mostly to rising income and payroll taxes. The summary paragraph from the report: The federal government recorded a deficit of $257 billion for the first six months of fiscal year 2007, CBO estimates, $46 billion less than the shortfall incurred during the same period in 2006. Revenues have risen by 8 percent in the first half of the year, whereas outlays have grown by about 3 percent.

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Relative Revenue Realism: State vs. Federal Indicators

Apr 2, 2007 by Dana Chasin

We've remarked before on what appear to be overly optimistic revenue growth rate projections by the President and Congress. Both President Bush's proposed FY 2008 budget (which assumes extension of the 2001 and 2003 Bush tax cuts) and in the House and Senate budget resolutions (which do not) project 5-7 percent annual revenue growth through 2012. A column in last week's New York Times points out that federal revenue jumped 12.7 percent in 2005 and 11.8 percent in 2006. But it adds a cautionary note about future receipts:

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