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

Why Pay Full Price

Sep 11, 2008 by Adam Hughes*

There have been lots of stories today I was thinking about throwing up on the blog (DCAA shenangians, Interior Department MMS shenangians), but I "http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122109613823821913.html">settled on an article you might have overlooked in the Wall Street Journal about the continuing investigations Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) and the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (PSI) have been conducting on offshore tax evasion. I've posted a few times (see href="/article/blogs/entry/5326/49" target="_blank">here and here too) over the last few

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With Bush Tax Cuts In Effect, Cost of Patching AMT Nearly Doubles

Sep 10, 2008 by Craig Jennings

In perusing CBO's latest budget forecast, I am once again taken by the magnitude of the 2001-2003 tax cuts (AKA the Bush tax cuts).

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CBO Predicts $409 Billion Deficit for FY 2008

Sep 9, 2008 by Craig Jennings

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has released its update to the Budget and Economic Outlook for Fiscal Years 2008 to 2018. The report anticipates that at the end of the current fiscal year (Sept. 30), the federal deficit for FY 2008 will be $409 (about 3 percent of GDP), $51 billion more than it predicted in March.

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CBO Releases Monthly Budget Review

Sep 8, 2008 by Adam Hughes*

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released their Monthly Budget Review on Friday last week, showing lots of red ink for the federal government in FY 2008.

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Splitting Hairs at the Chamber of Commerce

Aug 27, 2008 by Adam Hughes*

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CBO: Updated Social Security Projections

Aug 25, 2008 by Adam Hughes*

Last week the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released a new report with updated long-term projections for Social Security. This report is a follow up to the last projections for Social Security released by CBO back in December, 2007.

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Taxing and Spending

Aug 25, 2008 by Craig Jennings

Brad DeLong has a great post on the tradeoffs we face in bringing the long-term budget into balance.

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Gearing up for New Census Poverty Data

Aug 22, 2008 by Adam Hughes*

Today has been a slow day in an already slow month in fiscal policy in Washington, DC, but the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) issued a very helpful report leading up to the release of poverty, income, and health insurance data from the U.S. Census Bureau next Tuesday. The report is a guide to what to look for in the Census release and how to assess whether economic growth is reaching low- and middle-income families. CBPP thinks these data could show some pretty unprecedented trends:

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The Best Laid Plans

Aug 19, 2008 by Craig Jennings

Over on Capital Gains and Games (a favorite blog of the Budget Brigade), budget guru Stan Collender and Pete Davis muse, in a couple of posts, on the presidential candidates' budget plans. They emphasize the point that, as much as they may want to implement deficit-increasing tax and/or expenditure plans, the market may have other plans. First, Collender reminds us that in the post-Reagan world, economic policy options were limited.

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The $18 Trillion Mortgage

Aug 15, 2008 by Craig Jennings

BudgetBlog reader and national debt aficionado Brooke A. fired up Excel (or maybe even OpenOffice.org Calc?) and calculated what a 30-year mortgage would look like on a $9.5 trillion loan -- a loan principle equal to today's national debt.

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