Spending Transparency

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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President's Budget Takes Aim at Nation's Health

Feb 5, 2007 by Craig Jennings

President Bush's 2008 budget, to be released this morning, proposes to eliminate the deficit by 2012 with many spending cuts in various national health and well-being programs.

$101.5 billion in cuts to Medicare and Medicaid over five years
$223 million reduction in spending on the Children's Health Insurance Program, with cuts deep enough over five years to eliminate coverage for half of the children enrolled today
$99 million savings by eliminating a childhood obesity prevention program

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If CBO Can Do It, So Can - and Should - OMB Do It

Feb 2, 2007 by Craig Jennings

Based on the president's recent announcement of his plan to deploy an additional 21,000 troops to Iraq, CBO has released a report detailing the projected costs of such an escalation. CBO Director, Peter Orszag, predicts that the president's plan to increase troop levels could cost as much as $27 billion.

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Congress Hearing Middle-Class Midterm Message

Feb 1, 2007 by Dana Chasin

Washington seems to have gotten the midterm message from middle-class voters. No less than three congressional committees held hearings yesterday on the economic plight of the American middle class. The problem, in a word, is "insecurity," caused chiefly by:

steadily declining real wage growth in the the middle class over the 25-30 years (see chart)
technological change
increased international competition
rapidly rising education costs
large-scale corporate downsizings

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Sawicky on Min. Wage Tax Bogusness

Feb 1, 2007 by Craig Jennings

The Senate is scheduled to vote on the minimum wage package today at 2:30 PM...but now's a good time to check out Max Sawicky's erudite take on the unnecessary tax cuts attached to the minimum wage bill. One key passage on the tax cuts, AKA the Small Business and Work Opportunity Act of 2007 (SBWOA):

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Heritage Foundation Debunking Debunked

Jan 31, 2007 by Adam Hughes*

The Heritage Foundation has released a misleading document entitled "Ten Myths About the Bush Tax Cuts." The first "myth" that Heritage's Brian M. Riedl "debunks": Myth #1: Tax revenues remain low. Fact: Tax revenues are above the historical average, even after the tax cuts. Tax revenues in 2006 were 18.4 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), which is actually above the 20-year, 40-year, and 60-year historical averÂages.

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Projections and Prophecy

Jan 30, 2007 by Matt Lewis

Sen. Kent Conrad (D-SD) must be getting bored. He's been having hearings on long-term fiscal issues, but pretty much every speaker has been saying the exact same thing: there's huge problems in Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, so we better start cutting benefits, and maybe find a way to raise revenues.

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Give With One Hand, Take With The Other

Jan 29, 2007 by Matt Lewis

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has an big-time paper out on entitlement costs and the budget, where they both move forward the debate over future fiscal problems, and move it back. Laudably, they dispel the myth that there is an "entitlement" crisis. Many entitlement programs are actually going down in costs and getting more efficient. Just because the program is an entitlement doesn't mean it's got problems.

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Congressional Neglect Hits Timber-Dependent Communities

Jan 29, 2007 by Matt Lewis

Last year's Congress failed to reauthorize the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determiniation act, which provides a funding stream for rural areas suffering from the decline in the timber industry. Unless Congress acts soon, these rural communities may lose millions of federal funding. Oregon would be particularly hard-hit. The LA Times has more:

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Senate Wends its Way on Wage Bill

Jan 26, 2007 by Dana Chasin

The Senate has been making no concessions to the shortness of life in its deliberations on S. 2, the minimum wage bill.

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House and Senate Budget Cmtes: The Real CBO Picture

Jan 26, 2007 by Dana Chasin

The House and Senate Budget Committees have published succinct rejoinders to the CBO reported we blogged on here, providing warnings about the misleading, thought favorable, short-term deficit projection against the backdrop of the long term fiscal condition of the nation. My colleague Craig commends in particular this (Page 5 of the House document (Realistic Estimate Shows Bleak Deficit Outlook), graphic depiction of the distorted long term-picture painted by the Bush Administration.

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