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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more news

Senators Stand Up to Bush Over SCHIP

Jul 13, 2007 by Matt Lewis

Some good news: key Republican Senators are defying President Bush on SCHIP. From CQ (sorry, subscription only): The chief Republican architects of a deal to expand a children's health insurance program are defending the proposal against criticism by President Bush, who has threatened to "resist" it. This week, members of the Senate Finance Committee tentatively agreed on a renewal and expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), which covers about 6 million children from families that are low-income but not poor enough to qualify for Medicaid.

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A Real Minimum Wage

Jul 12, 2007 by Matt Lewis

With absolutely zero media attention, minimum wage workers finally got a raise on July 1st. To $5.85 an hour. So before you pop the champagne, give this paper a read- it's by University of Massachusetss-Amherst economist Robert Pollin. It's on how high the minimum wage should be, and what real-world experience shows are the unintended consequences of labor market interventions. My favorite passage:

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Morality Deficit

Jul 12, 2007 by Matt Lewis

The evidence keeps piling up that the budget deficits aren't increasing interest rates and aren't harming the economy. But deficits aren't just an economic problem- they're a moral problem, says economist Andrew Samwick: Suppose for the sake of argument that deficits don't put much upward pressure on interest rates. Even in that case, they still have to be financed at the existing interest rate, and the burden of financing them has to be borne by someone in the future. Taxing someone in 2020 to pay for our spending binge in 2003 violates my notions of fairness, and that is a substantially more salient issue here than any additional concerns about efficiency. Hold on there- that's a bit too simple.

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SCHIP Lurching Forward

Jul 10, 2007 by Matt Lewis

When I think of the Senate, I picture something like the insides of a very old and very big clock, with gigantic rusty gears that move extremely slowly. Well, it seems like, when it comes to expanding the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), those gears are finally starting to turn, but slowly, of course, and with so much effort and compromise required for so little movement.

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Approps Update

Jul 9, 2007 by Craig Jennings

Congress is back from its week-long July 4th vacation and will, among other things, try to get pass some more spending bills. This week in the House: Wednesday

Transportation-HUD is in full Appropriations Committee
Labor-HHS is in full Appropriations Committee

Thursday

Commerce-Justice-Science is in full Appropriations Committee
Energy-Water pork is divvied up by Appropriations Committee

Possible action sometime during the week

Defense is in subcommittee
Agriculture is in subcommittee

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CBO's Monthly Budget Update - July 2007

Jul 9, 2007 by Craig Jennings

The federal government incurred a deficit of $123 billion for the first nine months of fiscal year 2007, CBO estimates, $83 billion less than the shortfall recorded during the same period in 2006. Revenues have risen by more than 7 percent, whereas outlays have grown by less than 3 percent. Both rates of growth are noticeably smaller than the rates of increase in fiscal years 2005 and 2006, which averaged about 13 percent for revenues and close to 8 percent for outlays. (click on CBO logo for report)

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Critiquing the Critic

Jul 5, 2007 by Matt Lewis

There was a time when I thought Louis Menand, an academic who writes for the New Yorker, was the smartest guy around. But I've changed my mind, because his review of Bryan Caplan's really ridiculous book is abysmal and totally misses the point. To recap Caplan's argument: Irrational voters support economic policy that makes people worse off. And government mostly messes everything up (See here for more). Menand's conclusion:

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A Beachhead in the Campaign Against Free-Market Primacy

Jul 3, 2007 by Matt Lewis

Business Week has an interesting article on how some in the corporate community are embracing government-run health insurance. It's not particularly new news, but the article shows that some true-believers in the primacy of the free market are becoming more practical. They're moderating their views on government's capacity and role in society (though their faith in the market probably hasn't been shaken, paradoxically).

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EPI Papers Challenge The Macroeconomic Mainstream

Jul 2, 2007 by Matt Lewis

EPI just put out two very interesting papers (on full employment and demand-led growth) that challenge the wisdom of low-impact macroeconomic policy. Two general points:

There doesn't have to be a trade-off between efficiency and fairness. Indeed, policies could generate demand-led growth partly by ensuring that work was fairly rewarded.
Government can play a constructive role in the economy- guaranteeing fair wages, promoting growth, ensuring full employment. The best it can do isn't just to "get out of the way."

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I'm Thinking of an Issue...Starts With "E"

Jun 29, 2007 by Matt Lewis

Inclusion has put a challenge to the progressive policy community. What is an all-encompassing issue that nobody really knows exists? According to this logic, alternative and less familiar ways of framing rising economic inequality and insecurity aren't viable because they don't show up on the pollster's static list of "issues." But this ignores Perlstein's most important insight, that "the greatest politicians create their own issues, ones that no one knew existed." (An insight I couldn't help but notice that is very similar to my favorite one of the late philospher Richard Rorty: "the talent for speaking differently, rather for arguing well, is the chief instrument of cultural change.") Here's a shot: exploitation and economic fairness.

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