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

Collender: WH Balanced Budget Bid a PR Ploy

Jan 9, 2007 by Dana Chasin

We commend to readers today's National Journal article by Stan Collender entitled "Budget Debate Gets Off to a Bad Start," which succintly reprises the charade involved in President Bush's pledge last week to balance the federal budget by 2012. It is reproduced in full below: The FY08 debate got off to the worst possible start last week when President Bush announced he was going to balance the budget by 2012. Pledging to balance the federal budget in five years is a tried-and-true White House public relations ploy. That is the case here as well: The short-term deficit likely will be rising, with the FY07 and FY08 deficits higher than what occurred in FY06.

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CBO Reports Lower Deficit

Jan 9, 2007 by Matt Lewis

CBO has released the budget numbers for the first quarter of fiscal year 2007. The deficit was $85 billion, $35 billion less than the first quarter of last fiscal year. Temporary events, not structural factors, mostly explain the difference between this year and last. Hurricane Katrina drove up federal spending last year, and record corporate profits and big gains for high-earners have been pushing up revenues this year, though most analysts expect that surge to end soon. House Budget Chairman Rep. John Spratt (D-SC) commented on the news in CQ ($).

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Stating The Obvious

Jan 8, 2007 by Matt Lewis

Today, the NYT reminds us that the tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 disproportionately benefited the wealthy over the middle class, the super wealthy over the wealthy, and the wealthy-beyond-your-imagination over the super wealthy.

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Mallaby: AMT - Mend It, Don't End It

Jan 8, 2007 by Craig Jennings

Sebastian Mallaby expresses some sensible thoughts on Sen. Max Baucus’s (D-MT) recent declaration of his desire to repeal the alternative minimum tax (AMT): [A] prescription so fiscally crazy that not even the Bush administration supports it. Indeed. Mallaby goes on to suggest a permanent AMT fix - in whatever form it may take - could be used as a chip to sweeten any future revenue-generation package, and Baucaus would be wasting this opportunity. But, more importantly, Mallaby also makes the case that a repeal of the AMT is highly undesirable for two very important reasons:

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Implausible Deniability: the Direction of the Deficit

Jan 4, 2007 by Dana Chasin

“Bush Says Plan Would Balance Budget by ’12,” an article in yesterday's New York Times, includes this sorry sentence: “During his re-election campaign in 2004, Mr. Bush promised to cut the deficit in half by 2009. Though the prediction was greeted with widespread skepticism, that goal now looks increasingly plausible.” Indeed, that prediction was met with widespread skepticism, but not because it seemed implausible. As we have noted, President Bush and OMB inflate deficit forecasts in order to claim victory when actual deficit numbers turn out to be smaller.

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Humbled Bush Writes in WSJ

Jan 3, 2007 by Matt Lewis

President Bush has fired the opening shot of the 2007 budget battle, writing an op-ed in today's WSJ. The piece is mostly PR, which is an encouraging sign that the President is more interested in repairing his image than pursuing harmful policy. Substance-wise, the President is not asking for much more than the continuation of the status quo. Some notable budgetary policies and goals mentioned in the op-ed:

No new taxes: "Now is not the time to raise taxes on the American people."

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Interior Shows Waste in Oil Royalty Program

Dec 22, 2006 by Matt Lewis

The latest in a NYT series on how well the federal government treats the oil and gas industry shows just how wasteful this nice treatment is. The article focuses on an Interior Department study that found almost no benefit to giving energy companies a royalty break for drilling on public property. Over 40 years, these breaks will cost around $48 billion- and probably won't produce a drop of oil that wouldn't have otherwise been pumped. The report estimates that the current incentives would have a tiny impact that is far exceeded by swings in market prices.

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Bush Kind Of Supports Min. Wage Increase

Dec 21, 2006 by Matt Lewis

Bush says he's for a minimum wage increase...that comes with tax and regulatory breaks for business. See the story here. President Bush endorsed one of the Democrats' top priorities for the new Congress, a $2.10-an-hour minimum wage increase _ and on a faster timetable than they have proposed. But his support comes with a catch. Bush said at a Wednesday news conference that any pay hike should be accompanied by tax and regulatory relief for small businesses, potentially a tough sell for Democrats, who are about to reassume control of the House and Senate.

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Are Unfair Fiscal Policies Hurting Support for War?

Dec 15, 2006 by Matt Lewis

EJ Dionne has an insightful column on a vital question that's been coming up a lot recently: how should we pay for wars? This debate began as a moral one. Dionne thinks that conservatives have paid for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars in an unfair, irresponsible way. Through it all, they've supported lower taxes for the wealthy, run high deficits, and cut domestic programs.

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Katrina Recovery Stagnating?

Dec 14, 2006 by Matt Lewis

The Brookings Institute's Katrina Index, which is still performing the invaluable task of tracking the Gulf Coast recovery, reports today that inadequate public services seem to be slowing down the pace of the recovery in New Orleans. Bad public services have may caused stagnation in the housing market particularly, as former residents have been reluctant to move back to neighborhoods that lack adequate sanitation, electricity, gas and water services.

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