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

Jul 30, 2007 by Matt Lewis

Merrill Goozner, a health economist/journalist, gets deep responding to an article on the unevenness of cancer treatment. A few of his thoughts on one cancer drug:

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Jul 30, 2007 by Matt Lewis

Jared Bernstein has his speech up on TPM Cafe. Very much worth a read. It's a quick sum-up of his views on inequality and the way towards greater equality. A good passage: I'd like to offer three principles against which we can judge the nature and scope of the economic problems we face; three concepts that I suspect most of us would agree must be present in a viable social contract (and I'm borrowing here in part from the work of Fred Block): reciprocity, fair competition, and fair opportunities.

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Health Insurance and the Long Term Fiscal Outlook

Jul 27, 2007 by Craig Jennings

Ezra Klein points us to a study appearing in The New England Journal of Medicine indicating that Medicare costs are lower for people who had health insurance before enrolling in Medicare. It underscores the fact that in order to address the long term fiscal imbalance, we need to address health care in America. More evidence for the importance of health coverage comes from a study in The New England Journal of Medicine this month, which tracks what happens when the previously uninsured become eligible for Medicare. It turns out that they -- surprise! -- need a whole lot more care than their demographically similar, but previously insured, brethren!

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Capital Concerns Alarm Administration

Jul 27, 2007 by Dana Chasin

How Far Down Now, Dow? Rising income inequality, creeping AMT brackets, a deteriorating debt picture -- none of these seems to rise to the level of significance sufficient to galvanize the White House into action. But when life gets tough for the nation's investors -- and a five percent drop in the capital markets this week is making life tough for investors -- the White House gets going.

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Farm Bill Goings-On

Jul 27, 2007 by Matt Lewis

Congress is rushing to get lots done before its August recess. The Farm Bill is one of the bills Congress is working madly on. The entire House will probably vote on it today. The Farm Bill essentially sets the federal government's agricultural policy- crop subsidies, farmland conservation payments, bioenergy, and anti-hunger programs, like Food Stamps. It needs to be renewed every five years.

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House SCHIP Markup Proceeding

Jul 26, 2007 by Matt Lewis

After some delay, the House Energy and Commerce Committee is now marking up the SCHIP reauthorization and expansion. Some resources on the bill:

A summary of the chairman's mark
A section-by-section analysis
CBO's preliminary score
Families USA's chart that compares the House bill with the Senate version.

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Market Interventions Vs. Redistribution

Jul 26, 2007 by Matt Lewis

Just came back from an event sponsored by Democracy: Journal of Ideas (so pretentious- uggh) and the Brooking's Hamilton Project, which I'm not really a huge fan of either, but whatever. They're ok.

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The Broken Labor Market

Jul 26, 2007 by Matt Lewis

Economist Mark Thoma, over at Economist's View, locks in on an essential point in the inequality debate that often gets overlooked. One thing that bothers me about the whole inequality debate is the presumption that the winners deserve their incomes because it reflects their contribution to the firm, i.e. it is the wage that would be earned in well-functioning competitive markets, with the reward is equal to the person's marginal contribution to the firm. Thus, the analysis often begins with the idea that any tax takes away someone's hard-earned income and redistributes it elsewhere.

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House Reaches Agreement on SCHIP

Jul 25, 2007 by Matt Lewis

House leaders have an agreement on their version of the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) reauthorization and expansion, reports BNA (subscription req'd) today. The House Energy and Commerce Committee should approve the package on July 25th, and the House Ways and Means Committee on July 26th. The entire House is expected to vote on the bill by late next week- the Senate is expected to vote on their package this week. There are three major differences between the Senate and emerging House bill:

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Labor Market Failures

Jul 25, 2007 by Matt Lewis

Ezra Klein, a writer for the American Prospect, has an interesting post on uncompetitive and exploitative labor markets- a significant cause of inequality. Sadly, the best thing written on the blog today didn't come from me. Rather, it's a comment from Kathy G. arguing that labor markets don't look much like classical assumptions would suggest, and that the data -- and some emergent theory -- offers evidence that they're closer to a monopsony than the more traditional competitive-market-in-equilibrium model. Full comment below the fold: Anyone who thinks mandated leave would inevitably lead to a decrease in employment or wages most likely has not taken any econ beyond Econ 101. Because if you believe that such results would inevitably follow, you clearly are not familiar with the empirical research on paid leave, nor do you understand economic theory beyond a very superficial and incomplete level.

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