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

House to Vote Tomorrow on SCHIP Override

Oct 17, 2007 by Matt Lewis

Tomorrow, the House will vote on whether to override the President's veto of the SCHIP funding bill. This vote will most likely set the fate of the bill. The Senate is likely to vote to override the veto anyway. So it may be your last chance to make an impact this time around. Don't forget to contact your legislator!

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More of the Faux-Populism of the Far Right

Oct 16, 2007 by Matt Lewis

Do you work for a living? Not one of the superrich? Have a trouble paying your health insurance bills? Well, this is what the far right thinks of you.

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Who Spends Money Better- You Or The Government?

Oct 16, 2007 by Matt Lewis

The President gave a major talk on the budget yesterday (White House-edited transcript). This excerpt struck me:

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NYT Op-Ed on SCHIP

Oct 16, 2007 by Matt Lewis

Good New York Times op-ed on SCHIP: To hear the Bush administration tell it, expanding the State Children's Health Insurance Program would entice hordes of families to drop their private coverage and put their children on the public dole. As the Health and Human Services secretary, Michael Leavitt, argued in a recent television appearance, states that cover middle-income children as well as the poor are essentially telling people to "cancel your private insurance and we'll have the government pay for it." There are several things wrong with that claim.

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Competitive Pressure

Oct 15, 2007 by Craig Jennings

At the behest of Committee Chair Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform has produced a report on the wildly successful cost-reducing cost-inflating results of the private provision of the Medicare drug program (Medicare Pard D) Findings of the report:

The administrative expenses, sales costs, and profits of the privatized Part D program are almost six times higher than the administrative expenses of traditional Medicare.

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It's Not the Education, Stupid

Oct 15, 2007 by Craig Jennings

Writing in The American Prospect, Lawrence Mishel and Richard Rothstein disabuse readers of the notion that rising inequality can be reversed by improving the educational system. In fact, as the title of their piece - "Schools as Scapegoats" - indicates, the school system is being scapegoated by politicians and economists who refuse to believe that interventions in the private market may be required to reverse the inequality trend. The honesty of our capital markets, the accountability of our corporations, our fiscal-policy and currency management, our national investment in R&D and infrastructure, and the fair-play of the trading system (or its absence), also influence whether the U.S. economy reaps the gains of Americans' diligence and ingenuity. The singular obsession with schools deflects political attention from policy failures in those other realms. If you're interested in inequality issues, this is a must-read article. Below the fold is the nickel version of the piece.

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The Entitlement Crisis Farce- Exposed!

Oct 15, 2007 by Matt Lewis

No less than Paul Krugman is noticing a growing call for "entitlement reform." But now casual talk about the need to "fix" Social Security is creeping back into the discourse. Folks, Social Security is in pretty good shape; it's not clear that there even is a long-run shortfall, and if there is it's a much less pressing problem than many others. The only reason we hear so much about Social Security is that there are powerful political forces that want to kill it, for ideological reasons.

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SCHIP Action

Oct 15, 2007 by Matt Lewis

Tomorrow, people across the country will be taking concerted action on SCHIP. The activities include:

A national vigil in Upper Senate Park from 5:00 to 7:00 PM, and more than 260 vigils across the country.
Ads being run just about everywhere. You can watch one of the national ads on YouTube.
And national organizations, including OMB Watch, are urging everyone to call their congressional representatives.

The House will vote on the SCHIP bill on Wednesday. If you haven't taken action already, now's the time.

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David Broder Doesn't Play By The Rules

Oct 15, 2007 by Matt Lewis

David Broder's Sunday column was infuriating. He essentially endorses health care plans that are friendly to business. But that's not the worst part. He says he endorses them because they're the only way to reduce costs. Converting to such a system would be controversial. Insurers and some of the players in the health system would probably object. But the growing sense in business that only a mass marketplace of individuals can apply the competitive pressure needed to discipline the forces of medical inflation is moving the country in that direction.

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New IRS Data Shows Increasing Inequality

Oct 12, 2007 by Craig Jennings

Greg Ip in The Wall Street Journal reports($) on new IRS income tax return data: The wealthiest 1% of Americans earned 21.2% of all income in 2005, according to new data from the Internal Revenue Service. That is up sharply from 19% in 2004, and surpasses the previous high of 20.8% set in 2000, at the peak of the previous bull market in stocks. The bottom 50% earned 12.8% of all income, down from 13.4% in 2004 and a bit less than their 13% share in 2000.

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