New Posts

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...

read in full
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...

read in full
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...

read in full
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...

read in full
more news

Plan Puts U.S. on the Cutting Edge of Open Government

 WASHINGTON, Sept. 20, 2011—President Barack Obama today announced the United States’ Open Government Partnership (OGP) plan to further strengthen the transparency and accountability of the federal government. OMB Watch praised the plan as an important step, not just for U.S. transparency, but also for raising the international profile of open government issues.

read in full

Obama's New Deficit Reduction Plan Unapologetically Balanced

Earlier today, President Obama released a new plan for reducing the federal deficit, or the shortfall between revenues and spending. The plan is technically a set of recommendations for the Super Committee, which Congress created last month to find $1.2 trillion in deficit reduction. Obama’s plan isn’t ideal, but it is easily one of the best set of deficit reduction recommendations to come out of Washington in a while.

read in full

Senate Committee Proposes Transparency Cuts

There’s a grand tradition in DC: the Friday afternoon news dump. Press secretaries from across the District save up any bad news, and then release it on Friday after the major news deadlines have passed. That way, articles won’t show up until the weekend, when most people aren't paying attention. In yet another example of this, the Senate Appropriations Committee, responsible for the government’s yearly funding bills, released four bills this afternoon, all of which had passed out of committee yesterday. And, sure enough, there, buried in one of the bills, is the Senate effectively slashing funding for transparency projects.

read in full

New Database Sheds Light on Anti-Environment Congress as Attacks on Public Protections Continue

Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), ranking member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, unveiled on Monday a database of anti-environment votes by the 112th Congress. According to the minority page of the Committee's website, "the most anti-environment House in the history of Congress" has voted 125 times "to block action to address climate change, to halt efforts to reduce air and water pollution, to undermine protections for public lands and coastal areas, and to weaken the protection of the environment in other ways." The votes are searchable by legislation, topic, statute, or agency, and the database provides the American people with information about each bill or amendment, including a summary, the sponsoring member, and the outcome of the final vote.

read in full

EPA Both Increases and Delays Public Access to Critical Greenhouse Gas Data

In August, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) made several changes to the Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Mandatory Reporting Rule that will improve, but also delay, public access to critical air pollution data. The EPA will launch an electronic tool to collect and make public GHG pollution data from companies. However, the agency allowed firms in several industries to delay disclosing the factors used to calculate their GHG emissions.

read in full

Despite Debt Ceiling Deal, Future Budget Road Looks Bumpy

Although the recent debt ceiling deal theoretically brings Republicans and Democrats into agreement on spending levels for the next 10 years, the two parties remain miles apart on key budgetary issues. These fissures are likely to become apparent as Congress comes back into session and legislators begin work on a stop-gap continuing resolution over the coming weeks to stave off a government shutdown at the beginning of the next fiscal year, which starts Oct. 1.

read in full

Building a 21st Century FOIA System

The Obama administration is seeking to use technology to better support the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) system. The effort could improve access to government information, empower Americans, and strengthen democratic accountability.

read in full

Commentary: Progress, Pitfalls in Addressing Government Secrecy 10 Years after 9/11

Sunday marked the 10-year anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. This is an appropriate time to look back on what happened to government openness and access to information in the aftermath of the attacks. It seems that after 9/11, government officials stopped believing that Americans could be trusted with information – about their communities, about risks and dangers they could face, and about government actions on their behalf. Withholding information from citizens is a slippery slope for any democracy, yet over the past decade, government secrecy has expanded under the misguided belief that sacrificing citizen access to government information would somehow make us more secure.

read in full

Rio+20 is an Opportunity to Improve the Public’s Right to Know

On Sept. 2, 30 public interest organizations, including OMB Watch, presented the U.S. government with three requests to improve access to environmental and public health information and public participation in environmental policymaking. The requests aim to empower Americans to protect themselves, their families and communities from pollution and health risks through better access to data and decision-making.

read in full

EPA Scientific Integrity Proposal Missing Critical Elements

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) draft scientific integrity policy is missing critical elements needed to effectively safeguard science at the agency, OMB Watch said in comments filed yesterday. The policy must be improved if the agency is to ensure that the best science informs policy decisions that affect the health and environmental quality of all Americans.

read in full

Pages

Resources & Research

Living in the Shadow of Danger: Poverty, Race, and Unequal Chemical Facility Hazards

People of color and people living in poverty, especially poor children of color, are significantly more likely...

read in full

A Tale of Two Retirements: One for CEOs and One for the Rest of Us

The 100 largest CEO retirement funds are worth a combined $4.9 billion, equal to the entire retirement account savings of 41 percent of American fam...

read in full
more resources