Open, Accountable Government

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

Chemical Insecurity

Last night, the Homeland Security Appropriations Conference Committee struck a deal to attach chemical security language to the FY 2007 DHS spending bill. The language, agreed upon by Rep. Peter King (R-NY) and Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) last week, is a retreat from stronger, bipartisan bills pending in both houses and, according to environmental groups, "turns a blind eye to removing thousands of people from harm's way with off-the-shelf technologies." News of the agreement quickly met with strong criticism from members of Congress and public interest groups.

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Pending EPA Library Closures Spark Protest and Controversy

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) continues to move forward with plans to shut down agency libraries despite protests from EPA scientists and enforcement staff. According to a leaked EPA FY 2007 Library Plan, regional libraries in Chicago, Dallas and Kansas City as well as its Headquarters library in Washington, will be closed by Sept. 30 and as many as 80,000 documents not electronically available will be boxed for digitizing.

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Secretive Biodefense Legislation Moves Forward

The House and Senate are nearing a vote on legislation to authorize a new federal agency, the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Agency (BARDA), within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The agency would oversee "advanced research and development" of countermeasures to bioterrorism threats, epidemics, and pandemics, and would have broad authority to exempt information from public disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

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GAO Fails to Adequately Assess the Data Quality Act

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) recently issued a report on how well major federal agencies are implementing and overseeing compliance with the Data Quality Act (DQA). The report is an excellent overview of DQA's use, but it fails to make recommendations necessary to improving the management of DQA impacts on the federal government, in particular to minimizing its potential abuse.

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Joint Economic Committee Decries Income Inequality

Sep 22, 2006 by Craig Jennings

Although today's Joint Economic Committee press release was intended to bemoan the absolutely crushing burden of income taxes paid by the top 50% of income earners which has stymied all attempts to get this economy moving [/sarcasm], it actually underscores a troubling trend in income distribution. According to the new data, the top half of taxpayers ranked by income paid 96.70 percent of the individual income taxes paid in 2004, compared to 86.05 percent in 1949, 89.35 percent in 1959, and 90.27 percent in 1969.

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The Daily Opportunity Cost of Interest Expense

Sep 21, 2006 by Matthew Madia

According to the House Budget Committee Democratic Caucus' Materials for Five-Minute Speeches on the Budget, released Tuesday, federal government spending on publicly held debt is $504 million every single day. What could we do with today's worth of interest expense alone, if we didn't owe it to our creditors? We could:

hire 8,930 new airport security agents
increase the solvency of Social Security by half a billion dollars
give every college freshman $342 in tuition assistance
provide full health care benefots to 71,479 more veterans

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Accounting Secrets: The Deficit Unmasked

Sep 19, 2006 by Matthew Madia

Rep. Jim Cooper (D-TN)’s article in Roll Call today points out that “The Financial Report of the United States,” a document so embarrassing to the While House that it published only 2,100 copies this year, reveals a true accounting of the deficit -— one that encompasses veterans’ benefits, civil service retirement, Social Security, and Medicare. Cooper notes that a partial unmasking of the true extent of the nation’s financial condition was mandated this summer, when:

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Calling for Deficit Honesty

Sep 18, 2006 by Matthew Madia

Columnist Allan Sloan has come out in favor of deficit figures that show the long-term consequences of our spend now-pay later fiscal policy. Today, on Marketplace: SCOTT JAGOW: We're less than two weeks from the end of the government's fiscal year and it looks like the federal budget deficit will come in about 20 percent smaller than last year, around $260 billion. Or it could be twice that amount if you do the math the way Newsweek's Allan Sloan does it. ALLAN SLOAN: $558 billion dollars, give or take a few buck for rounding errors.

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GAO Report Highlights Magnitude of Fiscal Challenge

Sep 18, 2006 by Matthew Madia

Earlier, Matt posted about a GAO report released today about the unsustainability of the federal budget. The report illustrates in six pages the enormity of the challenges the federal budget faces. And it makes clear that even if Congress allows the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts to expire, as is currently the law, the federal government will have to make serious changes to its current fiscal policy.

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GAO: Fiscal Policy "Unsustainable"

Sep 18, 2006 by Matthew Madia

CBO chief Donald Marron, a month ago : "[T]he message I would send is that we've gone from a period in which the fiscal deficits we were running in this country were large and not sustainable if they had persisted, to a situation in which, at least now and for next year, for several years going forward, deficits appear to be in a range that they're sustainable.”

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