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

Secrecy for Farm Animals

The Senate Agriculture Committee approved a bill in late October that would create a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) exemption for records in the National Animal Identification System (NAIS). Open government advocates strongly oppose the exemption and see it as a violation of the public's right to access information regarding food safety.

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Toxic Chemicals R Us

All 35 participants tested positive for three toxic chemical groups in a study conducted by the Commonweal Biomonitoring Resource Center and the Body Burden Working Group. The report on the study, Is It In Us?: Chemical Contamination in our Bodies, released Nov. 8, is the first multi-state, multi-organizational effort to evaluate the presence of this particular combination of chemicals in Americans.

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Congress Reforming Government Surveillance Authority

Legislation to reform expansive surveillance authority moved forward in both the House and the Senate recently. The House passed the RESTORE Act (H.R. 3773), which would reform the Protect America Act (PAA), passed in haste before Congress's August recess. The Senate Judiciary Committee narrowly passed the FISA Amendments Act of 2007 (S. 2248) without telecom immunity provisions that were included in the Senate Intelligence Committee bill, setting up a confusing situation that makes it unclear which version will be sent to the Senate floor for consideration.

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Social Security: Where the Fire?

Nov 19, 2007 by Dana Chasin

Candidates Cling to the Third Rail Maybe they think it will get them attention. Why else would presidential candidates as diverse as John Edwards and Fred Thompson raise the issue of Social Security, a program that almost no one among budget policy experts seriously believes is in imminent trouble? In "Edwards, Thompson Say U.S. Must Ward Off Crisis in Social Security Funding," Bloomberg.com reports the latest alarm sounded on the issue:

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Whatever Happened to SCHIP and the Farm Bill?

Nov 16, 2007 by Matt Lewis

CongressDaily ($) is reporting that the two reauthorizations that have funding increases for human needs programs -the Farm Bill and SCHIP- aren't going anywhere anytime soon. Negotiations over SCHIP have broken down, and the Senate failed to close off debate on the Farm Bill. We'll have to wait until after Thanksgiving to try again.

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Review of Books On Health Care Costs

Nov 16, 2007 by Matt Lewis

A good article on health care cost issues from the American Prospect. It's a review of three new books on health care that are broadening the debate over health care costs outside the context of the long-term fiscal challenge. For years health care policy people have focused on insurance as a cure for all that ails the health care system, overlooking the cost-inefficiencies of the delivery system. Only recently has there been a good discussion. This discussion is now having a spill-over affect on fiscal policy, which is pretty awesome.

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Kuttner vs. Krugman, 1996 Edition

Nov 15, 2007 by Matt Lewis

This is kind of random, but check out this exchange between Paul Krugman and Robert Kuttner (with a little bit of Robert Reich's ideas mixed in there) from 1996. Krugman's ideas sound, shall we say, Hamiltonian. He's changed his outlook quite a bit since then. Why have the other Hamiltonians stayed the same? Update: Whoops, forgot the link- it's here.

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CBO's Health Care Projections

Nov 14, 2007 by Matt Lewis

CBO just released an impressive document on health care costs and long-term fiscal issues. It includes:

A more realistic projection of health care costs, absent changes in federal law
The relative importance of an aging population, health care costs, and social security costs
A systematic explanation of the rise in health care costs and its value
A discussion of possible remedies to excess health care costs

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Deficit/Spending

Nov 8, 2007 by Matt Lewis

Here's an interesting paper on the "starve the beast" school of government reduction by tax cut (via Inclusion). The abstract:

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John Edwards Has A Secret

Nov 8, 2007 by Matt Lewis

An interesting article in the Times on who's advising the presidential candidates on economic policy. So far, only John Edwards has broken Washington taboos and (quietly) declared that he'd increase the deficit to pay for more social spending.

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