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

Today's Krugman Column Needs Work

Nov 30, 2007 by Matt Lewis

Paul Krugman's column today was a little off-base, I think. He basically calls out Sen. Barack Obama for not including a mandate in his universal health care plan, which he thinks will make insurance much cheaper. I think his claims are overblown. The best estimate I've seen puts health care cost overruns at $480 billion. About $100 billion was due to inefficiencies in the insurance system on its own, and administrative expenses and profits make up the bulk of those unnecessary expenses. And I haven't seen anything on how being uninsured significantly raises costs in the delivery system.

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OMB Watch Celebrates One Year of FedSpending.org with New Version of Site

WASHINGTON, Nov. 29, 2007—To celebrate the one-year anniversary of FedSpending.org, OMB Watch today released a new and improved version of the website. The new version includes a complete FY 2006 data set for both contracts and federal assistance spending. The upgraded site also incorporates major functionality improvements, including the addition of a mapping feature on all searches, creation of a streamlined and powerful SuperSearch for all advanced searching needs, and increased flexibility in retrieving more extensive summary data through expandable summary tables.

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Not Changing the Food Stamp Program Is A Budget Cut

Nov 28, 2007 by Matt Lewis

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has another important fact sheet up, this time on the Food Stamp program. Congress is considering leaving the program, which is up for reauthorization in the Farm Bill, unchanged. Work on the Farm Bill in the Senate has ground to a halt, and some folks in Congress are suggesting that they revisit the program the next time it comes up for reauthorization- 5 years from now.

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Columnists Fight Over Social Security

Nov 28, 2007 by Matt Lewis

The Washington Post's Ruth Marcus has a column today on Social Security and fixing it. The column's more or less in response to this Paul Krugman column where he objects to addressing Social Security's projected shortfall now. If Marcus believes Social Security needs fixing, fine. But she should then devote far more columns to projected health care costs, which is an even bigger problem and demands greater effort to solve it, yet policymakers aren't really paying attention to it. This is what CBO basically recommends.

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Giving Up On SCHIP?

Nov 27, 2007 by Matt Lewis

CQ (no subscription) is reporting that health care advocates are abandoning the SCHIP funding increase and asking for a one-year extension that maintains the level of service being offered now. Some states may not have enough money to provide insurance to everyone enrolled now if Congress doesn't do something soon.

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CMS Releases Plan To Make Medicare Payments More Efficient

Nov 27, 2007 by Matt Lewis

The Center on Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS), an agency in the US Department of Health and Human Services, just released a plan to make Medicare's payments to hospitals more efficient.

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President Bush's Budget Tantrum

Nov 26, 2007 by Dana Chasin

Today's New York Times editorial, Faux Fiscal Discipline, makes an important point. As a candidate in 2000, George W. Bush boasted that, after accounting for inflation and population growth, he'd exercised fiscal displine as Governor of Texas. By his own standard, then, when "adjusted for inflation and population, Congress' proposed increases amount to zero." And yet he has seen fit to issue veto threats against every congressional spending bill that does not cut spending in real terms as much as he proposes. The editorial concludes:

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Some Good Books

Nov 20, 2007 by Matt Lewis

Nobel-prize winning economist Paul Samuelson (no relation to Robert) has an op-ed in the international herald tribune today advocating increased government intervention in the financial sector.

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Food Banking Op-Ed

Nov 20, 2007 by Matt Lewis

An provocative article in this Sunday's post about food banking, a subject I got to be familiar with while doing a fellowship on hunger issues. The author's main point is that food banking is a distraction from the real problem of ending poverty with public policy. Point well taken, but I had a few objections. I felt like he generalized a bit too much about food banks. For example, the Oregon Food Bank, where I used to work, has a vibrant public policy department and sees policy work as part of its mission. Many other food banks do the same.

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States Average a D-Minus on Disclosure

A new report by Good Jobs First finds that states have not kept up with technology in creating certain disclosure systems, and in some cases actively resist advances. The State of State Disclosure analyzed state websites for publicly available data on economic development subsidies, state procurement contracts and lobbying activities. Connecticut scored the highest, with an average of 84 percent, but more than half of the states received failing grades, placing the average score at 60 percent, a D-minus.

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