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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Condition of State Budgets Continue to Decline

May 22, 2008 by Craig Jennings

The state of state budgets continues to deteriorate around the country. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities released another update yesterday to their increasingly disturbing analysis, which now shows that 31 states are anticipating budget problems in 2009, with 27 projecting a budget shortfall. We continue to reiterate that this is pretty bad news as state budgets are far less flexible than the federal budget and usually are legally prohibited from running a deficit. From the CBPP update: 31 states anticipate budget problems. Of those:

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House, Senate Set to Approve Budget Resolution

May 22, 2008 by Adam Hughes*

The House and Senate are set to vote on the FY 2009 Congressional Budget Resolution today. OMB Watch sent letters of support for the resolution to both the House and Senate Budget Committees yesterday (House letter, Senate letter). The letters highlight the positive (and negative) aspects of the resolution, as well as the recent historical difficulty of enacting a budget resolution during an election year (hasn't happened since 2000).

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Vene, Vidi, Veti -- and Voodoo

May 21, 2008 by Dana Chasin

Doing the Veto-Voodoo Dance It's vetoes ("veti" in Latin?) gone wild this week at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, with President Bush vetoing the Farm bill this afternoon, and issuing formal veto threats against the war funding bill cleared last week by the Senate Appropriations Committee and, now, against the House extenders package, H.R. 6049 -- the Energy and Job Creation Act of 2008.

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GAO: The Nation's Long-Term Fiscal Outlook, April 2008 Update

May 21, 2008 by Craig Jennings

The Government Accountability Office released an updated report on the nation's long-term fiscal outlook last week. The outlook is still bleak, but the GAO is getting on the same page as the CBO in pointing toward rapidly rising health care costs as the prime cause of the gargantuan fiscal gap.

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Unions Boost Wages of Lowest-Income Workers the Most

May 16, 2008 by Adam Hughes*

Shawn Fremstad posted yesterday on a new paper released this month by John Schmitt over at the Center for Economic and Policy Research. The paper studies the impact unions have on income and has some interesting findings:

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GI Bill Surtax Would Affect 0.3% of All Taxpayers

May 16, 2008 by Craig Jennings

When the House approved the domestic spending amendment to the war supplemental spending bill, it approved not only a $52 billion expansion of the GI Bill, but a 0.5% surtax on income for millionaire couples (individuals earning more than $500,000). According a recent Citizens for Tax Justice report, the tax would affect about 0.3% of all taxpayers.

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TPC Testimony Before Senate Finance Committee

May 16, 2008 by Adam Hughes*

The Tax Policy Center, a joint venture of the Urban Institute and Brookings Institution, has published two tesitmonies from a recent Senate Finance Committee hearing on overhaul of the U.S. tax code: A Blueprint for Tax Reform and Health Reform Leonard Burman

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An Equal Opportunity Crisis

May 15, 2008 by Dana Chasin

House Financial Services Committee chair Rep. Barney Frank -- profiled in the New York Times this week -- is the only person in Washington remotely both as bright and as indecipherable as Alan Greenspan. His accent is the aural equivalent of illegible handwriting. A stenographer should follow him around so you don't have to wait 'til the next day for the transcript.

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White House Issues Memo on Controlled Unclassified Information

The White House released a memorandum on May 9 establishing new rules governing the designation and sharing of Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI). By creating a single designation and consistent procedures, the memo attempts to resolve the growing problem of multiple Sensitive But Unclassified (SBU) designations, which slow the sharing of information.

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Whistleblower Week in Washington

Whistleblower advocates convene in Washington, DC, this week (May 12-16) for events dedicated to honoring whistleblowers, promoting their protection, and educating the public and Congress about the most pressing issues for whistleblowers today.

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