White House Influence and Interference

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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PART: Meet Winchester, Virginia

Mar 13, 2006 by Matthew Madia

PART is still pretty unfamiliar to most followers of federal policy at the national level, so it is interesting to note this story in the Winchester Star newspaper: When kids and families struggle with substance abuse or other issues, it is a total community issue. The Safe and Drug Free Schools Program helps school systems provide support for troubled students and families through services such as violence and drug prevention. But the federal program, which provides for state grants and national programs, has been targeted for elimination in President Bush’s 2007 budget.

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Cop off the Beat

Mar 2, 2006 by Guest Blogger

The latest NYTimes article on MSHA should come as no surprise to anyone who has followed this administration's enforcement record; the Bush administration has reduced penalties for mine safety violations in order to better relations with industry. From the article: In its drive to foster a more cooperative relationship with mining companies, the Bush administration has decreased major fines for safety violations since 2001, and in nearly half the cases, it has not collected the fines, according to a data analysis by The New York Times.

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White House Pushes for Sunsets, Reorganization Power

The White House used its annual budget submission yet again as a platform to call for policies that would distort the management of government programs. Both the budget submission that was released Feb. 6 and the follow-up document detailing programs slated for elimination or deep cuts reiterated the White House's call for sunset and reorganization authority legislation.

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Some Bad Ideas Never Die

Feb 9, 2006 by Guest Blogger

The White House's recent budget submission included yet another call for sunsets (forcing programs to stop their work every 10 years and plead for their lives) and reorganization powers (to develop government reorganization plans to be rammed through Congress on a fast-tracked, take-it-or-leave-it basis). And today's release of the volume detailing programs to be eliminated or slashed also repeats the call.

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Admin Pushing for e-Gov

Feb 6, 2006 by Guest Blogger

It's about time: OMB makes new case to win Hill support for e-gov Having failed over the past 4 1/2 years to convince Congress of the virtues of e-government, the Office of Management and Budget is making an unprecedented attempt to sell the idea to lawmakers and secure funding for fiscal 2006. -from Government Computer News Actually, the lead is a little generous to the administration. The administration is accused of unorthodox maneuvers in passing the hat to agencies to fund e-rulemaking, and Congress ever so gently slapped the administration for it.

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PART: Finally, Someone Else Gets It

Feb 6, 2006 by Matthew Madia

At OMB Watch, we're pretty accustomed to working on issues that go under the radar. Such has long been the case with PART, the White House's tool for assessing program performance (supposedly). We have been telling anyone who will listen that PART is a political tool, not a measurement of "results" or "effectiveness," which the White House uses to justify lousy budget choices and to send management signals to agencies that would take government programs in the wrong directions.

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PARTly Sunny, PARTly Cloudy

Feb 6, 2006 by Adam Hughes*

With the release of the White House's budget submission comes, of course, the latest PART scores. In an effort to be tech-fancy, OMB created a new website, ExpectMore.Gov, to feature PART assessments. Only the homepage was working this morning, and now the pieces that are working are either not completely functional or spotty, taking you sometimes to data and other times to the 404-error page.

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State of the Union's Unmet Needs

Jan 31, 2006 by Guest Blogger

Our country must also remain on the offensive against terrorism here at home. The enemy has not lost the desire or capability to attack us.

But let's not be prepared for the worst.

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Is Reg Reform Back on the Agenda?

Jan 31, 2006 by Guest Blogger

Congress Daily (subscription-only) reports today that Bush's State of the Union address will include "competitiveness" as one of its themes: White House aides declined to define the "competitiveness" component of the speech. But it appears the term may serve as kind of a catchall for various Bush initiatives that in his view help bolster the economy. These could include items as varied as increasing foreign trade and keeping tax rates low by making permanent tax cuts passed earlier in his administration.

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Graham Weakened Safeguards, Gutting Gov't Capacity to Protect Public

Robert Shull, Regulatory Policy Director
Long before he came to Washington, Graham was well known as an industry-funded researcher who was actively involved in producing elaborate theories to justify weakening the government's ability to protect the public. Defenders of his nomination argued that Graham would buck that trend and place the public interest over corporate special interests in his new role. Five years later, we now know just how wrong they were.

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