Appropriations

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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Supplemental Resources -- the Iraq Spending Bill

Mar 20, 2007 by Dana Chasin

The House is heading for a floor vote, probably late this Thursday, March 22, on the now-$124.1 billion supplemental appropriations package -- the U.S. Troop Readiness, Veterans' Health, and Iraq Accountability Act. At this point, it is seen as a vehicle for a Democratic message regarding withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq as much as a spending bill providing a record $100 billion in supplemental war funds. As the time draws nigh, we thought these resources would be helpful:

Where the Vote Count Stands in the House: Iraq vote hangs by thread

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House Panel Passes $124 Billion Supplemental Bill

On March 19, the Bush administration said it would veto a supplemental appropriations bill being readied for a House vote expected to come as soon as March 22. The White House indicated that the president opposes language that would require troop withdrawal from Iraq as well as "excessive and extraneous non-emergency spending". The supplemental appropriations bill, at $124 billion, will be the largest supplemental bill ever considered by a house of Congress and has sweeteners in it to offset a tough vote on withdrawing troops from Iraq.

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Understanding PAYGO: Questions and Answers

The 110th Congress has brought attention once again to a well-known but little-understood fiscal responsibility mechanism: the pay-as-you-go rule, or PAYGO. The House has already enacted a PAYGO rule. The Senate has introduced a PAYGO bill (S. 10), and is expected to pass its own PAYGO rule in the FY 2008 Budget Resolution, which is now being considered in the Senate.

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White House Ordered Delay of OMB Earmark Database?

Mar 19, 2007 by Matt Lewis

Robert Novak reports today that the OMB database on earmarks is intentionally incomplete- orders came from the White House to not finish it, for fear of offending earmark beneficiaries.

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Sen. Committee Passes BR; Floor Action Next Week

Mar 16, 2007 by Adam Hughes*

The Senate Budget Committee reported out its FY 2008 Budget Resolution yesterday on a straight 12 - 11 party line vote. All of the funding levels we reported earlier in the week remained the same after the mark-up. Only a few amendmends were adopted, the most significant of which was one offered by committee chairman Kent Conrad (D-ND), which required any new entitlement or tax legislation that would increase the budget deficit to clear a 60-vote point of order until the president puts forward and Congress approves legislation to restore solvency to the Social Security trust funds. The committee rejected a number of amendments, including one from Sen. Jim Bunning (R-KY) to create a 60-vote point of order against any budget resolution that failed to reach balance, excluding Social Security funds, in five years. By excluding Social Security funds, the deficit would be significantly higher than the current level and the budget would be that much more difficult to balance. Funny that Bunning did not advocate for using this larger deficit figure when the Republicans controled the Senate. The panel also rejected an amendment by Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) to instruct the Finance Committee to find $33.8 billion in savings over five years, with the intent that the reductions come from putting in place a proposal by President Bush to reduce reimbursements to Medicare providers.

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Call-In For The Right Federal Budget

Mar 13, 2007 by Matt Lewis

Your voice is needed now to support a budget with the right priorities for all Americans. The ECAP coalition (read this Watcher article for more on ECAP) is mobilizing to promote a FY08 budget resolution that doesn't allow tax cuts for the wealthy and that makes enough room to fund programs for children, workers, education, and nutrition and housing issues. Let your representative know what you think about these programs and policies. They need to hear that their constituents will support them if they make the right decisions on the budget.

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War Supplemental Bill Becoming a Budget Bomb

Mar 12, 2007 by Dana Chasin

Congress and President Bush have been taking turns adding to what what started out a $99.6 billion supplemental appropriations package. This weekend, Bush formally requested an additional $6.3 billion in spending (mostly for 4,400 new troops to be deployed in the "surge"). This amount, C-Span reports, Bush wants "offset by cuts ... from domestic appropriations made in the fiscal 2007 continuing resolution."

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House Dems. to Add Min. Wage to the Supplemental?

Mar 8, 2007 by Dana Chasin

Bizarre as it might seem, the Wall Street Journal is reporting "a surprising addition [to the Iraq supplemental bill] by the Democratic leadership: a minimum wage increase." What does this mean, asssuming Pelosi and Co. go forward with the plan?

first, the Democratic leadership must be despairing that House liberals aren't seeing enough anti-war ammunition in the supplemental to support it
second, leadership impatience with the minimum wage tax package logjam may have reached the point where it simply wants to cut the gordian knot

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Walter Reed: At Root, A Budget Issue

Mar 8, 2007 by Matt Lewis

Fred Kagan of Slate has a good article on the budget woes that very likely contributed to the situation at Walter Reed and all across the military. His basic point: the discretionary budget for veteran's health benefits has not been keeping up with need (sound familiar?).

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Congress Set to Consider Largest Supplemental Funding Request in History

Congress will soon begin work on the largest supplemental funding bill ever requested — $99.6 billion — to continue to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, along with other items. The request was submitted to Congress by the president in early February, when the FY 2008 budget was released. If approved, this request would add $93.4 billion to the $70 billion Congress already appropriated for the "war on terror" in FY 2007 and bring the total cost of the wars to over $500 billion.

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