New Posts

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...

read in full
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...

read in full
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...

read in full
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...

read in full
more news

Recent CRS Report Details War Spending

A Congressional Research Service (CRS) report published on Feb. 8 indicates:
  • Enacted war spending, including supplemental requests and regular appropriations, to date totals $699.9 billion
  • Enactment of the president's full FY 2008 $196 billion ($105.2 billion is pending) request and $70 billion FY 2009 request would push total war spending up to $875 billion
  • Currently enacted spending legislation will fund war operations in Iraq and Afghanistan until Aug. 2008.

read in full

State Budgets Getting Worse and Worse and Worse...

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities continues to churn out updates to their analysis first released in January detailing the increasingly poor state of state budgets around the country, and things are not getting better. The most recent update adds one more state (Oklahoma) to the list of states facing a budget crunch in 2009. Now there are 21 states that are projecting budget gaps in 2009. The updated summary stats from CBPP: More than half of states anticipate budget problems, according to this updated analysis of state fiscal conditions.
  • 21 states now project budget gaps for 2009. Oklahoma joins this list.
  • The combined budget shortfall for these 21 states is now at least $36 billion due to changes in the estimates for California and Illinois, and the addition of an estimate for Oklahoma.
  • 4 states say they will have 2009 deficits, but have released no further information. Oklahoma leaves this list because it has now released an estimate.
  • 3 other states project budget gaps for 2010 and beyond.
CBPP: 21 STATES FACE TOTAL BUDGET SHORTFALL OF AT LEAST $36 BILLION IN 2009

read in full

What's in a Word?

Save 'Stimulus' for When We Really Need It Word is Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) may 'fast-track' S. 2636, the Foreclosure Prevention Act of 2008 (text) to the Senate floor this week.

read in full

Coal Mine Safety Shortchanged by Years of Budget Cuts

Congress created the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) in 1977, placing a new federal focus on miner safety and health. In the past two years, a spike in coal mine fatalities and high-profile coal mine disasters have prompted many Americans and Congress to look to MSHA to improve miner safety, but years of budget cuts and the loss of qualified employees have left the agency struggling to fulfill its mission. A new article by OMB Watch, the latest in our Bankrupting Government series, tracks the history of budget and staffing cuts at the agency with a particular focus on MSHA's coal mine safety and health program.

read in full

Are Contractors Taking Over?

This morning, the New York Times published a fantastic article by Scott Shane and Ron Nixon about how contractors are taking over huge parts of the federal government. The article, "In Washington, Contractors Take On Biggest Role Ever," is the first in a series of articles by the Times that will investigate government contracting. And rightly so. Outsourcing of government jobs, services, and product development has more than doubled in the last 6 years - a staggering growth rate. The article in today's paper shows, contrary to popular belief, that contractors often end up costing the government more money than it would otherwise spend, with inflated hourly wages ($104 per hour in one example from the article), poor performance and management, and little oversight or accountability from government employees. Scott and Nixon profile problems at the General Services Administration and the Department of Homeland Security, among other agencies, as case examples of following poor contracting practices and making wasteful decisions that have squandered billions of taxpayer dollars while enriching private companies. In fact, one study cited in the article concluded the explosion of contracting "poses a threat to the government's long-term ability to perform its mission" and could "undermine the integrity of the government's decision making." The entire article is worth reading and does a great job summarizing some major concerns about the current contracting environment. I'm looking forward to the rest of the articles in the series and my only hope at this point is that every member of Congress will read the articles as well.

read in full

Coal Mine Safety Shortchanged by Years of Budget Cuts

Congress created the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) in 1977, placing a new federal focus on miner safety and health. However, the agency's budget and staffing levels have been cut over the past three decades. The budget for MSHA's coal mine safety and health program has been particularly abused. In the past two years, a spike in coal mine fatalities and high-profile coal mine disasters have prompted many Americans and Congress to look to MSHA to improve miner safety, but years of budget cuts and the loss of qualified employees have left the agency struggling to fulfill its mission.

read in full

OMB Reports $508 Million in E-Gov Savings; Congress Remains Doubtful

The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) released a report to Congress Feb. 14 that calculates the benefits of President Bush's 24 E-Government (E-Gov) Initiatives at approximately $508 million in Fiscal Year 2007, based on agencies' estimates. Congressional skepticism of the Initiatives, and subsequent reluctance to fund them, led OMB to develop a questionable funding mechanism using agency contributions from their annual budgets.

read in full

Emergency War Spending Lacks Transparency, Increasingly Used for Non-Emergency Items

The Bush administration's emergency supplemental spending requests for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have lacked the transparency that normally accompanies the appropriations process, according to a new report from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). In addition, the CBO war spending report, however constrained by available data, revealed the composition of the war funding requests has been evolving into broader Defense Department spending initiatives, such as acquiring next-generation aircraft and replacing aging aircraft.

read in full

Multiple Rules Work in Concert to Undermine Medicaid

The Bush administration is pursuing or has achieved several policy goals that work to cut social support services by reducing federal funding for Medicaid programs. The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has released all of these policies — three proposed rules, one interim final rule, and two final rules — in the past nine months.

read in full

CBO: Emergency War Spending Requests Lack Detail, Procurement Portion Increasing

When asked by Senate Budget Committee Chair Kent Conrad (D-ND) to analyze the massive growth in war spending, CBO could point to general expensing areas of supplemental budget requests, but because of lack of detail in such requests, it could not provide a detailed accounting. However, CBO did find a slew of expenses, like acquiring next-generation aircraft, that the Defense Department would undertake in the absence of the wars. When federal agencies request funding during the normal appropriations process, they submit what are known as "budget justification" documents, which explain an agency's budget request in quite some detail (see e.g., the Education Dept.'s FY 2008 budget request justification materials). However, the emergency supplemental requests made by the administration for war spending do not include similarly detailed documents. Although the detail in such documents improved in 2007, specific data on war spending for earlier years is simply not available, severely limiting the ability of CBO to analyze and report on war spending. The supplemental budget requests submitted between 2002 and 2006 contained little detailed information on war expenses. DoD provided detailed justification materials for its regular budget request but did not submit similarly detailed information for its war-related expenses. In February 2007, DoD expanded the quantity of justification material submitted with its requests for war funding. In addition to providing more informative summary material, it prepared budget justification materials for each appropriation, similar to those provided for the regular budget....[B]ecause similarly detailed information is not available for 2005 or for earlier years, a detailed analysis of the changing patterns of spending is impossible.

read in full

Pages

Resources & Research

Living in the Shadow of Danger: Poverty, Race, and Unequal Chemical Facility Hazards

People of color and people living in poverty, especially poor children of color, are significantly more likely...

read in full

A Tale of Two Retirements: One for CEOs and One for the Rest of Us

The 100 largest CEO retirement funds are worth a combined $4.9 billion, equal to the entire retirement account savings of 41 percent of American fam...

read in full
more resources