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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more news

There's Enough Money For The War and Defense Employees

Nov 20, 2007 by Matt Lewis

Via Think Progress, the White House is threatening to furlough Defense Department workers unless Congress funds the war in Iraq with no strings attached for a complete year. They're claiming that they have to move money out of employee compensation to fund the war because the President's war funding request has not been enacted.

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The Real Long-Term Health Care Challenge

Recently, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has been issuing reports challenging conventional thinking about the long-term fiscal problem facing the nation, which holds that it is primarily related to the influence of demographic changes on Social Security and Medicare. These reports draw on the work of researchers and writers who found that the long-term fiscal challenge is almost entirely unrelated to demographics and Social Security, and it is mostly confined to inefficiencies in the private and public health care system.

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Republicans Keep Obstructing Common-Sense Investment Initiatives

Over the past few months, an intransigent president and a conservative coalition in Congress have waylaid a host of common-sense, progressive spending initiatives, including the reauthorization of the nutrition section of the Farm Bill, the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), and funding for domestic priorities in the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services (HHS), and Education. Conservative Republicans Barely Sustain President's Labor/HHS Veto

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CQ Out To Lunch On Budget Battles

Nov 19, 2007 by Matt Lewis

CQ reports today that the Democrats' $11 billion compromise on appropriations might be picking up momentum. In evidence, they offer that the President did not mention appropriations in his weekend radio address and something about Sen. Jon Kyl not wanting domestic spending tied to war funding. Color me unconvinced. The more reasonable interpretation is that the Republicans haven't moved from their position of rejecting this compromise.

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$11 Billion Cut Not Enough For Republicans

Nov 19, 2007 by Matt Lewis

Before the House Republicans sustained the President's veto of the labor/hhs appropriations bill, Democrats had offered to cut $11 billion out of budget bills, half of the difference between their budget proposal and the President's. Roll Call is reporting that that offer has been rejected. House Republicans are rejecting a compromise offer from Democrats that would cut in half their proposed $22 billion increase to President Bush's budget, but it's unclear how long GOP leaders will be able to keep getting their Members to walk the plank against popular spending bills.

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Splitting the Difference or Just Hairs?

Nov 16, 2007 by Craig Jennings

CongressDaily PM today ($): Democrats are proposing to cut $10.6 billion from their initial proposed spending bills. Even with the cuts, security-related spending Bush requested would rise 11 percent above the current year, while non-security domestic spending Democrats want would grow about 3 percent. Under the new allocations, Democrats would increase spending across most government agencies by $10.9 billion above last year; by contrast, the Defense bill Bush signed this week increases non-emergency funding by $39.7 billion from last year.

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Approps Update - Defense Down; Labor-H Out

Nov 16, 2007 by Craig Jennings

The Defense Appropriations bill was signed earlier this week. It is the first FY 2008 appropriations bill to be signed by the president.
The bill also contains a continuing resolution to fund governmental operations until December 14.
Bush vetoed Labor-H when he signed the defense bill. Last night, the House tried and failed to override the veto by 2 votes.
Meanwhile, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) wants to split the $22 billion difference between Congress's budget and the President's request

. November 16, 2007 House Senate

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Dems Backing Away From Backing Away From Transparency!

Nov 16, 2007 by Adam Hughes*

Well, good news came in late last night as Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) announced he struck a deal with House Transportation Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman John Olver (D-MA) to remove language that would prohibit the publication of Federal agency budget justifications (See my post last night for more info). This is fantastic news - congrats to Sen. Coburn for standing up for transparency. You can read his statement released last night on his website.

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Conservatives Sustain Labor/HHS Veto

Nov 16, 2007 by Matt Lewis

It was very close, but last night conservatives in the House sustained the President's veto of Labor/HHS. The vote was 277-141 (roll call). If two nays votes had switched, they would have had enough to override. The Washington Post has more.

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Dems Backing Away From Transparency?

Nov 15, 2007 by Adam Hughes*

Remember when the Democrats came to power earlier this year and promised to end the culture of corruption in Washington? Then remember when they passed a fairly significant lobbying and ethics reform bill? Ok, then what is going on here - Roll Call: Earmarks in, Reforms out of Trans-HUD Measure Roll Call reported today on some disturbing news - that the Transportation-Housing and Urban Development (T-HUD) appropriations bill has include earmarks that have not been disclosed yet under earmark transparency rules. In total, 18 earmarks worth $24 million were included in the conference report for the bill. The House Rules Committee website claims the vast majority of these new earmarks are for relatively benign projects. Yikes. Let's go through this. First off, who is deciding the relative benign-ness of these projects? Maybe Duke Cunningham thought the earmarks he was including as paybacks to companies who bribed him were "relatively benign" too? Wouldn't it be better to let everyone see them from the beginning and let an open process decide their benigninivity? Second, if the vast majority are relatively benign, what are the ones that are not benign? Shouldn't those be excluded until they can be properly reviewed? That's not even the worst of the news in the Roll Call article. The T-HUD bill also includes language that prohibits federal agencies from disclosing their "budget justification" documents to any committee in Congress other than the appropriations committees before the May 31 after the president's budget is released. I assume this would mean those agencies could not make these documents public either, as many of them do now. All this comes after OMB Watch joined with the National Taxpayers Union and 52 other organizations last year to strongly support the publication of these documents and we were ultimately successful as OMB agreed to voluntarily publish the budget justifications. The fact that there are attempts moving forward to clamp down on access to this information is truly unfortunate. What happened to the cleanest, most open Congress in history?

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