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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Update on Congressional Activities

Sep 24, 2008 by Adam Hughes*

Quick update following up on my earlier post about Congress' progress during this final potentially final week of the session. The House has passed the CR/Omnibus/Emergency gigantic package of spending items this afternoon, 370-58. The House is currently working on voting on some of the tax bills I jumped into earlier, most of which will have to be sent back to the Senate either because of changes in offsets or due to minor differences. More to come tomorrow.

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Shockingly, Republicans Want to Bailout Wall Street with Tax Cuts

Sep 23, 2008 by Craig Jennings

Budget afficionado Stan Collender says that a $700 billion Wall Street bailout will define the budget and, ultimately, the next president's spending priorities for several years.

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Picking Up the Tab

Sep 23, 2008 by Craig Jennings

With all the news of the massive Wall Street bailout, I've heard really nothing about how this $700 billion gamble is supposed to be paid for (other than more borrowing, which is to say paid for by later). And what I have read, makes me real nervous. In a "dear colleague" letter, former chair of the Republican Study Committe Rep.

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Commentary: On Bailouts, Congress Should Move with Great Care

The pace at which Congress is considering the largest intervention into financial markets in the history of the United States, if not the world, is shocking. Over the weekend, the Bush administration proposed legislation that would grant it the authority to buy up toxic financial assets in an amount equal to five percent of gross domestic product (GDP). The magnitude of the funds requisitioned is matched only by the administration's requested level of unchecked power and opacity in how it would execute this historic market intervention. Congress has responded with uncharacteristic haste, setting the stage for passage of monumentally flawed legislation that purports to fix a yet-undiagnosed problem in roughly one week.

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Free Market Ends as Washington and Wall Street Merge

Following a string of guarantees, buy-outs, and bailouts for various financial firms, Congress is now rushing to authorize the Treasury Secretary to spend $700 billion to bail out the rest of Wall Street. Since its role in the sale of investment bank Bear Stearns to rival J.P. Morgan in March, the federal government has intervened three times in the nation's financial markets by using taxpayer dollars to prop up the value of various private banking and mortgage entities. While taxpayers ought to be concerned about the sums of money involved in these transactions, a more fundamental problem exists: the bottom-line cost is anybody's guess.

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Details of Possible CR Emerge

Sep 22, 2008 by Adam Hughes*

House Democratic leaders have announced some details of a potential continuing resolution (CR) that would keep the federal government operating for half a year from the start of the FY 2009 fiscal year on October 1 through March of 2009. With none of the appropriations bills enacted into law and only eight days before the start of the fiscal year, passage of a CR is almost guaranteed. CongressDaily reported this afternoon some of the details of the plan:

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What About the Rest of Us?

Sep 19, 2008 by Craig Jennings

As Wall Street collapses under the weight of its greed, bad luck, and basic stupidity, the Free MarketTM crusaders of the Bush White House have come out of the pro-regulation, big-government closet. This morning, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said that the federal government will ride to the rescue of the investors in distress.

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A Chance to Change Wall Street

Sep 19, 2008 by Craig Jennings

If anything, the meltdown on Wall Street has shown that executive compensation and performance are hardly related.

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POGO Running on All Cylinders

Sep 19, 2008 by Adam Hughes*

Earlier this week, we highlighted two hearings in the House of Representatives that were focusing on issues of waste, fraud, and abuse and federal contracting. Our friends over at the Project on Government Oversight (POGO) have had their A-game this week. They not only testified at one of those hearings, but have provided some excellent previews, commentaries, analysis and reports, and summaries on the hearings this week. All of the POGO materials are worth at least glancing through, if not reading thoroughly.

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Congress Running Short on Time

Sep 18, 2008 by Adam Hughes*

It looks like the end of the current congressional session is in sight, maybe. While legislators had an insurmountable work load to complete in the three weeks of work in September, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) still hopes to adjourn the Senate a week from tomorrow (Sept. 26). Reid is hoping the Senate can still finish quite a lot in the next 6 days, including energy legislation, a tax cut extension bill (with an Alternative Minimum Tax patch), a new economic stimulus package, and some number of appropriations bills and a continuing resolution.

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