Congressional Budget Resolution

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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Budget Process Stuck at Square One and In Danger of Irrelevance

From the outside, a great deal seems to be happening with the fiscal year (FY) 2012 budget process. The House debated a "clean" bill to raise the debt ceiling and is starting to vote on its yearly appropriations bills, and the Senate just voted on four budget proposals. But looks can be deceiving: despite these recent actions, the nation's budget process is teetering on the edge of irrelevance.

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FY 2011 Wrapped Up, Still More Bumps on the Budget Road Ahead

Even though the fiscal year (FY) 2011 budget battles are over, Congress is still deeply mired in fiscal work. News about "the budget" continues to flood the airwaves, along with breathless reporting about the impending debt ceiling crisis as federal debt levels reach their statutory limits. Incredibly large numbers are part of each new report, leaving many to wonder what's in the offing for fiscal policy in the coming months.

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House Votes to Shift Funds from Medicaid to High-Income Households

Apr 15, 2011 by Craig Jennings

In approving (235-193) House Budget Committee Chair Paul Ryan's (R-WI) proposed budget resolution. The spending blueprint, if enacted, would turn Medicare into a voucher program and drastically cut Medicaid funding as a means to cutting income tax rates for upper-income households (from 35 percent to 25 percent). Although the plan has no chance of becoming law, it does illustrate the Republican-controlled House's priorities - namely tax cuts for the rich and spending cuts for low-income programs and seniors.

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Paul Ryan's 'Path to Prosperity' ... for the Rich

Apr 7, 2011 by Gary Therkildsen*

Released Tuesday morning amid great fanfare, Rep. Paul Ryan's (R-WI) fiscal year (FY) 2012 budget proposal is turning out to be a grab bag of right-wing economic crankery. In fact, that's too nice: the proposal is flat out awful. And when I say "awful," I don't just mean evisceration-of-two-very-popular-social-safety-net-programs or two-thirds-of-proposed-spending-cuts-from-low-income-programs awful, but tax-hikes-on-middle-and-low-income-folks-combined-with-tax-cuts-for-the-rich awful.

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The Ryan Plan: Budgeting for Big Business

Apr 7, 2011 by Craig Jennings

The House Budget Committee approved last night Rep. Paul Ryan's budget resolution proposal. What would House Republicans' do given their way? Write big checks to big businesses, cut taxes for the rich, and cut off health care, nutrition, and housing assistance for the poor.

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Analysis: Rep. Paul Ryan's FY 2012 Budget Resolution

Like all congressional budget resolutions, House Budget Committee Chair Paul Ryan's (R-WI) fiscal year (FY) 2012 Budget Resolution is not simply a chart of preferred spending and revenue levels, it's also a political statement guided by ideology. And Ryan's ideology demands that the federal government divert ever increasing sums from middle- and low-income families to big business and high-income families.

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The Long, Downhill Road to a 2011 Budget

Appropriations for fiscal year (FY) 2011 are now six months late. The fiscal year began on Oct. 1, 2010, but the nation is not much closer to having a budget than it was back then. As Congress comes face-to-face with the expiration of the current stop-gap spending bill, the budget's downward march may have stopped, but the possibility of a government shutdown still lingers.

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House Budget Fail?

Feb 11, 2011 by Craig Jennings

It's been an action packed week in Congress as the House tries to put together a $1.06 trillion spending bill to fund the operations of the federal government for the remaining seven months of the 2011 fiscal year. A divided Republican House caucus may be on their way to a huge tactical blunder that could result in a government shutdown or the failure of staying true to their pledge to massively cut federal spending.

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'Constitution-Minded' Republicans to Introduce Budget Authoritarianism

Jan 4, 2011 by Gary Therkildsen*

When the new Republican-controlled House gavels in tomorrow, legislative business will begin with a reading of the Constitution, a stunt brought about by what the Washington Post dubbed "the tea party-ization of Congress." More importantly, the House will also adopt new rules to determine how the legislative body operates over the next two years. One of the rules changes, though, flies in the face of the GOP's championing of governmental transparency and fairness.

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