Earmarks

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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Cirque du Senate, Take II

Dec 12, 2007 by Dana Chasin

Master of the Minority Mitch McConnell's Immodest Turn In a beautiful, if perhaps unintended, exposition of the hypocrasy of the McConnell legislative obstruction program in the Senate, a New York Times "Congressional Memo: "Muscle Flexing in Senate: G.O.P. Defends Strategy," quotes the Senate Majority Leader today as follows: I think we are being consistent here against higher taxes, consistently against greater regulation, consistently against creating new causes of action in bill after bill after bill. It's a positive message of our vision of America.

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The Sound of One Party Negotiating, Part II

Dec 11, 2007 by Dana Chasin

Sound and Fury, Signifying Nothing Another budget deal was scuttled with nine legislative days left in the year when the White House issued a veto threat over the weekend on the "split the difference" approach. It's plus ca change all over again. The only sound you hear, once again, is House Appropriations Chair David Obey, sick and tired of negotating with himself:

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Cirque du Senate: "Filibustering as if on Steroids"

Dec 7, 2007 by Dana Chasin

Les Mots Justes about Enough concerning an almost dysfunctional institution are offered by today's New York Times: Here... there is trash-talking, whining and finger-pointing, bickering and, occasionally, brief flashes of serious disagreement on policy. But with the clock ticking swiftly toward the end of the year and a stack of stalled legislation piling up, little is getting done in the Senate these days. ...

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The Sound of One Party Negotiating

Dec 6, 2007 by Dana Chasin

All Quiet on the Budget Front The quiet that has descended over Washington amid the cold war on the budget has almost nothing to with the blanket of snow that fell on the town steadily all day yesterday. Instead, we heard essentially the same thing we've been hearing for the last several weeks.

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Illusionists who Provide no Illusion

Dec 6, 2007 by Dana Chasin

The Budget Politics of Objection, Obstruction, and Obfuscation The lead editorial in today's New York Times, The President's Cynical Budget War, details President Bush's "attempt to repair the Republican Party's threadbare fiscal reputation" by stonewalling the FY 2008 budget process, vetoing every appropriations measure that's hit his desk thus far this year -- except for the spending bill funding the Pentagon.

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Earmarkwatch.org

Nov 14, 2007 by Matt Lewis

Ever wanted to do some investigative reporting on earmarks, but you just didn't know how to get started? Well, earmarkwatch.org is the site for you! You can dig into thousands of identified earmarks, with the help of research resources and relevant questions, to see if they're good public policy, or just pork barrel politics.

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Stan Collender's Got A New Blog

Nov 14, 2007 by Matt Lewis

You've read his columns (excerpted maybe too often on this blog)- now you can read his new blog.

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We Have a Flag on the Play

Nov 6, 2007 by Craig Jennings

Roughing the passer, on CQ. That's a 15-yard penalty for this lede ($):

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Is All Discretionary Funding Really Discretionary?

Nov 6, 2007 by Matt Lewis

What is discretionary spending? Well, in theory, it's spending that Congress should be able raise and lower with relatively greater ease than the other kind of spending, called mandatory spending. Discretionary programs' importance tends to change. Defense spending, for example, is discretionary. During war, we need to spend a great deal on defense; during peace, much less.

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It's the Policy, Stupid

Nov 2, 2007 by Matt Lewis

With the departure of Tom DeLay and his jailed associates, Congressional Republicans have become the guardians of fair legislative process, or so they would have you believe. Take just about any issue where they have an unpopular stance, and it's almost guaranteed that they will finger-wag and bray about "playing politics" and so on.

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