Federal Budget Policy

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

How Good Was the Post-WW II era?

Apr 11, 2007 by Matt Lewis

Craig excerpts an interesting article below that reminds us that there was once a time when the median wage tracked productivity- or, as I like to think, a time when people were paid what they earned.

read in full

Expeditious Supplemental -- Fur Flies Fast and Furious

Apr 10, 2007 by Dana Chasin

After both houses of Congress moved with close to record speed right before recess to pass the president's appropriations request -- the largest in history -- the president wasted no time in pushing everything back to square one by promising to veto whatever might emerge from conference once Congress returns from recess. Today, President Bush appeared to castigate Congress for wasting everybody's time by adding conditions to a funding bill:

read in full

NPP On Income Tax Spending

Apr 6, 2007 by Matt Lewis

Tax day is coming up; want to be disgusted by what your income taxes are actually paying for? Check out this new report from the National Priorities Project.

read in full

Krugman on PAYGO, Sorta

Apr 6, 2007 by Matt Lewis

Paul Krugman's column today highlights what seems to me an unintended but good consequence of the PAYGO world: rooting out corporate welfare.

read in full

SCHIP Outreach Being Curtailed

Apr 5, 2007 by Matt Lewis

State Medicaid administrators have been telling state children's health insurance programs (SCHIP) to back off outreach efforts, Inside CMS ($) reports today. The crux of the issue is that when SCHIP programs do outreach, they tend to find and sign up children and adults not only for SCHIP, but for Medicaid, as well.

read in full

BudgetBlogging on TPM Cafe

Apr 3, 2007 by Matt Lewis

Check out Dana's latest post on TPM Cafe- The Budget Resolutions: Whose Largest Tax Increase in History?

read in full

Budget Resolution Conference Faces Key Choices on PAYGO, Taxes

In the final weeks of March, the House and Senate adopted budget resolutions for Fiscal Year 2008 by narrow margins and will now turn to the task of finding a compromise resolution in conference committee. The two $2.9 trillion budget plans are broadly similar — both seek to reach a budget surplus by the year 2012, establish reserve funds to extend the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) to all eligible children, and embrace pay-as-you-go (PAYGO) principles.

read in full

Congress Approves War Funding; Pressures Bush to Withdraw Troops

Despite repeated veto threats from President George W. Bush, both the House and Senate have approved enormous war supplemental bills that contain a schedule for eventual withdrawal of American soldiers from Iraq. At approximately $124 billion, these bills are the largest supplemental funding legislation in history.

read in full

CTJ: Biggest Tax Increase in History?

Apr 3, 2007 by Matt Lewis

Citizens For Tax Justice has a good piece on the "biggest tax increase in history" line being used by every Republican on the planet. The budget resolutions in the Senate and the House do not by themselves increase or decrease taxes, but they do make Congress "pay for" any further tax cuts by setting up PAYGO rules that ensure that new tax cuts do not increase the deficit. Enacting more tax cuts is what, in a legal sense, extending the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts would be, since they expire in 2010, and new legislation would have to be passed to continue them.

read in full

Newsflash: Media Biased (Against Government Spending)

Mar 30, 2007 by Craig Jennings

The Cato Institute and the Heritage Foundation ought to be happy. The coverage of the House budget resolution more or less includes their talking points about how "spending is the problem" with the federal budget. What's more, these ideas are not attributed; they're just presented as facts that the reporters decided, for an unnamed reason, to add to these stories. THe New York Times:

read in full