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...

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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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Tax Reconciliation Vote May Take Place Soon

May 9, 2006 by Guest Blogger

Both the Senate and House are expected to vote on the $70 billion tax reconciliation bill this week, which both extends capital gains and dividends tax rates for two more years, and also provides protection for 15 million families from paying the alternative minimum tax. The tax cuts within the bill, particularly the capital gains and dividends rate extension, would overwhelmingly benefit the wealthiest in society. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has estimated that H.R. 4297 would give households with incomes over $1 million an average tax cut of $42,000.

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Hidden Debt Limit Increase in House Budget Blueprint

May 9, 2006 by Matthew Madia

House Majority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) has indicated that if he has the votes he will hold a vote on the House budget bill potentially as early as friday. Interestingly, this $2.7 billion budget plan includes language in it, as reported in today's Washington Post, that would bump up the federal debt ceiling yet again, to almost $10 trillion.

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Showdown Over Supplemental?

May 8, 2006 by Guest Blogger

Update on the supplemental spending bill: The Senate passed a $109 billion supplemental last thursday, which ended up being significantly higher than the bill passed by the House on March 16th (which was $91.9 billion).

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Chairman Lewis Announces 302(b) Allocations

May 5, 2006 by Guest Blogger

House Appropriations Chairman Jerry Lewis (R-CA) has made public his spending allocations for the FY07 budget. House GOP leaders are hoping to bring a budget plan to the floor the week after next. In a statement on the allocations, Lewis remarked "These allocations represent my best effort to fairly distribute the limited resources available.

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2006 Tax Reconciliation Bill Languishes

Despite claims by the two senior GOP tax writers of a breakthrough last week following daily meetings with Republican leaders, last year's $70 billion tax cut bill remains unfinished. The bill is expected to be finalized and brought to the floor of both the House and the Senate, as long as House Ways and Means Chairman Bill Thomas (R-CA) and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles Grassley (R-IA) reach a compromise over how to pay for a small part of the bill that exceeds budget targets.

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Harsh Budget Resolution On Its Last Leg?

There has been little movement on the FY 2007 budget resolution since it was pulled from the House floor before the April congressional recess. Despite a deal late last week between Majority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) and Appropriations Committee Chairman Jerry Lewis (R-CA) that removed one of three major obstacles to approval in the House, the outlook for the resolution remains bleak.

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Spotlight on the Line Item Veto Act

May 1, 2006 by Adam Hughes*

On April 27, the Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on the Constitution held an oversight hearing on the Line Item Veto Act of 2006. Christina Martin Firvida, Senior Counsel at the National Women's Law Center, testified the bill would

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The President Who Cried Wolf?

Apr 26, 2006 by Adam Hughes*

The Senate voted today to smack down an attempt to cut spending from the 2006 emergency spending bill current under debate. An amendment offered by Sen. Craig Thomas (R-WY) that would have replaced the entire text of the $106.5 billion bill with President Bush's original $92.2 request was easily defeated 72 - 26.

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Many Not Pleased With Levels of Supplemental Spending

Apr 25, 2006 by Guest Blogger

The New York Times has a great article today highlighting some of the criticisms of supplemental spending, which has "ballooned over the last five years, driven first by the Sept. 11 attacks, followed by the war in Iraq and then by natural disasters including the tsunami in Asia and Hurricane Katrina."

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House Fails to Agree on Budget; Boehner Retreats

After proposing a sparse budget on March 29 and following a intense and divisive few weeks of behind-the-scenes negotiations, House GOP leaders ultimately pulled the plug on the $2.8 trillion FY 2007 budget resolution late on April 6. House Majority Leader John Boehner (R-OH), who admittedly spent the week "popping Advil" in preparation for difficult negotiations with his colleagues, failed time and again to emerge from these talks with enough votes to pass the resolution--a significant setback in what was his first real test as the new Majority Leader.

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