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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What Does the President's Budget Mean for Transparency?

The president's budget request for fiscal year 2012, released on Feb. 14, is the opening bid in a months-long process to decide how much the federal government will spend on everything from the Navy to open government efforts. The administration's budget proposal is difficult to analyze in terms of open government commitments because it doesn’t include line-item categories for transparency activities. However, it does provide some clues about increases and cuts.

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A Government Shut Down, One Way or the Other

Feb 18, 2011 by Matthew Madia

The 2011 budget has turned into a game of hot potato. With a short-term extension of the current budget increasingly unlikely, it appears as though those holding the decisionmaking authority on March 4 at 11:59 pm, when the current continuing resolution expires, will be forced to make an unpopular decision: passing draconian Republican cuts or forcing the government to shut down.

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Handicapping the Future

Feb 18, 2011 by Craig Jennings

As part of his scheme to cater to business interests, President Obama yesterday appointed Intel CEO Paul Otellini to the President's Council on Jobs and Competiveness. The appointment of a corporate leader to such an advisory panel isn't particularly surprising, given that Obama has been bending over backward to make sure the opinions of Big Business^TM are heard in the White House (you know, because they're soooo underrepresented). What is surprising is that Otellini has a blind spot for honest appraisals of economic policy.

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House Republicans Take Chainsaw to the Budget

Feb 16, 2011 by Sam Rosen-Amy

While much of the national attention recently has been on President Obama’s fiscal year 2012 budget proposal, the House of Representatives is still looking backward to FY 2011. Last Friday, House Republicans unveiled a new and improved budget plan, one containing $60.9 billion in cuts from the FY 2010 budget ($65.5 billion cut from non-security discretionary, $4.7 billion increase for security spending). The new plan is an update to one released just days earlier, one which the party’s conservative faction rejected. These conservatives pushed for a full $100 billion worth of cuts from Obama’s FY 2011 budget (which as I said last week was a terrible baseline), and in a matter of days, the conservatives got them. And the new budget is full of bad news.

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Is our Country Broke?

Feb 16, 2011 by Gary Therkildsen*

Why do I thirst for an Orange Julius when I look at this picture?

At a news conference yesterday morning, House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), shrugged off criticism that his party's proposed spending cuts would cost thousands of federal workers their jobs, saying, "In the last two years, under President Obama, the federal government has added 200,000 new federal jobs. If some of those jobs are lost, so be it. We're broke." Boehner has rightly been criticized for the first and second parts of his comments, but what about the last part?

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The Best of State Tax Expenditure Disclosure

Feb 16, 2011 by Joe Cox*

While the federal government offers no insight into where an estimated $1 trillion in tax breaks go every year, some states are beginning to provide information about which corporations benefit from local tax spending programs. None of the state websites are perfect, but their strong suits could be combined to create tools for disclosing federal corporate tax expenditures.

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GOP Not Cutting Defense Spending ... but It Should Be

Feb 15, 2011 by Gary Therkildsen*

How about cutting that second engine, Boehner?

Over the weekend, House Republicans began a coordinated campaign to defend the caucus' "$100 billion" worth of proposed cuts to the fiscal year (FY) 2011 budget. Since the proposal's release, Republicans have been taking flak for targeting non-security discretionary programs, which only make up about one-sixth of federal spending. When asked about this on the various Sunday talk shows, Republican leaders demurred, claiming defense spending is also on the chopping block. They're not telling the truth.

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The Budget That Won't Be (But Still Matters)

Feb 14, 2011 by Craig Jennings

This morning, President Obama officially proposed to Congress his FY 2012 budget. Marking the start of a year-long poker game, this is just an opening bid. Republicans will soon follow up within the next month or so their counter offer when the House votes on its FY 2012 budget resolution. Then the Senate will throw in its two cents (so to speak) and make its suggestion. Months later, actual spending bills will be offered, debated, negotiated, and adopted (though probably not on time) at the end of the year.

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Recovery Board Chairman Backs Multi-Tier Reporting

Feb 11, 2011 by Sam Rosen-Amy

While the new Republican House seems obsessed with cutting federal spending back to pre-stimulus levels, it can be easy to forget that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is still spending money. In fact, there’s still about $100 billion in stimulus contract, grant and loan money that has yet to go out the door. And the Recovery Board, which is in charge of displaying the Recovery Act recipient reports, is still at work. This week, in a big win for transparency advocates, the Board’s chairman, Earl Devaney, announced his support for multi-tier reporting, or reporting beyond prime and sub-recipients.

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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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