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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Press Views on Budget Resolution Off-Base on Offsets?

Mar 14, 2007 by Dana Chasin

The Center on Budget's Statement on the Senate Budget Committee Plan today scolds commentators for scolding Committee chair Kent Conrad (D-ND) for failing to specify the offsets for program expansions and tax-cut extensions assumed in his budget resolution mark. This reflects the press'

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Preview of Sen. Conrad's Budget Resolution Mark

Mar 14, 2007 by Dana Chasin

Senate Budget Committee chair Kent Conrad (D-ND) provided reporters with some details yesterday about the budget resolution draft that his committee will mark up today and tomorrow. Some features are good news:

priorities -- Conrad's draft provides a $16-18 billion increase in domestic appropriations over Bush's proposal for FY 2008, with substantial increases in education, veterans, and community policing programs, and, on the mandatory spending side, $50 billion for SCHIP over the next five years

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Call-In For The Right Federal Budget

Mar 13, 2007 by Matt Lewis

Your voice is needed now to support a budget with the right priorities for all Americans. The ECAP coalition (read this Watcher article for more on ECAP) is mobilizing to promote a FY08 budget resolution that doesn't allow tax cuts for the wealthy and that makes enough room to fund programs for children, workers, education, and nutrition and housing issues. Let your representative know what you think about these programs and policies. They need to hear that their constituents will support them if they make the right decisions on the budget.

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War Supplemental Bill Becoming a Budget Bomb

Mar 12, 2007 by Dana Chasin

Congress and President Bush have been taking turns adding to what what started out a $99.6 billion supplemental appropriations package. This weekend, Bush formally requested an additional $6.3 billion in spending (mostly for 4,400 new troops to be deployed in the "surge"). This amount, C-Span reports, Bush wants "offset by cuts ... from domestic appropriations made in the fiscal 2007 continuing resolution."

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House Dems. to Add Min. Wage to the Supplemental?

Mar 8, 2007 by Dana Chasin

Bizarre as it might seem, the Wall Street Journal is reporting "a surprising addition [to the Iraq supplemental bill] by the Democratic leadership: a minimum wage increase." What does this mean, asssuming Pelosi and Co. go forward with the plan?

first, the Democratic leadership must be despairing that House liberals aren't seeing enough anti-war ammunition in the supplemental to support it
second, leadership impatience with the minimum wage tax package logjam may have reached the point where it simply wants to cut the gordian knot

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Walter Reed: At Root, A Budget Issue

Mar 8, 2007 by Matt Lewis

Fred Kagan of Slate has a good article on the budget woes that very likely contributed to the situation at Walter Reed and all across the military. His basic point: the discretionary budget for veteran's health benefits has not been keeping up with need (sound familiar?).

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Congress Set to Consider Largest Supplemental Funding Request in History

Congress will soon begin work on the largest supplemental funding bill ever requested — $99.6 billion — to continue to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, along with other items. The request was submitted to Congress by the president in early February, when the FY 2008 budget was released. If approved, this request would add $93.4 billion to the $70 billion Congress already appropriated for the "war on terror" in FY 2007 and bring the total cost of the wars to over $500 billion.

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Legislators Introduce Competing Entitlement Commission Proposals

The 110th Congress is barely two months old, but several lawmakers have introduced proposals to create "entitlement commissions" that would be charged with formulating policies to address projected long-term fiscal challenges in Social Security and Medicare. The plans have surfaced just as there are increasing concerns on Capitol Hill about the fiscal gap — that is, the amount of spending reduction or tax increases needed to keep the national debt as a share of gross domestic product (GDP) at or below the current ratio. There are currently three plans:

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ECAP Campaign Takes Positive Budget Message to States

The Emergency Campaign for America's Priorities (ECAP) has been promoting its "First Things First" agenda for the FY 2008 budget with local events all over the country since February. The "First Things First" agenda is premised on the belief that public services need to be expanded to ensure equal opportunity and prosperity for all Americans. To this end, ECAP has requested that Congress, for FY 08:

Provide $450 billion for domestic discretionary spending.

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War Spending Keeps Climbing, Says CBO

A new round of defense and emergency appropriations will raise the total amount of money spent on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to nearly $750 billion by the end of FY 2008, according to a recent report by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).

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