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

The FY 2007 DoD Approps Bill, Deconstructed

Oct 13, 2006 by Matthew Madia

In a brilliant analysis of the FY 2007 DoD appropriations bill, Winslow T. Wheeler, Director at the Straus Military Reform Project of the Center for Defense Information based in Washington, D.C., exposes the bill's budget gimmicks, misleading program labeling, and meaningless dollar figures. The lead-in for Wheeler's article:

read in full

Bringing Home the Bush Tax Cuts

Oct 12, 2006 by Matt Lewis

For anyone interested in how the Bush tax cuts have impacted individual states, take a look at this report from Citizens for Tax Justice.

read in full

OMB Watch Launches FedSpending.org

For the first time, itemized information on the more than $12 trillion disbursed by the federal government between FY 2000 and FY 2005 is now available to the public on a user-friendly, searchable Web site. FedSpending.org, a project of OMB Watch launched Oct. 10, provides citizens with a detailed look at how the government sets national priorities and allocates federal resources.

read in full

The Do-Nothing 109th Congress, Pt. 2

Oct 10, 2006 by Dana Chasin

In Part 1 of our evaluation of the 109th Congress to date, we looked last week at Congress’ effort to meet its minimal constitutional requirements: producing a budget resolution and adopting a budget. While Congress failed to complete work on the FY2007 budget, it did approve an additional $70 billion in tax cuts over five years, and allowed discretionary spending to increase to $873 billion, $30 billion above the 2006 level. On top of this, Congress approved two major FY 2006 supplemental bills to finance the war in Iraq and Katrina recovery, totaling $110 billion.

read in full

FedSpending.Org Released!

Oct 10, 2006 by Matt Lewis

FedSpending.Org is now online! Check it out!

read in full

OMB Watch to Unveil www.FedSpending.org

Oct 6, 2006 by Dana Chasin

Next Tuesday, Oct. 10, at 9:30 a.m. EST, OMB Watch is launching FedSpending.org, a new, searchable online database allowing you to search, aggregate and analyze all federal spending. Be a more informed voter this midterm election. See which federal programs and agencies got the most federal dollars this year. See which contractors are getting paid how much to work in your congressional district.

read in full

Bernanke on Budget Cuts

Oct 5, 2006 by Matt Lewis

Another sign that the Bush Administration may push for "entitlement reform" (read: massive cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid) after the election. From CongressDaily ($$):

read in full

Roll-Out of Federal Spending Oversight Tools Next Week

Oct 3, 2006 by Matthew Madia

The launch of OMB Watch's powerful new Web-based tool for tracking government spending and congressional accountability will be held at 9:30 a.m.next Wednesday Oct. 10, in the Lisagor Room of the National Press Club. Update: The press conference in Washington on Tuesday, October 10 will also be webcast - so you can join in on the excitment from anywhere. Sign up for a reminder from OMB Watch by email on Tuesday morning about the event.

read in full

The Do-Nothing 109th Congress, Pt. 1

Oct 2, 2006 by Matthew Madia

Now that only a lame-duck portion of it remains, we are now in a position to begin to assess the 109th Congress. Per the Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein article that my colleague Matt points out below: “with few accomplishments and an overloaded agenda, [the 109th Congress] is set to finish its tenure with the fewest number of days in session in our lifetimes, falling well below 100 days this year.” At the same time, as the Washington Post reports today, the House passed 165 bills… in the last week alone. That’s more than one for every threatened incumbent, and then some.

read in full

The Other Public Interest

Oct 2, 2006 by Matthew Madia

Shorter Sebastian Mallaby: Democrats have no principles because they won't cut Social Security for married low-income people. Snark aside, I bring this up because Mallaby and many of the entitlement-reform-obsessives around Washington are missing the point about fast-growing government spending. The fastest growing part of the budget are interest payments on the national debt. For more, Daniel Gross has a great article in Sunday's NYT explaining why interest payments have taken off.

read in full