Last week the National Priorities Project released their annual publication Where Do Your Tax Dollars Go? The publication shows how the median income family's income tax dollars are spent for every state and 200 cities, towns and counties. It also looks at the shift in how tax dollars were spent in 2005 compared with 2000. For example, NPP has found that the military's share of the income tax dollar has risen by 20 percent since 2000, while the share of spending has dropped for job training (-21 percent), environment (-19 percent), housing (-7 percent) and veteran's benefits (-2 percent).

In a surprising collapse late yesterday afternoon, the House GOP leadership pulled the 2007 budget resolution from floor consideration and gave up any efforts to pass the bill before the two-week April recess. Lacking the votes to pass the resolution, new GOP Majority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) failed in his first major test as head of the new leadership team in the House. Boehner had made statements earlier this week vowing to pass a budget before the recess or abandon efforts to pass one at all. On April 4, he asked rhetorically, "If we don't do it this week, why do it at all?"

Absolutely fantastic article by David Cay Johnston on the front page of the New York Times today showing how enormously skewed the Bush tax cuts on capital gains and dividends are toward the richest of the rich in America. The Times did their own analysis of IRS data from 2003 with some shocking conclusions. A few excerpts below: Among taxpayers with incomes greater than $10 million, the amount by which their investment tax bill was reduced averaged about $500,000 in 2003

Following up on a previous posting from last week, an article that ran yesterday in govexec.com reported that two private collection companies have filed a complaint with the General Accountability Office (GAO) protesting the selection of a third firm (Linebarger Goggan Blair & Sampson) to receive a contract to collect outstanding taxes owed to the IRS.