Revenue & Spending

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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more news

More Support for Ending the Contracting Free-For-All

Jun 25, 2008 by Craig Jennings

Following up on my blog earlier today about the Webb-McCaskill Wartime Contracting Commission finally starting to get off the ground, I came across a great column by Thomas Frank today in the Wall Street Journal (of all places!) continuing the drumbeat for a contracting commission to finally get to the bott

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House Approves Fiscally-Responsible AMT Patch

Jun 25, 2008 by Craig Jennings

The voted this afternoon (233-189) to pass a fully-offset, one-year AMT patch that would prevent some 25 million Americans from falling into an alternate tax universe in which their tax bills would jump by an average of $2,000. The bill's $61.6 billion cost is fully offset mostly by:

Treating income of equity fund managers as income, rather than capital gains
Revoking some tax cuts for oil companies
Closing a loophole currently enjoyed by some foreign-owned firms using tax havens
Tighter tax enforcement of merchant credit card payments

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Contracting Oversight Commission Members Announced

Jun 25, 2008 by Adam Hughes*

Craig's post yesterday about some short-sighted decisions at OMB to not provide sufficient resources for contractor oversight at the Army got me thinking about the Webb-McCaskill Commission on Wartime Contracting. There hasn't been a ton of news about that commission since it was enacted into law last fall, but just last week seven of the eight commission members were announced.

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OMB Refuses to Prioritize Army Contractor Oversight

Jun 24, 2008 by Craig Jennings

A day after we read that OMB denied the Army funds to employ 5 generals that would be in charge of overseeing contracting for the Army, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee issues a report that finds the Army's $300 million contract with fraudster contractor AEY "can be viewed as a case study in what

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Approps Update: Senate Panel Clears Labor-H

Jun 24, 2008 by Craig Jennings

By a voice vote, a Senate appropriations subcommittee has approved a FY 2009 Labor-HHS-Education funding bill. The measure would provide about $400 billion less than the House version but bests the president's request by over $7 billion. The bill includes a $1.1 billion boost to NIH and would increase college education funding by $2.7 billion.

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Everybody Needs to Pay Their Taxes...Everybody!

Jun 24, 2008 by Adam Hughes*

Our friends over at the Government Accountability Office released another great report a week or two ago concerning how Medicare providers (hospitals, nursing homes, and doctors) are failing to pay federal taxes to the tune of at least $2 billion a year. Findings from the report:

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Kyl Language in Senate Housing Bill "Hooey"

Jun 24, 2008 by Craig Jennings

The housing legislation that the Senate may vote on this week contains a property deduction similar to one found in the House version of the bill. The provision would allow homeowners who do not itemize their taxes to deduct a fixed amount from their taxes -- $500 for individuals and $1,000 for couples.

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Congress Struggles with Tax Bills ahead of July 4 Recess

In the dwindling days before the July 4 congressional recess, the House and Senate will try to break the longstanding logjams on three critical pieces of tax legislation: a proposal to approve a "patch" to hold constant the number of taxpayers liable to the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT), a bill to renew dozens of tax provisions collectively referred to as the "extenders," and the tax title of Rep. Barney Frank's (D-MA) Federal Housing Administration (FHA) foreclosure guarantee bill.

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Fiscal Responsibility, War Critics Take a Back Seat in House War Supplemental

When the House Democratic leadership introduced a supplemental appropriations bill the week of June 16, chock-full of popular spending measures, it ensured easy passage of the $257 billion package. The Democrats and President Bush can each claim they won items in the negotiation over the bill: the Democrats won increased spending on domestic programs; Bush was able to kill any requirements for withdrawal of soldiers from Iraq. Yet the bill remained controversial because the Democrats refused to include fiscally responsible measures or accede to the opinion of 63 percent of Americans that soldiers should return home within two years.

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Social Security Can Wait. Really.

Jun 23, 2008 by Craig Jennings

A "Brookings Alert" in my inbox this morning directs me to an op-ed by Brookings Senior Fellow Alice M. Rivlin and U. Mich Prof. John W. Kingdon entitled "Next President and Congress: Tackle Social Security First." Oy. I'm going to outsource this one to Shawn Fremstad over at Inclusion.

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