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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Congress Approves War Funding; Pressures Bush to Withdraw Troops

Despite repeated veto threats from President George W. Bush, both the House and Senate have approved enormous war supplemental bills that contain a schedule for eventual withdrawal of American soldiers from Iraq. At approximately $124 billion, these bills are the largest supplemental funding legislation in history.

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CTJ: Biggest Tax Increase in History?

Apr 3, 2007 by Matt Lewis

Citizens For Tax Justice has a good piece on the "biggest tax increase in history" line being used by every Republican on the planet. The budget resolutions in the Senate and the House do not by themselves increase or decrease taxes, but they do make Congress "pay for" any further tax cuts by setting up PAYGO rules that ensure that new tax cuts do not increase the deficit. Enacting more tax cuts is what, in a legal sense, extending the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts would be, since they expire in 2010, and new legislation would have to be passed to continue them.

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Relative Revenue Realism: State vs. Federal Indicators

Apr 2, 2007 by Dana Chasin

We've remarked before on what appear to be overly optimistic revenue growth rate projections by the President and Congress. Both President Bush's proposed FY 2008 budget (which assumes extension of the 2001 and 2003 Bush tax cuts) and in the House and Senate budget resolutions (which do not) project 5-7 percent annual revenue growth through 2012. A column in last week's New York Times points out that federal revenue jumped 12.7 percent in 2005 and 11.8 percent in 2006. But it adds a cautionary note about future receipts:

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Suspect Contract in the Vice President's Office

Apr 2, 2007 by Adam Hughes*

A good story in the American Prospect on contract cronyism. The contract in question is another one of these contracts that's put up for competition, but, mysteriously, ends up in the hands of a close associate of powerful people in government. More than just "no-bid" contracts are susceptible to political manipulation- even fully competed contracts can get shady. Makes you wonder if it's worth taking the risk of contracting these services out in the first place. UPDATE: Check out FedSpending.org for the profile of the contractor in this article - MZM, Inc..

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Not Oversight Is Oversight Through Oversight

Apr 1, 2007 by Craig Jennings

In weird sort of Zen meditation on the nature of oversight, the Department of Education overlooks a stark conflict of interest by selecting the company which implemented a billion-dollar reading program to evaluate the very program that it implemented. And the company in question has been criticized by the Ed. Dept.'s inspector general for failing to avoid conflict of interest problems when it originally implemented the program.

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Now 'ear This: Roundup of Earmark Action This Week

Mar 30, 2007 by Adam Hughes*

Action and commentary aplenty on the earmarks front, from CRS to OMB to Capitol Hill this week:

CRS' Earmark Policy: the Library of Congress's Congressional Research Service (CRS) "sudden" announcement that "it will no longer [perform research for] members of Congress on the size, number or background of earmarks" brought this WSJ denunciation on Monday, followed by this CQ-released ($) response by CRS the same day;

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Newsflash: Media Biased (Against Government Spending)

Mar 30, 2007 by Craig Jennings

The Cato Institute and the Heritage Foundation ought to be happy. The coverage of the House budget resolution more or less includes their talking points about how "spending is the problem" with the federal budget. What's more, these ideas are not attributed; they're just presented as facts that the reporters decided, for an unnamed reason, to add to these stories. THe New York Times:

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Latest IRS Data Reveal Continued Inequality Trend

Mar 30, 2007 by Craig Jennings

David Cay Johnston, writing in the New York Times about the latest available data from the IRS, says things are going well for a few Americans, but not as well for many, many more: The new data also shows that the top 300,000 Americans collectively enjoyed almost as much income as the bottom 150 million Americans. Per person, the top group received 440 times as much as the average person in the bottom half earned, nearly doubling the gap from 1980. The Bush administration is not so troubled, however, claiming:

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Senate's 51-47 Supplemental Vote a Challenge to Bush

Mar 29, 2007 by Dana Chasin

The Senate passed a $122 billion supplemental spending bill this afternoon by 51-47; it was a party-line vote, with all Democrats in favor and all GOP Senators opposed, except for Chuck Hagel (R-NE), and Gordon Smith (R-OR), who supported the measure.

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House Adopts Budget Resolution; Conference Ahead

Mar 29, 2007 by Dana Chasin

By a 216-210 margin, the House this afternoon passed a budget resolution for FY 2008 . The $2.9 trillion nonbinding blueprint calls for a $153 billion surplus by 2012, a nearly $25 billion increase for domestic programs, and restoration of the PAYGO budget discipline rule.

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