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

IRS to Weed out 'Used Car Salesman' Tax Prepares

Jan 5, 2010 by Gary Therkildsen*

How much do you trust the fine folks at H&R Block or Jackson Hewitt to properly prepare your taxes? Soon you'll be able to trust them a lot more. According to a Washington Post article published today, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) "plans to test, register and screen people who get paid to prepare tax returns," as the agency seeks to "crack down on preparers who do shoddy or fraudulent work." The IRS will phase in the changes during the 2011 tax season.

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How Temporary is the Estate Tax's Death?

Jan 4, 2010 by Gary Therkildsen*

Just before senators departed for the Christmas holiday, they wrapped up most of their pressing business for the year, including health care reform and an extension of the debt ceiling, but they failed to address the expiring estate tax. Because of the Senate's inaction, the estate tax effectively died on Jan. 1 and will stay dead until Jan. 1, 2011. That is until senators return from their winter break and resurrect the tax, which top tax writers on Capitol Hill are promising to do before March.

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A New Year, a New Reporting Cycle Begins

Jan 4, 2010 by Sam Rosen-Amy

Just a friendly reminder that on January 1, the clock began on the second Recovery Act recipient reporting cycle. Prime and sub recipients have from January 1 to January 15 to submit their reports to FederalReporting.gov, recipients will edit these reports from then until January 22, and agencies will then have until January 29 to review the reports. Everything will be published on Recovery.gov on Saturday, January 30.

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Merry Christmas, America: Uncle Sam isn't going to Default on His Debt

Dec 23, 2009 by Gary Therkildsen*

When Senate Republicans and Democrats reached a compromise on Tuesday to allow a final health care vote earlier than planned on Christmas Eve, they also made room to finish off the year with a vote to raise the nation's debt limit temporarily.

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Blackwater/Xe, the Company You Can't Get Rid of

Dec 22, 2009 by Gary Therkildsen*

Yesterday, Justin Elliot at Talking Points Memo published an interesting piece on the never-ending saga that is the government's relationship with the company formerly known as Blackwater. Despite the scandals, investigations and indictments that have recently plagued Xe – and the resultant loss of a license to operate in Iraq and the cancellation of several security contracts overseas – the company continues to perform work for the State Department, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Pentagon in Afghanistan and Iraq.

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OMB Releases New Last-Minute Recovery Act Jobs Guidance

Dec 22, 2009 by Sam Rosen-Amy

While most of the nation's attention seems to have been focused on health care and budget issues as of late, the Office of Management and Budget has been hard at work on the Recovery Act recently. With the start of the second recipient reporting cycle rapidly approaching, on Friday OMB put out a new Recovery Act guidance, this one specifically addressing job creation estimates and data quality issues. These two areas have been huge problems for OMB and the Recovery Act in general, with many of the story lines from the last cycle focusing on terrible data quality and suspect job creation estimates. With the new guidance, OMB is hoping to head off some of these stories for the coming reporting cycle.

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Fiscal Policy in 2009 – A Review

Federal fiscal policy has been front and center throughout 2009 as the Obama administration and Congress have gone to extraordinary lengths to bring the country's economy back from the brink of disaster. It seems like every week, we saw a crucial vote or major policy proposal released. A massive Wall Street bailout, an economic stimulus effort with unprecedented transparency provisions, an attempted reform of the financial regulatory system, a new presidential effort to reform the contracting system, significant gains in proper enforcement of the tax code, and a Congress that continued to fail at passing appropriations and tax bills in a timely manner have made for a pretty exciting, if not chaotic, year. Below is a review of some of the major developments in federal fiscal policy in 2009 from an OMB Watch perspective.

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This Week in Deficit Hawks

Dec 18, 2009 by Gary Therkildsen*

On Thursday, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT), in an attempt to become more "relevant," held a hearing in search of fiscal remedies to the country's growing $12 trillion debt. Rather than provide a platform for exploring different options, though, Lieberman lined up witnesses to trumpet a special congressional commission that could railroad budget "solutions" through Congress. Lieberman, along with several of his hearing witnesses, has joined a small but vocal choir of deficit-hawk-converts that are demanding the government address budget shortfalls immediately, seemingly without regard to current fiscal circumstances.

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Is the Senate Going to Allow the Estate Tax to Die?

Dec 17, 2009 by Gary Therkildsen*

According to a Wall Street Journal article published this morning, efforts to pass some sort of estate tax extension in the upper chamber broke down late Wednesday afternoon. It seems the Democratic caucus can't agree on whether to permanently or temporarily extend 2009 estate tax levels. Though legislators are already promising to address the issue as soon as they return from the holidays, there is still time left to pass something. OMB Watch and a host of other organizations have submitted a letter to the Senate urging them to take action. Ironically enough for those who would champion the tax's death on Jan. 1, the consequences of inaction for small businesses and farms are costlier than extension.

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House Finishes Year in a Blaze of Controversial Legislation

Dec 17, 2009 by Sam Rosen-Amy

Yesterday, in what most news organizations are calling a "flurry" of legislative action, the House passed a relatively large package of contentious bills, including the Defense appropriations bill, an increase to the debt limit, and a jobs bill. The Defense bill, originally thought to be the most difficult of the four bills, easily sailed through the House, 395 to 34, and the Senate immediately began its debate on the bill. The other two bills, however, proved to be much closer, and foreshadow legislative confrontations in the beginning of 2010.