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

Blame Will Avert a Government Shutdown

Feb 25, 2011 by Craig Jennings

Unless Congress comes to an agreement over current fiscal year funding soon-- and one acceptable to President Obama -- many operations of the federal government will shut down after March 4. Although what exactly will be shutdown remains uncertain, it's likely the public will notice and be inconvenienced while hundreds of thousands of federal employees will be furloughed. In short, it would be a huge mess and someone will have to take the rap.

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House Budget: More Exemptions and Lower Payments for Big Oil

Feb 23, 2011 by Matthew Madia

In the latest issue of The Watcher, OMB Watch discusses (here and here) the recently passed House budget and the many non-budget provisions attached to it, including the anti-environmental riders that prevent the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and other agencies from doing this or that.

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President Obama Calls for More IRS Funding in 2012 Budget

Following the freeze-but-invest theme of his fiscal year (FY) 2012 budget, President Obama is calling for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to receive a boost compared to the agency's FY 2010 budget. Increased investments in tax enforcement and information technology (IT) could help make the currently complex tax code fairer while streamlining bureaucracy. Additionally, these improvements would likely raise more revenue for the government and make the agency more user-friendly. The Republican-controlled House, however, will likely stand in the way of the budget request, putting the IRS's future funding in question and potentially jeopardizing these reforms.

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The Heavy-Handed House Spending Bill

In the early hours of Feb. 19, the House passed a continuing resolution (CR) that is intended to keep government running for the remainder of the fiscal year. The bill contains not only drastic spending cuts, but would also implement a series of funding restrictions that would block the federal government from carrying out certain policies. While President Obama has said he will veto the legislation if it reaches his desk, it sets an unconstructive tone for Congress with provisions that would adversely impact people in need, undermine job growth, and seriously impair the ability of government to protect the public.

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Environmental and Public Health Safeguards Under Siege in House Spending Bill

The House-passed fiscal year 2011 spending bill would stop the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from limiting greenhouse gases from certain sources, halt standards for air and water pollution, and set other conditions on the agency that will complicate its efforts to protect the environment and public health. Other health and safety agencies are also targeted in the bill.

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What Does the President's Budget Mean for Transparency?

The president's budget request for fiscal year 2012, released on Feb. 14, is the opening bid in a months-long process to decide how much the federal government will spend on everything from the Navy to open government efforts. The administration's budget proposal is difficult to analyze in terms of open government commitments because it doesn’t include line-item categories for transparency activities. However, it does provide some clues about increases and cuts.

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A Government Shut Down, One Way or the Other

Feb 18, 2011 by Matthew Madia

The 2011 budget has turned into a game of hot potato. With a short-term extension of the current budget increasingly unlikely, it appears as though those holding the decisionmaking authority on March 4 at 11:59 pm, when the current continuing resolution expires, will be forced to make an unpopular decision: passing draconian Republican cuts or forcing the government to shut down.

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Handicapping the Future

Feb 18, 2011 by Craig Jennings

As part of his scheme to cater to business interests, President Obama yesterday appointed Intel CEO Paul Otellini to the President's Council on Jobs and Competiveness. The appointment of a corporate leader to such an advisory panel isn't particularly surprising, given that Obama has been bending over backward to make sure the opinions of Big Business^TM are heard in the White House (you know, because they're soooo underrepresented). What is surprising is that Otellini has a blind spot for honest appraisals of economic policy.

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House Republicans Take Chainsaw to the Budget

Feb 16, 2011 by Sam Rosen-Amy

While much of the national attention recently has been on President Obama’s fiscal year 2012 budget proposal, the House of Representatives is still looking backward to FY 2011. Last Friday, House Republicans unveiled a new and improved budget plan, one containing $60.9 billion in cuts from the FY 2010 budget ($65.5 billion cut from non-security discretionary, $4.7 billion increase for security spending). The new plan is an update to one released just days earlier, one which the party’s conservative faction rejected. These conservatives pushed for a full $100 billion worth of cuts from Obama’s FY 2011 budget (which as I said last week was a terrible baseline), and in a matter of days, the conservatives got them. And the new budget is full of bad news.

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Is our Country Broke?

Feb 16, 2011 by Gary Therkildsen*

Why do I thirst for an Orange Julius when I look at this picture?

At a news conference yesterday morning, House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), shrugged off criticism that his party's proposed spending cuts would cost thousands of federal workers their jobs, saying, "In the last two years, under President Obama, the federal government has added 200,000 new federal jobs. If some of those jobs are lost, so be it. We're broke." Boehner has rightly been criticized for the first and second parts of his comments, but what about the last part?

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