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

AMT: Seeking Permanent Reform, Short of Repeal

Mar 7, 2007 by Dana Chasin

At 2 p.m. today, Rep. Richard Neal (D-MA), chair of the House Ways and Means Suncommittee on Select Revenue Measures, holds the first hearing (webcast here) of the 110th Congress on AMT reform, meaning repeal. Currently, the debate about how to keep AMT liability from engulfing the middle class seems to vaccilate between between:

the temporary solution -- the hold-harmless-via-patches strategy favored by leading Senate Democrats, who have endorsed a $115 billion, two-year patch for 2007 and 2008

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Watcher: March 6, 2007

Mar 7, 2007 by Matt Lewis

War Spending Keeps Climbing, Says CBO A new round of defense and emergency appropriations will raise the total amount of money spent on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to nearly $750 billion by the end of FY 2008, according to a recent report by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). Congress Set to Consider Largest Supplemental Funding Request in History Congress will soon begin work on the largest supplemental funding bill ever requested — $99.6 billion — to continue to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, along with other items.

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Earmarks: Getting a Read on the House Rules

Mar 6, 2007 by Dana Chasin

According to an article in Roll Call today ($), a new earmark request-and-approval regime in the House is giving rise to a culture of confusion for members and lobbyists alike. The regime is proving to be a far more complex and perilous one than in the past, owing to:

ambiguities in the House rules package on earmarks in several areas, including "multi-Member" funding letters supporting for broad or regional requests (which may now count against the earmark limits of each signatory)

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GSA Chief To Testify on More Misdeeds

Mar 6, 2007 by Matt Lewis

GSA Administrator Lurita Doan is in hot water again. Rep. Henry Waxman, Chairman of the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee, has just obtained documents that demonstrate that Doan had a long-standing relationship with a prospecitve recipient of a no-bid contract (the contract was never issued). A Jan. 19 Washington Post story first broke the news that Doan tried to intervene in the contracting-out process on behalf of this friend of hers.

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Congress Set to Consider Largest Supplemental Funding Request in History

Congress will soon begin work on the largest supplemental funding bill ever requested — $99.6 billion — to continue to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, along with other items. The request was submitted to Congress by the president in early February, when the FY 2008 budget was released. If approved, this request would add $93.4 billion to the $70 billion Congress already appropriated for the "war on terror" in FY 2007 and bring the total cost of the wars to over $500 billion.

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Senate Approved of Walter Reed Privatization

Mar 6, 2007 by Matt Lewis

GovExec has a good story today on how privatization may have made the situation at Walter Reed even worse. A prolonged public-private competition demoralized staff, nearly 100 of whom quit. On Monday, Weightman said attrition reduced the number of employees affected by the competition from a high of 190 down to about 100 people. He said that despite being given authority to staff up to bridge the gap, he was unable to find more than 10 additional people to take positions not slated to last beyond four months.

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Legislators Introduce Competing Entitlement Commission Proposals

The 110th Congress is barely two months old, but several lawmakers have introduced proposals to create "entitlement commissions" that would be charged with formulating policies to address projected long-term fiscal challenges in Social Security and Medicare. The plans have surfaced just as there are increasing concerns on Capitol Hill about the fiscal gap — that is, the amount of spending reduction or tax increases needed to keep the national debt as a share of gross domestic product (GDP) at or below the current ratio. There are currently three plans:

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ECAP Campaign Takes Positive Budget Message to States

The Emergency Campaign for America's Priorities (ECAP) has been promoting its "First Things First" agenda for the FY 2008 budget with local events all over the country since February. The "First Things First" agenda is premised on the belief that public services need to be expanded to ensure equal opportunity and prosperity for all Americans. To this end, ECAP has requested that Congress, for FY 08:

Provide $450 billion for domestic discretionary spending.

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War Spending Keeps Climbing, Says CBO

A new round of defense and emergency appropriations will raise the total amount of money spent on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to nearly $750 billion by the end of FY 2008, according to a recent report by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).

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AMT Wonkery

Mar 6, 2007 by Craig Jennings

The Joint Committee on Taxation released a report on the AMT yesterday describing how the AMT works, a brief legislative history, and why it's affecting more and more middle-class tax payers every year. It's really a good primer on the tax.

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