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

EarmarkWatch.org -- the Wiki for those who Wonder...

Sep 24, 2007 by Dana Chasin

... just who's getting all those earmarks anyway? Who's giving them and why? Do earmarks meet pressing needs or pay off political favors? And which are pure pork? Check out EarmarkWatch.org, a new tool that makes it easy to look under the rock and take a close look at earmarks, like the $100,000 prize that Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) secured for an organization that promotes creationism in Louisiana schools -- paid for in part by you, of course.

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Pear: Overview of Budget Showdown

Sep 24, 2007 by Matt Lewis

The reliably informative Robert Pear has a good article on the budget debate in today's New York Times. I didn't know this: Mr. Bush's public comments suggest he is determined to veto one or more appropriations bills, to highlight what he describes as excessive spending. But neither side has a postveto strategy. Democratic leaders in Congress say they have yet to resolve the most basic strategic question: Should they negotiate with the president or just send him bills reflecting their priorities and wait to see what happens?

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Two Ironies Of The SCHIP Debate

Sep 21, 2007 by Matt Lewis

President "Heckuva job, Brownie" Bush has cast himself as the defender of the poor against the greedy working class, which doesn't deserve help with their health insurance bills. I don't see how else you read statements like this.

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House, Senate Reach Deal on SCHIP

Sep 21, 2007 by Matt Lewis

See the press release, with policy details, on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's webpage.

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Mother of all Tax Bills: Spectacular Conception?

Sep 21, 2007 by Dana Chasin

Biology Lesson: Policy Proliferates Progeny The massive-and-still-growing tax bill gestating in the House Ways and Means subcommittee on Select Revenue Measures -- now in at least its third trimester -- may include not only AMT, EITC and, appropriately, a child tax credit, is hatching yet another embryonic idea: a corporate tax cut. According to yesterday's Wall Street Journal, Ways and Means chair Charles Rangel (D-NY) "is open to cutting corporate-tax rates if the lost revenue can be made up by eliminating existing provisions and loopholes used by businesses."

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Debt on Arrival -- Take II

Sep 21, 2007 by Dana Chasin

Sometime before its Columbus Day recess, the Senate will vote on legislation to raise the ceiling on the national debt to nearly $10 trillion. Treasury Secretary Paulson wrote congressional leaders on Wednesday that the statutory limit of $8.965 trillion would be reached Oct. 1. Last week, the Senate Finance Committee OK'ed boosting the debt limit by $850 billion to $9.815 trillion. The House did likewise without a roll call vote (under the so-called 'Gephardt' or 'Hastert' rule) when it adopted the fiscal 2008 budget resolution in May.

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Magic of the Market, Private Prisons Edition

Sep 21, 2007 by Matt Lewis

A recent study by University of Utah professors found no clear advantage to privatizing prisons, in terms of either cost or benefits. The Desert Morning News has the story (via the AFSCME privatization blog): Privatizing Utah's prison system would have no clear cost advantages, according to an independent study that was presented to lawmakers on Wednesday.

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In Local News...Payday Loan Interest Rates Capped!

Sep 21, 2007 by Matt Lewis

The DC city council has capped payday loan rates...via DMIblog. The D.C. Council voted 12 to 1 yesterday to approve legislation that would require payday loan stores to charge the same annual percentage rate as banks and credit unions, a limit that the payday lending industry says will put them out of business in the city.

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White House Releases Next Round of PART Scores

Sep 20, 2007 by Adam Hughes*

The White House released the next round of PART scores yesterday (the 2007 PART scores), adding an additional 40 new programs that had never before been assessed to the docket and 75 programs that were reassessed at the request of agency staff. The full gambit of PART scores can be found at ExpectMore.gov, but it is difficult to identify the newly assessed programs or the ones that were reassessed.

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Alan Spoke -- Atlas Shrugged

Sep 20, 2007 by Dana Chasin

Because He Couldn't Hear Him NEWS ITEM: Greenspan in 1987 said he had "learned to mumble with great incoherence." (USA Today) I want to take this opportunity, on the occasion of a cycle of media coverage of the publication of a book by a certain former chairman of the Federal Reserve Board to express myself in no uncertain and certainly no less prolix terms than said chairman to say that certain sayings ascribed to the subject of this discursis were subject to such scrutiny as practically, if not irrationally, and often exhuberantly, to confer upon them the status of scripture.

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