New Posts

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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Bush Requests $1.9 billion to Pay for Border Security

President Bush has officially asked Congress to fund his $1.9 billion border security initiative. The $1.9 billion in border security expenses is to be inserted into the supplemental spending bill currently making its way to conference. Incidentally, $1.9 billion is about the same amount of a border security provision that Senate Budget Committee chairman Judd Gregg (R-NH) authored. In fact, even the offsetting funds in both Bush's and Gregg's plans would come from the same line item. Perfect - same amounts, same offsets - so, what's the problem?

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The Senate Will Lose Extra Funding In Supplemental

Negotiators for the House and Senate have agreed to back down on including extra funding within the supplemental spending bill, and are doing so to avoid a veto fight with the White House. The emergency spending bill, which is set to fund war efforts (which after this long should not be funded through the emergency procedure) and hurricane disaster relief, will most likely cost no more than $94.5 billion.

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Prof. Frank Teaches Econ 101

Yesterday, we listened to President Bush mislead Americans about the role the 2003 tax cuts played in the economic growth we've seen since 2003. Mr. Bush was not the only administration member misleading Americans. The Wall Street Journal blog, Washington Wire, caught this exchange bewtween Treasury Secretary John Snow Representative Barney Frank (D-MA) during testimony to the House Financial Services Committee on the International Financial System and the Global Economy.

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House Passes Budget Resolution 218-210

At 1:30 AM last night the House passed their version of the budget resolution after Majority Leader Boehner had repeatedly put off the vote because he didn't have enough support to pass the bill. The $2.8 trillion measure, H.Con.Res. 376, just barely passed 218-210 after moderates led by Rep. Mike Castle (R-DE) decided to support the measure.

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Tax Cuts Grow Debt, Not Economy

Today, President Bush signed the $70 billion Deficit Growth Package (aka Tax Relief Extension Reconciliation Act of 2005) into law. And as he places more debt on the shoulders of our children and grandchildren, he continues to mislead the American people by claiming that the 2003 tax cuts are the cause of the growing economy. One of the most important decisions we made was to cut the taxes on dividends and capital gains. These cuts were designed to lower the cost of capital and to encourage businesses to expand and hire new workers. And these tax cuts are doing exactly what we expected.

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BREAKING: House Budget Vote TODAY!

Call Congress Today House Republican leaders are planning to VOTE TODAY ON THE BUDGET RESOLUTION. The vote is not assured and your call is crucial!Call your Representative toll free at 800-459-1887 and tell them to vote NO on the irresponsible budget.

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Watcher: May 17, 2006

Dishonest Budget Gimmick Enables Passage of Irresponsible Tax Cuts Fed. Report Underscores Estate Tax's Importance House Fails to Pass Budget Again -- Approps Move Forward Just the Same

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Offensive Op-ed in Today's Hill on the Estate Tax

The Hill is running a terribly misinformed op-ed today on the estate tax. The op-ed, which actually calls the victims of the estate tax "real and tragic" in the first paragraph, only gets worse from there. (I personally would not call the situation of any multimillionaire "tragic," but some people like to put a little flair in their writing).

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National Guard Border Deployment Would Be "horribly over-expensive"

Last year Department of Homeland Security head Michael Chertoff declared that deploying the National Guard to the Mexican border for border patrol activities would be "a horribly over-expensive and very difficult way to manage [the illegal immigration] problem." CQ's Patrick Yoest reports: “Why don’t you put the National Guard on the border to back up the border patrol and stop the bleeding, and then start to increase the Border Patrol, the high-tech and all of that?” [Fox News talk show host Bill] O’Reilly asked…

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Do Tax Cuts Pay For Themselves? No

President Bush is slated to sign the $70 billion tax reconciliation bill tomorrow, and this provides as good an opportunity as any to disprove a myth that unfortunately has been floating around the anti-tax ranks for some time now: that tax cuts pay for themselves, or even come close to doing so.

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Resources & Research

Living in the Shadow of Danger: Poverty, Race, and Unequal Chemical Facility Hazards

People of color and people living in poverty, especially poor children of color, are significantly more likely...

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A Tale of Two Retirements: One for CEOs and One for the Rest of Us

The 100 largest CEO retirement funds are worth a combined $4.9 billion, equal to the entire retirement account savings of 41 percent of American fam...

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