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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Task Force to Examine House Rules

Feb 1, 2007 by Matt Lewis

As promised, an outside panel will decide how to enforce the new House rules. The group will make recommendations by May 1 on such matters as the proposed Office of Public Integrity. Speaker Pelosi and Minority Leader Boehner announced yesterday the bi-partisan eight member panel. Pelosi and Boehner each named four members and according to CQ ($) Representative Capuano (D-MA) will be chairing the panel.

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Bush's Health Care Plan and the AMT?

Feb 1, 2007 by Craig Jennings

Brad DeLong has a question about Bush's health care plan as described in the SOTU speech: A question. When George W. Bush said: [Although we are adding the value of health insurance contributions by employers to the income subject to personal income and payroll taxes, we are adjusting things so that] families with health insurance will pay no income or payroll taxes on [the first] $15,000 of their income. Single Americans with health insurance will pay no income or payroll taxes on [the first] $7,500 of their income...

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Congress Hearing Middle-Class Midterm Message

Feb 1, 2007 by Dana Chasin

Washington seems to have gotten the midterm message from middle-class voters. No less than three congressional committees held hearings yesterday on the economic plight of the American middle class. The problem, in a word, is "insecurity," caused chiefly by:

steadily declining real wage growth in the the middle class over the 25-30 years (see chart)
technological change
increased international competition
rapidly rising education costs
large-scale corporate downsizings

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Sawicky on Min. Wage Tax Bogusness

Feb 1, 2007 by Craig Jennings

The Senate is scheduled to vote on the minimum wage package today at 2:30 PM...but now's a good time to check out Max Sawicky's erudite take on the unnecessary tax cuts attached to the minimum wage bill. One key passage on the tax cuts, AKA the Small Business and Work Opportunity Act of 2007 (SBWOA):

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That Settles It

Feb 1, 2007 by Matt Lewis

President Bush on Congressional war powers, in an interview with an incredulous Wall Street Journal editorial board (emphasis mine): WSJ: There's a lot of discussion in Congress about putting caps on troop levels or defunding or saying you can't deploy, as commander in chief, troops in Baghdad. Do you think Congress has the constitutional authority . . . GWB: I think they have the authority to defund, use their funding power . . . WSJ: You do?

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House Passes $463.5 bn. FY2007 Spending Resolution

Jan 31, 2007 by Dana Chasin

This afternoon, the House passed its $463.5 billion "CRomnibus" spending resolution for FY2007 by a 286-140 vote. Approval by the Senate and the President are required to keep the government operating after Feb. 15.

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OMB Watch Statement on Joint Resolution

Jan 31, 2007 by Adam Hughes*

Click here for OMB Watch's statement on the joint funding resolution that the House will soon vote on.

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Heritage Foundation Debunking Debunked

Jan 31, 2007 by Adam Hughes*

The Heritage Foundation has released a misleading document entitled "Ten Myths About the Bush Tax Cuts." The first "myth" that Heritage's Brian M. Riedl "debunks": Myth #1: Tax revenues remain low. Fact: Tax revenues are above the historical average, even after the tax cuts. Tax revenues in 2006 were 18.4 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), which is actually above the 20-year, 40-year, and 60-year historical averÂages.

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Congress Takes Good First Step in Joint Funding Resolution

WASHINGTON, Jan. 31, 2007—OMB Watch today applauded House and Senate Democrats for coming one step closer to bringing the Fiscal Year 2007 appropriations process to a close. The just-unveiled Joint Resolution calls for restoring funding for high-priority programs, elimination of scores of wasteful “earmarks,” and progress toward a fair and open budget process that invests in our nation’s priorities

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Reconstruction Auditor Exposes More Waste

Jan 31, 2007 by Matt Lewis

The Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction just put out their semi-annual report on reconstruction. The report is on the web here, and it ain't pretty. The Washington Post has some lurid examples of the fraud and waste that the report exposes. And to think that just a few months ago the special inspector general's office was on the chopping block... One important note: it's tempting to see contracting waste and abuse as an Iraqi reconstruction problem, or a Halliburton problem, or even a defense problem. But really it's a contract administration and oversight problem.

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