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

IRS Privitization Program on its "Deathbed"

Mar 6, 2007 by Adam Hughes*

At a hearing of the House Appropriations Financial Services and General Government Subcommittee yesterday, Chairman Jose Serrano (D-NY) made some harsh statements about the IRS privitization program that has outsourced some tax collection duties. Serrano said that the program is on its "deathbed" and that the program does not have a lot of supporters in Congress right now. This is certainly welcome news from the appropriations subcommittee chair who has jurisdiction over the IRS. Yet another key voice has chimmed in on this program and the verdict is not good.

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Baucus, Conrad Support 2-Year AMT Patch; Rangel, Neal Embrace Repeal

Mar 5, 2007 by Dana Chasin

Senate Finance Committee chair Max Baucus (D-MT) has abandoned his support of full AMT repeal and joined with Senate Budget chair Kent Conrad (D-ND) in favor of a two-year AMT patch. Their position is already "http://public.cq.com/docs/cqt/news110-000002458033.html" target="_blank">part of a Senate bill (S. 619) introduced by Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) along with nine co-sponsors. The proposal would cost more than $90 billion over 10 years, but nobody has said yet how or even if it would be offset.

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Walker, Budget Nutcase

Mar 5, 2007 by Matt Lewis

GAO Chief David Walker showed up on 60 Minutes yesterday. Dean Baker has a nice takedown of what he said. I accuse him of three more errors against entitlements and the long-term fiscal imbalance. First, he limits options for policy solutions: So where's that money going to come from? "Well it's gonna come from additional taxes, or it's gonna come from restructuring these promises, or it's gonna come from cutting other spending," Walker says. What about reforming the private health care system- the source of the problem? Second, he distorts the opposition's beliefs:

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CBO Estimates Bush Budget Fails to Balance in 2012

Mar 2, 2007 by Dana Chasin

Administration projections that its FY 2008 federal budget proposal would yield a surplus by FY 2012 were contradicted today by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) scoring of the President's plan. The bottom lines:

the Bush budget will fail to balance in 2012 by $9 billion (see Table 1); CBO's estimate projects $119 billion less in revenues in 2012 than does OMB's
domestic discretionary spending for FY 2008 is scored at $932 billion (Table 4), up from the President's proposed $928.9 cap

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Do Your Job, Congress

Mar 2, 2007 by Matt Lewis

Things are moving forward on a plan to create a panel (CQ, $) of legislators who'd come up with proposals to curb long-term fiscal problems. If created, the commission will no doubt propose legislative packages of "tough choices," a euphemism for painful legislation that'll cut benefits here and raise taxes there, with the intention of reducing the long-term budget imbalance, but not producing any tangible benefit for the public.

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Resolution Tea-Leaf Reading: The Conrad Lexicon

Mar 1, 2007 by Craig Jennings

If you found Senate Budget Committee chair Kent Conrad's comments on the Budget Resolution quoted in our blog yesterday inscrutable, you are not alone. Policy wonks, journalists, lobbyists, industry groups, and aides have spent much of the past two days trying to interpret the meaning of Conrad's promise, "no tax rate increases," given his broader promise of balancing the budget by 2012. So we offer an abridged Conrad Lexicon, to assist in parsing the delphic utterance:

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Wyden's Health Care Plan Could Save $1.5 Trillion

Mar 1, 2007 by Matt Lewis

Here's an interesting study of Sen. Ron Wyden's plan to provide health care insurance for all Americans. It estimates that the plan would slow the growth of health care costs by nearly 1 percent, a reduction in total health care spending (public and private) of about $1.5 trillion over ten years. You can agree or disagree with Wyden's plan (I think it relies too much on private insurers and doesn't go far enough to control costs). What's inarguable is that providing more health insurance would control costs in a moral and effective way.

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War Supplemental Mark-Ups "Targeted"

Mar 1, 2007 by Craig Jennings

Coming to a chamber floor near you! CQ($): The House Appropriations Committee has set a "target date" of March 7 to mark up the fiscal 2007 supplemental measure, Rep. David R. Obey, D-Wis., the committee chairman, said Wednesday. The goal is to bring the bill to the floor the following week. The Senate Appropriations Committee intends to mark up its own version of the bill March 20, according to its chairman, Robert C. Byrd, D-W.Va. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., has said he would like to have the bill on the floor the last week of March. Last week of March - mark your calendars.

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Bush's $526 Billion Tax Increase

Mar 1, 2007 by Matt Lewis

Congress's Joint Committee on Taxes has put out a preliminary examination of the Bush health care tax plan. Over the next ten years, they estimate it would raise taxes by $526 billion. President Bush had claimed the package would be a wash in net. Check out this AP article for more: President Bush's health insurance proposals would cost taxpayers $526 billion through 2017, according to a preliminary estimate from Congress' Joint Committee on Taxation.

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Democrats to Reach Balanced Budget by Different Means

Feb 28, 2007 by Dana Chasin

The broad outlines of the Democrats' FY 2008 Budget Resolution strategy are beginning to emerge. This much is now clear, per comments this week by House and Senate Budget Committee chairs Rep. John Spratt (D-SC) and Sen. Kent Conrad (D-ND):

the BR will set total discretionary spending above the $929.8 billion cap proposed by President Bush
it will provide for a balanced buget by FY 2012, by increasing revenues "without any tax rate increases"; instead, it will "broaden the base and keep rates low"

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