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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GOP Candidates' Tax Plans Reduce Taxes on Wealthy, Increase Deficits

As the media focuses its attention on the Republican Party’s presidential nominating contest, several tax and budget organizations have taken turns examining the candidates’ tax proposals. In January, Citizens for Tax Justice (CTJ) released a report looking at the costs of each of the GOP contenders’ plans, and, just recently, the Tax Policy Center (TPC) scrutinized the distributional impacts of the candidates’ proposals. Both reports found that all of the contenders’ tax plans would disproportionately benefit the highest-income households and exacerbate budget deficits.

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Report Highlights Need for Additional Revenue Options

The current top federal income tax rate is 35 percent. But what would the top rate have to be in order to raise enough federal revenues to cover spending? A recent paper from the Tax Policy Center (TPC) and the Pew Fiscal Analysis Initiative sets out to answer that question, but its answer is incomplete. To bring federal revenues up from their current historic lows, Congress needs to consider more revenue options than just raising individual income tax rates.

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Sequestration Central: News and Impacts

This webpage is devoted to tracking both projected and actual impacts on affected federal programs. It includes original reports and analysis from the Center for Effective Government, as well as links to reports in the media and selected organizations.

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Is the President’s Budget Dead on Arrival? Maybe Not

On Feb. 13, budget season officially began with the release of the president’s budget, which was immediately heralded as dead on arrival. “If there was ever a year to ignore the president’s annual budget proposal, this is it,” proclaimed the National Journal (subscription required). While this may be the fate of the president’s tax proposals, many of the program funding levels in his budget have a chance of becoming law.

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Obama Proposes Exempting IRS Enforcement from Budget Caps

One of the main objectives of President Obama’s fiscal year (FY) 2013 budget request for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is to reduce the "tax gap," the difference between what taxpayers owe each year and what they actually pay. The president’s IRS budget request seeks funding increases for both taxpayer services and enforcement programs. Recognizing that a dollar spent on collecting revenue more than pays for itself, the Obama administration has proposed to exclude some IRS enforcement spending from the budget caps imposed by 2011's debt ceiling deal (known as the Budget Control Act).

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In New Report, OMB Watch Highlights Importance of Funding for Agencies that Promote Public Health and Safety

WASHINGTON, Feb. 17, 2012—Today, OMB Watch released a new report, Safeguarding the Public's Health and Safety: The President's FY 2013 Public Protections Funding Requests, that analyzes the parts of the president's FY 2013 budget request that support the agencies and programs crucial to protecting America’s public health and safety.

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Small Biz Owners: Big Businesses, Millionaires Not Paying Fair Share

Feb 7, 2012 by Gary Therkildsen*

The American Sustainable Business Council, Main Street Alliance, and Small Business Majority released a new poll yesterday gauging small business owners’ opinions on taxes. On everything from the tax rates of the wealthy to corporations' exploitation of loopholes in the tax code, small business owners from across the nation say big businesses and millionaires aren’t paying their fair share.

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The House's Fake Budget Process Changes

During the week of Jan. 30, the House began debating a slew of budget reform measures, part of a package of 10 bills proposed by the House Budget Committee that affect everything from budget resolutions to the president’s veto power. Of the 10 pieces of legislation, two have passed the House so far.

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Revenue Proposals in FY 2013 Budget Anything but a Surprise

One doesn’t need an inside source at the White House or an advance copy of this year’s budget to know what the bulk of the proposed tax provisions in the Obama administration’s 2013 budget proposal are likely to be. The debt ceiling deal, recent rhetoric at campaign stops, and the president's State of the Union speech have painted a good portrait of what we can expect to see on Feb. 13.

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We Have Choices: Revenue Options

The federal government took in less money in 2011 than at any time in the last 60 years. State and local governments saw their revenues shrink, too. Why? Because the U.S. economy lost over eight million jobs and trillions in home equity when the housing bubble burst. Less economic activity means less money from sales taxes and business receipts. When a recession hits, the regular revenues government relies on fall dramatically.

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