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

The Social Security Trustees Report: End at Hand?

Apr 24, 2007 by Craig Jennings

The Board of Trustees of the Federal Old-Age and Survivors Insurance and Federal Disability Insurance Trust Funds (read: Social Security) released their annual report yesterday. It must be absolutely disturbing to prompt these remarks from Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson: Without change, rising costs will drive government spending to unprecedented levels, consume nearly all projected federal revenues, and threaten America's future prosperity. I urge my friends in Congress to join me in a bipartisan effort to strengthen both programs for future retirees.

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Conferees Pass Supplemental, with Troop Restrictions

Apr 23, 2007 by Dana Chasin

House and Senate conferees have just approved a $124.2 emergency war spending supplemental conference report. The report adopts the Senate version of the supplemental, which set a goal of withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq by April 1, 2008.

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Orszag: Long-Term Budget Problem is ALL Health Care

Apr 23, 2007 by Matt Lewis

Peter Orszag, speaking at a conference on budget issues held by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, gets the real long-term fiscal problem (emph. mine). ...the floor was given to CBO director Peter Orszag, who made the following three points.

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Will Min. Wage Make Supplemental Less Vetoable?

Apr 23, 2007 by Dana Chasin

House Ways and Means chair Charles Rangel and Senate Finance chief Max Baucus have indeed worked out a compromise minimum wage tax deal providing $4.84 bn. in tax relief for small business over 10 years, offset by an equal amount of tax increases.

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Smash Health Care Capitalism!

Apr 23, 2007 by Matt Lewis

Writing for the commie-pinko Washington Monthly, Philip Longman, a fellow at the unabashedly socialist New America Foundation, has foreseen the end of the capitalist health care market and the coming of socialized medicine in America.

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Emergency Supplemental -- Color-Coded

Apr 20, 2007 by Dana Chasin

Last year, President Bush sent a $72 billion emergency supplemental war spending bill to Congress on February 16, 2006. He signed the bill 119 days later, on June 15, 2006. A year earlier, the dates were: February 14, 2005, Bush submits $82 billion supplemental bill; May 11, 2005, he signs it.

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OMB Watch Statement on Privacy Violation in Government Data

Apr 20, 2007 by Adam Hughes*

Earlier this afternoon, the New York Times published information about Social Security numbers being disclosed for many years by the government in unique identifiers for certain financial transactions (Read the NYTs story). This was discovered by a user of our FedSpending.org, an online service providing information about government spending that includes a government database that had the personally identifiable information.

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Forward Calendar for Supplemental, Budget Resolution

Apr 20, 2007 by Craig Jennings

The following is the current schedule of congressional action with respect to the:

War Spending Supplemental (H.R. 1591):
- April 23 -- House conferees (appointed April 19) to meet meet with Senate counterparts in first public conference committee meeting, 4:30 p.m., HC-5 Capitol Bldg.
- April 25 or 26 -- House consideration Conference Report
- April 26 or 27 -- Senate consideration of Conference Report
- May 31 -- Target date for passage of second ("post-veto") supplemental bill

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Keeping Government out of the Boardroom

Apr 20, 2007 by Craig Jennings

This week, the White House issued a statement asserting its opposition to the right of shareholders to voice an opinion about the way the companies they own should be run. The president takes issue with Rep. Barney Frank's (D-MA) Shareholder Vote on Executive Compensation Act (H.R. 1257), which "would require that public companies ensure that shareholders have an annual nonbinding advisory vote on their company's executive compensation plans."

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Statement from Gary D. Bass on Privacy Violation in Government Data

WASHINGTON, April 20, 2007—It has become public information today that the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has been including Social Security numbers in a data field that identifies certain public financial transactions with government (e.g., loans). In response, OMB Watch has taken two actions. First, we have temporarily redacted the information in the USDA data field, which serves as a unique identifier, from our online service, FedSpending.org. Second, we call on the federal government to immediately remedy the privacy violation by providing a new unique identifier that does not contain personally identifiable information.

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