At 10 AM today (July 8), the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee will hold a hearing on oversight of the Recovery Act. The hearing will feature testimony from Gene Dodaro from the Government Accountablility Office, Robert Nabors from the Office of Management and Budget, and governors of three states.

This morning, Citizens for Tax Justice (CTJ), in conjunction with Rebuild & Renew America Now (RRAN), a tax policy group, released a report outlining two tax reform proposals devised to help pay for the much anticipated overhaul of the U.S. health care system by Congress. The proposals, designed to place the least amount of tax burden on low and middle-income families, call for an expansion of the Medicare tax and a limitation on itemized deductions. According to CTJ, the two tax reforms could yield as much as $60.5 billion in the first year and $760 billion over the course of a decade. The report breaks down how the tax reforms would affect citizens of different income levels on a state-by-state basis. In addition to the report, Deborah Weinstein, Executive Director of the Coalition on Human Needs, which is part of RRAN, published an opinion piece on Huffington Post arguing for responsible revenues to pay for health care reform.

The Coalition for an Accountable Recovery (CAR), of which OMB Watch is a co-chair, just released its analysis of OMB's recent guidance on recipient reporting under the Recovery Act. OMB's guidance only covers recipients of grants and loans (a separate guidance for federal contractors is coming soon), but it starts to flesh out the details of the reporting process, which up until this point have largely been vague and unformed.

Today, Accenture, the Georgetown Public Policy Institute (GPPI), and OMB Watch officially released a report, Building a Better Government Performance System: Recommendations to the Obama Administration", that outlines six key principles that are essential in the reform of government performance systems.  These principles will help to open up internal compliance-based review processes that typically result in static ratings and create a more dynamic conversation about continually improving performance.