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...

read in full

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...

read in full

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...

read in full

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...

read in full

more news

FY 2008 CR: Legislative Update

Sep 25, 2007 by Dana Chasin

With three legislative days left before the end of the 2007 fiscal year, Congress and the president have little choice but to adopt a Continuing Resolution (CR) to keep the government operating at full strength. Word on the Hill is that a clean CR -- that is, providing continued funding during the life of the CR at FY 2007 levels -- is expected to be passed before the end of the week, with House voting on the CR tomorrow and the Senate doing likewise on Thursday. Currently under discussion is a CR that would expire sometime around Nov. 16. Click here for a look at the House CR bill.

read in full

Renewing Fiscal Responsibility

Sep 25, 2007 by Matt Lewis

The Brookings Institution will be hosting an event to get the presidential candidates focused on the deficit. But only six years post-Clinton, they may be tilting at windmills.

read in full

Bush, Monday Morning QB, Asks 'Clean' CR

Sep 25, 2007 by Dana Chasin

But Unable to 'Obey' His Own Demands House Appropriations chair Rep. David Obey (D-WI) is trying to forstall a government shutdown, negotiating details of a Continuing Resolution (CR) for Fiscal Year 2008 (which begins next Monday, Oct. 1) with newly-installed OMB director Jim Nussle. "I met with the President's budget director last week and informed him at that time that we intended to pass a clean C.R. I asked him if he would let me know if the administration had any exceptions that they wanted included and they sent us over a dozen changes that they wanted."

read in full

FY 2008 War Funding Could Top $200 Billion

In May, Congress passed a $99.5 billion supplemental war spending bill that expires on Sept. 30. The next supplemental bill for FY 2008 war spending is expected to total close to $200 billion. That total, however, is an estimate based on speculation in Washington and continuously changing conditions in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

read in full

Congress to Vote on Compromise SCHIP Package

House and Senate negotiators have agreed to an expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) that closely mirrors the earlier Senate version. The House is scheduled to vote on the package today, Sept. 25, with the Senate voting later in the week. President Bush has promised to veto the bill.

read in full

U.S. Reaches Debt Limit: The Case for Long-Term Analysis

The Senate will vote soon on legislation to raise the ceiling on the national debt to nearly $10 trillion. This action is imperative as the statutory limit of $8.965 trillion on the United States' level of public debt will be reached by Oct. 1, according to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson.

read in full

Wartime Commission Would Investigate Contracting Abuses in Iraq and Afghanistan

Sens. Jim Webb (D-VA) and Claire McCaskill (D-MO) have sponsored a bill (S. 1825) that would set up a commission to investigate and reform wartime contracting. It is likely the bill will be introduced as an amendment to the Defense Reauthorization Act that is currently being debated in the Senate. OMB Watch has sent a letter of support to Congress urging adoption of Webb's potential amendment. The Project on Government Oversight, Government Accountability Project, and Taxpayers for Common Sense also support the bill.

read in full

More on Funding Priorities

Sep 25, 2007 by Matt Lewis

From the AFL-CIO blog: Let's also use these numbers for the appropriations conflict. That'd make 82 more days in Iraq as costly as the difference between the President's budget requests and the Congressional proposal. The President's cuts would take away:

nearly 370,000 veterans' health care
9,223 teaching jobs
12,000 cops

See this breakdown by state for more of the impact of the President's cuts. And check the headlines for the impact of the President's decision to keep funding this war.

read in full

A Correction and an Explanation

Sep 25, 2007 by Adam Hughes*

We were contacted over the weekend by the Administration on Aging (AoA) in response to my posting last Thursday about the newly released round of PART scores. Saadia Greenberg, Director of the Office of Evaluation at the AoA correctly points out that I was in error when I said it was strange OMB cited the AoA during this release of new scores because it was evaluated by the PART in 2003. In fact, the AoA was reassessed this year (2007) and you can see the results of the reassessment. I apologize for the error. Now I certainly don't want to pass the buck here, but this mistake wasn't really my fault. If you put "Administration on Aging" into the search engine on the ExpectMore.gov website, all you get is information on the program's evaluation from 2003, not 2007. See the screen capture I took this morning: This brings up two important points about the PART:

read in full

Truly Wasteful Spending

Sep 24, 2007 by Matt Lewis

President Bush wants (at least) $200 billion for another year of war in Iraq and Afghanistan. But he won't pay for health care for kids or veterans, or more cancer research, all things that would be funded under proposals Congress is considering but the President has threatened to veto. Dean Baker on the President's perverse priorities:

read in full