CBO chief Donald Marron, a month ago : "[T]he message I would send is that we've gone from a period in which the fiscal deficits we were running in this country were large and not sustainable if they had persisted, to a situation in which, at least now and for next year, for several years going forward, deficits appear to be in a range that they're sustainable.”
Prof. Frances Hill, a law professor at the University of Miami and Tax Policy Program Director at the Campaign Legal Center has called on the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to do a better job of explaining its policies and procedures that enforce the ban on partisan activity by charities and religious organizations. For the full text see OpEd for the Chronicle on Philanthropy.
The official end of the Internal Revenue Service's investigation of the NAACP was as inexplicable as its beginning.
Paul Krugman crystallizes the issue of income inequality(sub. req'd).
Yet in spite of all this technological progress, which has allowed the average American worker to produce much more, we’re not sure whether there was any rise in the typical worker’s pay. Only those at the upper end of the income distribution saw clear gains — gains that were enormous for the lucky few at the very top.
With appropriators blocking sunset commission legislation in House, there's a good chance we won't see the legislation again this year. The legislative battle, however, does leave us with some interesting questions about how to make government more responsive to public need. Eliminating federal programs with limited congressional debate is obviously not the answer, but what is? New York University professor Paul C. Light offers one possible solution in an Op-Ed for the Christian Science Monitor.
Be sure to check out our own Dana Chasin guest blogging over at TPM Cafe this month on the trifecta bill and the estate tax. Frist has now charged four Republican Senators with the task of figure out how to ram through his failed strategy on the estate tax before they recess for the year.
Get all the latest details at TPM Cafe: Trifecta Failure -- The Fingerprint File.
After intense horse-trading and vote-counting, the House voted 245-171 this afternoon to impose upon itself a "house" rule requiring that a House committee identify the sponsor of each earmark contained in legislation that it reports. The rule will stay on the House books until the current Congress adjourns; it would have to be re-approved de novo to apply to succeeding Congresses.
Douglas Holtz-Eakin, former director of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), testified at a House Budget Committee hearing on dynamic analysis yesterday. He is a well-respected, center-right economist, and people take his opinion seriously. And he is a fan of dynamic analysis.
Lots of progressives worry that dynamic analysis could justify nasty tax cuts with voodoo-supply-side economics. But from a political perspective, dynamic analysis may not be such a bad thing.
IRS Announcement 2006-69, released Sept. 11, states that the tax-exempt status of Youth Ministries, Inc., d/b/a Operation Rescue West, has been revoked. The statement does not give a reason, but a statement of Catholics for Free Choice says:
