In December 2007, Citizens United, a 501(c)(4) organization, filed a lawsuit against the Federal Election Commission (FEC) in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia claiming that television ads for its film, Hillary: The Movie, should not be subject to donor disclosure requirements under FEC rules. On Jan. 15, a three-judge panel ruled against the group. The organization has since asked the U.S. Supreme Court to consider its case. The suit is a response to the FEC's new rule implementing the Supreme Court's Wisconsin Right to Life (WRTL) decision that allows genuine issue broadcasts to air in the period before federal elections.

In the current political climate, it is unlikely that Congress will succeed in passing legislation that protects the public from the range of regulatory failures we experienced in 2007. The barriers to substantially improving public health, worker safety, and environmental quality seem too high in this election year, especially given President Bush's willingness to use his veto power. What Congress can accomplish in 2008 is establishing legislative and oversight priorities over numerous health, safety, and environmental issues. In many instances, however, we will see states move ahead with a variety of actions designed to improve public protections. The executive branch will also play an increasingly important role as the Bush administration comes to a close.

The Department of Defense (DoD) is finalizing policies to streamline categories used to restrict technically unclassified documents. The new policy to eliminate the multiple agency-specific "Sensitive But Unclassified" (SBU) procedures and replace them with a common set of "Controlled Unclassified Information" (CUI) standards is currently under presidential review.

A lack of enforcement resources, misplaced priorities, and inefficient policies at the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) are among the factors perpetuating the federal tax gap, according to a new OMB Watch report released Jan. 15. The report, Bridging the Tax Gap: The Case for Increasing the IRS Budget, illustrates why the IRS has had such a difficult time recovering the more than $300 billion in federal taxes that go unpaid every year and offers some practical solutions to the problem.