There’s so much talk these days about federal deficits and cutting spending. So we at NPP thought it would be good to talk about tax revenues—the other half of the budget picture—and not just about spending (For some background on how the budget works, check out the People’s Guide to the Federal Budget)

Some folks say the government is “bankrupt,” but a look at Costoftaxcuts.com suggests that temporary tax cuts, enacted by President Bush and extended through 2012 by President Obama, have a lot to do with current deficits.

For example,

• Bush tax cuts for ...

Our friends at the Sunlight Foundation are working for a more transparent "Super Committee" process and have developed five recommendations:

Provide a live webcasts of all official meetings and hearings

Make available the Committee's report for 72 hours before a final committee vote

Disclose every meeting held with lobbyists and other powerful interests

Disclose all campaign contributions as they are received (on their campaign websites)

Provide financial disclosures of Committee members and staffers

Check out Sunight's campaign page at http://sunlightfoundation.com/opensupercongress/ with additional resources for individuals and groups to take action.

In addition to all the ...

Data from the Census Bureau show that the percentage of families in poverty rose between 2008 and 2010.1 And it's no secret that unemployment and underemployment numbers also rose during that time.2 So when reviewing the latest food insecurity numbers, I was surprised to see that the nationwide percentage of food insecure households was virtually unchanged between 2008 and 2010.3

The USDA defines food insecure as households that have difficulty providing enough food for all members; therefore, it seems logical that this number would go up along with poverty and underemployment.

Curious, I decided to see ...

$1,034,401,772,556.

That’s the cost to the U.S. Treasury since 2001 from Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest 5 percent of Americans—as of the moment I started writing this blog post. National Priorities Project and Citizens for Tax Justice today released CostOfTaxCuts.com, a site that has a real-time ticker showing the cost of tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans.

A few highlights:

 The average tax cut in 2011 for a household in the wealthiest one percent is $66,384. The average tax cut for a household in the poorest 20 percent is $107 ...

This

week I (Mattea Kramer, research analyst here at NPP) traveled to Washington to

the Take Back the American Dream conference. What did I learn? I learned that the

American Dream Movement is about Shannon McLeish and others like her. Shannon

and I ate cheese quesadillas together on Monday night. Shannon has two

daughters, ages 6 and 7. She and her husband are self-employed; she has a tiny

editing business, and he sells things on Craigslist and eBay. They’re from

Daytona Beach, Florida.

Shannon

became an activist when chemical additives in her kids’ food made her concerned for their ...

Right now our elected officials are trying to balance the federal budget on the backs of the most marginalized Americans.

This crusade to drag government into the bathroom and drown it will,

over time, result in the erosion or near eradication of programs that

safeguard our collective well-being. Four years into an economic crisis,

the majority of our states remain in deficit and local communities are

far beyond cutting fat. We're now sawing at bone.

This year, fewer federal dollars will flow into my home state of

Massachusetts at a time when the Commonwealth budget is already short

$1 ...