Federal Budget & Tax

Federal Budget & Tax: News Blog Background

Thursday, February 16, 2006

The House Budget Committee held a hearing today on performance evaluations and spending trends. Clay Johnson of the Office of Management and Budget testified, along with Brian Reidl of the Heritage Foundation and Bob Greenstein of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Johnson spoke of the importance of accountability in government spending as well as OMB's new performance website, but refused to recognize the hypocrisy surrounding some of the budget decisions made after these programs are evaluated by OMB's standards. Testimony and opening remarks are below:

Opening Remarks: Chairman Nussle

Testimony: Clay Johnson, Deputy Director of the OMB

Testimony: Brian Reidl, Heritage Foundation

Testimony: Bob Greenstein, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

Posted by Becky Lewis, 03:41:55 PM

Tuesday, February 07, 2006

OMB Watch Initial Analysis of President's FY 2007 Budget

Our initial analysis of the president's budget release is now available. This is just preliminary and there are many more aspects of the budget to comment on. Check back here often for additional updates and information about what's in the FY 2007 budget proposal.

Posted by Adam Hughes, 12:10:31 AM

Monday, February 06, 2006

PART: Finally, Someone Else Gets It
At OMB Watch, we're pretty accustomed to working on issues that go under the radar. Such has long been the case with PART, the White House's tool for assessing program performance (supposedly). We have been telling anyone who will listen that PART is a political tool, not a measurement of "results" or "effectiveness," which the White House uses to justify lousy budget choices and to send management signals to agencies that would take government programs in the wrong directions.

Now someone else has come across PART and realized what a load of propaganda it is. Check out ThinkProgress.org's truthcheck of some of the assessments in this year's PART.

Posted by Robert Shull, 06:10:58 PM

PARTly Sunny, PARTly Cloudy
With the release of the White House's budget submission comes, of course, the latest PART scores. In an effort to be tech-fancy, OMB created a new website, ExpectMore.Gov, to feature PART assessments. Only the homepage was working this morning, and now the pieces that are working are either not completely functional or spotty, taking you sometimes to data and other times to the 404-error page.

Techie stuff aside, it's interesting to observe that OMB has simultaneously made PART info both MORE and LESS accessible. More accessible: the new database format makes it easier to narrow the universe of information and zoom in on just the program you are concerned about. Less accessible: the database has completely replaced the comprehensive information that the White House used to publish, which would allow you to get an overview of PART and look across the entire universe of information for broader patterns. Click here and here for the documents from past years that are now no longer available. (At least the spreadsheet is still available.)

Posted by Robert Shull, 02:56:06 PM

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