Earlier this month, the city council of Topeka, KS, voted to decriminalize domestic violence in what has become a national-headline-grabbing budget dispute between the city and its county seat, Shawnee. Some are arguing that it's a sad spectacle when a couple of local governments within our nation play jurisdictional games with such a serious issue, but it's important to point out that the standoff didn't have to occur.

Over the past month or so, the Shawnee County district attorney’s office has stopped pursuing domestic violence charges – a misdemeanor offense – due to state budget cuts and an overwhelming caseload of felonies. To prevent the costs shifting onto the similarly budget-strapped city, local elected officials chose to repeal the city ordinance outlawing domestic violence, directing the cases back to the county.

State governments are dealing with the worst revenue shortfalls in modern history – with average state revenues still nine percent below pre-recession levels – and most have adopted severe budget cuts to deal with these shortfalls, affecting important social services like education, health care, and economic assistance. These cuts can have a devastating impact as they travel down the line to local governments, as exemplified by the Topeka case. But when budget cuts can go no further, local officials could push responsibility back up the chain and make the case for taxes.

Unlike local jurisdictions with high unemployment and a limited tax base, the federal government has numerous options for raising the revenue local communities so desperately need to pay for vital services. Many of these revenue options enjoy majority support among the public. Whether it’s financial taxes, a surtax on the wealthy, or repeal of the top two Bush tax cuts, additional federal revenue are popular and critical to providing help to states and localities still grappling with the Great Recession.

Alternatively, state officials could pair a small revenue raiser with spending cuts. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), only five states “balanced deep spending cuts with significant revenue-raising measures” to close fiscal year (FY) 2012 budget shortfalls. Kansas was not one even though residents pay only 9.7 percent in state and local taxes (a little below the national average).

Politicians are too docile about speaking to the public about taxes. Taxes help pay for important things like the ability of a county prosecutor to protect domestic violence victims. Elected officials need to have the moral courage and leadership to raise their voices and discuss these issues. Budgets – whether federal, state, or local – are about choices; we fund those services we believe the government should pursue, and the prosecution of domestic abusers should be one of those services.

Image by Flickr user Sneebly used under a Creative Commons license.

Warren Buffett's op-ed last week calling on Congress to raise taxes on the wealthy has struck a nerve with conservatives, stirring charges of class warfare and zingers about how the billionaire investor should write a check to help Uncle Sam. Exemplifying the right's opprobrium, the reactionary Tax Foundation has been lambasting Buffett in a series of recent posts and has actually gone so far as to call on low- and middle-income Americans to pay more before the rich do.

The rationale trotted out most often by the organization to defend its position is currently one of the more popular conservative conceits: the super rich already "pay nearly 40 percent of the income taxes" and "50 percent of American households pay no income tax at all." At first blush, these statistics might give one pause when confronted with a call for higher taxes on the rich, but let's unpack the argument a bit.

The Tax Foundation is trying to claim that a group's share of the total income taxes paid in any given year should help determine that group's tax rate. Yet it's not the share that a group as a whole puts into the income tax pie that matters so much as the tax rates that each of that group's members pay. Indeed, the super rich's share of total income taxes paid in a certain year serves little useful purpose for policy discussions and is simply a rhetorical device employed by anti-tax zealots to halt revenue discussions in their tracks.

Similarly, the fact that roughly 46 percent of households will pay no income tax in 2011 doesn't provide a ringing endorsement for raising their taxes before those of the rich. As Ezra Klein recently noted, "For about half of [the households], the standard provisions of the income tax wiped out their liability." So, why did standard provisions wipe out their liability? It's because those households make so little money.

Ninety-nine percent of those earning less than $10,000 a year pay no income tax, just as nearly 81 percent of those bringing home between 10K and 20K yearly. A good number of those who pay no income tax are also elderly folks who "get an extra standard deduction" and "an exemption for some Social Security benefits." Moreover, members of this group – nonironically referred to by the Wall Street Journal as "lucky duckies" – already pay a much greater share of their income on payroll, sales, and state and local taxes compared to the wealthy.

The fact is, over the last 40 years the federal tax system has become increasingly less progressive. There has been a dramatic decline in top marginal income tax rates – which affects the most affluent among us – while payroll taxes – which disproportionately affects low- and middle-income folks – have substantially increased. If any group can spare some additional income, it's the super rich.

Image by Flickr user KentonNgo used under a Creative Commons license.

Bob Greenstein, president of the well-respected Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), lays out the broader consequence of the self-inflicted debt ceiling crisis and, in short, it's a "terrifying" new framework of federal budget politics that enshrines minority rule and threatens to "undermine democracy."

Leaving aside the awful details of the deal itself, which include punitive discretionary caps, a special joint committee that likely won’t raise any revenues, and potential arbitrary across-the-board cuts, Greenstein says, "[I]t's the precedent that Republican congressional leaders say the crisis has established" that is the true threat to our democracy.

Several Republican leaders have already spoken out about either replaying the last crisis by withholding votes on a future debt limit increase and risking financial collapse unless specific policy goals, i.e. spending cuts, are met (Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY)), or that all future debt limit raises should entail dollar-for-dollar spending cuts (Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH) and Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI)).

Neither of these approaches is acceptable, as the first will continually threaten the full faith and credit of our nation and both risk sowing long-term turmoil into our economy. As Greenstein points out, if Congress were to adopt a dollar-for-dollar debt ceiling policy, even under Rep. Ryan’s unnecessarily miserly budget that entails over $4 trillion in cuts, future congresses would have to raise the debt ceiling another $6 trillion to incorporate the budget’s debt, necessitating that same amount in what would be even further draconian cuts.

Of course, future increases of the debt ceiling do not have to play out like the most recent debacle, though it will take a concerted effort from the public to demand that future congresses stop playing games with the debt ceiling. Polling conducted since the resolution of the debt ceiling crisis has shown that people were disgusted and angry over the way Congress handled the issue, with congressional Republicans fairing the worst.

The public must convert that frustration into an actionable demand of their elected officials – especially those lawmakers that have swaddled themselves in the garb of constitutional fealty but have displayed an utter disdain for the processes of our representative democracy, particularly during this latest crisis – and insist that they renounce debt ceiling brinksmanship.

Image by Flickr user vpickering used under a Creative Commons license.

Give yourself credit if you guessed "ArmorGroup North America Inc." (AGNA) and the "Lord of the Flies" environment they oversaw in the housing camp for U.S embassy guards in Kabul, Afghanistan, which our friends over at the Project On Government Oversight (POGO) exposed back in 2009.

Earlier this month, AGNA, the private security company and subsidiary of the British security services conglomerate G4S, settled a whistleblower's lawsuit associated with the scandal, agreeing to pay a $7.5 million fine. Importantly, though, the contractor settled the suit without an admission of fault or liability, effectively sweeping the incident under the rug with regard to future considerations of government contracts.

Any future contracting officials seeking to determine ArmorGroup's integrity and trustworthiness will not see the incident listed in the government's top contracting performance database, the Federal Awardee Performance and Integrity Information System (FAPIIS).

Currently, FAPIIS only displays lawsuits or administrative actions taken by federal, state, or local governments where there is an admission of fault or liability by the contractor. And guess what contractors always demand whenever they settle something out of court; yup, immunity from any finding of fault, keeping many of the worst contracting abuses out of the government's databases and away from the eyes of contracting officials.

In AGNA's case, that includes allegations of the company blatantly disregarding "its obligations to ensure the safety and security of the U.S. Embassy in Kabul" – according to the whistleblower who sued – and other assorted nefarious activities – according to the Department of Justice (DOJ). Wrongdoings include:

• "AGNA submitted false claims for payment on a State Department contract to provide armed guard services at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan";
• "[I]n 2007 and 2008, AGNA guards violated the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) by visiting brothels in Kabul, and that AGNA’s management knew about the guards’ activities";
• "AGNA misrepresented the prior work experience of 38 third country national guards it had hired to guard the Embassy"; and
• "AGNA failed to comply with certain Foreign Ownership, Control and Influence mitigation requirements on the embassy contract, and on a separate contract to provide guard services at a Naval Support Facility in Bahrain."

Those seem like some important pieces of information that a contracting official might want to take into consideration if choosing between ArmorGroup and one of its modestly more responsible competitors when determining the award of a future federal contract.

Of course, contracting officials – and the public for that matter – could see this information if Congress simply passed some common sense contracting transparency reforms. Last spring, then-Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) introduced a bi-partisan bill including just such reforms.

Included in the legislation was language to pull into FAPIIS "records of any administrative proceeding entered into by a contractor at any level of government" no matter the finding of fault or liability. There was also a provision "increasing the length of time from five years to 10 that a contractor's past performance record on a government contract" would stay in the database.

The legislation ingloriously died in committee, however, and with Sen. Feingold now out of the Senate, the transparency community needs a new champion to step up in Congress and push for these basic contracting reforms.

Image by Flickr user johnsolid used under a Creative Commons license.