There are so many different dimensions to government information that are still obscure. WashingtonWatch.com aims to change that, but it will definitely take time.

I agree with the import of your question - a LOT would be saved by families if subsidies and corporate welfare were ended.

Now, as to whether Mike did a “Cream Puff review.” You can criticize me. You can criticize WashingtonWatch.com. You can criticize the methodology. But criticizing Mike is going too far!

Seriously, a careful discussion of the methodology in special cases like the estate tax is over at: http://www.seancoon.org/2006/08/death_tax_20.html

I’d be delighted to learn of any methodology for calculating costs and savings that is a) better and b) scalable.

Thanks for your inquiries, Jason, and thanks again Michael for pointing your readers to WashingtonWatch.com.

- How much would be saved by families by ending subsidies for the Oil and Mining Industries

- How much would be saved by ending corporate welfare.

Thanks.

—
Saves $2025.70 per family
The Death Tax Repeal Permanency Act of 2005
—-

Yea, except 95% + of American families aren’t even affected by the Estate Tax. So it saves them nothing.

In my opinion, this is a bit of a Cream Puff review by Mike. The data should have been analyzed before saying how great the site is.

It’s doubtful that they’re readers, and they sure won’t embrace it.

WashingtonWatch is the last thing they want from the voters. Message: Democrats good, Republicans bad. Celebrating 50-year anniversay of “Republicans are only for the rich.” We feel your pain. New and improved DNC strategy: We’re … not them. Yeah, that’s the ticket!. So, just remember that, and eat your oatmeal…

The other way it shows its bias in the way it describes everything as either a “cost” or a “savings”. Whoever set this up has to be smart enough to realize how disingenuous that is.

Your commenters have smartly picked up on the fact that the current methodology doesn’t report tax or spending “incidence,” using averages instead. I have a caution about that (among several others) on WashingtonWatch.com’s “about” page.

More granular reporting is in the plans, but it’ll be tough to do (ever look at the tax code?) so that remains a horizon project. That said, dynamic economic analysis of costs and savings would tend to “spread” tax and spending incidence across the population, so averaging is not as bad as people might assume for getting a sense of what’s going on in D.C.

My day-job is at the Cato Institute, which I guess people strongly favor or disfavor. (At least we’re not boring!) Just wanted to note that WashingtonWatch.com is a side-project not formally affiliated with Cato. I burn endless spare time, like this fine Sunday night, on the site.

Or something…

What would make this site truly useful (and I do like the concept - thanks for the pointer) is to have a little app on the page where you characterize yourself - male, married, income of $X, etc… Then you’d get “YOUR estimated savings/cost from thos bill would be…”

Love their analysis of the estate tax repeal - it’ll save $2025.70 per family! Yeah, if you pretend that the proceeds will be distributed to every family (and not to the wealthiest thousand families in America) and that the revenue loss won’t be offset with higher taxes on everyone else.

It’s a consevative propaganda site - nothing more.

edit: second paragraph prohbit is repeated.

One of the first features I’d add is something that let’s you input your income (+ capital gains for startup folks) and it will estimate your cost for each of these bills. I suspect that the average techcrunch reader pays a whole lot more in taxes than the “Average Families” it uses.