Now that the Obamacare repeal effort has stalled, Republicans are focusing on their next big priority: tax reform. GOP leaders in the House, Senate, and White House have issued a “joint statement” promising action in the coming months to create a “simpler, fairer, and lower” tax code.
What about the Democrats? In the Senate, 45 of them have sent a letter to the GOP leadership asking to be included in tax reform discussions. That sounds like a hopeful development, especially given that the last major tax reform in 1986 was bipartisan.
However, this year, with these two parties, bipartisanship on taxes is not going to happen. The GOP can and should go it alone on major reforms.
Back in the 1980s, numerous Democratic leaders pushed for tax reform, including Rep. Richard Gephardt of Missouri. He penned an essay for the Cato Institute in 1985 on the topic, and today it sounds far more Republican than Democratic.
Bipartisanship on taxes is not going to happen. The GOP can and should go it alone on major reforms.
Fidelity to our founding principles of respect for civil liberties and limited government may be easy when times are easy. The true test of our faith in those principles comes when we are beset by assaults from without and economic turmoil within, when public anxiety may temporarily make it seem expedient to put those principles aside.
In a romantic view of democracy, legislators act with the interests of the general public in mind. They grapple with policy issues, work toward a broad consensus, and pass legislation that has strong support. They frequently reevaluate existing programs and prune the low-value and harmful ones. They put citizens first and limit their actions to those allowable under the U.S. Constitution.
In the real world, Congress often enacts ill-conceived laws that do not have broad public support.
A new DownsizingGovernment.org paper, “Congressional Incentives and Government Failure,” looks at how Congress operates. It examines the incentives that induce members to support policies counter to the general public interest, and concludes that political incentives induce members of Congress to take short-sighted and parochial actions that undermine the overall prosperity of the nation.
Despite their small government rhetoric, too many Republicans don’t really want to cut spending any more than the Democrats do. They just want to spend the money on different things.
This makes for the sort of compromise where we spend more on everything, and everyone goes away happy — except for taxpayers.
As we face the possibility of another attempted Speaker’s race, potential candidates should tell us now how they plan to overcome this tendency.
In May, the U.S. Senate passed the Bipartisan Congressional Trade Priorities and Accountability Act, better known as Trade Promotion Authority (TPA), by a vote of 62–37. But the road to securing TPA, finalizing the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), and implementing the agreement remains long and uncertain.
A new bulletin from Cato scholar Daniel J. Ikenson describes the status of TPA and TPP, provides some background, and fleshes out some of the issues that could impact the trade agenda in the weeks and months ahead.
“There have been twists and turns in the road for trade policy during the Obama administration. Expect several more in the weeks and months ahead. Although the likelihood that TPA will pass and the TPP will be completed and successfully implemented remains uncertain, it is clear that trade policy will be a ripe and contentious issue throughout the 2016 election year,” writes Daniel J. Ikenson.
Senator Ron Wyden wants the government to track imports of e-cigarettes more closely. Specifically, he has asked the U.S. International Trade Commission to create a specific reporting category for e-cigarette imports, which are not currently tracked as a distinct category from other small electronic devices.
But why does it matter where the e-cigarettes come from?
“There are legitimate (although not horrifying!) concerns about the contents of the final TPP deal, but it’s certainly not a harbinger of an economic or constitutional apocalypse. The American public should scrutinize the final agreement closely, but that won’t happen until TPA becomes law. For supporters of free markets, there’s no legitimate reason why it shouldn’t,” writes Lincicome.
Unfortunately Congress has created an ongoing crisis in the Highway Trust Fund (HTF), leaving an annual funding gap of at least $13 billion. Year after year, policymakers spend more on highway and transit aid to the states than the HTF raises from gas taxes and other dedicated revenues. CBO projects that annual HTF spending will be $53 billion and rising in coming years, while HTF revenues will be $40 billion. What can be done?
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, exercising power purportedly delegated to it pursuant to Congress’s power to regulate interstate commerce, has classified the countless Utah prairie dog, which has no commercial value and has never dug holes in any lands beyond southwestern Utah, as “threatened” under the Endangered Species Act (ESA), thereby prohibiting the “take” of said prairie dogs—which essentially means doing anything that disturbs the little rodents’ habitat.
If the varmints invade their property, human residents cannot build homes, start or operate certain businesses, or, in the case of Cedar City, protect playgrounds, an airport, and a local cemetery from their burrowing and barking.
A D.C.-based public policy research organization (or "think tank") dedicated to the values of individual liberty, limited government, free markets, and peace.
