There’s been a lot of talk about impeachment lately. What role will it play in the midterm elections?
LISTEN TO THE FULL PODCAST: http://j.mp/2D5yOwF
Time to Rethink U.S. Arms Sales Across the Globe
With the Trump administration poised to sell $110 billion in arms to Saudi Arabia — the largest such deal ever agreed to by the U.S. — and more than $84 billion to 42 other nations, it’s high time to reevaluate U.S. arms deals.
The research is clear: the geopolitical benefits of U.S. arms sales are overrated, while the benefits of discontinuing such sales are significant finding that arms sales do little to strengthen the U.S. economy or protect national security interests, even undermining the latter in some cases.
The U.S. does not discriminate between nations which may or may not pose future threats. There are a large number of risky customers in the world, and the United States sells weapons to most of them. Between 2002 and 2006, the U.S. clocked $197 billion in arms sales — and, the 28 countries currently involved in high-level conflicts bought an average of $2.94 billion worth of U.S. arms.
The U.S. has increasingly relied on arms sales since WWII, with the Nixon-era American Export Controls Act formalizing the executive branch’s ability to conduct such sales, requiring risk analyses (which are often nothing more than rubber stamps), and giving Congress the ability to block such sales within a 30-day window — a power Congress rarely exercises.
Although arms sales are an “extremely flexible” tool of statecraft allowing the U.S. to cheaply exert influence and gain favor, the benefits are illusory. Arms sales have shown little ability to prevent terrorism or conflict from taking root in a country, and arms sale-recipient countries have been significantly more likely to be attacked by their geopolitical rivals.
Most concerning is arms sales’ tendency to culminate in “blowback,” when a U.S. ally turns into an adversary. American troops and their allies have faced American-made weapons in almost every military engagement since the end of the Cold War. Moreover, weapons sales tend to have an entangling effect, leading the U.S. to take gradually more involvement in the areas it conducts such sales, most notably of late in the Syrian Civil War.
Despite this, there is limited manpower devoted to making sure weapons are not misused or end up in the wrong hands: the limited staff at the the Directorate of Defense Trade Controls, which oversees U.S. arms licensing agreements, and the Blue Lantern program, which conducts end-use monitoring of weapons. The latter has a staff of twelve, responsible for tracking billions of dollars in weapons sales every year.
The United States does not need the limited economic benefits arms sales provide—and it certainly does not need the strategic headaches that come with them.
President Trump should enact a strict, conditional approach towards arms deals, with a default policy of “no sale,” and should be sure to embargo nations that are likely to misuse or lose weapons they buy from the U.S. End-use monitoring programs should be strengthened, while Congress should also legislate for itself a more active role in approving arms deals.
Who Does the Low Income Housing Tax Credit Really Benefit?
The federal government subsidizes housing through numerous tax and spending programs. One of the more inefficient programs is the Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC). The program provides $9 billion a year in tax credits to support housing construction. The federal government distributes the credits to the states, which in turn award them to developers to cover part of the costs of constructing apartment buildings and other projects. In return, developers must cap rents for the units they set aside for low-income tenants.
Congress enacted the LIHTC as part of the Tax Reform Act of 1986, aiming to create more affordable housing by providing $9 billion a year in tax credits, which are then distributed to the states to support housing construction and thus lower rent for low-income tenants. However, the LIHTC actually complicated the tax code unnecessarily, all while creating a special-interest tax break and rewards for investors, developers, and financial companies.
The program has complex administration, is prone to abuse, and produces costly low-income housing. It complicates the tax code and fails to address housing affordability problems — the LIHTC mainly benefits investors, developers, and financial companies, not poor tenants.
The LITHC is also a target for abuse by tenants, developers, and government officials alike. Some tenants claim false levels of income in order to obtain this subsidized housing. Developers can inflate reported construction costs to obtain more money in tax credits, and there have been some cases of government officials using the program credits as a bargaining chip for campaign donations.
State housing agencies have the ability to manipulate the program in order to receive significant boosts in funding by building in areas that are distressed or are particularly costly. GAO data suggest that numerous states are abusing this by providing it to too many housing projects. Several reports, including one by the Congressional Budget Office, conclude that the program largely benefits developers and investors. Missouri’s state auditor of the state’s own LIHTC estimated that “only $0.35 of every tax credit dollar issued is actually used to build low income housing.”
Politically, the LIHTC is a successful program, as it is both a tax break and a welfare program. However, LIHTC units cost 19-44% more than units subsidized using housing vouchers — and these vouchers are not tied to strict geographical areas as LIHTC housing is. The LIHTC also is a significant obstacle to solutions that market housing could provide, by “crowding out” the supply and blocking owners from raising rents in order to adequately maintain and upgrade housing units.
Instead of federal subsidies, a better way to reduce housing costs would be through state and local policy reforms. The states should reduce the burden of building and zoning regulations to increase the supply of housing, including multifamily housing for low-income tenants.
It does not make sense for the federal government to subsidize housing affordability while local governments neutralize their efforts with artificial barriers to housing supply
Tackling Gerrymandering
Does gerrymandering for partisan advantage violate the Constitution? SCOTUS will soon decide…
Gerrymandering is the manipulation of congressional districts or other internal political boundaries to achieve a partisan advantage. If it is done effectively, gerrymandering can frustrate the desires of voters and yield a Congress that is not truly representative. Many efforts have been made to end gerrymandering, albeit with mixed results.
This term the U.S. Supreme Court will consider whether gerrymandering for partisan advantage violates the Constitution. In light of the timeliness of the topic, the November issue of Cato Unbound, Cato Institute’s monthly debate magazine, tackles gerrymandering.
Our lead essayist this month, Cato Senior Fellow Walter Olson, serves on the state of Maryland’s Redistricting Reform Commission. He argues that gerrymandering is an issue that all of us should take seriously, libertarians certainly included.
Joining him this month are Professor Michael McDonald of the University of Florida, and Professor Raymond J. La Raja of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
Comments will remain open through the end of the month, and we invite readers to join the discussion on Facebook and Twitter.
61% of Americans Oppose Firing NFL Players Who Refuse to Stand for National Anthem
Not wanting to fire NFL players because of their political speech doesn’t mean that most Americans agree with the content of this speech. Most oppose burning, desecrating, or disrespecting the American flag. But, even if they don’t agree with the content of the speech, that doesn’t mean they support punishing people who do.
Americans appear to make a distinction between allowing a person to express (even controversial) political opinions and endorsing the content of their speech. The public can be tolerant of players’ refusing to stand for the national anthem, even while many disagree with what the players are doing.
These findings stand in contrast to President Trump’s remarks over the weekend and his urging NFL teams to fire players who refuse to stand for the anthem.
When Criminal Justice Policy Isn’t Constitutional…
President Trump says crime is a serious problem and that he’s going to do something about it.
To begin, it is very unfortunate that President Trump has chosen to elevate the crime problem in the way that he has because it reinforces the mistaken idea that the federal government “oversees” our criminal justice system. In fact, the Constitution says very little about federal criminal jurisdiction.
According to the constitutional text, piracy, treason, and counterfeiting are supposed to be the federal government’s concern, but not much else. The common law crimes of murder, rape, assault, and theft are to be handled by state and local governments.
Of course, as the federal government grew in size and scope, it came to involve itself in a host of local matters — from schools to road maintenance to crime fighting. Although Trump has spoken of “draining the swamp” and slashing the federal budget, he not only seems uninterested in reducing the federal role in crime-fighting, but is also clearly moving to expand that role.
President Trump may have good intentions, but his gut instincts in the area of criminal justice are terribly misguided. Criminal justice reformers will likely win some policy battles — especially at the state and local level, but the road ahead looks treacherous indeed.
Trump’s Border Wall is Impractical & Expensive
Senator Cruz’s bill would apportion some money seized from drug lords — like El Chapo—to the construction of a border wall.
Aside from the fact that a wall is an impractical, expensive, and ineffective border plan, there are several problems with Cruz’s plan….
- Cash seizures cannot pay for the border wall. The DEA, ATF, and FBI only seized assets and cash worth $5.36 billion from 2007 through 2016. Building and maintaining a border wall over the next decade will cost about $44 to $99 billion.
- A redirection of revenue that was already coming in cannot be a new stream of revenue to pay for a border wall. At best, it is an accounting trick to make it look like Mexico is paying for the wall.
- Much of the disagreement over the cost of the border wall concerns the cost of eminent domain. Most of the land that the government will need to seize through eminent domain to build the border wall is in Texas where most of the land along the border is privately owned — which is one reason why 61% of Texas adults oppose the border wall.
- Annual cross-border apprehensions are at or near a 17-year low. Even if a border wall was a cheap and effective way to stop illegal immigration, the sustained collapse in cross-border apprehensions makes it a silly expenditure.
In essence, Cruz’s bill would redirect seized drug money in order to fund further seizures of private property along the border and to pay for an expensive wall that is unnecessary.
RIP Partisan Filibuster (2003-2017)
Today’s removal of the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees is long overdue…
The parliamentary tool effectively required 60 votes to proceed with a vote on a matter.
The practice began with Reid’s unprecedented partisan filibusters in 2003 when nominee Miguel Estrada was blocked primarily because Democrats didn’t want President Bush to appoint the first Hispanic Supreme Court justice.
The Senate is now restored to the status quo, and any judicial nominee with majority support will be confirmed. That’s a good thing.
President Trump’s New Immigration Ban Undercuts His Own Arguments
While the new executive order may, in fact, be legally sound in its own right, the politically toxic atmosphere from the first order may still doom it.
If this new executive order had been what was was signed initially, President Trump wouldn’t have provoked the type of political response he did or the legal quagmire he entered.
The entire point of the new order is to place his ban on more secure legal footing. However, in several respects, the new order actually undermines several of the defenses President Trump has given over the past month.
Specifically, these four arguments made by the Trump Administration have been totally eviscerated by the new order….
- “Delaying implementation puts our country in peril!” This new executive order does not become effective for more than a week. Does the president’s delayed rollout also “put our country in peril”?
- “Current vetting is totally inadequate!” This new order allows people who currently have a valid visa to come. If the vetting process is so inadequate, then exempting current visa holders makes no sense.
- “This is about better vetting, not banning people.” If the whole point of this “temporary” ban is to give the administration 90 days to review the vetting, then why does the new executive order restart the clock to 90 days? 37 days have passed since the order was enacted. Why would the time when the prior order was suspended not count against the 90-day review?
- “The countries named are the same countries previously identified by the Obama administration.” President Trump took Iraq off the list, which means that now he can no longer claim that his list is the same as President Obama’s or is based on a congressional statute. It’s now his list and his alone.
Here’s How Congress & the Administration Can Make Us All More Free….
The Cato Institute is pleased to announce the release of the 2017 edition of the Cato Handbook for Policymakers.
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.
The new Cato Handbook for Policymakers outlines practical steps Congress and the administration could take to expand freedom and limit government.
Newly updated for the 115th Congress, each of the Handbook’s 80 chapters offers analysis and a list of major policy recommendations for Congressional staff interested in promoting liberty, free markets, and peace across a wide array of policy areas.
This 8th edition lays out a framework for reform in areas ranging from international trade policy to federal tax reform, health care to agricultural policy, and many more.
