January 2012

State AGs Give EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson (recycled) bum advice

by Marlo Lewis on February 11, 2009

in Energy, Environment, Global Warming, Legal, Stimulus to Nowhere

In a letter dated 5 February 2009, 17 state attorneys general (AGs) plus three other non-federal officials urge EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson to respond to the Supreme Court case of Massachusetts v. EPA (2007) by issuing a finding that greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from new motor vehicles cause or contribute to “air pollution” that may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health and welfare.

To explain why EPA should make an endangerment finding, the AGs quote from EPA’s July 2008 Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPR): “The IPCC projects with virtual certainty (i.e., a greater than 99% likelihood) declining air quality in cities due to warmer days and nights, and fewer cold days and nights, and/or more frequent hot days and nights over most land areas, including the U.S.” In the ANPR, EPA goes on to say that the increase in air pollution from global warming will lead to “increases in regional ozone pollution, with associated risks for respiratory infection, aggravation of asthma, and potential premature death, especially for people in susceptible groups.”

This chain of reasoning flies in the face of history and public policy reality.

As American Enterprise Institute scholar Joel Schwartz documents, air quality in U.S. cities has improved steadily over the past three decades as urban air temperatures have increased. Nobody should know this better than EPA, because EPA deserves much of the credit and regularly publishes the relevant data. From 1980 to 2006, emissions of the six criteria pollutants fell by the following amounts: lead, 97%; oxides of nitrogen, 33%; volatile organic compounds, 52%; sulfur dioxide, 47%; carbon monoxide, 50%; PM10, 28%; and PM2.5, 31%. As a consequence, ambient concentrations of polluting emissions also declined. From 1980 to 2007, air pollution levels fell by the following amounts: nitrogen dioxide, 43%; sulfur dioxide, 68%; and ground-level ozone, 21%.

More importantly, under existing regulatory requirements, air pollution emissions and concentrations will continue to decline despite potential climate change. Schwartz explains:

EPA’s Clean Air Interstate Rule (CAIR) requires power plant SO2 and NOX emissions to decline more than 70% and 60%, respectively, during the next two decades, when compared with 2003 emissions. This is a cap on total emissions from power plants that remains in place independent of growth in electricity demand. [Note, in July 2008, the D.C. District Court of Appeals overturned CAIR, but whatever EPA puts in its place will likely be even more stringent.]

Recently implemented requirements for new automobiles and diesel trucks, and upcoming standards for new off-road diesel equipment will eliminate more than 80% of their VOC, NOX, and soot emissions during the next few decades, even after accounting for growth in total driving. Dozens of other federal and state requirements will eliminate most remaining emissions from other sources of air pollution.

We may “reasonably anticipate” that in 20 years most U.S. air pollution problems will have been solved, and that by mid-century significant air pollution will exist only in history books.

So the AGs are advising Jackson to act on the basis of bogus “science” that EPA parroted from the IPCC without due diligence.

The AGs are a notoriously unreliable bunch. When litigating Massachusetts v. EPA, they said that the case posed no risks to the U.S. economy because it solely concerned one subset of mobile emission sources (new motor vehicles) under one provision of the Clean Air Act (§202), which requires EPA to consider compliance costs when setting emission standards. The only significant consequence of promulgating first-ever GHG emission standards for new cars and trucks, they said, was that we’d all get better gas mileage and suffer less pain at the pump.

In reality, as EPA’s ANPR and numerous comments thereon reveal, the Clean Air Act is a highly interconnected statute. Setting GHG emission standards for new motor vehicles would initiate a regulatory cascade through multiple provisions of the Act, exposing 1.2 million previously unregulated buildings and facilities to costly and time-consuming regulation under the Act’s Prevention of Significant Deterioration (PSD) pre-construction permitting program, and millions of such sources to pointless paperwork burdens and emission fees under the Title V operating permits program.

Nor is that all. The endangerment finding that would compel EPA to establish GHG emission standards for new motor vehicles would also set a precedent for establishing National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) for greenhouse gases. As I explain here, this could lead to the promulgation of NAAQS for carbon dioxide and other GHGs that the United States could not attain even through outright de-industrialization.

In short, if Ms. Jackson acts on the AGs’ advice, she would start a process that could turn the Clean Air Act into a gigantic de-stimulus package.

OJ Bigger Villian than Fiji Water!

by Angela Logomasini on February 11, 2009

in Environment, Global Warming

Environmentalist activists must certainly mean well.  But, at times, some are so silly that all you can do is laugh.  Consider a recent Tree Hugger post comparing bottled water to orange juice and its lament about carbon footprints!  The post points out that orange juice has an even bigger footprint than—brace yourself—Fiji water! Fiji water is supposedly the world’s “most wasteful” water because it is shipped across continents.

Alas, if you don’t live in a community that grows oranges organically for locally produced juice, the carbon footprint is just unacceptable. In fact, the post concludes, all citrus products are “an imported luxury” that responsible environmentalists shouldn’t be drinking every day!

What the greens have discovered here is no great revelation.  The reality is:  Everything in life has a carbon footprint! And bottled water probably has one of the lower ones. Unfortunately for so many well-intended greens, having a light carbon footprint requires considerable self denial.  If orange juice is so bad, just consider the carbon footprint of the computers used to produce Tree Hugger posts, the coffee consumed (do they really need coffee anyway?) while writing such posts, and yes, even that morning McMuffin!

Fortunately for market advocates, we understand the value of globalization—the opportunity eat bananas from Brazil, drink wine from Australia, and and yes, even consume water all the way from Fiji. We recognize that a better world is one in which more people have more access to such goods so more people can eat well, heat their homes, and live well. Drinking orange juice, water, or whatever, from places where it is most efficiently produced around the globe is a blessing, not a curse. In fact, CEI has shown many times over that the best approach to climate change is not to get wrapped up in such foolish worries or policies that they produce, like bans on bottled water!

European Environment Agency–stuck in a mental rut

by Marlo Lewis on February 11, 2009

in Energy, Environment, Global Warming, International

In a report titled “Beyond Transport Policy,” the European Environment Agency (EEA) bemoans the fact that European transport sector CO2 emissions increased by 26% during 1990-2006. The report is called “Beyond Transport Policy” because–hold on to your hat–the “drivers” of transport demand growth are “external” to the transport sector itself. For example, people don’t fly for the sheer thrill of flying, but in order to vacation or conduct business in an increasingly global economy.

Consequently, traditional transport policies such as fuel economy regulations, motor fuel taxes, and infrastructure upgrades have had little impact on transport demand and the associated emissions.

This implies that in order to achieve what the EEA calls a “sustainable transport system,” politicians and bureaucrats must control those pesky “external drivers”–basically the totality of things that constitute work and play in the modern world.

But, as I discuss here, the EEA’s proposed solutions are not “beyond transport policy,” but are the same old, same old: new taxes on fuels, vehicles, passengers, and imports. The EEA is stuck in a mental rut; it has taxes on the brain.

Bottled Water Helps Wildlife Too!

by Angela Logomasini on February 11, 2009

in Environment

We know that bottled water is helpful to humans during a natural disaster, but did you know it’s an aid to wildlife?  Today’s Washington Express newspaper has on its cover a picture of a firefighter in Australia giving bottled water to an injured koala bear!  It warms the heart to know that the private sector–in this case privately packaged water–serves many interests!  In contrast, Iain Murray commented today on this picture, explaining how government regulations have yet again resulted in misery for both man and nature.

USDA Pushing EPA for More Ethanol in Gasoline

by Marlo Lewis on February 11, 2009

in Agriculture, Energy, Environment, Global Warming

On Tuesday (Feb. 10), USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack urged EPA to increase the quantity of ethanol blended into gasoline from the current amount–10% ethanol per gallon–to some higher percentage, Reuters reports.

Will EPA heed Vilsack’s request or heed the clear implication of www.fueleconomy.gov, a Web site EPA administers jointly with the Department of Energy?

The EPA/DOE Web site reveals that filling up with ethanol is a big fat money-loser. To see for yourself, click on “Flex-Fuel Vehicles,” then click on “Fuel Economy Information for Flex-Fuel Vehicles,” and then click on “Go.”

EPA and DOE compare the average annual cost of using regular gasoline and E-85 (motor fuel blended with 85% ethanol) for 90 different flex-fuel models. In every case, regardless of make or model, fueling the vehicle with E-85 costs more than gasoline—lots more.

Consider a few examples:

E-85

Regular Gas

Annual Cost

Annual Cost

Chevrolet HHR 4WD

$2,225

$1,063

Chrysler Avenger

$2,644

$1,256

Mercedes-Benz C3004matic

$2,821

$1,553

Dodge Caravan 4WD

$3,253

$1,452

Lincoln Town Car FFV

$3,020

$1,452

GMC Sierra C15 2WD Pickup

$3,524

$1,725

Dodge Ram 1500 Pickup 2WD

$4,230

$1,841

Jeep Grand Cherokee 4WD

$4,230

$1,841

Toyota Sequoia 4WD

$4,230

$1,971

The Nissan Titan 4WD pickup

$4,230

$1,971

Another neat thing about this site is that it compares the annual carbon footprint of using E-85 versus regular gasoline for each vehicle. In every case, ethanol has a lower carbon footprint (emits fewer annual tons of CO2). This is controversial in light of research (see here, here, and here) indicating that ethanol is a net contributor to greenhouse gas emissions when you take into account emissions from fertilizer used to grow corn and the carbon released from forests and soils as corn cultivation expands into previously unfarmed areas.

Nonetheless, even if one eschews a lifecycle analysis and considers only the direct emissions released by burning equal volumes of gasoline and ethanol, the cost per ton of CO2 avoided by using E-85 is ridiculously expensive.

Consider the Nisan Titan 4WD. According EPA and DOE, using regular gasoline, the Titan emits 13.1 tons of CO2 per year; using E-85, it emits 11.1 tons of CO2 per year. So fueling the Titan with E-85 instead of gasoline reduces the vehicle’s annual CO2 emissions by 2 tons. However, the E-85 costs $2,259 more, which means the per-ton cost of reducing CO2 by using E-85 instead of gasoline is $1,129.50. That’s a dozen times more costly than the “social cost of carbon” (how much damage each ton of CO2 allegedly does) as estimated by Richard Tol, perhaps the world’s leading climate economist, in a major literature review.

For additional perspective, the Energy Information Administration estimated that emission permits under the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act (S. 2191) would cost $16.88 per ton in 2012, $29.88 in 2020, and $61.01 in 2030. So the per-ton cost of reducing CO2 emissions by switching your Nisan Titan from gasoline to E-85 is between 18 and 66 times more costly than emission permits under Lieberman-Warner, a bill the U.S. Senate did not see fit to pass.

The EPA/DOE Web site demolishes claims that ethanol reduces pain at the pump or provides a cost-effective antidote to global warming. Yet the agencies established the Web site partly to promote E-85 and flex-fuel vehicles, and neither agency advises consumers not to use ethanol–quite the reverse.

So EPA will probably side with Vilsack against the clear implication of its own analysis that ethanol is a consumer ripoff.

“Regulatory forbearance” in today’s context

by Fran Smith on February 11, 2009

in Bailout Watch, Economy, Stimulus to Nowhere

Harking back to the much-maligned concept of “regulatory forbearance” that was a hallmark of the S&L debacle, Holman W. Jenkins Jr writes in today’s WSJ that in the current context, “flexibility about bank solvency would better serve the public interest.” Jenkins points out that Tim Geithner’s plan does nothing to allay market concerns and he endorses the idea of dropping mark-to-market accounting:

The larger difficulty of yesterday’s plan is the idea that government somehow can solve the problem of thousands of idiosyncratic, out-of-favor assets on bank balance sheets. Banks are much better suited to that work, given time and relief from the pressure of regulatory writedowns. In time, too, the market for such assets will recover based on real confidence and risk appetite, not government bribes, especially if spared fears of accounting-induced firesales.

Dropping mark-to-market is no miracle cure, but it would reduce the pressure on banks and regulators to make irrational choices about the disposition of questionable assets. Banking might even regain some of its appeal for equity investors, who might see an attractive bet that bank-held assets are oversold — that is, if they don’t have to worry about unpredictable regulatory actions. Real confidence is organic: not something that can be conjured from Mr. Geithner’s promise that Mighty Mouse is here to save the day.

Check out John Berlau’s post yesterday that dealt with just this point.

Environmental Policies Kill – Again!

by Iain Murray on February 11, 2009 · 24 comments

in Environment, International, Nanny State, Precaution & Risk, Private Conservation, Regulation, Stimulus to Nowhere

One of the main themes of my book, The Really Inconvenient Truths, is that misguided environmental policies often lead to humanitarian and environmental disaster. We’ve just seen another example in Australia, where fires have claimed many lives. Distraught survivors are certain they know at least part of the reason why the fires were able to do so:

During question time at a packed community meeting in Arthurs Creek on Melbourne’s northern fringe, Warwick Spooner — whose mother Marilyn and brother Damien perished along with their home in the Strathewen blaze — criticised the Nillumbik council for the limitations it placed on residents wanting the council’s help or permission to clean up around their properties in preparation for the bushfire season. “We’ve lost two people in my family because you dickheads won’t cut trees down,” he said.

It’s called bushfire season for a reason: the bush catches fire. If you want to reduce the effects, you cut back the bush. Policies that stop this are criminally dangerous.

It’s a similar story here in the US. Every year wildfires cause more damage than they should because landowners are restricted from clearing land because of a variety of environmental policies. See here for the disturbing details of one such case from the 1990s. Here’s how I summarize the American approach to wildfires in my book:

When Californian farmers adjacent to the national forests found the kangaroo rat, which graces the Endangered Species List, on their property in the 1990s, they soon found that the rat had destroyed their livelihoods. They were unable to develop their properties in any way without paying a fine for every acre of land they owned, even if they only wished to develop a small portion of it and even if the rat habitat would be unaffected. So they sold their land to property developers, who were easily able to afford the fees. As a result, homes stood next to national forests where previously there had been a buffer zone of farmland.

Meanwhile, the forest service was unable to carry out controlled burns in those forests adjacent to the homes because the underbrush they wished to clear was also home to, you guessed it, the kangaroo rat. Even building a firebreak could get landowners into trouble under the Endangered Species Act. This problem was already apparent. After similar fires in 2003, California’s Blue Ribbon Fire Commission, created by then governor Gray Davis and whose members included Democratic senator Dianne Feinstein as well as state legislators of both parties, concluded that “habitat preservation and environmental protection have often conflicted with sound fire safety planning.”

Liberal environmentalist dogma, however, prevented any action being taken to ensure that sound fire safety planning was enabled, far less that logging companies be allowed to do their bit to protect landowners and the environment. Instead, the contradiction was allowed to stand and when the fires swept through California, the environmental “protections” of the Endangered Species Act led directly to the destruction of the very habitats and animals they were meant to save.

Congressmen should know about these problems and the best available solution. In September 2000, the late and much lamented Congresswoman Helen Chenoweth-Hage of Idaho, chair of the Forests and Forest Health Subcommittee of the House Resources Committee, held hearings on private conservationand the lessons the nation could learn from exemplary private landowners.

Skeet Burris, a South Carolina tree farmer and the American Tree Farm System’s “National Tree Farmer of the Year,” was asked if he practiced controlled burns on his private forestland. He replied that he did because it was necessary to protect the health of his pines and that fire was an integral part of the ecosystem of the southern pine forests. He said he burned about one third of his forest annually.

Chenoweth-Hage asked if, before he began his burns, he waited until there was a huge fuel build-up, a long drought, and an especially hot spell with low humidity and high winds. To some laughter, Burris responded that such a policy would be insane. When he was told that such conditions were characteristic of prescribed burns on the national forests, he explained that he couldn’t afford to take such risks.

His forests and home were all that he owned and that his children and grandchildren would inherit. Furthermore he couldn’t risk his controlled burn destroying his neighbors’ forests and homes because he would personally be held liable. There would be no taxpayers to foot the bill, no transfer to another forest, no early retirement on a taxpayer pension, no other golden parachutes. As the landowner he would personally bear the costs— and that drove his behavior.

As R.J. Smith says: “As long as man is part of nature, we can only have a sound and healthy environment by the exercise of caring stewardship and management. For guidance in that we must now look to the nation’s successful private conservationists.” Liberal environmentalism, on the other hand, has set the
forests ablaze.

Instead of repealing or reforming these regulations, the stimulus bill included $500 million for “wildland fire management.”

Photo credit: AP Photo/Mark Pardew, reproduced under Creative Commons License

Sirius XM Bankruptcy: Thank Washington for the Delay

by Cord Blomquist on February 10, 2009 · 1 comment

in Regulation, Tech & Telecom

Sirius XM Satellite Radio—the company born from the merger of Sirius Satelllite Radio and XM Satellite Radio—has “been working with advisers to prepare for a possible bankruptcy filing,” according to the New York Times.

Some may say that Sirius XM was never a fit business to begin with—many of their new subscribers came from the bundling of  subscriptions into the sale of new automobiles—but it’s hard to say what might have been had federal regulators not delayed the merger for 18 months and then added insult to injury by subjecting them to seemingly arbitrary restrictions.

My colleagues Wayne Crews and Ryan Young wrote about this last year at Real Clear Markets noting the conditions that the merged company had to adhere to:

One condition of appeasement for the Sirius-XM merger is that they hand over 8 percent of their channels to noncommercial and “public service” programming. Internet radio does not face this requirement.

Another condition is that they freeze their prices for three years. Meanwhile, their competitors are still free to set their own prices to reflect changing market conditions.

A third condition is that XM-Sirius must introduce á-la-carte subscription models. If this were economical, they would have done this already.

The motivation for these conditions was just as absurd as the conditions themselves—regulators worried that the combined company might overcharge and otherwise abuse consumers.  That’s right, regulators actually believed that consumers would just pay and pay for satellite radio if the prices were raised, rather than abandon the fledgling technology for competing technologies.  Regulators thought this despite the fact that we have no shortage of alternatives.  Traditional radio, iPods, streaming music on our cell phones, Pandora, Last.fm, CDs, MP3s, and the hundreds of other ways that music and talk entertainment can enter our ears.

So why did regulators do it?  Simple, they do what it takes to protect their fiefdoms.  As Crews and Young put it:

FCC commissioners and DOJ appointees are political actors. Their decisions are thoroughly politicized. They have no real incentives to ensure an open, competitive market. Their goals are to keep bad press to a minimum, and to increase their budgets by appearing to be “doing something.”

Too bad this case of “doing something” has threatened a frontier industry before it ever had the chance to settle its new terrain.

Stimulus Package Shrinks Economy, Expands Welfare Rolls

by Hans Bader on February 10, 2009 · 7 comments

in Bailout Watch, Economy, Legal, Politics as Usual, Regulation, Stimulus to Nowhere

The Stimulus Package passed by the Senate will encourage people to stop working and go on welfare, undermining the 1996 welfare reform law by rewarding states that expand their welfare rolls.

The stimulus package will also reduce the size of the economy within a decade, as the burdens of servicing the vast amount of national debt produced by the stimulus package stifle economic growth. That’s the conclusion of the Congressional Budget Office. Its honesty about the harmful side effects of the stimulus package is commendable, given that the CBO has every incentive to curry favor with its Congressional masters by hyping the benefits of the stimulus package and downplaying its costs.

Many economists oppose the pork-laden stimulus package, which does nothing to address the root causes of the current financial crisis. Those root causes included the Community Reinvestment Act and federal affordable-housing mandates, and political and legal pressure to make risky sub-prime loans.

Championing Economic Liberty in a Time of Crisis

by Fred Smith on February 10, 2009 · 2 comments

in Agenda for Congress, Bailout Watch, CEI Projects, Economy, Features, Regulation, Stimulus to Nowhere, Zeitgeist

From the introduction to One Nation, Ungovernable?, A Bipartisan Agenda for Economic Liberalization & Restraint on Political Power:

Rahm Emanuel, President Barack Obama’s incoming chief of staff, recently commented: “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.” Now, we at the Competitive Enterprise Institute are at least as concerned about the nation’s current economic crisis—but we are even more concerned about bad policies that may come out of this crisis.

Still, Emanuel’s point is valid. Crises expose unexpected—and often misunderstood—weaknesses in current policies. While our statist friends see this as an opportunity—indeed, a duty—to expand the size and scope of government, we at CEI see it as a chance to challenge the entanglement of the private and political spheres.

Markets have appeared less resilient and less disciplined than we had hoped—but not because of a laissez faire ideal. The troubles besetting America’s financial sector are best understood as a tragic example of the inevitable consequences of the “mixed economy”—an ungainly mix of government mandates, regulations, subsidies, private sector rent-seeking, and socialization of risk.

The mixed economy model seeks to advance utopian social goals by harnessing the profit motive of capitalism. Thus, we see this crisis as an opportunity to dramatize the disastrous consequences of this collectivist approach, and to encourage policy makers to rethink the drift away from sound principles over the last century, to restore a world of freedom and responsibility—the essence of truly free markets.

Indeed, America’s success has been based on an adherence to sound principles: a government limited to its appropriate sphere—protecting property rights and the nation, enforcing the rule of law—and a voluntary sector enjoying the greatest possible ambit for both economic and non-economic exchanges.

Sadly, we have drifted far from those principles as “progressive” ideas have gained intellectual ground. This has led policy makers to push private enterprise to “do good”—voluntarily, if possible; coercively, if necessary. And the “good” is defined by the intellectual class, which has long championed bigger government.

Unlike in Europe, where socialists sought outright government ownership of industry, American progressives sought to leave in place the illusion of free markets, while imposing on businesses an array of “social” mandates to be enforced through taxes, regulations, and subsidies.

This had the effect that, in Europe, the costs of statist policies were apparent, and the blame for failure could be easily attributed to government. In contrast, the American regulatory welfare state hides its costs by shifting themon to businesses and consumers, so its failures are more likely to be attributed to the private sector. In America, these factors make it more difficult to reign in the regulatory state, and to discipline its excesses. Yet to do so is necessary now more than ever.

Civilization is the slow process of creating the institutions that allow greater freedom, allowing more of mankind to engage in voluntary exchange with others. For many years, America was the leader in this effort. We pioneered in expanding private property rights to all citizens–including subsurface mineral rights, which allowed entrepreneurial activity to move beneath the Earth, making possible the rapid growth in the mineral and energy sector. And as science found ways to harness the electromagnetic spectrum and the airwaves, those too began to move toward private ownership.

However, policy makers in the early part of the 20th century rolled back many of these efforts as progressive ideas supplanted those of freedom and responsibility. Voluntary exchange was compromised by America’s regulatory welfare form of central planning. Gradually, the boundary between government and voluntary exchange weakened, and it became common for policy makers to seek to combine maximizing profits with pursuing political goals, such as subsidizing politically preferred constituencies.

In the financial arena, an example of this is the creation of government sponsored enterprises (GSEs) like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac—nominally private profit-making firms that enjoyed an implicit government guarantee against losses. Those guarantees allowed the GSEs to dominate the low-risk sectors of the housing market, pushing private lenders into higher risk investments. In addition, politicians insisted that the GSEs make home loans to individuals with weak credit scores. Government could have honestly sought to increase home ownership for the poor through direct subsidies, but that would have made the policy’s costs transparent. Instead, the carrot and stick of subsidies and regulations, helped hide the costs. The resulting confused mix of politics and business became one of the primary factors behind the current financial crisis.

Now a new Democratic administration comes to Washington, promising “change we can believe in”—and that could be a good thing. The last few decades—of over-spending, over-regulating, and over-intervening—call for considerable change. Only a few years ago, a Republican team roared into Washington with its own ambitious reform agenda—and soon became mired in the bogs of Washington. If the Democrats replicate their Republican colleagues’ mistakes, their honeymoon will be brief.

Real change is needed. The economic emergency measures advanced by the Bush Administration have done little to alleviate the financial— or any other—crisis. It should be clear by now that such top-down solutions do not work—and are even unlikely to produce any political gains as economic pain turns public opinion sour.

CEI hopes to work with the administration and others on these issues. We hope to share with the new Congress our ideas on how to jump-start the nation’s economic engine—the American people’s entrepreneurial spirit. There is much to do.

Many sectors of the economy—electricity, telecommunications, airlines, and other network industries—have been hampered by botched, partial deregulations. The solution is not to revert to state control, but to truly liberalize.

We also hope to work with the new Congress to promote the health of the American people by reforming the Food and Drug Administration to speed the process of bringing new life-saving drugs to market.

With major change come major risks. As a Louisianan, I am well aware of populism’s something-for-nothing allure. Mistakes made in the name of “helping the little guy” can hurt everybody in the long run, by creating long-lasting economic damage. Proposals for one-size-fits-all mandates in areas like wages and prescription drugs threaten to undermine the dynamism of America’s market economy—and thus hurt those whom such measures are supposed to help. We will happily work with lawmakers of both parties to oppose bad ideas like those.

During the last Congress, Republicans massively expanded the federal government—and the voters punished them for it. Now the Democrats have been entrusted to set aright the ship of state. In a globalized world, they will retain their majority only by advancing a pro-growth agenda.

A revitalized economic liberalization program must be a part of that agenda. This volume offers policy reforms to lawmakers, of all parties, to help boost economic and personal liberties. It will be an interesting few years; we plan to be a part of the debate.

To read more of CEI’s Agenda for Congress, visit cei.org/congress

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