CEI President Fred Smith and I have an article in The Daily Caller expressing cautious optimism about yesterday’s election results. Our main points:
-We are (cautiously) optimistic because voters turned out in droves to make a statement against big government, not to endorse GOP policies. But no reforms will happen unless people keep fighting for them.
-Activists have a lesson to learn from the Bush-era anti-war movement. Anti-Iraq War protestors vanished into thin air almost the moment President Obama was elected. They gave up. That’s one reason there are still 50,000 troops in Iraq and America’s presence in Afghanistan has doubled. The next few years will be the true test of the tea party movement. Will it grow complacent in victory?
-GOP politicians have a lesson to learn from their 1994 victory and subsequent fall from grace. The 1994 Republicans gave up as reformers after about six months. Voters kept them around because they did a tolerable job of checking Clintonian excesses. But six years of one-party rule under Bush were more than enough to show that Republicans were far more concerned with staying in power than with shrinking government. Federal spending roughly doubled under Bush, and that was enough to give them the boot.
It will be interesting to see what happens. The 2010 election might be nothing more than a blip on the radar. Or it could be the start of a genuine reform movement that will take on the coming entitlement crisis. We’re hoping for the latter.
Tax Freedom Day was April 9. But when you factor in the cost of regulation (on which more here), it turns out we work nearly half the year just to pay for government. Wayne Crews and I give the details, as well as some ideas for regulatory reform, over at Fox Forum. The three we give are:
-Disclosure. Each year’s federal budget, or the annual “Economic Report of the President,” should include in-depth chapters exploring the regulatory state, along the lines of Ten Thousand Commandments. The more the public and policymakers know about regulatory costs, the more likely they are to do something about them.
-Eliminate obsolete rules. Congress should task the Office of Management and Budget with identifying rules to eliminate each year. Congress should also implement its own bipartisan packages of cuts to be voted on, up or down, without amendment. Mandatory 5-year sunsets for all new rules would also help. Congress can reauthorize useful rules, while obsolete or harmful ones would automatically expire.
-Most important of all, Congress needs to reassume its lawmaking responsibilities. It passed 125 bills last year—but federal agencies passed 3,503 final rules. This “regulation without representation” should end. There is too little accountability when it comes to regulation.
Host Richard Morrison and co-host Jeremy Lott welcome special guests Lee Doren and Greg Conko to Episode 60 of the LibertyWeek podcast. We start with a recap of the 9/12 D.C. Tax Protest, look into union rules that hurt minority contractors and consider the alleged ethics violations of former California Assemblyman Mike Duvall. We then turn to Greg Conko for his thoughts on free market healthcare reform and finish with a tribute to The Greatest Man Who Ever Lived, Norman Borlaug (1914-2009).
Lots of commonsense suggestions to rein in health care costs that won’t bankrupt the country in John Mackey’s op-ed in the Wall Street Journal today. Mackey, the CEO of Whole Foods, points to eight steps to health care reform that involve less government intervention and greater individual choice, while driving down costs.
Mackey’s recommendations are similar to those of Gov. Bobby Jindal and those of Susanne Lomatch as outlined here.
Also enjoyed this quote framing Mackey’s article:
“The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out
of other people’s money.”
—Margaret Thatcher
The Washington Times ran a great editorial this morning regarding the majority of Congress’s continued refusal to actually read the bills before voting on them.
No simpler requirement for good government could be imagined. When what is at stake is a revolutionary change in the entire organization of 17 percent of the economy – not to mention the delivery of services that could mean the difference between life and death for millions of Americans each year – it is basic common sense to insist that our lawmakers know and understand what they are voting on – and that includes the fine print.
Recall the passing of Waxman-Markey by the House, which had 300 pages added 18 hours before the floor vote–almost certainly going unread by most members of Congress. Furthermore, the nonplussed responses from administration backers and Democrats in Congress–when pressed to read the legislation they vote on or support–should be infuriating to anyone in favor of transparency and responsibility in government. As CEI Adjunct Fellow Fran Smith noted, some on the left went as far to claim that members of Congress uncomfortable with voting for climate change legislation in the dark were guilty of “treason against the planet.”
The editorial goes on to mention the “Pledge to Read” campaign launched by Let Freedom Ring, a conservative activist group. The pledge calls for members of Congress to read any new health care legislation in its entirety before voting up or down. Reasonable enough, right? Wrong.
Unfortunately, Mrs. Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid say they can’t be bothered with such essentials. On June 25, both declined to promise to give the public a week to review any major health care reform. Mrs. Pelosi did not even respond to a question posed at a press briefing by Cybercast News Service about whether the Congressional Budget Office would have time to “score” the bill’s final price tag.
This is not just a pet issue of the “Vast Right-wing Conspiracy.” The libertarian activists at Downsize DC have been advocating a Read the Bills Act for years, and a left-leaning coalition at ReadTheBill.org is also demanding that Congress read the legislation before voting on it. But don’t hold your breath for Congress to actually implement such sensible, transpartisan-supported reform.
Oh, Happy Day! And it certainly is for all those who value freedom, responsibility and the true free market in which individuals are free to profit from their risks on the condition that they don’t stick the rest of us with their losses.
It’s not hyperbole to say the Republican and Democratic backbenchers who defied both parties’ leadership to defeat this $700 billion package of Wall Street socialism literally saved America. Whatever their reasons, this defeat (or rather victory for freedom), means that America is much less likely to turn into France, Venezuela, or the old Soviet Union, as this bailout/nationalization package would have set us on the road to becoming.
Several great speeches on the Right and Left were given. Democrats Brad Sherman of California and Earl Blumenauer of Oregon gave powerful speeches against corporate giveaways. And conservative leaders of the Republican Study Committee — such as Jeb Hensarling, Jeff Flake, Mike Pence, and of course Ron Paul — spoke about how government intervention was largely the cause of this predicament, but the bailout would doom arguments for the free market form here on out. The idea of the government making this kind of outlay to high-flying risk takers just didn’t jibe with members, and certainly not with the American people.
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