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NYT Room for Debate: the Oregon Medicaid Study & ObamaCare
Michael F. Cannon
Today’s New York Times ”Room for Debate” feature poses the question, “Do the mixed results of an Oregon health care study show that government medical insurance should provide only catastrophic coverage?” From my contribution:
ObamaCare aims to cover 16 million poor uninsured adults through Medicaid, plus 16 million higher-income uninsured Americans through government-subsidized “private” insurance. Supporters portrayed these “reforms” as a matter of life and death, particularly for the poor. Yet a monumental new study finds that “Medicaid coverage generated no significant improvements in measured physical health outcomes” for poor adults. These findings strengthen the case that states should stop implementing ObamaCare, and Congress should swiftly repeal it…
The absence of physical-health improvements indicts the entire enterprise. Supporters have an obligation to show that the $2 trillion in entitlements ObamaCare will launch next year would actually improve enrollees’ health. The Oregon study shows they cannot meet their burden of proof. What part of “no discernible improvement” don’t they understand?
Read the whole thing here. See also the contributions by Drew Altman, Austin Frakt, Robert Reich, and Grace-Marie Turner.
View full post on Cato @ Liberty
Our Astrategic Syria Debate
Justin Logan
Only a terrifically secure country could have as poor and astrategic a debate about war as the one we’re having about taking sides in Syria’s civil war.
Actually, we’re not having a debate about taking sides in Syria’s civil war. That’s the problem. We’re debating Syria as though it’s an engineering question—an electrical outage, or a bit of erosion in the backyard. Doing so removes the most vexing aspects of the issue, leading us to the delusion that military action can easily make things better.
Too much of the discussion has focused on moral arguments and too little of it on the very real political problems beneath the war. Take the advocacy of Shadi Hamid of the Brookings Institution. As Hamid wrote of his thinking on Syria in January 2012, he was pro-intervention “emotionally, and from a purely moral perspective,” but had some nagging non-emotional, non-moral concerns: “I cannot say whether military intervention would work.” By June, though, the emotional and the moral took over, with Hamid declaring that it was “not the job of civilian think tanks” to figure out how military intervention would produce the desired outcome.
Princeton’s Anne-Marie Slaughter, who until recently occupied George Kennan’s old office at the State Department, has similarly assumed away Syrian politics, making the case for intervention much easier. As she tweeted Sunday, “Suppose US goal in #Syria were simply to STOP THE KILLING. Forget who might/might not win down the line. What’s fastest/best way to do that?”
But forgetting who might win down the line waves off the central problem: the killing is happening for a political reason. Bashar al-Assad and his enemies are not engaged in wanton, nihilistic slaughter; they are struggling over political control of Syria. Any analysis that removes that basic fact from the discussion of how to “STOP THE KILLING” turns a complex political question into a technical, scientific project, creating the delusion that it can be readily fixed by the U.S. government.
In fairness to Hamid and Slaughter, they are carrying the torch of a time-honored American tradition of foreign policy thinking. Historically, debates over foreign intervention in the United States have featured liberal analysts against realists and the military. In the 1950s, President Eisenhower reportedly had to admonish his activist Secretary of State John Foster Dulles to calm down: “Don’t do something, Foster, just stand there!”
In the 1990s, apolitical liberal thinking on war reached its pinnacle. When Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell expressed hesitation about the Clinton administration’s intervention ideas, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright lashed out: “What’s the point of having this superb military you’re always talking about if we can’t use it?” And President Clinton’s lack of understanding of war caused him to ruminate, accurately, to General Hugh Shelton that it would “scare the shit out of al Qaeda if suddenly a bunch of black ninjas rappelled out of helicopters into the middle of their camp.”
In the 1990s, realists like Richard Betts were warning Americans not to fall victim to the “delusion of impartial intervention.” Admonishing policymakers for their newfound enthusiasm for limited, ostensibly apolitical intervention, Betts reminded readers of a ground truth: “A war will not end until both sides agree who will control whatever is in dispute.” This is as true in Syria as it is anywhere. Alternatively, if analysts want to use the U.S. military to regime-change Assad, they have every obligation to explain how they intend to shepherd the country toward whatever political order they seek.
More honest hawkishness can be found at the Institute for the Study of War, whose recent paper advocating aiding the Syrian opposition admitted that politics matter:
The goal behind U.S. support to the opposition should be to build a force on the ground that is committed to building a nonsectarian, stable Syria, with a government more likely to respect American interests.
That outcome is presumably what all analysts urging intervention desire. The trick is to acknowledge the problems of connecting military means to our political desiderata. Anyone who doesn’t deal with the underlying political problems at stake is threatening to push the country into another ill-considered, potentially costly war.
View full post on Cato @ Liberty
The Socialist Calculation Debate, with Prolegomena to Any Future Metamarkets. Part I: Really Hard Math.
The socialist calculation debate is an important episode in the history of economic thought in part because it revealed some of the previously underappreciated things that markets accomplish. It did so by supposing the existence of a socialist planning agency that would have to do all of those things instead – a thing that many socialists of course wanted, but that supporters of the free market have also found very useful to examine. It turned out that the planning agency would face a large number of previously unanticipated problems. Many of them now appear insoluble.
Not that we haven’t tried. On the contrary, lots of work has been done here. That work illuminates what markets actually accomplish (not always what we thought they did!), what economic science can know about them (not as much as we’d like!), and what institutions, if any, might ever be able to improve on them.[1] There are many facets to the socialist calculation debate, and in what follows I’ll talk about only some of the more relevant ones.
One problem in talking about this fascinating episode in the history of economic thought is that each of its lines of argument is often conflated with the others, and, at times, an author raising objections to the prospect of socialist calculation will veer from one problem to another with little in the way of transition. I’ve tried hard to sort out the threads as I see them, but it’s very possible that someone more well-read in Austrian economics will come along and disagree.[2]
Anyway, let’s begin looking at objections.
I. The Math Is Too Hard.
This is by far the weakest objection to the prospect of socialist calculation. It’s also one that I still seem to find in all kinds of places, and still offered as if it mattered. It doesn’t, and it’s not a terribly important objection anymore, but it’s necessary to go through it to get to the interesting stuff.
By the early 20th century, economists had shown that in theory, a centrally directed socialist allocation of resources could match that of a market economy that was in a Walrasian general equilibrium.
What’s a Walrasian general equilibrium? The economist Léon Walras had earlier shown mathematically that, under certain not obviously problematic assumptions it was possible for the markets in many different goods to clear simultaneously – that is, a multi-good market could theoretically adjust all of its prices so that supply and demand were in balance for all goods at the same time. Producers could theoretically make the exact amounts needed to fill consumer demand, and consumers who were willing to pay the market price could always get what they wanted. Most importantly, Walras showed that nothing about the simultaneous existence of many different goods in his model would get the way of the process, and the existence money wouldn’t either.[3]
General equilibrium has obvious appeal, and yet real-world economies never seem to reach it. Walras himself emphasized that markets only approximated his theoretical equilibrium through a process he called tâtonnement–literally, “groping.” And they were therefore not terribly efficient when compared to the mathematical ideal. Which I think is true.
Scientific socialists, in part inspired by Enrico Barone, proposed to do better.[4] Solving the right system of equations would in theory give planners the optimal allocations of all capital and consumption goods, allowing them to reach Walrasian equilibrium directly, even as markets could only grope about in the dark.
In the early twentieth century, theoretical economists – even folks like Lionel Robbins and F.A. Hayek – conceded that all of the above was true. But, they said in part, the math was just too hard. It’ll take forever to solve all those equations.[5]
But forever is a very long time, and today we have computers that can most certainly crack problems like this one. Even, as some have claimed, for an economy with millions of goods.
In 1993, Allin Cottrell and W. Paul Cockshott examined the calculations needed to very closely approximate market-clearing prices for all goods in the Soviet economy circa 1983. For this economy of around 10 million goods, and using only a commercially available supercomputer of mid–1980s vintage, they determined that market-clearing prices, denominated in hours of unskilled labor, could be roughly arrived at in just 17 minutes.
That’s a pretty impressive result. So impressive, in fact, that one gets the feeling that something else must almost certainly be going on here.
And indeed, something else is going on here, but what it is will have to wait for the next post in the series.
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Do I seem perhaps dangerously open to the prospect of something one day supplanting the market? Well, I am! My commitment is not to markets as an end in themselves, but only as a means to the end of human well-being. The same is true, I think, of basically any other reflective advocate of a market-driven social order. ?
Markets have been great for humanity. But if there’s something better, do let’s find it, shall we? But only – and this is key – only after we understand what markets have actually been doing for us, and thus what pitfalls might await us if we abandon them. Some of these are wholly evitable, I think, and this is a matter that the socialist calculation debate does much to clarify.
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Yes, Austrian, and not Chicago. The Chicago school of economics stands condemned in the eyes of Austrians for making many of the same errors that the scientific socialists did. I think the Austrians are basically right, and while Chicago economists have done many interesting and worthwhile things, their claims about what we are capable of knowing about markets sometimes verge on hubristic to me. The reasons for this will become more apparent as the series goes on. ?
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There are many later objections to Walras’ model, including those of John Maynard Keynes. We don’t need to get into them here. It’s enough to say that if Keynes is right, then his work may pose a problem for both laissez-faire markets and for those calculating socialisms that try to emulate markets in Walrasian equilibrium. ?
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Marxists of course term themselves scientific socialists, in contrast to the utopians, but Marx did relatively little in the way of describing mathematically how a centrally planned socialism would work. Still, though, this term is almost a necessity for labeling those who did. I can’t think of a better one. ?
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They raised other objections, too. Particularly Hayek, of whom we’ll have much more to say in future posts. Part of what I’m doing here is chunking the story into discrete analytical bits, and this one – sorry – is only about the Really Hard Math. ?
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The Fact-free Gun Control Debate
Tim Lynch
From Thomas Sowell’s latest column:
Amid all the heated, emotional advocacy of gun control, have you ever heard even one person present convincing hard evidence that tighter gun-control laws have in fact reduced murders? …
What almost no one talks about is that guns are used to defend lives as well as to take lives. In fact, many of the horrific killings that we see in the media were brought to an end when someone else with a gun showed up and put a stop to the slaughter. The Cato Institute estimates that there are upwards of 100,000 defensive uses of guns per year. Preventing law-abiding citizens from defending themselves can cost far more lives than are lost in the shooting episodes that the media publicize. The lives saved by guns are no less precious just because the media pay no attention to them.
Read the whole thing. Go here for the Cato research that Mr. Sowell is talking about.
View full post on Cato @ Liberty
Can We Have An Evidence-Based Debate about the Future of the IMF?
Dalibor Rohac
On Saturday, March 30, the New York Times ran a curious editorial about the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The piece makes the case for a quick ratification of IMF’s quota reform by the United States, which it pictures as being in America’s interest. Unfortunately, the article is somewhat casual when it comes to the evidence it presents in support of its argument.
Firstly, the authors claim that the IMF
“has helped stabilize the global economy, most recently by providing loans to troubled European countries like Greece and Ireland.”
It is far from obvious that the repeated bailouts to Greece, in which the IMF has participated, have done much to calm the financial markets or to help the country’s economy. Recall that Greece is still going through a recession deeper than the Great Depression, with youth unemployment at around 60 percent, and no signs of recovery.
Secondly, there is the following assertion:
“[T]he fund’s capital […] has fallen sharply as a percentage of the global economy in the last decade.”
That is misleading as it does not take into consideration the increased use of the ‘new arrangements to borrow,’ (NAB) through which the Fund’s lending capacity was tripled in 2009, from $250 billion to $750 billion. That represented a historically unprecedented hike in the amount of resources available to any international organization.
Thirdly, the statement that the increase in quotas will happen “without increasing America’s financial commitment to the organization” is disingenuous. While the increase in quotas is to be accompanied by a reduction in the use of NAB’s – making it appear fiscally neutral on surface – the deployment of the NAB’s is accompanied by a stringent approval procedure, whereas the quotas can be deployed towards various lending purposes at the Fund’s discretion. Greater reliance on quota funding would thus enable the Fund to make bigger claims on the public purse, with less accountability.
A debate about the future of the IMF is long overdue in this country. But it should be a debate based on a careful examination of the Fund’s track record in mitigating financial crises around the world. To flatly assert, like the editorial does, that “[i]ncreasing the fund’s resources will ensure that it can respond quickly to another wave of turmoil in Europe or elsewhere” does not do the job. If anything, that claim – like much of the editorial – only strains credulity.
View full post on Cato @ Liberty
Over $100,000 Pledged to See Krugman Debate Austrian Economist (Bob Murphy)
Hey Krug you’re being called out. Surely you can take an afternoon to go toe to toe with Robert Murphy especially if $100,000 will be given to a food bank in New York City if you do.
The post Over $100,000 Pledged to See Krugman Debate Austrian Economist (Bob Murphy) appeared first on AgainstCronyCapitalism.org.
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The Continuing Debate Over Scholarship Tax Credits
Jason Bedrick
Though there are currently more students participating in scholarship tax credit (STC) programs than voucher programs nationwide (about 151,000 to 104,000), the former have not received nearly as much attention as the latter. That has begun to change in recent years as growth in the number of STC programs has outpaced growth in voucher programs.
Over the past week, I have enjoyed engaging in a spirited debate over STC programs with Professor Kevin Welner of the University of Colorado at Boulder. The debate was sparked by Valerie Strauss’ blog post at the Washington Post that contained several significant errors that I addressed here. Welner then responded at Strauss’ blog and we continued to spar here and here. It is my sincere hope that readers who have followed the debate have found it illuminating.
Though I suspect that Welner might not share my aspiration for universal educational choice, we have a least found common ground in the belief that, given limited resources, such programs should first aid those most in need. I also agree that our three primary areas of contention are: 1) the differences between STC programs and vouchers and their significance; 2) the fiscal impact of STC programs; and 3) who receives tax-credit scholarships. I will address Welner’s latest arguments on these matters below.
First, however, I must address two errors in Welner’s last post. In explaining why he did not provide context for some of his remarks, Welner wrote: “Much of this change happened in the aftermath of the 2010 midterm elections, when Republicans swept into state offices in very large numbers.” Actually, only five of the 14 STC programs (in Louisiana, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, Virginia, and one of the two programs in Pennsylvania) were adopted in the wake of the 2010 midterm elections. Moreover, there was strong support among Democrats in two of those states: Pennsylvania’s 2012 STC legislation passed with the support of 15 of 20 Democrats in the Senate and unanimous support in the House. In Louisiana, the legislation passed with the support of 11 of 15 Senate Democrats (32-7 total) and 32 of 45 House Democrats (66-37 total).
Scholarship Tax Credits vs. Vouchers
Welner wonders why I did not use the term he invented to describe scholarship tax credit programs. “Neovouchers” is a confusing term that appears nowhere in any of the 14 STC laws. It also blurs the distinctions between STCs and vouchers, which I have described previously. I have likewise avoided the term “opportunity scholarships” because it is essentially meaningless as well. The terms “scholarship tax credits” or “education tax credits” accurately describe a program in which individuals or corporations receive tax credits for donating to scholarship organizations that fund low- and middle-income students attending nonpublic schools. I don’t begrudge Welner for using the term that shares a name with his book, but I also don’t see why he should expect that others should adopt it.
In my previous posts, I argued that these two policies have similar ends but very different means and therefore should be called by different names. I then explained how the means are different, particularly their funding (public vs. private money) and administration (government-run/centralized/uniform vs. privately-run/decentralized/diverse). Welner then responds, essentially, “Yes, but their ends are nearly identical!” I would suggest that he misses the point.
Welner also takes issue with the examples I gave of courts that decided the question of whether tax credits constitute public or private money. Welner noted correctly that some of those cases did not pertain directly to scholarship tax credit programs. What he misses is that this fact strengthens my point. State courts have ruled that tax credits do not constitute “public funds” both with regard to STC programs and other forms of tax credits. This consistency shows that STC programs are not merely a legal loophole or “money laundering,” as Welner called it. The freedom of citizens to direct their own money makes such tax credit programs qualitatively different in policy terms and this difference is reflected in the law, not arbitrarily invented by it.
Credible Evidence of Savings
Welner points out that I overinterpreted his statement that he would not be surprised if Florida’s STC program generates savings. Instead, he holds that the available evidence does not support that conclusion. He argues that we do not have all the data necessary for a conclusive determination, so he throws up his hands. In fact, there is credible evidence of savings.
The best available estimate of any STC program’s fiscal impact is from Florida’s Office of Program Policy Analysis and Government Accountability (OPPAGA). This is important since Florida’s STC program is the least likely candidate for realizing savings (with the possible exception of Georgia’s). Florida offers the maximum possible tax credit (100%), whereas programs in seven of the other 10 states offer only partial credits, as low as 50% in Indiana and Oklahoma. Florida has the largest average scholarship size and the highest ratio of scholarship size to average public school operating per pupil expenditures, as shown in the table below. (Note that operating per pupil expenditures exclude some large budget items, including capital expenditures. Moreover, low-income students generally cost the state more money than average to educate.)
|
State |
Average scholarship size |
Public school average operating per pupil expenditures |
Scholarship size compared to PPE |
|
Arizona (corporate) |
$1,861 |
$9,641 |
19.3% |
|
Arizona (individual) |
$2,077 |
$9,641 |
21.5% |
|
Florida |
$3,664 |
$11,626 |
31.5% |
|
Georgia |
$3,494 |
$11,498 |
30.4% |
|
Indiana |
$880 |
$10,040 |
8.9% |
|
Iowa |
$1,031 |
$11,126 |
9.3% |
|
Pennsylvania (individual) |
$990 |
$13,712 |
7.2% |
|
Rhode Island |
$2,727 |
$14,897 |
18.3% |
[This chart excludes Arizona’s STC program for special needs students and the STC programs in Louisiana, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, Virginia, and Pennsylvania’s corporate program, which were only recently launched or have yet to launch. It includes the most recent data available in each category. Source for average scholarship size: Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice, “The ABC’s of School Choice, 2013 Edition,” January, 2013. Source for average public school operating per pupil expenditures: National Center for Education Statistics, “Digest of Education Statistics 2011,” Table 193: “Total and current expenditures per pupil in fall enrollment in public elementary and secondary education, by function and state or jurisdiction: 2007-08.”]
Now Welner is certainly correct that savings depend on the ratio of switchers to stayers, but the data I’ve provided thus far indicates that the percentage of switchers does not have to be very high in order to realize savings in most states. Welner was understandably skeptical of OPPAGA’s 2008 report, which made an educated guess that 90% of scholarship recipients were switchers. However, OPPAGA’s 2010 report and 2012 revenue estimating conference relied on U.S. Census data and found that their previous estimate of switchers had been too low, since 94.6% of scholarship-eligible low-income students were attending public schools in the year before the STC program took effect. As Jon East explained in RedefinED, “The estimating conference went even further, combining American Community Survey data from 2005-09 with private school enrollment data to make projections about the actual number of low-income students enrolled in each grade level in private schools in 2012.” The more recent report projected savings of $57.9 million for Florida in 2012-13.
Welner is also correct that the analysis of the total fiscal impact of STC programs should not stop there. States that offer less than Florida’s 100% tax credit should also account for the impact of the deduction of the non-credit-eligible portion of the donation, as well as the caps on deductions. A complete fiscal analysis would also have to include other government programs or tax credits that are available in a given state. I agree with Welner that in most states we need more data. However, the evidence of savings in Florida is strong, even accounting for Welner’s caveats. And if there are savings in the least likeliest of states, then there are likely savings elsewhere.
Clear Benefit to Low-Income Families
In my previous posts, I criticized Strauss for claiming that low-income families do not benefit from tax-credit scholarships. Welner admits that STC programs “provide financial assistance to many lower-income families,” but says that he “didn’t read [Strauss’] statement to be saying that zero low-income families receive neovouchers. ” Once again, Strauss correctly noted that tax-credit scholarships do not cover the full cost of tuition, then incorrectly concluded: “Poor families can’t make up the difference. Guess who can.” That’s a fairly unambiguous statement. Strauss didn’t even qualify her claim by referring to “most” or “some” low-income families, let alone provide any evidence to support her claim. If she wants to be taken seriously as a responsible commentator, she should correct the record.
Likewise, Strauss has not yet rescinded her fallacious charge that STC programs are “welfare for the rich” because the donors somehow benefit from the tax credits. As I have demonstrated, the donors break even at best. Even Welner abandoned that line of argument in his latest post. Again, Strauss has a duty to correct the record.
In his latest post, Welner conceded that all of the STC programs are means-tested but for Georgia’s and one of Arizona’s two programs. However, Welner expressed skepticism about the organization that issued the study showing that two-thirds of scholarship recipients in Arizona fall under 185% of the federal poverty line. He also noted correctly that the income thresholds in some states allow some middle-income families to qualify as well. That said, it is unclear why he ignored the evidence I provided from state governments showing that the average income of scholarship recipients is far below the means-testing thresholds. For example, the average income of recipient families in Pennsylvania was only $29,000, just under half of the state’s income threshold at the time. Welner has not explained why we should assume that recipients in other states look significantly different, especially when there is evidence of similar patterns.
Welner calls for a more comprehensive state-level reporting system. I am sympathetic to this suggestion, though I believe that states should proceed with caution. Scholarship organizations are already more regulated than ordinary nonprofits, like the Salvation Army or Red Cross. While regulations vary by state, STC programs generally have more stringent accounting standards, reporting requirements, and some states even require background checks for employees. Every STC program requires that scholarship organizations spend no more than 10% on administrative costs, the exceptions being Florida’s 3% maximum and Pennsylvania’s unnecessarily high 20% maximum. (It’s important to note that a government study found that 62% of Pennsylvania scholarship organizations disbursed 100% of their collected funds while only 5% used the maximum administrative expenses.)
Our education system should empower families to choose the education that best meets their kids’ individual needs. Scholarship tax credit programs move our education system toward that goal. As with all government programs, we should constantly reassess whether STC programs are achieving their desired ends and make any necessary changes. I would like to thank Professor Welner for taking the time to discuss this important matter.
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ObamaCare Debate Challenge: Lawrence Wasden Edition
Michael F. Cannon
Congress empowered states to block major provisions of ObamaCare, including its subsidies and employer mandate. All states need do to is refuse to create a health insurance “exchange.” (And a whopping 34 states, accounting for two-thirds of the U.S. population, have done just that.)
Supporters of the law are doing their level best to deny what the law says. It has now been one full month since I challenged anyone and everyone to debate with me the powers Congress gave states to block these and other parts of the law. My debate-challenge video (embedded below) has nearly 3,000 views on YouTube. And how many brave ObamaCare supporters have accepted my challenge? Zero.
The latest to deny what the law says is Idaho Attorney General Lawrence Wasden, who has issued an opinion that Congress did not give Idaho these powers. So I hereby issue my challenge directly to Wasden, or any member of his staff, or his entire staff: I say you are misreading the law, and doing Idaho legislators, employers, and taxpayers a great disservice. So let’s have a debate over whether Congress allows Idaho to block ObamaCare’s employer mandate, and whether you are accurately portraying the law to Idaho legislators.
Update: Washington & Lee University law professor Timothy Jost protests that he debated this issue with both Jonathan Adler and me back in October 2012. True enough, Jost is the only person who has agreed to debate this issue with us live. Here’s the video of that debate. Decide for yourself who bested whom. I meant my “zero” count to be prospective, and would be happy to debate Jost again.
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Are We Moving Toward a More Ideological Trade Policy Debate?
K. William Watson
With John Kerry leaving the Senate to become Secretary of State, the seat that Kerry held on the Senate Finance Committee will be filled by Senator Bob Casey of Pennsylvania. This is an interesting committee assignment given that the Finance committee oversees all international trade issues in the Senate and that Senator Casey is one of the most protectionist members of Congress today. But there is another reason why Casey’s assignment and his voting record are intriguing for the future of trade policy.
The Cato Institute has been keeping track of Congressional votes affecting trade freedom since 1999. Every member of Congress has a trade vote profile that reveals their support for trade barriers and trade subsidies throughout their career. The database reveals some interesting facts about members of the Finance Committee, swing states, and ideology.
Pennsylvania and Ohio are both states where neither Republicans nor Democrats hold a stable majority, and indeed there is one Republican senator and one Democratic senator from each. All four of those senators are now on the Senate Finance Committee. What’s especially interesting is that the two Democrats—Casey from Pennsylvania and Sherrod Brown from Ohio—are solid Interventionists according to Cato’s trade scoring matrix, while the two Republicans—Pat Toomey from Pennsylvania and Rob Portman from Ohio—can both securely claim the (alas, much-rarer) Free Trader designation.
The significant disparity in voting records for Senators with the exact same constituents goes against conventional trade-policy wisdom. Trade barriers often have regional implications so that support for a particular policy will transcend ideology or party affiliation. Polticians from Maine support shoe tariffs; politicians from Arkansas support catfish restrictions; politicians from Florida support sugar subsidies; politicians from South Dakota support beef restrictions; and so on.
I find the possibility of a more ideological trade debate refreshing. Maybe this phenomenon in Ohio and Pennsylvania says more about the electoral peculiarities of swing states than it does about trade policy—all four of these Senators are new comers to their office and were elected in mid-term elections that favored their party. But if it signals a new trend in how the battle lines of trade policy will be drawn in Congress, the future looks bright. I’d rather be governed by two principled ideologues with opposing ideas than by two centrists tied to special interests.
View full post on Cato @ Liberty
Will Debate Constitutionality of the Voting Rights Act — Anytime, Anywhere
Ilya Shapiro
Three years ago, some law professors were having a hard timing finding someone to debate the constitutionality of Obamacare’s individual mandate. I naively stepped up to the plate, which resulted in over 100 debates, speeches, panels, and public events (and, as we know, an invalidation of the mandate but salvage of the relevant provision in the form of a tax).
Now we see a similar predicament with respect to Section 5 of the Voting Right Act, the provision that effectively makes the federal government a proconsul with respect to election administration in a seemingly random assortment of states, counties, and towns around the country. As I’ve blogged and written in a Supreme Court brief, Section 5’s extraordinary powers were justified only under Jim Crow’s exceptional conditions; the Voting Rights Act’s success in eradicating those conditions has happily obviated Section 5’s constitutional legitimacy. (As I noted more recently, and wrote in another brief, Section 2 has its problems as well.)
Yet my view isn’t shared in legal academia – surprise, surprise – and a leading election law scholar posits that “the case for Section 5’s constitutionality is so clear that the liberal election law professors simply have the better of the argument!” Three weeks before the Supreme Court hears argument in the pivotal case of Shelby County v. Holder, there is apparently a dearth of scholars willing to speak out against this egregious violation of federalism and equal protection.
Well, in the words of How I Met Your Mother’s Barney Stinson, challenge accepted!
I may not be full-time faculty anywhere – is that a negative? – but I hereby announce that I will travel anywhere at anytime to debate the constitutionality of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. Whoever sets up the debate has to pay my travel expenses and take me out to a nice dinner, but that’s it. Any takers?
View full post on Cato @ Liberty