October 12, 2000

Does the ADA Handicap Federalism?
Congress Wants to Have Its Surplus and Spend It Too
Hitting the Brakes on High Speed Rail

Does the ADA Handicap Federalism?

As disabled-rights activists demonstrated outside the Supreme Court building yesterday, nine sharply divided justices debated whether the Constitution permits people to sue state governments for employment discrimination under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), according to The Washington Post.

Legal analysts consider the case, Alabama v. Garrett, one of the most important this term. The court's decision will affect not only the legal scope of the ADA, but also the balance of power between the federal government and the states.

In "How the ADA Handicaps Me," disabled lawyer Julie Hofius reflects on the ADA and writes that "the physical obstacles have been removed, but they have been replaced with a more daunting obstacle: the employer's fear of lawsuits." In "Handicapping Freedom: The Americans with Disabilities Act," Director of Regulatory Studies Edward L. Hudgins calls the law "one of the worst cases of the Bush-era regulation of the economy" and explains all its drawbacks.

Vice President for Legal Affairs Roger Pilon testified "On the First Principles of Federalism" in 1995, noting that "the question the people and the states are increasingly putting to Washington is simply this: By what authority do you rule us as you do?" In the Cato Journal article "Federalism and Individual Sovereignty," Nobel laureate in economics James M. Buchanan also discusses the proper role of the federal government.

Congress Wants to Have Its Surplus and Spend It Too

In a front page feature today, The Christian Science Monitor reports that as presidential candidates debate how to use next year's budget surplus, Congress is rapidly spending it. With time running out on the session, lawmakers are scurrying to add just one more bridge, dam or highway to a must-pass spending bill. Or attach a "rider" that saves millions for a business, or one that puts off cleaning up a river.

It's the biggest binge of stealth legislating in anyone's memory. Critics say the flurry of spending could eat up much of the projected surplus -- making the promises of both major-party presidential candidates far more costly, and perhaps signaling a return to Washington's "big spender" days.

In "The Return of the Living Dead: Federal Programs That Survived the Republican Revolution," Stephen Moore and Stephen Slivinski show that the 106th Congress is well on its way to becoming the largest-spending Congress on domestic social programs since the late 1970s when Jimmy Carter sat in the Oval Office and Thomas "Tip" O'Neill was Speaker of the House.

They find that the total federal nondefense spending is estimated to grow in real terms by $33 billion, or 11 percent, from 1999 to 2001 under the budget resolution approved by Congress in April 2000. And this is undoubtedly a "best-case" scenario: As the election gets closer, Congress and the White House are almost certain to add billions more to a budget crammed with special-interest spending for just about every constituency in Washington -- from farmers, to environmentalists, to road builders, to the teachers' unions and universities.

In "Making Better Use of the Budget Surplus," Cato President Edward H. Crane writes that although the projected surplus depends on revenue assumptions that are reasonable, it also depends on a grossly optimistic assumption: that Congress and the White House will resist the itch to spend. "If by some miracle a federal budget surplus does materialize," he writes, "under no circumstances should the president and Congress be allowed to use it to buy more goodies for favored constituencies."

Hitting the Brakes on High Speed Rail

Transportation Secretary Rodney E. Slater yesterday designated more miles of new "high-speed rail corridors" in the South, Midwest and New England. At the same time, bickering within the administration is delaying a $10 billion bill for high-speed rail, with time running out in this session of Congress, according to The Washington Post.

Throughout its three-decade, hand-to-mouth existence, Amtrak has found itself in numerous financial pinches, but seldom has the government train agency been in this position. If this legislation does not pass, there will be almost no federal money for high-speed rail, even as Amtrak and Slater whip up enthusiasm for it.

The Cato Handbook for Congress calls for the privatization of Amtrak and explains that "its services are neither essential for social equity nor a result of market failures." In "Amtrak at Twenty-Five: End of the Line for Taxpayer Subsidies," Jean Love, Wendell Cox and Stephen Moore explain that "virtually every stated justification for continued Amtrak subsidies is based on myth, not reality."

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