Cato Daily Dispatch for October 24, 2005
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GOP Feud over Federal SpendingDeath Toll in Iraq Hits 2,000
Big Brother Is Watching You
GOP Feud over Federal Spending
"Republican efforts to cut billions of dollars of federal spending to pay for Hurricane Katrina relief are dividing the party and sparking feuds between fiscal hawks and members trying to protect programs that benefit their home states," according to The San Francisco Chronicle. "House GOP leaders had to postpone a vote last week on a plan to increase the proposed cuts from $35 billion to $50 billion after Majority Leader Roy Blunt, R-Mo., admitted he lacked the votes to pass it."
In "Congress Should Make Some Sacrifices, Too," Stephen Slivinski, Cato's director of budget studies, writes: "There's no reason why money spent on natural-disaster relief should not compete with spending in other areas of government. If the relief spending is truly more necessary than other programs in the budget, then those less essential programs should be pared back to make room for it. Congress does not seem concerned about how the federal government (read: taxpayers) is going to pay for any of this. Yet now is exactly the time to figure that out. Charity does require sacrifice, even from big-spending politicians using other people's money for charitable purposes."
In "Bush Beats Johnson: Comparing the Presidents" published in Cato's Tax & Budget Bulletin, Slivinski uses revised data released during the summer by the Congressional Budget Office to make side-by-side comparisons of the spending habits of each president during the last 40 years. While the data show that all presidents presided over net increases in spending, President Bush is shown to be one of the biggest spenders of them all, even outpacing Lyndon B. Johnson in terms of discretionary spending.
Death Toll in Iraq Hits 2,000
"Top White House image makers and Republican political operatives say the steadily rising Iraq death toll is a sobering reminder that an unpopular war not only threatens the remainder of President Bush's term, but also jeopardizes his legacy," The New York Daily News reports. "'Until the American people see something that persuades them we're winning, Iraq is going to continue to plague him,' a source close to Bush said, 'and they won't believe anything positive is happening unless they see an end to the violence.'"
In Chapter 57 of the Cato Handbook on Policy, Christopher Preble, Cato's director of foreign policy studies, writes: "The primary concern for U.S. policymakers should be defending Americans from known threats. An expeditious end of the military occupation of Iraq serves that end because a withdrawal would free crucial resources for fighting known terrorists and at the same time remove a source of grievance for future terrorists. In the meantime, the presence of U.S. forces in Iraq is costly, in terms of both in lives lost and dollars spent."
In Sandstorm: Policy Failure in the Middle East, Leon Hadar, a Cato research fellow in foreign policy studies, provides a sweeping re-examination of the conceptual bases of American policy and proposes a strategy of "constructive disengagement" from the region, a policy of benign neglect to promote the interests of the United States as well as those of the people of the Middle East. He exposes the flaws of conventional thinking and shows that continued American presence and involvement in the Middle East have tremendous political and economic costs that outweigh the benefits. He challenges the United States to let the regional states take increased responsibility for security, economic growth, and political stability.
Big Brother Is Watching You
"The FBI has conducted clandestine surveillance on some U.S. residents for as long as 18 months at a time without proper paperwork or oversight, according to previously classified documents to be released today," reports The Washington Post. "Records turned over as part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit also indicate that the FBI has investigated hundreds of potential violations related to its use of secret surveillance operations, which have been stepped up dramatically since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks but are largely hidden from public view."
In Chapter 19 of the Cato Handbook on Policy, Timothy Lynch, Cato's director of the project on criminal justice, states: "American institutions tend to look for 'quick-fix' solutions to problems. American policymakers must recognize, however, that the danger posed by Al Qaeda is not a short-term crisis but a long-term security dilemma for the United States.
"Now that more than three years have passed since the shock and horror of September 11, Congress will have an opportunity to seriously deliberate the constitutional issues that were initially skirted. Policymakers should not make the mistake of underestimating the American people. Of course, the electorate wants safety, but it wants the federal government to secure that safety by fighting the terrorists themselves, not by turning America into a surveillance state."
Greg Garner, editor, ggarner@cato.org