Cato Daily Dispatch for October 27, 2005
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Miers Announces Her WithdrawalBush Vows to Cut Spending
Committee Approves D.C. Smoking Ban
Miers Announces Her Withdrawal
"Harriet Miers, President George W. Bush's embattled choice for the U.S. Supreme Court, withdrew her nomination amid a rebellion by conservatives and skepticism among Republican senators over her qualifications," reports Bloomberg News. "'I am concerned that the confirmation process presents a burden for the White House and our staff that is not in the best interest of the country,' Miers said in a letter to Bush."
Cato senior fellow Randy Barnett was one of the earliest critics of the nomination, writing a sharply worded column in The Wall Street Journal titled "Cronyism." Barnett says, "To be qualified, a Supreme Court justice must have more than credentials; [Miers] must have a well-considered 'judicial philosophy,' by which is meant an internalized view of the Constitution and the role of a justice that will guide her through the constitutional minefield that the Supreme Court must navigate. Nothing in Harriet Miers' professional background called upon her to develop considered views on the extent of congressional powers, the separation of powers, the role of judicial precedent, the importance of states in the federal system, or the need for judges to protect both the enumerated and unenumerated rights retained by the people. It is not enough simply to have private opinions on these complex matters; a prospective justice needs to have wrestled with them in all their complexity before attaining the sort of judgment that decision-making at the Supreme Court level requires, especially in the face of executive or congressional disagreement."
Roger Pilon, Cato's vice president for legal affairs and founder of Cato's Center for Constitutional Studies, had this to say about Miers' withdrawal: "I welcome the decision by Harriet Miers to ask President Bush to withdraw her nomination to be an associate justice on the Supreme Court. As had become clear, the president's decision was a mistake from the start, as many of us said from the start. The president needs now to focus on selecting a nominee whose understanding and experience make it clear to all that he or she will uphold the Constitution. That means securing its restraints on expansive government, and protecting the full range of rights the Constitution was meant to protect. This is no time to be looking for a 'diversity' nominee. The president should be looking, this time, for the best nominee."
Bush Vows to Cut Spending
"President George W. Bush on Wednesday called on Congress to 'push the envelope when it comes to cutting spending' amid concern over the growing federal deficit in the wake of Hurricane Katrina," The Financial Times reports.
"Mr. Bush called for 'significant reductions in mandatory and discretionary spending,' to offset the cost of rebuilding the Gulf Coast. He denied the spending would undermine plans to cut the deficit in half by 2009. 'We can be good stewards of the taxpayers' dollars at the same time,' he said."
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."
Committee Approves D.C. Smoking Ban
"Legislation that would ban smoking in all [Washington, D.C.] bars and restaurants by January 2007 was approved yesterday by the D.C. Council's Health Committee," according to The Washington Post. "The committee's action means that the full council could vote on the measure as soon as December. Smoking ban legislation has been stalled in committee for two years, but proponents say a council majority now favors some form of a ban."
In "Puffing for Property Rights," Radley Balko, a Cato policy analyst, writes that what's at issue here is the right for business owners to "make their own decisions about their own businesses and not allowing out-of-state activists and nanny-statists to force D.C. bars and restaurants to serve D.C. residents on the activists' terms."
"If the people who pushed for the D.C. smoking ban believe in securing smoke-free options for Washington-area families, consumers and restaurant industry workers, they'll give up their fight to force the city to knuckle under to how they think things ought to be. Instead, they will work to create a stronger market for themselves by patronizing the dozens of smoke-free options already doing business in the city. That should inspire new nonsmoking businesses to open, and it certainly would be a more positive approach to the issue than removing the smoking option from everyone by government fiat."
Greg Garner, editor, ggarner@cato.org