Cato Daily Dispatch for November 5, 2004
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Karzai Promises Stability in AfghanistanSpending Restraint Key to Reducing Deficit
Pressure from Britain Concerning Climate Change
Karzai Promises Stability in Afghanistan
"In the floodlit gardens of the presidential palace, President Karzai promised Thursday in his first speech since he was declared the official winner of the election on Oct. 9 to bring security and stability to his people," reports the New York Times.
"'The Afghan people voted for me and other candidates,' he said. 'But every vote from the Afghans was for the benefit of Afghanistan. These votes were for stability.'"
In "Afghanistan Will Elect a President Today, We Hope," Patrick Basham, Cato senior fellow, writes: "One cannot simply drop a democratic system into a country like Afghanistan and expect it to take root... It will be decades before Afghanistan develops anything that remotely resembles a truly democratic system."
Spending Restraint Key to Reducing Deficit
"In pledging to halve the U.S. fiscal deficit over his second presidential term, President Bush has laid the emphasis on spending restraint," reports the Financial Times.
"During the campaign Bush did not provide great detail on his pledge to cut the fiscal deficit. However, by ruling out tax increases, deficit reduction will rest on economic growth which will boost tax revenues and on curbing spending."
In "Bush's Overspending Problem," Director of Tax Policy Studies Chris Edwards writes: "A spending freeze would eliminate the deficit. The FY2004 budget would increase discretionary outlays from $791 billion in FY2003 to $926 billion by FY2008. If, instead, discretionary outlays were frozen at the FY2003 level, the deficit would plunge to just $55 billion by FY2008. The budget could be balanced even more quickly with reforms to cut rapidly growing entitlement costs. If total outlays were frozen at the FY2003 level, the budget would essentially be balanced in just two years (by FY2005)."
Pressure from Britain Concerning Climate Change
"The [British] government hopes it can exert influence on re-elected President George W. Bush and push the United States to do more to combat climate change, the government's chief scientist says," according to Reuters.
"Prime Minister Tony Blair has made tackling global warming and reducing carbon emissions one of two priorities for Britain's year-long presidency of the Group of Eight (G8) richest nations starting in January."
Cato senior fellow Patrick J. Michaels, author of the recent Cato book, Meltdown: The Predictable Distortion of Global Warming by Scientists, challenges the conventional warnings about the dangers of global warming. In the book, he argues that the warming is modest, and nature and humans will easily adjust.
Gina Verticchio, editor, gverticchio@cato.org
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