Cato Daily Dispatch for November 17, 2003
Subscribe to the Daily Dispatch via email
Subscribe to the Daily Dispatch via PDA (AvantGo)
(Links to outside sources were active as of the date of this dispatch; however, not all news sources maintain links to current stories indefinitely. Some links also may require registration.)
Schwarzenegger Takes Office TodayBush, Republicans Push Medicare Drug Benefit
FBI's DNA Database Could Be Vastly Expanded
Schwarzenegger Takes Office Today
"At 11 a.m. today, Arnold Schwarzenegger will place his hand on a Bible and take the oath of office as California's 38th governor," the Los Angeles Times reports. "It will be a simple, no-frills ceremony, his advisors say."
Cato Adjunct Scholar Michael New offers up some advice for the new governor in his article, "How to Fix California's Fiscal Problems: A Guide for Schwarzenegger." He writes: "Schwarzenegger needs to turn his attention to California's deteriorating fiscal condition. Resolving California's $8 billion deficit should definitely be his top priority. However, he and his aides also need to give serious consideration to long-term strategies for keeping California fiscally solvent.
"One idea that has received broad support is a constitutional spending limit. Indeed, a tight expenditure limit would have gone a long way in preventing California's current fiscal crisis. If spending had increased by the inflation rate plus population growth, since Gray Davis' inauguration, the budget would have been $14 billion lower in fiscal 2003. Furthermore, the accumulated surpluses would have totaled $40 billion. This could pay down the state's debt and leave a tidy sum for tax relief."
Bush, Republicans Push Medicare Drug Benefit
"President Bush and congressional Republican leaders are selling their new Medicare prescription drug plan, but so far, not many Democrats are buying," The Associated Press reports. "The legislation would create a prescription drug benefit for 40 million elderly and disabled Medicare beneficiaries beginning in 2006. Participants would be offered a chance to purchase coverage at a monthly premium of $35, with a $275 deductible, a gap in coverage and protection against extremely high annual expenses."
According to Cato Fiscal Policy Director Chris Edwards and researcher Tad DeHaven, "Congress is considering making the looming fiscal crisis much worse with a costly and unfunded prescription drug program." In "War between the Generations Federal Spending on the Elderly Set to Explode," they say, "[I]ncreasing the already high transfers from the young to the old is neither economically sound nor fair."
FBI's DNA Database Could Be Vastly Expanded
"DNA profiles from hundreds of thousands of juvenile offenders and adults arrested but not convicted of crimes could be added to the FBI's national DNA crime-fighting program under a proposed law moving through Congress," USA Today reports. "
The law, if enacted, would be the greatest single expansion of the federal government's power to collect and use DNA since the FBI's national database was created in 1992. The FBI says its national DNA database holds genetic profiles from about 1.4 million adults convicted of state and federal crimes."
Timothy Lynch, director of Cato's Project on Criminal Justice, warned of the dangers of DNA collection in "Databases Ripe for Abuse," published by USA TODAY in 2000. "The federal government is constantly trying to expand its purview over every aspect of American life," he writes. "And wherever the feds go--whether it be health care or education--they inevitably demand information about people. Sooner than you think, the feds will want your DNA to be stored in an FBI database."
He continues: "There is, of course, cause for concern. Federal officials have abused their powers in the past, such as by throwing Japanese-Americans into detention camps, by conducting barbaric experiments on black men in Tuskegee, Ala., and by deliberately exposing GIs to atomic blasts, to name just a few. If we believe that tomorrow's political leaders will somehow be incapable of abusing their power over a fully centralized DNA database, the next generation will never forgive us--and rightly so."
Wyatt Dubois, editor, wdubois@cato.org