I first met Bill when I went to the Council of Economic Advisers in mid-1982. Bill had come to the CEA in the spring of 1981 as one of the early appointees of the incoming Reagan administration. He had known the president and worked with him when he was governor of California.

Bill and I quickly became good friends. Whenever we were both in Washington, we would usually start the day with 20 minutes of chewing over what was going on in the economy and in public policy. Part of the bond that developed between us was a consequence of the unrelenting infighting within the administration. The infighting sometimes involved the CEA but Bill and I, most of the time, were able to stand clear and remain in neutral territory.

Of course, Bill understood how bureaucracies work, or failed to work, from both his research and his experience at Rand, Ford, OMB and, yes, at UCLA and Berkeley. His insights were a staple of our conversations both at the CEA and later. Very few scholars have such first-hand experience in these various sectors of the economy. That fact often shows in the work of academics who have policy ideas that are simply untenable in the context of how organizations and the political system actually work.

A wonderful sense of humor lubricated Bill’s interactions with others. Well, most of the time anyway. During the administration’s work that culminated in the Tax Reform Act of 1986, Bill cracked along the way that the Treasury proposal was one that Walter Mondale would be proud of. I had left the CEA and returned to Brown University by that time, but Bill’s crack so angered Treasury Secretary Don Regan (who was not renowned for a sense of humor) that Regan vetoed Bill’s path to become chairman of the CEA. He served as acting chairman for a short time and then joined Cato.

Bill was the most widely read person I have known. That, plus the breadth of his personal experience, made him a delightful conversationalist on almost any topic in almost any group.

Although it was a big loss to the Reagan administration for Bill to depart, it was a huge gain for Cato and for the nation for him to join Cato. His leadership there, working closely with Ed Crane, built Cato to what it is today—the premier libertarian think tank in the world. Bill’s scholarly work will influence future generations; so also, in equal or greater measure, will the Cato Institute that he helped to build.

I have sometimes wondered whether it is accurate to say that Republicans are the “Stupid Party.”

We’ll soon know the answer to that question. As part of the debt limit agreement, the politicians agreed to set up a “Supercommittee” comprised of six Republicans and six Democrats that was responsible for producing at least $1.2 trillion of supposed deficit reduction.

But the Democrats appointed a group of hardcore leftists to the Supercommittee, which means that it is virtually impossible to get the necessary seven votes for a good agreement. Indeed, the more relevant question is whether one or more of the Republicans surrenders to a big tax hike.

Fortunately, there is an alternative. The law says that there will be automatic spending reductions if the Supercommittee does not reach an agreement. The political establishment in Washington thinks that this outcome—known as sequestration—would be horrible.

They tell as that a sequester would mean “savage” and “draconian” budget cuts. The only “responsible” approach, we are told, is to go along with a tax increase.

This is hogwash. The automatic spending cuts are only “cuts” using Washington’s dishonest budget math. Here’s a chart showing how much spending will grow over the next 10 years, and the relatively tiny reduction in budgetary growth that will be caused if there is a sequester.

We’ve actually been down this path before. There was a small sequester back in the mid-1980s, shortly after the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings law was enacted. There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth, but the sequestration helped restrain the growth of spending and helped bring about a record amount of deficit reduction in 1987.

There was a similar (unsuccessful) fight in 1989. Here’s what then-Senator Bob Packwood of Oregon wrote in 1989.

…the sequester has become the focus of partisan debate . Each side accuses the other of being responsible for “deep and arbitrary” budget cuts . Some legislators say we should do whatever it takes to cancel the sequester, even if it means higher taxes. While a sequester is certainly not the ideal way to resolve this year’s budget dispute, there are reasons to believe that the fiscal discipline of a sequester is the medicine we need to cure the budget process. For all its drawbacks, a sequester is real deficit reduction . Instead of budget gimmicks, accounting tricks, phony cuts, and “revenue enhancements,” a sequester would reduce spending levels by a fixed percentage in eligible spending programs . In other words, unlike most deficit reduction packages, sequestration would actually reduce the deficit.

The only argument against a sequester, at least among conservatives, is that a sequester would impose too much of a burden on the defense budget. But I’ve already explained in this post that the defense budget will climb by about $100 billion under sequestration.

I don’t know whether Republicans are the stupid party, but I know they will be very stupid if they don’t take the sequester and declare victory.

Seems like this is an appropriate day for this lesson about tax policy.

The last thirty seconds of the three-minute video actually contain some very good economics, roughly akin to this classic cartoon. Yes, incentives matter.

Speaking of cartoons, here’s one with a Halloween theme.

And since it is Halloween and everyone is thinking about candy, these two parodies of The Candyman song (here and here) are rather appropriate.

If you read Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli’s op-ed in Sunday’s Washington Post, you witnessed the too-rare spectacle of a Republican denouncing his own party’s hypocrisy on medical malpractice reform:

With Senate Bill 197 — legislation that would have the federal government dictate how state judges are to try medical malpractice cases and cap what state courts may award — several Republican senators have…take[n] an approach that implies “Washington knows best” while trampling states’ authority and the 10th Amendment. The legislation is breathtakingly broad in its assumptions about federal power, particularly the same power to regulate commerce that lies at the heart of all the lawsuits (including Virginia’s) against the individual mandate of the 2010 federal health-care law. I have little doubt that the senators who brought us S. 197 oppose the use of the commerce clause to compel individuals to buy health insurance. Yet they have no qualms about dictating to state court judges how they are to conduct trials in state lawsuits…

This legislation expands federal power, tramples the states and violates the Constitution. And if it were ever signed into law — by a Republican or Democratic president — I would file suit against it just as fast as I filed suit when the federal health-care bill was signed into law in March 2010 (15 minutes later).

For more on why ObamaCare is unconstitutional see this white paper by Cato chairman Bob Levy. For a discussion of why nearly all federal med mal reforms are unconstitutional, see this Policy Analysis by Bob Levy and Michael Krauss. For a discussion of why mandatory caps on damages may harm patients, see this recent Policy Analysis by Cato adjunct scholar Shirley Svorny. For an individual-rights-based approach to med mal reform, see this paper by yours truly.

So the Associate Publisher of The Nation sends me an email asking me, “Have any lefty relics gathering dust in your closet?” They’re having a fundraising auction.

As it happens, I do have some lefty relics I’d like to get rid of. I have:

• Keynesianism
• Wilsonianism
• Nationalized health care
• Government Motors
• The idea that the Constitution grants “plenary” powers to the federal government
• The War on Poverty
• Racial preferences

As protestors across America condemn Wall Street for its greed and corruption, the Supreme Court has an opportunity to examine a ruling that holds some of Wall Street’s biggest regulators immune from suit.

In 2006, the National Association of Securities Dealers and the regulatory arm of the New York Stock Exchange consolidated to form the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA). NASD and FINRA are “self-regulatory organizations” (SROs), because the Securities and Exchange Commission charges them with regulating their own members — a set-up that is supposed to protect investors and the public. But NASD officers may have achieved the consolidation (and thereby received huge bonuses) by misstating material facts on a proxy solicitation, which induced member firms to give up some of their voting powers in exchange for a payout.

Remarkably, the Second Circuit held that a lawsuit against NASD for the alleged fraud could not proceed because the defendants had sovereign immunity. Yes, SROs should be immune for their actions as quasi-government regulators. For example, immunity is appropriate for government actors like judges, who must have some protection from private suit to do their jobs properly. But judges are not immune for things they do in their private lives — they can be sued just like anyone else. The Second Circuit, however, held that SROs, which have expansive and varied powers, enjoy absolute immunity even for actions that are merely “incident to” their regulatory duties. That is, suits involving private corporate actions cannot proceed if they are incident to actions taken in a governmental capacity.

In this case, the court found that the voting-rights changes were “incident to” FINRA’s regulatory activities because they were part of a plan to make a larger entity that would also have regulatory duties. This case raises serious constitutional issues about the role the judiciary plays in ensuring that SROs remain faithful to their delegated duties of protecting investors and the public. Because SROs are quasi-private actors, they have incentives to act in their own best interests — rather than in the public interest — and they do not have to be as transparent as fully public agencies.

Further, the executive branch, including the SEC, has failed to hold SROs accountable for their self-serving behaviors. As we see from this case, the judiciary provides the sole opportunity for SRO accountability. Cato, joined by the Competitive Enterprise Institute, has now filed a brief urging the Supreme Court to review Standard Investment Chartered, Inc. v. NASD. Accountability among branches of government — the separation of powers and checks-and-balances — is a central tenet of our constitutional structure, and is especially important for SROs, which exercise great power over financial markets. Our brief argues that the judiciary remains the last check on SROs’ unbridled power and that the Second Circuit erred in failing to hold these SROs accountable.

Texas governor Rick Perry’s “Cut, Balance, and Grow” plan is out. Dan Mitchell discussed Perry’s proposed tax reforms so I’ll offer my take on the proposed spending reforms:

• Perry says he wants to “preserve Social Security for all generations of Americans” but state and local government employees would be allowed to opt-out of the program. Perry says that younger Americans would be able to “contribute a portion of their earnings” to a personal retirement account. I’d like to be able to completely opt-op without having to work in government. I suspect that other younger Americans who recognize that Social Security is a lousy deal will feel the same.

• Other proposed reforms to Social Security include raising the retirement age, changing the indexing formula, and ending the practice of using excess Social Security revenues to fund general government activities. Proposing to put an end to “raiding” the Social Security trust fund might be a good sound bite for the campaign trail, but excess Social Security revenues will soon be a thing of the past anyhow. Bizarrely, Perry cites the Highway Trust Fund as “the model for how to protect funds in a pay-as-you-go system from being used for unrelated purposes.” As a Cato essay on federal highway financing explains, only about 60 percent of highway trust fund money is actually spent on highways. The rest is spent on non-highway uses like transit and bicycle paths. The bottom line is that the federal budget’s so-called “trust funds” generally belong in the same category as Santa Claus and the Toothy Fairy. Perry should just stick with calling Social Security a “Ponzi scheme.”

• As for Medicare, Perry says reform options would include raising the retirement age, adjusting benefits, and giving Medicare recipients more control over how they spend the money they receive from current taxpayers. No surprises there.

• I’m a little confused by Perry’s language on Medicaid reform. On one hand, he says that the 1996 welfare reform law should be used as the model. The 1996 welfare reform law block granted a fixed amount of federal funds for each state. On the other hand, Perry says “Instead of the federal government confiscating money from states, taking a cut off the top, and then sending the money back out with limited flexibility for how states can actually use it, individual states should control the program’s funding and requirements from the very beginning.” I believe that the states, and not the federal government, should be responsible for funding low-income health care programs (if they choose to offer such programs). However, I don’t think that’s what Perry is actually proposing.

• Perry calls for a Balanced Budget Amendment to the Constitution and a cap on total federal spending equal to 18 percent of GDP. Federal spending will be about 24 percent of GDP this year. What agencies and programs would Perry cut or eliminate to reduce federal spending by 6 percent of GDP? He doesn’t really say. That leaves me to conclude that he embraces a BBA for the same reason that most Republicans embrace it: he wants to avoid getting specific about what programs he’d cut. One could argue that his entitlement reforms are sufficiently specific, but compared to Ron Paul’s plan, which calls for the elimination of five federal departments, Perry’s plan leaves too much guesswork.

• Other spending reform proposals don’t make up for the lack of specifics on spending cuts. For example, Perry proposes to eliminate earmarks. That’s already happened. He says he’d cut non-defense discretionary spending by $100 billion, but that’s a relatively small sum and letting military spending off the hook is disappointing. Proposing to “require emergency spending to be spent only on emergencies” sounds nice but would a President Perry stick to it if Congress larded up “emergency” legislation for a natural disaster in Texas or some military adventure abroad?

In sum, there’s some okay stuff here, but I don’t think it’s anything those who desire a truly limited federal government can get excited about. That said, Perry could have done a lot worse.