In the Wall Street Journal today, Cass Sunstein—the administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs and erstwhile Harvard Law School professor—wants us to know what he and the Obama Administration are up to. In an op-ed that seems more like an advertisement (“the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, accept no substitute!”), Sunstein describes the “unprecedented government-wide review of regulations already on the books so that we can improve or remove those that are out-of-date, unnecessary, excessively burdensome or in conflict with other rules.”

Sunstein discusses OSHA eliminating “1.9 million annual hours of redundant reporting burdens on employers,” the Department of Health and Human Services “reconsidering burdensome regulatory requirements, including paperwork burdens, now placed on hospitals and doctors to ask whether those requirements actually benefit patients,” and the Department of the Interior “reviewing cumbersome, outdated regulations under the Endangered Species Act to clarify and expedite procedures for approval of conservation agreements.”

Also on the chopping block are “regulations that require the use of outdated technologies” and a regulation that defines milk as “oil” and subjects it “to costly rules designed to prevent oil spills.” Lost in the discussion are the obvious questions: how did these admittedly useless and burdensome regulations ever get adopted in the first place? What sort of backward organization would require 1.9 million hours of redundant reporting? Has anyone in the EPA ever cleaned up spilled milk before? What’s to keep all this from happening again?

“Cutting government waste” is the mantra for those politicians who regard certain government programs as sacred cows. President Obama hopes to pay for a sizeable part of his health care overhaul by eliminating “waste, fraud, and abuse” in Medicare. Speaking at Cato yesterday, former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty said he wouldn’t cut defense spending, but he would try to make defense “more efficient.”

These sacred cows, however, have a severe eating disorder. The binge and purge cycle that politicians occasionally put them through does nothing to eliminate the underlying disease. Governmental agencies are inherently inefficient and wasteful because they have few reasons not to be. Searching out government waste is a chimerical mission that should raise fundamental questions about the nature of government, not about whether milk is oil.

To judge by the hysterical statements issuing from elected officials—not to mention the breathless press coverage—you’d think the three little-used Patriot Act provisions set to expire unless reauthorized today are like the doomsday timer from the TV show Lost: Fail just once to keep pushing the reset button and some unspecified catastrophe is sure to result! Under the headline “Patriot Act Battle Could Hinder Investigators,” the New York Times quotes an alarmed anonymous official calling it “unprecedented” and warning that “no one could predict what the consequences of a temporary lapse might be.” The Washington Post agrees with the need for reform, but editorializes that “[at] this late hour, it is most important to ensure that the provisions do not lapse.” The Hill uncritically quotes Senate leaders’ assertion that any lapse “would cause a major disruption to the ability of law enforcement officials to fight terrorism.”

This is not just wrong, it is rolling-on-the-floor-laughing ridiculous. A lapse of these provisions for a few days—or a few weeks—would have no significant effect. First, they’re all covered by a grandfather clause. And contrary to what the New York Times implies, that doesn’t just mean that orders or warrants already issued under these authorities remain in effect. Rather, as the Congressional Research Service explains (using the sunset deadline from prior to a short-term extension):

The grandfather clauses authorize the continued effect of the amendments with respect to investigations that began, or potential offenses that took place, before the provision’s sunset date.108 Thus, for example, if an individual were engaged in international terrorism on the sunset date of February 28, 2011, he would still be considered a “lone wolf” for FISA court orders sought after the provision has
expired. Similarly, if an individual is engaged in international terrorism on that date, he may be the target of a roving wiretap under FISA even after authority for new roving wiretaps has expired.

Got that? Every investigation already in progress at the time of sunset gets to keep using the old powers. Every new investigation where the illegal conduct in question began before the sunset date gets to keep using the old powers. Over the span of a few days or weeks, that’s going to cover almost every actual investigation. For the tiny number that don’t fall into those categories, if there are any at all in the space of a short lapse, investigators will be “limited” to relying on every other incredibly broad tool in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act arsenal—with, of course, the option to use plain old criminal investigative authorities as well.

But even without the grandfather clause it’s unlikely a short-term lapse would have much effect, because these powers are just not used all that frequently. Lone Wolf has never been used—so to be worried about this, you’d have to believe that in the span of the lapse, we’ll need it for the first time ever, and for some unfathonable reason unable to investigate effectively using ordinary criminal wiretaps. The business records provision—which would not totally expire but revert to a more limited form—is used about 40 time per year on average (though last year’s 96 uses set a new record), and was not used at all for the first few years after the passage of the Patriot Act. Somehow in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, when you’d think the urgency would be greatest, this supposedly critical tool did not seem so critical: Indeed, Justice Department officials quite explicitly directed agents to start using it only because they worried that they had to demonstrate to Congress that they “needed” it. Here, too, there are always slightly more limited alternatives under criminal investigative authorities—not to mention the vastly more popular National Secuirty Letters—if records must be obtained. Roving wiretaps have been used 22 times per year on average, meaning they constitute something like 1 or 2 percent of FISA wiretap orders each year. Roving orders allow investigators to follow a target to new phone lines or Internet accounts without returning to the court for authority, but typically at least begin with the set of facilities the target is known to be using at the time the order is issued, so even when it’s granted the roving authority is unlikely to actually come into play immediately.

So why are so many people who ought to know better pretending that even a single day without these handful of Patriot Act authorities would somehow crack the seventh seal? Because—as the previous administration learned all too well—it’s easy to get what you want from people who are terrified, from people who believe that some looming emergency has deprived them of the luxury to stop, think, debate, and consider alternatives. And if, inconveniently, there are no real emergencies at hand, it turns out that it’s surprisingly easy to manufacture one.

Today POLITICO Arena asks:

How will yesterday’s largely symbolic Senate vote rejecting the Ryan FY 2012 budget plan affect the 2012 political fortunes of Republicans, especially those facing possible Tea Party-fueled primary challenges?

My response:

Yesterday’s Senate vote was simply an effort by Democrats to capitalize on the outcome of Tuesday’s NY-26 election. It changed nothing on the ground. Responding to that election, most congressional Republicans, far from deserting the Ryan plan, have only rallied more strongly behind it.

And well they should, because there’s nothing worse in politics than disarray, as wayward moderate Republicans will likely discover in 2012. What 2010 showed was that deficits and debt are dominating our politics like never before. Democrats haven’t come to grips with that. Like Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D‑N.H.) yesterday, they castigate the Ryan plan for ending Medicare “as we know it.” Yet they have no plan of their own.

One can criticize the Ryan plan from a number of perspectives, but at least it’s moving in the right direction. If Republicans stay on course, they should do well in 2012. Columnists like the Post’s E.J. Dionne may continue to delude themselves into thinking that NY-26 marked the end of the Tea Party. I doubt it. But if he’s right, we’re really in trouble.

Back in February, Democratic leader Harry Reid promised fellow senator Rand Paul that—after years of kicking the can down the road—there would be at least a week reserved for full and open debate over three controversial provisions of the Patriot Act slated to expire this weekend, with an opportunity to propose reforms and offer amendments to any reauthorization bill. And since, as we know, politicians always keep their promises, we can look forward to a robust and enlightening discussion of how to modify the Patriot Act to better safeguard civil liberties without sacrificing our counterterror capabilities.

Ha! No, I’m joking, of course. Having already cut the legs out from under his own party’s reformers by making a deal with GOP leaders for a four-year extension without reform, Reid used some clever procedural maneuvering to circumvent Rand Paul’s pledged obstruction, slipping the Patriot extension into an unrelated small-business bill that’s privileged against filibusters. All this just to prevent any debate on amendments—the most prominent of which, the Leahy-Paul amendment, is frankly so mild that it ought to be uncontroversial. (Among other things, it modifies some portions of the statute already found constitutionally defective by the courts, and codifies some recordkeeping and data use guidelines the Justice Department has already agreed to implement voluntarily.) Apparently it’s too much to even allow these proposals to be debated and voted on.

One reason may be that a growing number of senators—most recently Ron Wyden and Mark Udall—have been raising concerns about a classified “sensitive collection program” that makes use of the sunsetting “business records provision,” also known as Section 215. They’ve joined Dick Durbin and (former Senator) Russ Feingold in hinting that there may be abuses linked to this program the public is unaware of, and that, moreover, the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court has interpreted this provision (in a classified ruling, of course) in a way that the general public would find surprising, and which goes beyond the law’s apparent intent. Intelligence operations, of course, must remain secret, but this means we are now governed by a body of secret law, potentially at odds with citizens’ understanding of the public statute—with the result that we cannot even know the true reason that common sense reforms, once endorsed unanimously by the Senate Judiciary Committee, cannot be adopted. This is—to put it very mildly—not how a democracy is supposed to function. Equally troubling, there’s strong circumstantial evidence (which I’ll outline in a separate post) that the program in question may involve large-scale cell phone location tracking and data mining—a conclusion shared by several other analysts who’ve followed the issue closely.

The one silver lining here is that, while press may not have the patience for a complicated policy debate involving byzantine intelligence law—especially now that many Democrats have decided that powers which raised the specter of tyranny under George W. Bush are unobjectionable under an Obama administration—they are always happy to cover a legislative boxing match. Perhaps, thanks to Sen. Paul’s intransigence, we’ll finally see a little sunlight shed on these potent and secret surveillance powers.

Today POLITICO Arena asks:

Reacting to yesterday’s NY-26 election results, Paul Ryan this morning said, “I saw the ads. I saw burning people’s Medicare cards. If you can scare seniors into thinking that their current benefits are being affected, that’s going to have an effect. And that is exactly what took place here.” Do Republicans have a messaging problem on Medicare?

My response:

Some Republicans have a messaging problem — that partially explains the NY-26 result. Others, like Paul Ryan, are telling it straight, for which they should be commended.

Medicare “as we know it” will soon end, as every honest analyst has recognized. If Democrats continue to demagogue the issue, we have a character problem on our hands. And if enough voters fall for that flim-flam, we have a national problem of lethal proportions. Hard reality doesn’t play politics.

One of the biggest threats against global prosperity is the anti-tax competition project of a Paris-based international bureaucracy known as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The OECD, acting at the behest of the European welfare states that dominate its membership, wants the power to tell nations (including the United States!) what is acceptable tax policy.

I’ve previously explained why the OECD is a problematic institution — especially since American taxpayers are forced to squander about $100 million per year to support the parasitic bureaucracy.

For all intents and purposes, high-tax nations want to create a global tax cartel, sort of an “OPEC for politicians.” This issue is increasingly important since politicians from those countries realize that all their overspending has created a fiscal crisis and they are desperate to figure out new ways of imposing higher tax rates. I don’t exaggerate when I say that stopping this sinister scheme is absolutely necessary for the future of liberty.

Along with Brian Garst of the Center for Freedom and Prosperity, I just wrote a paper about these issues. The timing is especially important because of an upcoming “Global Forum” where the OECD will try to advance its mission to prop up uncompetitive welfare states. Here’s the executive summary, but I encourage you to peruse the entire paper for lots of additional important info.

The Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development has an ongoing anti-tax competition project. This effort is designed to prop up inefficient welfare states in the industrialized world, thus enabling those governments to impose heavier tax burdens without having to fear that labor and capital will migrate to jurisdictions with better tax law. This project received a boost a few years ago when the Obama Administration joined forces with countries such as France and Germany, which resulted in all low-tax jurisdictions agreeing to erode their human rights policies regarding financial privacy. The tide is now turning against high-tax nations – particularly as more people understand that ever-increasing fiscal burdens inevitably lead to Greek-style fiscal collapse. Political changes in the United States further complicate the OECD’s ability to impose bad policy. Because of these developments, low-tax jurisdictions should be especially resistant to new anti-tax competition initiatives at the Bermuda Global Forum.

To understand why this issue is so important, here’s a video I narrated for the Center for Freedom and Prosperity.

And here’s a shorter video on the same subject, narrated by Natasha Montague from Americans for Tax Reform.

Last but not least, here’s a video where I explain why the OECD is a big waste of money for American taxpayers.

Here we go again: To read E.J. Dionne’s piece in the Washington Post this morning, you’d think that God Himself had ordained the modern welfare state. Dionne’s nominal target is the media for its failure to sufficiently cover John Boehner’s recent commencement address at the Catholic University of America. But his larger aim is to promote his reading of the proposition that “From the apostles to the present, the Magisterium of the Church has insisted that those in power are morally obliged to preference the needs of the poor.”

That’s from the opening paragraph of a letter to Boehner from a group of Catholic academics, including some leading members of the Catholic University faculty. It added, “Your record in support of legislation to address the desperate needs of the poor is among the worst in Congress.” And it singled out the House-passed Ryan budget for special condemnation, Dionne tells us, approvingly.

It’s hardly news, of course, that Catholics, along with other denominations, are divided on the “social justice” question. But as I wrote last month in the Wall Street Journal, the idea that Jesus taught that we should be forced, by government, to aid the poor is a serious misreading of Christian doctrine, to say nothing of the Decalogue. Virtue arises from voluntary actions, of which there is no shortage here in America — at least so long as the burdens of the welfare state don’t crowd them out entirely. This use of the gospel to promote that state is not only unAmerican but unChristian as well.