The House Judiciary Committee has created a task force to address the problem of overcriminalization. 

Here are some statements from the news release:

Chairman Goodlatte: “Over-criminalization is an issue of liberty. As federal criminal laws and regulations have increased, so has the number of Americans who have found themselves breaking the law with no intent of doing so. Americans who make innocent mistakes should not be charged with criminal offenses. We need to take a closer look at our laws and regulations to make sure that they protect freedom, work as efficiently and fairly as possible, and do not duplicate state efforts. I am hopeful that the bipartisan task force established today will be able to reach consensus and make recommendations to the House Judiciary Committee on how to improve our federal criminal statutes and protect our freedom.”

Ranking Member Conyers: “Unduly expansive criminal provisions in our law unnecessarily drive up incarceration rates. Almost one-quarter of the world’s inmates are locked up in the United States, yet Americans constitute only 5 percent of the world population. In addition, the incarceration rate for African Americans is six times that of the national incarceration average. I welcome the work of the over-criminalization task force in analyzing this serious issue.”

Crime Subcommittee Chairman Sensenbrenner: “Our current criminal code is riddled with outdated provisions, inconsistent with modifications made to reflect America’s contemporary approach to criminal law. This bipartisan task force will review federal laws in Title 18 and work to clean it up. Congress must ensure the federal role in criminal prosecutions is properly limited to offenses within federal jurisdiction and within the scope of constitutionally-delegated federal powers. I also plan to reintroduce the Criminal Code Modernization and Simplification Act which reforms and recodifies Title 18 of the U.S. Code. This bill cuts more than one-third of the existing criminal code, consolidates criminal offenses from other titles, and streamlines the code to make it more coherent for attorneys, judges, and Congress.” 

Crime Subcommittee Ranking Member Scott: “Although crime is primarily a matter for states and localities to handle, over the last 40 or so years Congress has increasingly sought to address societal problems by adding criminal provisions to the federal code. There are now over 4,000 federal criminal provisions, plus hundreds of thousands of federal regulations which impose criminal penalties, often without requiring that criminal intent be shown to establish guilt. As a result, we are hearing many complaints of overuse and abusive uses of federal criminal laws from a broad-based coalition of organizations ranging from the Heritage Foundation to the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. Today, we are establishing a bipartisan task force on over-criminalization to assess issues and make recommendations for improvements to the federal criminal system, and I look forward to working with my colleagues on this worthy endeavor.”

I testified before the Committee on this subject about a year ago. Good to see some action on this front.

Conservative and libertarian scholars are clashing over the findings and political implications of the new Heritage Foundation immigration study. The study spans 92 pages and is jam-packed full of statistics and detailed calculations.

I’ll leave the immigration policy to my colleagues who are experts in that area. To me, the study provides a very useful exploration into how massive the American welfare state has become. Here are some highlights:

• “There are over 80 of these [means-tested] programs which, at a cost of nearly $900 billion per year, provide cash, food, housing, medical, and other services to roughly 100 million low-income Americans.”
• “The governmental system is highly redistributive … For example, in 2010, in the whole U.S. population, households with college-educated heads, on average, received $24,839 in government benefits while paying $54,089 in taxes … [and] households headed by persons without a high school degree, on average, received $46,582 in government benefits while paying only $11,469 in taxes.”
• “Few lawmakers really understand the current size of government and the scope of redistribution. The fact that the average household gets $31,600 in government benefits each year is a shock.”

Total federal, state, and local government spending in 2010 was $5.4 trillion, or $44,932 per U.S. household. The figure of $31,600 in “benefits” is total spending less spending on public goods, interest, and government pensions.

A useful feature of the Heritage study is a breakdown of the $5.4 trillion in spending into six categories constructed by the authors. “Direct benefits” includes mainly Social Security and Medicare. “Pure public goods” includes programs such as defense and scientific research. “Population-based services” includes programs aimed at whole communities, such as police and highways. (Some of these also seem to be public goods). “Means-tested benefits” includes programs such as food stamps. Education includes both K‑12 and college subsidies. “Interest and pensions” is the current costs of past spending, which includes servicing the debt and paying for government pensions. The chart shows spending in 2010. 

This spending breakdown is useful for thinking about the proper size of government. From a libertarian standpoint, governments ought to be spending only on public goods and population-based services, as a first cut. That would be $1.94 trillion, or just 36 percent of the current total of $5.4 trillion. As a percent of GDP in 2010, that would be spending of 14 percent, rather than current spending of 38 percent.

But some of the population-based services mentioned by the authors could be privatized, and spending on some of the public goods could be cut. So a good libertarian target might be less than 36 percent of current spending, or less than 14 percent of GDP.

The Heritage study is sparking a debate about what type of immigration reform the nation should have. But hopefully, it will also spur more discussion about the massive size of the American welfare state. Immigration is partly, or mainly, such a contentious issue because we have such a huge welfare state.

The study includes projections about how many trillions of dollars of government benefits will flow to immigrants and their children in the decades ahead. But conservatives and libertarians agree that we ought to cut trillions of dollars in benefits to immigrants and nonimmigrants alike.

So is there some common ground here? Can we work toward an immigration reform that cuts government dependency in general and downsizes the welfare state?

The Washington Free Beacon reports:

Circle K Southeast joined a growing list of national companies shifting workers to part-time status this week, in order to avoid paying Obamacare’s mandatory benefits, CBS-WTOC reports.

The alternative is to pay a $2,000 fine per fulltime worker who is not covered, leading Circle K to become the latest in a long line of companies to slice employee hours to avoid increased costs.

Here’s the video:

The Free Beacon continues:

Regal Entertainment Group, the largest U.S. theater chain, specifically blamed Obamacare in April when it shifted many of its employees to below the 30-hour threshold to offset Obamacare, as did AAA Parking. Numerous restaurants, hotels and retailers have done or are considering the same.

Long Beach, Calif., located in heavily Democratic Los Angeles County, is cutting back the hours of employees to avoid the penalty, as has the state of Virginia and the city of Dearborn, Mich.

In March, The New York Times noted an “unsettling trend” in the rise of part-time workers during the languishing economic recovery in the U.S.

Earlier this week, former Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean acknowledged patients will be damaged by the legislation, and longtime advocate Sen. Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) said Obamacare could cause premiums to go through the roof Thursday before trying to walk back the remarks.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has also said citizens purchasing new insurance policies for themselves this fall could face rising premiums due to the Affordable Care Act.

Yet the federal government has no authority to impose penalties on these employers in the 33 states that have declined to establish an ObamaCare Exchange. A new lawsuit seeks to prevent the IRS from imposing those illegal penalties.

The Louisiana Supreme Court struck down Louisiana’s nascent school voucher program today. There were about 5,000 LA students already receiving vouchers and about 8,000 were approved to receive vouchers in the next school year. The court ruled that once public funds are allocated to the state’s Minimum Foundation Program (MFP), the constitution prohibits reallocating those funds for other purposes.

Fortunately, there is another school choice program that rests on much firmer constitutional ground. Louisiana’s scholarship tax credit program avoids the voucher program’s constitutional troubles because its funds never enter the MFP. Indeed, they actually never enter the state treasury at all. Instead, taxpayers receive a credit for donations to nonprofit “school tuition organizations” that fund low-income students attending the schools of their choice. The program gives priority to students living in districts with failing government schools.

While Governor Jindal and school choice supporters across the Pelican State are disappointed with the decision, they need not despair. Instead, they should channel their efforts toward expanding the scholarship tax credit program. 

Today’s New York Times “Room for Debate” feature poses the question, “Do the mixed results of an Oregon health care study show that government medical insurance should provide only catastrophic coverage?” From my contribution:

ObamaCare aims to cover 16 million poor uninsured adults through Medicaid, plus 16 million higher-income uninsured Americans through government-subsidized “private” insurance. Supporters portrayed these “reforms” as a matter of life and death, particularly for the poor. Yet a monumental new study finds that “Medicaid coverage generated no significant improvements in measured physical health outcomes” for poor adults. These findings strengthen the case that states should stop implementing ObamaCare, and Congress should swiftly repeal it…

The absence of physical-health improvements indicts the entire enterprise. Supporters have an obligation to show that the $2 trillion in entitlements ObamaCare will launch next year would actually improve enrollees’ health. The Oregon study shows they cannot meet their burden of proof. What part of “no discernible improvement” don’t they understand?

Read the whole thing here. See also the contributions by Drew Altman, Austin Frakt, Robert Reich, and Grace-Marie Turner.

From Reuters:

“There is reason to be very concerned about what’s going to happen with young people. If their (insurance) premiums shoot up, I can tell you, that is going to wash into the United States Senate in a hurry,” said Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat…

“Why in late April can’t they show us any of what they’ve got planned? The rollout plan should already be in existence,” an exasperated Democratic Senate aide said separately…

Reform is facing challenges on several fronts. Big insurers appear wary of participating, raising questions about how competitive the exchanges will be. Businesses are mounting a new legal effort to stop the use of federal subsidies in exchanges run by Washington. And most states have balked at the exchanges and the Medicaid expansion…

“I don’t see how what they’re planning to do is going to be adequate. The resources are too limited, the (law’s) penalties are too weak and elite opposition in much of the country will undermine” enrollment, said Paul Starr, a Princeton professor and former health adviser to President Bill Clinton…

An April survey of 1,003 people by HealthPocket, an online company that helps consumers find insurance, also found that the law’s penalty for not buying coverage would not induce most 25-to-34-year-olds or 18-to-24-year-olds to purchase it…

 

We do not claim that the school funding system… is fundamentally flawed, only that there is no correlation at all between the level of per pupil funding and educational outcomes. —Deloitte

Hahahahaha! Ha! Haha! Haaaaaah. Okay. Now a little context.

Last November, the British government “published” a study of its state school system that it had commissioned from the accounting firm Deloitte. Maybe “published” is too strong a word, since there was apparently no press release, no news conference, no effort of any kind to make the public or the media aware of its existence. Perhaps that’s because the study found no correlation between spending and achievement in Britain’s state schools, and the current government’s policy is to increase spending on state schools in an effort to be seen to be doing something.

The sad thing is, the same fundamentally flawed funding systems and dysfunctional political incentives exist in the United States, too… and with much the same effect:

Hat tip: Joanne Jacobs.