Americans are scrambling to file their 2018 federal income tax returns. The good news is that most folks should be left with more cash this year after Uncle Sam’s greedy grab than in past years.

The 2017 Republican Tax Cuts and Jobs Act slashed taxes across the board, with about 90 percent of tax-paying households receiving a cut. The individual tax cuts will be in place from 2018 to 2025, at which point Congress will decide whether to extend them. If Americans want to retain their tax cuts, they need to pressure Congress to restrain spending.

The Joint Tax Committee—the tax scorekeeper of Congress—released the table below showing the effects of the tax cuts in 2019. In the confusing way they’ve labelled it, “present law” is the law before the cuts and “proposal” is with the cuts. Also note that the law cut income taxes, but the table includes income taxes, payroll taxes, and excise taxes.

The GOP law cut taxes for every income group. The largest percentage benefits went to households with incomes between $20,000 and $50,000. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has repeatedly called the law a “tax scam for the rich,” but she is quite wrong. The law made our highly progressive tax code a bit more progressive.

The table shows that average tax rates (total taxes paid divided by income) rise steeply as income rises. With the GOP cuts in place, households earning more than $1,000,000 pay a rate about twice that of households earning between $50,000 and $100,000, and three times that of households earning between $40,000 and $50,000.

Measuring police effectiveness is a daunting task at both the agency and at the individual officer levels. At the macro level, studies indicate that some proactive policing strategies can lower crime rates, but there are many other factors that also affect crime so there is no one-size-fits-all answer to what police can do to lower incidents of crime in any given area. On the individual officer level, departments usually measure tangible production—e.g., tickets issued, arrests made, individuals contacted via police stops—but that doesn’t say what effect, if any, those actions had on the community well-being. So, while departments want to lower crime rates and enhance community well-being, they usually evaluate officers on actions that have no proven bearing on either metric. Many officers are thus incentivized to make certain contacts with individuals irrespective of whether or not it will ultimately benefit the community. As a result, the costs of those encounters with the public are often ignored or overlooked as the police go about their business.

A new collaborative article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences measures the criminogenic effects of pedestrian stops among non-white* adolescent males. Put simply, the researchers measured whether police stops of male adolescents of color had an effect on their likelihood to commit crimes in the future (measured as “delinquency”). The study also measured whether the police encounters had the desired deterrent effect on future criminal behavior. What the study found is troubling, given that police agencies often employ proactive strategies like officer contact to deter crimes.

The research indicates that a pedestrian stop of an adolescent male of color slightly increased the likelihood of future delinquent behavior, regardless of the young man’s previous engagement in delinquent activities. The research also indicates that multiple pedestrian stops further increases the likelihood of future delinquent behavior. The research neither indicated that police stops had the desired deterrent effect on delinquency nor that delinquent behavior had an effect on the number of police stops. That is, these stops had a one-way effect on delinquency, and it was not the good way. This evidence suggests that certain common types of proactive policing amounts to what we at Cato have dubbed “self-defeating policing.”

One doesn’t have to believe that police act maliciously or in an intentionally racist manner to understand that policing can have unintended, negative effects on the communities officers try to serve. This article is important because it tries to quantify the psychological and other social costs of policing tactics on those who experience them. Kudos to the researchers and authors of this important article. More work like this could have a significant impact on the future of policing.

You can read the abstract and download the paper here.

*N.B. Adolescent males of color were singled out because they are far more likely than white adolescent boys or females of any race to be stopped by police while on foot. It should be noted, however, that the reactions to stops did not vary among the races measured (black, Latino, and multi-racial).

Lost in all of the media frenzy over the Mueller Report, redactions, and alleged improprieties within the Department of Justice and FBI, was Attorney General William Barr telling the Senate Appropriations Committee yesterday that he favors a more federalist approach to marijuana laws.

In response to a question from Senator Lisa Murkowski (R‑AK), Barr said that allowing the states to set their own marijuana policy and removing the federal government from the matter would be an improvement over the present situation, which he called an “intolerable” conflict between state and federal laws. Senator Murkowski is a sponsor of the Strengthening the Tenth Amendment Through Entrusting States (STATES) Act, which would give immunity from federal action against business and people engaged in the manufacture, sale, purchase, or consumption of marijuana in states where it has been legalized. President Trump has signaled in the past that he would sign the bill if it was passed and sent to his desk.

Unfortunately, Barr still opposes federal legalization, but his approach to the issue is a stark and welcome contrast to that of his predecessor Jeff Sessions, and would amount to de facto federal decriminalization—at least in the states that have decided to legalize marijuana. 

It also signals a realization that the march toward state-by-state legalization continues to gather momentum. It may be just a matter of a few years before federal decriminalization of marijuana becomes a reality and, as is the case with alcohol, it will be a matter left up to each of the states and the District of Columbia.

Decriminalization should be a welcome change for all who are concerned with the growing rate of opioid-related overdose deaths. There is growing evidence that marijuana reduces the need for opioids to relieve pain and numerous studies have shown lower opioid-related overdose death rates in states where access to marijuana is legal. Furthermore, marijuana has great potential as a harm reduction strategy. At the recent conference on harm reduction held at the Cato Institute, Dr. Adrianne Wilson-Poe, a nationally recognized cannabis clinical researcher at Washington University School of Medicine, gave a detailed and enlightening presentation on the potential role for cannabis in Medication Assisted Treatment (MAT) as well as opioid withdrawal management. You can see that presentation here. Dr. Wilson-Poe was also interviewed on a Cato Daily Podcast here.

In January 2017, President Trump banned nationals of seven majority Muslim countries from receiving visas or entering the United States. He followed up that ban with two subsequent bans, and as of April 10, 2019, the U.S. government is still blocking most legal admissions from five majority Muslim countries and North Korea (which received almost none anyway).

Last year, the Supreme Court upheld these actions as legal based on legislative grants of authority to the executive branch. In my comments reacting to the Supreme Court decision, I wrote:

As a matter of policy, no president should be given such broad power to determine immigration law. While the travel ban currently affects only a small share of immigrants and foreign travelers, all legal immigrants should be concerned that the president will wield this power against them next. Congress should immediately intervene to preserve its power to determine immigration policy.

A new bill would do just that. Senator Chris Coons (D‑DE) and Rep. Judy Chu (D‑HI) have introduced the National Origin-Based Antidiscrimination for Nonimmigrants Act, or NO BAN Act, that would explicitly protect the normal immigration system from this executive overreach. It would ban religious or nationality-based discrimination from decisions about granting visas or immigration privileges and remove president’s authority to ban immigrants not explicitly authorized to be banned by Congress except in very narrow circumstances.

To win at the Supreme Court, the president relied on Section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which grants the president near limitless authority to “suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens” if he determines that they will be “detrimental” to the United States. The Ninth Circuit had ruled that this authority would be an unconstitutional delegation of legislative power if interpreted as giving the president authority to rewrite all immigration law. The Supreme Court disagreed, allowing the statute to stand as written.

To remedy this congressional error, the NO BAN Act would do the following:

1. It would amend section 202(a) of the Immigration and Nationality Act to explicitly ban religious discrimination in the issuance of visas. This section already bans nationality-based discrimination in the issuance of immigrant visas, but the Supreme Court ruled that the president can use his authority to ignore this provision. The bill would also clarify that this provision would guard against discrimination in decisions governing entry or other immigration decisions, including for nonimmigrants (temporary visitors, tourists, guest workers, students, etc.).
2. It would amend section 212(f) to allow the president to ban aliens only if the ban is:

• based on credible facts that entries should be restricted to address specific acts that undermine the security or public safety of the United States, human rights, democratic processes or institutions, or international stability;
• not based on religion or nationality;
• narrowly tailored to meet a compelling governmental interest;
• using the least restrictive means possible to achieve the governmental interest;
• for a specific duration; and
• based on specific evidence that the president provides; and
• apply a rebuttable presumption in favor of granting family-based and humanitarian waivers.

These provisions address all of the problems with the travel ban. It wasn’t based on any facts—credible or otherwise—and its supposed secret “evidence” was never released and may not have even existed. It was—according to the president at least—intended to restrict the entries of Muslims to the United States. It was not narrowly tailored as it banned millions of people who had never even lived in the targeted areas. It did not use the least restrictive means of achieving its supposed goal of keeping out people who couldn’t be vetted since it applied to people who the government admitted it could vet. It is no longer time-limited in any way, and it has a rebuttable presumption against granting waivers.

The innovative legislation would essentially establish a heightened strict scrutiny standard for presidential actions to restrict entry to the United States. The NO BAN Act would protect the rights of both immigrants and U.S. citizens. It would prevent U.S. citizens from being separated from their spouses and minor children who happened to be born in one of the banned countries. As I have reported before, the travel ban has already separated thousands of U.S. citizens from their spouses and minor children, a crisis that grows by the day. Congressional action is desperately needed to reverse this human tragedy.

While this issue developed out of the “travel ban,” I warned that the president would take the Supreme Court’s decision as authorizing open season against all legal immigrants, and sure enough, the president quickly expanded it to include asylum seekers already inside the United States—a policy still being held up in the courts. But it is clear that the president—no president—should have the power to unilaterally restrict Americans’ rights to associate, contract, and trade with people born in other countries.

The $768 billion Medicare program is in deep trouble as America ages and elderly health care soars in cost. Medicare is a giant central planning scheme that imposes more than 100,000 pages of regulations and related rules on more than 600,000 health care providers. 

The inefficiency is vast, and the structure of the program makes it a perfect target for fraud and abuse. The system processes more than a billion provider claims a year. Auditors estimate that more than $50 billion of taxpayer money goes down the drain every year from improper payments. The New York Times highlights some alleged scams today stemming from a recent federal bust.

Congress should end traditional Medicare and give each enrollee a voucher to purchase a health plan of his or her choice. Funding Medicare through fixed-dollar vouchers would give enrollees more control over their medical care, encourage cost consciousness, spur innovation by eliminating price controls, and restrain spending.

A voucher-based system would also greatly reduce fraud because massive, complex, and open-ended federal billing would be replaced by simpler fixed payments to individuals.

Here is an excerpt from the NYT story. Fortunately, investigators caught these alleged fraudsters, but the article illustrates the vulnerability of the system where scam artists can rack up apparently bogus charges of more than $200 million.

Federal officials said Tuesday that they had dismantled a $1.2 billion Medicare scheme that spanned continents and ensnared hundreds of thousands of unsuspecting elderly and disabled patients.

Under the scheme, which the authorities described as one of the largest health care frauds in United States history, doctors prescribed back, shoulder, wrist and knee braces that were not needed, prosecutors said. Twenty-four people were charged, according to the Justice Department.

“These defendants — who range from corporate executives to medical professionals — allegedly participated in an expansive and sophisticated fraud to exploit telemedicine technology meant for patients otherwise unable to access health care,” Brian Benczkowski, the assistant attorney general for the department’s criminal division, said in a statement.

Some of the accused were owners of durable medical equipment companies that paid kickbacks and bribes to doctors to write prescriptions for braces that were medically unnecessary, according to the authorities.

An international telemarketing network with call centers in the Philippines and Latin America would reach out to Medicare beneficiaries, persuading them to get the free or low-cost braces. The doctors would sometimes write prescriptions without speaking to the patient.

“The defendants took advantage of unwitting patients who were simply trying to get relief from their health concerns,” Craig Carpenito, the United States attorney for New Jersey, said in a statement. “Instead, the defendants preyed upon their weakened state and pushed millions of dollars’ worth of unnecessary medical devices, which Medicare paid for, and then set up an elaborate system for laundering their ill-gotten proceeds.”

The defendants laundered the proceeds through international shell companies and used the money to buy exotic cars, yachts and luxury real estate around the world, the authorities said.

Prosecutors brought charges related to the payment of bribes, illegal kickbacks, money laundering and conspiracy to commit health care fraud against people in California, Florida, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, South Carolina and Texas.

… In Florida, Willie McNeal IV, the owner and chief executive of two telemedicine companies, hired health care providers and then paid them to prescribe braces for Medicare beneficiaries regardless of whether it was medically necessary, according to an indictment. Mr. McNeal would then receive illegal kickbacks in exchange for ordering those braces, the indictment said.

Mr. McNeal, 42, facilitated the submission of fraudulent Medicare claims worth nearly $250 million, the government said.

… In a case out of South Carolina, more than a dozen companies owned by Andrew Chmiel, 43, billed Medicare for more than $200 million as part of a scheme to sell medically unnecessary equipment, according to an indictment.

By the way, the HHS headquarters building ranks as one of the ugliest in Washington. As this blogger notes, the federal government only hired architects with early onset glaucoma during the 1960s and 1970s.

However, it is also true that the Soviet-style brutalist design for HHS is ideal for a bureaucracy that imposes top-down central planning on a large part of the economy. The harshness of the building is a metaphor for the cold treatment of the citizenry under government-imposed planning schemes. 

For over a year, Cato has been leading the charge to challenge the doctrine of qualified immunity: an atextual, ahistorical doctrine invented by the Supreme Court in the 1960s, which shields government agents from liability for misconduct — even when they break the law. Today marks a huge milestone in that ongoing campaign, as Cato has just filed an amicus brief in support of a new cert petition calling on the Court to reconsider this doctrine. So has a diverse, cross-ideological alliance of over a dozen prominent public interest groups, as well a group of leading qualified immunity scholars. In the words of Wyatt Earp: “You called down the thunder. Well, now you’ve got it!”

The case at issue is I.B. and Doe v. Woodard. When I.B. was a four-year-old girl, she was strip searched and photographed at her preschool by April Woodard, a state caseworker. Woodard had neither a warrant, nor the consent of the girl or her mother, nor were there any exigent circumstances requiring such an invasive search. All she had were unfounded abuse allegations (specifically, of a few marks and bruises on I.B.) which easily could have been checked and disproven through a non-invasive search. After I.B. complained to her mother about what happened, Woodard denied having performed a search at all, and continued to lie about that fact for several weeks, until finally admitting what she had done. I.B. suffered severe and ongoing emotional trauma as a result of being strip-searched and photographed against her will.

I.B. and her mother filed a Section 1983 against Woodard (and others), alleging violations of I.B.’s Fourth Amendment rights. But a divided panel of the Tenth Circuit held that the defendants were entitled to qualified immunity, because Woodard’s strip search did not violate “clearly established law.” The court failed to even address the Fourth Amendment claims on the merits, noting only that (1) there was a circuit split on whether a warrant was necessary under these circumstances, and (2) assuming a warrant wasn’t necessary, it was still not “clearly established” whether this sort of strip search was permissible. This latter holding is particular shocking, because the Supreme Court itself recently addressed this exact subject matter (warrantless strip searches of children in schools) in Safford Unified School District No. 1 v. Redding. In Safford, the Court even said it was seeking “to make it clear” that an intrusive strip search of a child was justifiable only with “specific suspicions” that evidence of danger or wrongdoing will be found in the area searched. For this reason, Judge Briscoe dissented in part from the Tenth Circuit’s decision, and would have held that I.B.’s strip search violated “clearly established law,” as stated in Safford. 

The Tenth Circuit’s decision exemplifies everything that is perverse and unjust about qualified immunity. I.B. had her constitutional rights violated in an egregious manner, yet she was left without a remedy because of a fictitious doctrine, with no grounding in the text or history of Section 1983. The Tenth Circuit refused to even decide whether her constitutional rights were violated in the first place, and it applied the “clearly established law” test so strictly that a seemingly on-point Supreme Court case concerning nearly identical circumstances was still insufficient to overcome qualified immunity. 

I.B. and her mother are now represented by Scott Keller, chair of Supreme Court practice at Baker Botts, and they’ve filed a powerful cert petition, asking the Supreme Court both to resolve the Fourth Amendment questions at issue here, but also to reconsider the doctrine of qualified immunity itself. Today, Cato filed an amicus brief in support of that petition, arguing that qualified immunity lacks any proper legal or historical basis, and that it is not entitled to respect under the doctrine of stare decisis. Specifically, we explain how (1) the “clearly established law” standard is so malleable and indefinite that it has failed to create the kind of stability and predictability that justify respect for precedent in the first place; (2) that the Supreme Court itself has already made major modifications to qualified immunity over the years, and therefore should have no qualms about reconsidering the doctrine now (but this time to bring it line with the statute Congress actually passed); and (3) that allowing the status quo to continue severely undermines public accountability and effectively subjects citizens to ongoing constitutional violations.

Ours is far from the only brief being filed today, however — we’ve also helped coordinate the drafting and filing of two additional amicus briefs. The first is on behalf of a group of leading qualified immunity scholars, who discuss the academic consensus that the Court’s qualified immunity doctrine is in serious need of correction. The second is on behalf of a diverse array of groups from across the ideological and professional spectrum, who nevertheless all share a common interest in ensuring that government officials are held accountable for their misconduct. This brief was joined by all of the following groups: the ACLU, Alliance Defending Freedom, American Association for Justice, Americans for Prosperity, Due Process Institute, Institute for Justice, Law Enforcement Action Partnership, MacArthur Justice Center, NAACP Legal Defense Fund, National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, Public Justice, R Street Institute, Reason, and the Second Amendment Foundation. Take a moment and consider just how egregiously misguided a Supreme Court doctrine has to be to unite all of these organizations in opposition, on a single brief. (Note also that several other groups have filed additional amicus briefs asking the Court to take the case, although we weren’t specifically involved with those.)

All in all, this case represents one of the most promising opportunities in the ongoing fight against qualified immunity. It highlights the sort of gross injustice that the doctrine regularly permits, demonstrates just how much cross-ideological consensus there is on this issue, and presents the Court with an ideal vehicle for restoring Section 1983 to its proper stature. We can only hope the Court answers the call. 

Customs and Border Protectionjust announced that Border Patrol has apprehended 364,941 people from the beginning of fiscal year 2019 through to the end of March 2019. Border Patrol apprehensions this FY rose by 34 percent in the month of March. Although the number of apprehensions is rising, the proportion of all apprehensions who arecriminal aliensis dropping, in a trend that I wrote about earlier this month. Furthermore, the absolute number of criminal aliens arrested by the end of FY 2019 will be below the number arrested in any year since CBP began publishing data.

Border Patrol identifies criminal aliens as those who have been convicted of crimes here or abroad if the conviction is for conduct which is also criminal in the United States. From the beginning of FY2015 through the end of March 2019, the absolute number and percent of criminal aliens arrested by Border Patrol have fallen in every year. In 2015, about 5.7 percent of all Border Patrol apprehensions were criminal aliens. For the beginning of FY 2019 through the end of March, only about 0.7 percent of people apprehended by Border Patrol were criminal aliens. If the number of criminal aliens apprehensions continues apace for FY 2019, the absolute number will be about 75 percent below the number apprehended in FY 2015.

From February 2019 to March 2019, the total annual number of Border Patrol apprehensions climbed by 34 percent while the total number of criminal alien annual apprehensions rose by only 24 percent. In other words, the number of non-criminal apprehensions is rising much faster than the number of criminal aliens apprehended. As the flow grows, it is becoming less criminal. Only 0.5 percent of those apprehended in March were criminal aliens compared to 0.7 percent from October 2018 through February 2019.

From 2015 to FY 2019, the percentage of those apprehended by Border Patrol who were non-criminals rose from 94.3 percent to 99.3 percent while the percentage who were criminals fell from 5.7 percent to 0.7 percent (Figure 1). In absolute numbers, criminal aliens have also declined from 19,117 apprehensions in 2015 to 2,513 through half of FY 2019. If the trend of criminal alien apprehensions continues for the rest of FY 2019, there will be just over 5,000 by the end of this FY – well below the 6,698 recorded in 2018.

Figure 1
Non-Criminal and Criminal Aliens

Source: Customs and Border Protection.

The most consistent argument wielded in support of closing the border or harsher border security is that those being apprehended are dangerous criminals. Based on data supplied by Border Patrol, the absolute number of criminal aliens and their proportion of all apprehensions along the border are lower in FY 2019 than in previous years. While the government has an important role in keep criminal aliens out of the United States, the current situation along the border shows that Border Patrol has a better handle on crime than at any time in the recent past.