Topic: Government and Politics

Plaintiffs Ask Court to Block IRS’s Illegal ObamaCare Taxes this Year

By
Michael F. Cannon

I have blogged about the Internal Revenue Service’s attempt to tax, borrow, and spend $800 billion contrary to the clear language of ObamaCare, and how both Oklahoma (in Pruitt v. Sebelius) and a group of individuals and small businesses (in Halbig v. Sebelius) have filed suit to block this raw power grab. The Congressional Research Service writes that these challenges “could be a major obstacle to the implementation of [ObamaCare].” George Mason University law professor Michael Greve writes:

This is huge: all of Obamacare hangs on the outcome…If successful…[either] case will bring Obamacare’s Exchange engine to a screeching halt…In short, this is for all the marbles.

Last week, the Halbig plaintiffs asked the U.S. district court for the District of Columbia to speed things up. Though the IRS doesn’t have to respond to the Halbig complaint until July, the plaintiffs filed a motion for summary judgment asking the court to rule on the case before the end of 2013. According to the plaintiffs:

Plaintiffs need a determination on the merits far enough in advance of January 1, 2014, to allow them to conform their behavior to the law. Because the validity of the regulation turns on a purely legal question and the administrative record is closed, Plaintiffs are moving for summary judgment now, and hope thereby to avoid the need to litigate a motion for preliminary injunction or temporary restraining order at the eleventh hour.

The plaintiff’s motion for summary judgment cites my paper (with Jonathan Adler), “Taxation Without Representation: The Illegal IRS Rule to Expand Tax Credits Under the PPACA.”

On June 17, one week from today, Cato will host a policy forum on Halbig v. Sebelius featuring plaintiffs’ counsel Michael Carvin and other luminaries. Register here.

Topics: 
Government and Politics, Health Care, Regulatory Studies, Tax and Budget Policy

Larry Summers Redefines Balanced Budgets as Stimulus and Big Deficits as Austerity

By
Alan Reynolds

Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, in June 4 testimony before the Senate Budget Committee, offers a scatter diagram which allegedly shows “that countries that pursued harsher austerity policies in recent years also had lower real GDP growth.”  He acknowledges, but does not adequately explain, that the causality may well be backwards: Bond markets would not allow countries in severe economic distress (Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain) to continue financing deficits at the peak levels of 2010.

Summers defines “austerity” as the three-year change (regardless of the level) from 2010 to 2013 in cyclically-adjusted “primary” deficits (excluding interest expense) as a percent of potential GDP.  His scatter diagram then compares those changes to average real GDP growth from 2010 to 2013, using unexplained estimates for 2013.

Measuring fiscal stimulus by the change in budget deficits means several countries with little or no budget deficit in both 2010 and 2013 appear as employing the most “fiscal stimulus” in Summers’ graph. Sweden’s deficit is estimated at 0.1 percent of GDP for 2013, according to The Economist, and was literally zero in 2010.  Keeping the budget balanced puts Sweden on the admirable left side of Summers’ diagram – the side ostensibly choosing growth rather than austerity.  Germany is another country Summers counts as avoiding austerity, even though Germany’s brief cyclically-adjusted deficit of 3.5 percent of GDP in 2010 was cut to zero in 2012-2013.

When it comes to real GDP Growth, Hong Kong, Singapore, the Slovak Republic and South Korea appear near the top of Summers’ graph.  It is revealing that Hong Kong is also far to the left on the pro-growth side of the austerity axis.  This may appear paradoxical since Hong Kong ran budget surpluses in 7 of the past 8 years, and will do so again in 2013. No amount of cyclical adjusting could turn chronic surpluses into deficits.  Simply because Hong Kong has not switched from a big deficit to a smaller one, that alone suffices to place it among the least “austere” economies on list.  Similarly, South Korea’s budget surplus is estimated at 1.3-1.4 percent of GDP in both 2010 and 2013, according to the OECD, but keeping the budget in surplus between those years counts as stimulative policy in Summers’ reckoning.

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Topics: 
Government and Politics, International Economics and Development, Tax and Budget Policy

Government’s Legal Arguments Shrivel on the Vine

By
Ilya Shapiro

Yet again the unanimous Supreme Court has slapped down a government attempt to deprive property owners of their civil rights.  What was at stake in Horne v. Dept. of Agriculture wasn’t even the property – raisins! – but the mere ability to challenge the government’s desire to take that property without meaningful judicial review.

Nobody should have to suffer a needless, Rube Goldberg-style litigation process to vindicate their constitutional rights. Yet that’s exactly what the U.S. Department of Agriculture sought to impose on raisin farmers Marvin and Laura Horne when they protested the enforcement of a USDA “marketing order” that demanded that the Hornes turn over 47% of their crop without compensation.

These New Deal-era regulations are bad enough – forcing raisin “handlers” to turn over some of their crop to the government so it can control raisin supply and price – but here the government kept throwing up obstacles to the Hornes’ attempts to assert that they shouldn’t legally be subject to them.  The government demanded about $650,000 from the Hornes and didn’t want to give them a day in court until they paid the money and jumped through assorted administrative hoops.

The Supreme Court correctly rejected that absurd position and reversed the California-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit that upheld it, reinforcing the line drawn by five other circuit courts.  “In the case of an administrative enforcement proceeding,” Justice Thomas wrote on all his colleagues’ behalf, “when a party raises a constitutional defense to an assessed fine, it would make little sense to require the party to pay the fine in one proceeding and then turn around and sue for recovery of that same money in another.”

Indeed, there’s no reason to treat Fifth Amendment takings claims any differently than lawsuits against government violations of other constitutional provisions.

Here’s more background on the case and Cato’s amicus brief.

Topics: 
Government and Politics, Law and Civil Liberties, Regulatory Studies

The Federal Government’s “Rural” Industrial Complex

By
David Boaz

David Fahrenthold has another excellent article on waste in government in Sunday’s Washington Post. This time he finds a truly comic example of waste, duplication, and confusion:

[T]he U.S. government has at least 15 official definitions of the word “rural,” two of which apply only to Puerto Rico and parts of Hawaii.

All of these definitions matter; they’re used by various agencies to parcel out $37 billion-plus in federal money for “rural development.” And each one is different….

There are 11 definitions of “rural” in use within the U.S. Department of Agriculture alone.

It’s laughable. But the real question is, Why does the federal government even need to define “rural”? Well, of course the answer comes back to the real purpose of our modern tax-and-transfer state: The definitions define who gets the subsidies.

Every year, there are billions available to fund projects in rural communities. Money for housing. Community centers. Sewer plants. Broadband connections.

In a sidebar to the story, we get some details. The Census Bureau has one definition of “rural” so it can tell us how many Americans live in rural areas. Here are the purposes of the other 14 definitions:

Used for a variety of loan and grant programs, all meant to foster rural development…for loans and grants for “community facilities” in rural areas… for aid for water and waste-disposal systems… for aid for improvements in telecommunications systems…by farm-credit associations making housing loans… for certain lending programs for rural community development…to determine areas served by Office of Rural Health…by the National Rural Development Partnership…for grants to rural institutions of higher education…to determine what areas of Hawaii are eligible for rural-aid programs…to determine what areas of Puerto Rico are eligible for rural-aid programs…by various rural development loan and grant programs.

So let’s see. People in rural areas pay federal taxes. People in urban areas pay federal taxes. All that money goes to Washington – where a great deal of it stays – and then some of it is used to provide programs and services in rural and urban areas. Maybe both rural and urban Americans would be better off keeping their money at home and paying for whatever services they think are actually worth the cost. And then the federal government wouldn’t have to pay handsome salaries to well-educated people to form task forces to determine 15 different definitions of “rural.” And states, cities, and rural areas wouldn’t have to hire expensive lobbyists to get a piece of that federal pie.

Topics: 
Government and Politics, Tax and Budget Policy

National Journal: Top Obama Advisers Admit IRS Could Have Been Asked to Suppress Political Dissidents

By
Michael F. Cannon

I have already blogged about Ron Fournier’s remarkable National Journal column on how President Obama’s many scandals make it hard to support big government. But there’s an item buried in that column that bears highlighting:

If investigators uncover even a single email or conversation between conservative-targeting IRS agents and either the White House or Obama’s campaign, incompetence will be the least of the president’s problems.

Team Obama has publicly denied any knowledge of (or involvement in) the targeting. Privately, top advisers admit that they don’t know if the denials are true, because a thorough investigation has yet to be conducted. No emails have been subpoenaed. No Obama aides put under oath.

It seems Fournier has multiple sources close to the president who have basically said, “Did someone in the administration tell the IRS to suppress our opponents? Ehh, maybe.”

Topics: 
General, Government and Politics, Regulatory Studies, Tax and Budget Policy

There’s No Such Thing as ‘Good Government’

By
Michael F. Cannon

National Journal’s Ron Fournier:

I like government. I don’t like what the fallout from these past few weeks might do to the public’s faith in it…

The core argument of President Obama’s rise to power, and a uniting belief of his coalition of young, minority and well-educated voters, is that government can do good things–and do them well.

Damn. Look at what cliches the past few weeks wrought.

Fournier then runs through how the various Obama scandals show:

Government is intrusive … Orwellian … incompetent … corrupt … complicated … heartless … secretive … [and] can’t be trusted.

And that’s when the good guys are running the show!

Maybe Fournier needs to brush up on his Common Sense:

Society in every state is a blessing, but Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil… Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence… For were the impulses of conscience clear, uniform and irresistibly obeyed, man would need no other lawgiver; but that not being the case, he finds it necessary to surrender up a part of his property to furnish means for the protection of the rest; and this he is induced to do by the same prudence which in every other case advises him, out of two evils to choose the least.

Translation: there’s no such thing as “good government.”

Topics: 
General, Government and Politics, Political Philosophy

San Francisco’s Self-Inflicted Housing Problem

By
David Boaz

Housing is expensive and hard to find in beautiful San Francisco. In today’s New York Times, one would-be housing provider explains why. Scott James writes:

[A]fter renting out a one-bedroom apartment in my home for several years, I will never do it again. San Francisco’s anti-landlord housing laws and political climate make it untenable….

[A] complex legal structure has been created to make evictions for just cause extraordinarily difficult.

At first many of these rules governed only apartment complexes and larger properties with many units. But in 1994 the city applied the regulations to homes if they included just one rental on the property. In other cities, including New York City, such small-time landlords have far more rights over their own homes.

As he goes on to describe his experience with the last tenant in his downstairs apartment—a story featuring a sledgehammer, a flooded apartment, and a plugged-in appliance in an overflowing sink—I was reminded of the 1990 movie Pacific Heights, not coincidentally set in San Francisco.

It’s a thriller that is almost a documentary on the horrors of landlord-tenant law—and that is confirmed by today’s story. A young couple buys a big house in San Francisco and rents an apartment to a young man. He never pays them, and they can’t get him out, and then things get really scary. The lawyer lectures the couple—and the audience—on how “of course you’re right, but you’ll never win.” When I saw it, I just knew this happened to someone—maybe the screenwriter or someone he knew. Sure enough, when Cato published William Tucker’s book Rent Control, Zoning, and Affordable Housing, and I asked Pacific Heights director John Schlesinger for a jacket blurb, he readily agreed to say, “If you thought Pacific Heights was fiction, you need to read this book”; and he told me that the screenwriter had a relative who had gone through a tenant nightmare.

Want to instantly create 10,600 rental units in San Francisco? Reform landlord-tenant law so that small landlords come back to the market. In the meantime, watch Pacific Heights.

Topics: 
Government and Politics, Regulatory Studies

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