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Cato Daily Dispatch for July 18, 2003

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(Links to outside sources were active as of the date of this dispatch; however, not all news sources maintain links to current stories indefinitely. Some links also may require registration.)

States May Benefit if Medicare Drug Bill Passes
Senate Blocks Funding for Computer Dragnet
Virginia Officials Ponder Converting HOV Lanes to "High Occupancy Toll Lanes"

States May Benefit if Medicare Drug Bill Passes

The New York Times reports that "the states hope to be among the big winners if Congress passes a Medicare drug benefit, allowing them to shift expenses from state-financed programs onto the new federal program. The windfall could be billions of dollars a year, or it could be far less, depending on how differences between the Senate and House versions of the Medicare bill are hashed out in a conference committee."

Although the states might get a break under the drug bill, it will be today's young workers and their children who will truly bear the cost. In "Medicare Drug Debacle", Cato Institute entitlements expert Michael Tanner writes that "unless they are reformed, entitlement programs like Medicare and Social Security will soon become an unbearable burden on our children and grandchildren. But, unfortunately, young people don't vote. Unless they do, or unless a few members of Congress discover their courage, today's young workers can expect to be handed the bill once again."

Senate Blocks Funding for Computer Dragnet

"The U.S. Senate voted on Thursday to cut off funding for a widely criticized computer-surveillance program [known as the Terrorist Information Awareness program, or TIA] that would comb travel records, credit-card bills and other private records to sniff out suspected terrorists," according to Reuters.

In "TIA Redux: Still Bad Math", Cato Institute Director of Defense Policy Studies, Charles Pena, observes that "the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA), which launched TIA, claims that the new TIA is designed 'to protect U.S. citizens by detecting and defeating foreign terrorist threats before an attack.' But the core of the new TIA is the same as the old: a database of public and private records to be analyzed for patterns indicative of terrorist activities.

"TIA essentially depends on the 'law of large numbers.' It's what marketing companies call 'data mining.' In a nutshell, 'profiles' are developed of people who should be good customers for a particular product or service. A large pool of people who fit the profile is targeted, knowing that only a small fraction will actually be customers. That's what TIA will do. Only instead of potential customers, the profiles will be for would-be terrorists. And like commercial data mining, only a small fraction of the pool of people who fit the profile of a terrorist will, in fact, be actual terrorists."

Virginia Officials Ponder Converting HOV Lanes to "High Occupancy Toll Lanes"

"Virginia's top transportation official wants the state to move forward on a proposal to put toll lanes on the Capital Beltway," reports the Associated Press. "Virginia Dept. of Transportation Commissioner Philip Shucet says the Commonwealth Transportation Board should advance the idea to the next stage of review under the Public-Private Transportation Act." The lanes are called HOT lanes, which stands for High Occupancy Toll lanes.

In "HOT Lanes: A Better Way to Attack Urban Highway Congestion", Robert Poole and C. Kenneth Orski write that HOT lanes are a workable alternative to HOV lanes. "HOV lanes -- under attack by motorists, academics, and environmentalists -- may not survive politically. The alternative is HOT lanes, a policy innovation whose time has come. HOT lanes offer congestion-free highway use for a fee. Critics charge that HOT lanes benefit only the wealthy, but that is demonstrably untrue. The HOT lanes concept is a rare policy innovation that improves economic efficiency and is politically feasible as well."

Chris Kilmer, editor, ckilmer@cato.org