September 27, 2000

GOP Spending Spree
Supreme Court Rejects End-Run Around Appeals Process
Clinton: 2000 Surplus Going Toward Debt Reduction
Senate Moves to Raise H-1B Cap

GOP Spending Spree

The Washington Post reports in its front page today that Congress is moving to approve the biggest spending increase for domestic programs since the Republicans took control in 1995, adding billions more to the budget for everything from local harbor dredging and bridge construction to hospital funding, science research projects and school aid.

Republican leaders say they must spend far in excess of their own budget blueprint to satisfy the demands of both President Clinton and their own rank and file.

"The deficit used to have some modest braking influence, but now that that's not there, it's just a free-for-all," said Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) "They're all equal opportunity pork-barrelers . . . This is the worst ever."

In "The Return of the Living Dead: Federal Programs That Survived the Republican Revolution," Stephen Moore and Stephen Slivinski show that the 106th Congress is well on its way to becoming the largest-spending Congress on domestic social programs since the late 1970s when Jimmy Carter sat in the Oval Office and Thomas "Tip" O'Neill was Speaker of the House.

They find that the total federal nondefense spending is estimated to grow in real terms by $33 billion, or 11 percent, from 1999 to 2001 under the budget resolution approved by Congress in April 2000. And this is undoubtedly a "best-case" scenario: As the election gets closer, Congress and the White House are almost certain to add billions more to a budget crammed with special-interest spending for just about every constituency in Washington -- from farmers, to environmentalists, to road builders, to the teachers' unions and universities.

Supreme Court Rejects End-Run Around Appeals Process

The U.S. Supreme Court said yesterday that it will not hear a direct appeal of the Microsoft Corp. antitrust case, sending a federal judge's order breaking up the software giant back to a federal appeals court and effectively delaying a final decision in the case by at least a year, according to The Washington Post. The court's 8-to-1 decision, with Justice Stephen G. Breyer dissenting, means that the case will be heard first by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, which handed Microsoft a 1998 victory during a related antitrust lawsuit brought by the Justice Department.

In "Microsoft Redux: Anatomy of a Baseless Lawsuit," Senior Fellow in Constitutional Studies Robert Levy demonstrates why claims of monopoly or unfair competition are completely unjustified. In "The Theft of Microsoft," Executive Vice President David Boaz explains how "over the years Gates and his colleagues made a lot of people mad, especially their competitors. Some of those competitors delivered a 222-page white paper in 1996 to Joel Klein, head of the Justice Department's antitrust division, and urged him to do to Microsoft 1in court what they couldn't do in the marketplace."

Clinton: 2000 Surplus Going Toward Debt Reduction

President Clinton planned to announce today that the amount of money taken from Americans beyond what is needed to run the federal government for the 2000 fiscal year will be at least $230 billion, according to Reuters.

The $230 billion figure is the total surplus tax dollars that have flooded into the U.S. Treasury during this fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30. Aides said Clinton planned to announce that about $223 billion of the surplus is going toward reducing the national debt. That will mean more than $360 billion has gone for debt reduction over the last year.

In "What to Do with the Emerging Budget Surplus?" Cato President Ed Crane recommends using the projected surplus to privatize Social Security. In testimony before Congress on the same issue, Cato Chairman William A. Niskanen said that a surplus should be used only for major fiscal reforms such as privatizing Social Security and Medicare or reducing the federal debt and initiating major tax reform. Director of Fiscal Policy Studies Stephen Moore agrees in "Cut Taxes and the National Debt." Senior Fellow Doug Bandow argues for tax cuts in "Return the Surplus to Those Who Earned It."

Senate Moves to Raise H-1B Cap

The Senate signaled its intention to pass legislation increasing visas for highly skilled foreign workers yesterday, in what observers see as a preelection bid to satisfy the high-tech industry's huge demand for employees, according to The Washington Post. ( http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A23857-2000Sep26.html )

This bill would raise from 115,000 to 195,000 the number of H-1B visas that can be issued for foreign workers to come to the United States for up to six years to fill specialized jobs that companies say they cannot fill with American workers. Without new legislation, the limit would drop to 107,500 next year. Companies have estimated that 300,000 jobs are going unfilled because of a lack of skilled workers.

In the Cato Handbook for Congress, Dan Griswold and Stephen Moore call for easing immigration laws and expanding quotas for immigrant workers. Julian L. Simon compiles a plethora of immigration trends and facts in the pamphlet "Immigration: The Demographic and Economic Facts." In "Keep Giving Us Your Best and Your Brightest," Moore argues that "immigrants are generally assets to our economy and our culture." In "H-1B Straightjacket: Why Congress Should Repeal the Cap," Griswold explains that "fears that [skilled immigrant] workers cause unemployment and depress wages are unfounded."

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