September 29, 1999

Daily Digest editor Peter Orvetti is ill today. This abbreviated edition was written by Patrick Korten

The PRC at 50
Stopgap Federal Funding

The PRC at 50

The People's Republic of China officially celebrates its 50th anniversary on Friday, but the nature of the celebration will vary quite a bit, depending on where you are. In Beijing, the last redoubt of China's Communist Party leaders, a half-million carefully screened participants will march beneath a giant portrait of Chairman Mao, chanting 50 slogans approved by the party's Central Committee. Far to the south, the city of Shanghai will, in the words of the Washington Post's John Pomfret, host "some of the world's wealthiest capitalists in the skyscrapers of a new Shanghai business district that evokes the space-age world of George Jetson."

Today, the Cato Institute is hosting a day-long conference entitled "Whither China: The PRC at 50." Top Chinese and American scholars participating in the event include James Lilley, former ambassador to both Taiwan and the PRC, Martin Lee, head of Hong Kong's Democratic Party, and many others. Live Webcast coverage continues throughout the day, and archived video of all speeches and events will be available shortly after the conference ends at 4:30 p.m. EDT.

Recent op-ed pieces on China include two by Jim Dorn ("China's Financial Future" and "Capital Freedom Spells Prosperity") and one by Mark Groombridge ("The Right Way to Get China into the WTO").

Stopgap Federal Funding

Both the Senate and the House have now voted to approve a short-term continuing resolution which will keep the federal government funded for the next three weeks. It was made necessary by the fact that the end of the government's fiscal year is just a day away and 8 of the 13 appropriations bills haven't been passed yet.

Money bills still pending in Congress include the $270 billion Defense spending bill, where a battle over whether to produce the F-22 fighter has held things up. In mid-summer, House appropriators surprised observers by voting to cut funding for the F-22, just as a Cato policy analysis had recommended earlier in the year ("Hard Choices: Fighter Procurement in the Next Century," by Williamson Murray). But the Senate put the money back in the budget, and now they're fighting over how much money will be put back into the program.

Also pending is the $68 billion Agriculture spending bill, slowed down by a ludicrous debate over federally mandated regional milk prices that vary depending on a dairy farmer's distance from a town in Wisconsin. Who knew that Rube Goldberg was a farmer? As the Cato Handbook for Congress notes in the most recent edition, "There is now roughly one bureaucrat for every six full-time farmers. The USDA should be eliminated, freeing farmers to grow whatever quantity of whatever crops they see fit and to sell them at whatever price the market will bear."" For much more information on how Congress could actually be cutting federal programs and spending, see the on-line edition of the Handbook.