October 10, 2000

Don't Count Your Surplus 'Til It's Hatched
Marijuana: The Last Frontier
Today PNTR, Tomorrow WTO?

Don't Count Your Surplus 'Til It's Hatched

Both Texas Gov. George W. Bush and Vice President Al Gore are basing their tax cut and spending plans on a $2.2 trillion surplus forecast that President Bill Clinton believes is overly optimistic, according to The Washington Post. Gore and Bush take their surplus estimate from the Congressional Budget Office: $2.2 trillion through 2010, not counting the Social Security surplus.

At a fundraiser in Manhattan last week, Clinton told a group of dinner guests that Bush's plans to cut taxes $1.3 trillion over nine years might benefit them in the short-term, but would be short-sighted in the long run.

"Take my word for it," he said. "I know something about arithmetic, [and] the surplus is at least $500 billion less than they tell you it is."

But it's also $380 billion less than what Gore tells you it is, if you follow the argument that Clinton lays out.

In "Making Better Use of the Budget Surplus," Cato President Edward H. Crane writes that although the projected surplus depends on revenue assumptions that are reasonable, it also depends on a grossly optimistic assumption: that Congress and the White House will resist the itch to spend. "If by some miracle a federal budget surplus does materialize," he writes, "under no circumstances should the president and Congress be allowed to use it to buy more goodies for favored constituencies."

Marijuana: The Last Frontier

Alaskan voters are being asked in the Nov. 7 election to say "yes" to marijuana in a single, sweeping measure that would not only legalize consumption of the drug for anyone age 18 and over but also create automatic amnesty for those convicted of marijuana-related charges and even require the state to consider restitution for such people, according to The New York Times.

Supporters of Proposition 5 are visible all over Anchorage, holding up roadside banners, handing out leaflets and displaying stickers on their car bumpers. They gathered signatures from more than 41,000 registered voters to get the measure on the ballot, more than twice the needed number and a figure that represents nearly 10 percent of the voters in the state. And if marijuana users are derided by drug critics as laid-back and apathetic, the frenetic energy that many are bringing to the cause belies that image.

"It's a travesty that we lock people up and make criminals of them for personal use of marijuana," said James Garhart, a 51-year-old messenger who says he has used marijuana "semi-daily" for years and now spends most of his free time working for the Yes-on-5 campaign.

The Cato Institute hosted the conference "Beyond Prohibition: An Adult Approach to Drug Policies in the 21st Century" last year, which featured legal scholars, former law enforcement officials, and political and social leaders discussing the harmful consequences of drug prohibition and to assess alternative policies. Video of the conference is available online. In testimony before congress last year, Cato Executive Vice President David Boaz explained that the "long federal experiment in prohibition of marijuana, cocaine, heroin and other drugs has given us unprecedented crime and corruption combined with a manifest failure to stop the use of drugs or reduce their availability to children." He encouraged a policy of harm reduction and the repeal of federal drug laws, allowing states to set their own drug standards.

Today PNTR, Tomorrow WTO?

President Clinton is scheduled to sign landmark legislation today granting permanent normal trade relations to China, according to Reuters. The bill is to be signed at a White House ceremony attended by House and Senate Republican leaders and top Democratic supporters of the measure, White House spokeswoman Nanda Chitre said.

The trade bill will end the 20-year-old annual ritual of reviewing China's trade status and guarantee Chinese goods the same low-tariff access to the U.S. market as products from nearly every other nation.

The Cato Institute has been at the forefront of research into trade relations with China. In "China’s Long March to a Market Economy: The Case for Normal Trade Relations," research fellow Mark Groombridge showed that approving normal trade relations with China, and China's subsequent accession to the World Trade Organization, will benefit not only U.S. consumers but also the millions of Chinese citizens still suffering in abject poverty.

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