Cato Daily Dispatch for November 4, 2004
Subscribe to the Daily Dispatch via email
Subscribe to the Daily Dispatch via PDA (AvantGo)
(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.)
President Vows to Begin Work Now on Social SecurityAdministration Looks to Simplify Tax Code
Republican Victories Could Lead to Judicial Nominee Success.
President Vows to Begin Work Now on Social Security
"President Bush said on Thursday he planned to start work immediately on reforming America's ailing Social Security retirement system and predicted a long slog ahead," the Associated Press reports.
Michael Tanner, director of Cato's Project on Social Security Choice, says: "The Democratic congressional leadership, which has ardently opposed Social Security reform, now faces a choice. Will they engage in a thoughtful debate over Social Security's problems and possible solutions or will they cling to the status quo and the failed scare tactics of the past? For Republicans, they must now decide whether they meant what they said when they promised to fix Social Security."
Tanner is the author of "The 6.2 Percent Solution: A Plan for Reforming Social Security." His plan would enable individuals to privately invest their half (6.2 percentage points) of their payroll tax through individual accounts. The remaining 6.2 percentage points of payroll taxes will be used to pay transition costs and to fund disability and survivors benefits.
Administration Looks to Simplify Tax Code
"President George W. Bush said he would press ahead with the war on terrorism and his goals for the U.S. economy such as changing the tax code during his second term," Bloomberg News reports.
In "Simplifying Federal Taxes: The Advantages of Consumption-Based Taxation," Chris Edwards, Cato director of tax policy studies, writes: "Minor simplification reforms will not be enough. The tax system is caught in a spiral of continual change and nonstop growth in rules. Since the mid-1980s there have been 7,000 federal tax code changes and a 74 percent increase in the number of pages of tax rules. Complying with federal tax requirements wastes 6 billion hours each year as families and businesses fill out tax forms, keep records, and learn tax rules.
"... The complexity and inefficiency of the individual and corporate income taxes have led to great interest in replacing them with a consumption-based tax. The leading consumption-based tax proposals ... could dramatically simplify federal taxation. Those tax systems would eliminate many of the most complex aspects of federal taxation, including depreciation accounting and capital gains taxation."
Republican Victories Could Lead to Judicial Nominee Success.
"Republicans strengthened control of two branches of government this week -- but their electoral success could have its greatest effect on the third: the courts," according to the Wall Street Journal.
"All judicial nominations will be referred to a Senate with a strengthened 55-seat Republican majority. Starting in January, the Senate Judiciary Committee will have a new chairman -- expected to be Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), who would succeed Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) who is stepping down under Senate rules."
In "How Constitutional Corruption Has Led to Ideological Litmus Tests for Judicial Nominees," Roger Pilon, Cato vice president for legal affairs, writes: "The battle between politics and law takes place at many points in the American system of government, but in recent years it has become especially intense over judicial nominations. That is because judges today set national policy far more than they used to -- and far more than the Constitution contemplates. Because the original constitutional design has been corrupted, especially as it relates to the constraints the Constitution places on politics, we have come to ideological litmus tests for judges.
"... That will not change until we come to grips with the first principles of the matter -- with the true foundations of our constitutional system. Yet neither party today seems willing to do that. Democrats have an activist agenda that a politicized Constitution well serves. Republicans have their own agenda and their own reasons for avoiding the basic issues. Thus, it may fall to the nominees themselves to take a stand for law over politics, the better to restore the Constitution and the rule of law it was meant to secure."
Wyatt DuBois, editor, wdubois@cato.org
/div>