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Cato Daily Dispatch for December 6, 2002

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O'Neill, Lindsey Announce Resignations
Document Claims Iraq Has No Weapons of Mass Destruction
Court Upholds California Assault Weapons Law

O'Neill, Lindsey Announce Resignations

Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, whose outspokenness often landed him in hot water, announced his resignation today in a shakeup of President Bush's economic team amid concern about the ailing economy, the Associated Press reports.

White House economic adviser Larry Lindsey also was resigning, a senior White House official said.

Presidential advisers do not blame O'Neill for the economic problems, but they've long recognized that a shakeup of the economic team would help show voters that Bush is doing everything he can to improve matters.

Sworn in Jan. 20, 2001, O'Neill is expected to leave office within the next few weeks. During his time as treasury secretary, O'Neill's blunt-speaking style served as a lightning rod for detractors and sometimes could even make his supporters wince.

In a statement, Cato Chairman William Niskanen said that O'Neill "did not take the lead in formulating and promoting the administration's position on four major economic policy issues: the U.S. response to international financial crises, tax reform, private retirement accounts, and the response to the collapse of Enron and other large corporations. I hope that Paul is replaced by someone with similar talent and integrity but with a stronger commitment to economic policy reform and a better political ear."

Document Claims Iraq Has No Weapons of Mass Destruction

Iraq will give the United Nations a several thousand page document tomorrow expected to say it has no weapons of mass destruction but Washington has angrily refuted this, according to Reuters.

Under a U.N. Security Council resolution passed last month, Iraq must make the declaration about its nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons programs by Sunday.

If Baghdad is found to be in "material breach" of the resolution, it could set the stage for a military attack on Iraq by the United States and its allies in what Washington has described as a "coalition of the willing."

In "Top Ten Reasons Not To 'Do' Iraq," Ivan Eland, Cato's director of defense policy studies, argues against war with Iraq and suggests that the cost of war would be a huge strain on the economy.

Eland writes, "At a time of economic sluggishness and of red ink for the U.S. government, an invasion and long-term occupation of Iraq could cost billions of dollars, bust the budget and throw the U.S. economy into a tailspin. The Gulf War cost $80 billion (in 2002 dollars). Because the United States would probably be faced with a long occupation of Iraq to stabilize the country after the invasion, the cost is likely to be higher this time around. And unlike the Gulf War, no financial support from other nations can be expected to defray the costs."

Court Upholds California Assault Weapons Law

A federal appeals court upheld California's assault weapons control act yesterday, ruling that there is no constitutional right for individuals to keep and bear arms, the Los Angeles Times reports.

The 3-0 decision, declaring that the 2nd Amendment protects only the right of states to organize and maintain militias, is flatly at odds with the position of the Bush administration and a decision last year by a federal appeals court in New Orleans.

California adopted the nation's most sweeping assault weapons ban in 1999. It prohibits the manufacture, sale, or import of weapons including grenade launchers, semiautomatic pistols with a capacity of more than 10 rounds, semiautomatic rifles that use detachable magazines and guns with barrels that can be fitted with silencers.

The Cato Handbook for Congress' chapter on gun control argues for the repeal of the 1994 ban on so-called assault weapons because nationwide police statistics show that such guns are rarely used in crimes.

"Those guns do not fire faster than other guns, nor are they more powerful. Indeed, they fire smaller bullets at lower velocities than do most well-known rifles used for hunting big game," reads the Cato Handbook.

Jonathan Block, editor, jblock@cato.org