December 18, 2000

Public Supports Tax Cuts
Charter Schools Spread to Suburbs
More Terrorism in America's Future?

Public Supports Tax Cuts

Americans favor a large tax cut, but aren't so sure President-elect Bush will have enough public support for his proposed cuts, according to the Associated Press.

A CBS News poll found that 61 percent of Americans favor such a tax cut, but are divided on whether Bush has enough public support to pass the initial $460 billion, five-year installment.

Forty-two percent of respondents said Bush had enough support for the cut, while 38 percent said the president-elect did not. An additional 18 percent had no response, while 2 percent said Bush doesn't need public support to make the cuts. Extended over 10 years, the Bush tax plan calls for $1.3 trillion in cuts, but Congress votes on budget plans projected over five-year intervals. The survey asked only about the $460 billion cut envisioned in the first five years of the Bush plan.

One way tax cuts affect people is known for sure: They get to keep the money they worked hard to earn. In "Return the Surplus to Those Who Earned It," Doug Bandow writes that the individual tax burden is huge and giving it back to workers would be a boon to the economy. "Cutting taxes would also be the right thing to do. People are paying too much for too little. The budget is larded with pork, unnecessary programs, special interest subsidies and blatant waste." The Cato Handbook for Congress also calls for drastic tax cuts.

Charter Schools Spread to Suburbs

In a front page story today, The New York Times reports that although charter schools began mostly as a possible solution to bad city schools, and have remained largely an urban phenomenon, they are starting to spread into suburbs, in part because some suburban parents say they, too, deserve a choice of public schools, and in part because for-profit education management companies are looking for settings likely to produce good results.

The expansion is forcing suburbs to grapple with some of the same divisive issues that cities have faced over charter schools. But it also poses an unusual challenge to what many think of as the major attraction of many suburbs: the reputation of their schools.

"I don't think charter schools are meant for these kinds of communities," said Gloria Wagner, who formed the Coalition to Oppose Charter Schools in Glen Cove last summer. "We want to keep our community desirable. The connotation of a charter school is, `The schools are lousy, they're not meeting the needs of our children.' Our property values will go down, our taxes will increase because we'll need to pay more money to keep up the standards."

In "The New Trend In Education: For-Profit Schools," Carrie Lips, a former Cato Institute policy analyst, writes that "All children deserve an education marketplace as dynamic as the computer and biotech industries. The existing for-profit education marketplace provides a glimpse of what a thriving, competitive market for education might look like if the United States opened the education sector to competition." Lips analyzes the education marketplace in the Policy Analysis "Edupreneurs: A Survey of For-Profit Education."

More Terrorism in America's Future?

According toThe Washington Post, a new global threat assessment by the National Intelligence Council, scheduled for release today, concludes that terrorist attacks against the United States through 2015 "will become increasingly sophisticated and designed to achieve mass casualties. We expect the trend toward greater lethality . . . to continue."

The Cato Institute recently hosted the policy forum "How Should the United States Respond to Terrorism?." Video of the event can be seen on the Cato Web site.

In "Does U.S. Intervention Overseas Breed Terrorism?" Director of Defense Policy Studies Ivan Eland writes that there may be too much focus on deterring terrorism rather than understanding what motivates it. He concludes that a strong correlation exists between U.S. involvement in international situations and an increase in terrorist attacks against the United States.

		Palm Computing and Windows CE users: now you can read the Cato Institute's Daily Commentary and Daily Dispatch while you're on the go.

Sign-up and get the Cato Institute's Daily Dispatch in your email every weekday morning.