New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s (R) hearts former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R), so much that Christie says it is ”completely intellectually dishonest” to compare RomneyCare to ObamaCare.  Why?  Because Romney didn’t raise taxes, and President Obama did.  Oh.

Avik  (pronounced O-vik) Roy explains how Christie gets RomneyCare so very, very wrong:

There isn’t a single person, left or right, who follows health policy seriously who disagrees with the assertion that Romneycare was the model for Obamacare. And Massachusetts has had to raise taxes, after Romney left office, to pay for the law’s significant cost overruns.

Here are some examples, left and right. But Roy o-mits a few important points.

1. Mitt Romney increased taxes the moment he signed RomneyCare.  RomneyCare increased net government spending.  That in itself is an increase in the tax burden.  All that remains to be determined is who will pay for that added spending and when they will pay it.  The fact that the incidence of that added tax burden fell after Romney left office does not mean that’s when the added tax burden was created.
2. Mitt Romney has raised taxes on as many people as Barack Obama has.  Half of RomneyCare’s new spending was financed by the federal government through the Medicaid program, which is financed through federal taxes, which fall on taxpayers in all 50 states.  That means that when Romney financed half of RomneyCare’s new spending by pulling down more federal Medicaid dollars, he increased taxes on residents of all 50 states.
3. RomneyCare was born of, and expanded, a corrupt scheme by Massachusetts politicians to tax residents of all 50 states.  What motivated Romney to enact RomneyCare, as former Romney/Obama adviser Jonathan Gruber explains here, was the widespread desire (within Massachusetts) to hang on to $385 million of federal Medicaid money that Massachusetts had secured using one of Medicaid’s notorious and fraudulent “provider tax” scams.  In other words, the whole purpose of RomneyCare was to enable Massachusetts to hold on to $385 million that it received by defrauding and taxing residents of other states.  And of course, Romney/RomneyCare caused the tax burden that Massachusetts effectively imposes on non-Massachusetts residents to grow.

RomneyCare: Making a Fool of Every Republican It Touches Since 2006 is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

On June 12, 1967, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down bans on interracial marriage in more than a dozen states in the case of Loving v. Virginia. Today, the highest court in the United States may soon take on the issue of marriage equality for gay and lesbian relationships. Attorneys David Boies and Theodore B. Olson are hoping the case of Perry v. Schwarzenegger will further establish marriage as a fundamental right of citizenship. Also featured are John Podesta, President of the Center for American Progress, Cato Institute Chairman Robert A. Levy and Cato Executive Vice President David Boaz.

Watch the full event from which many clips were pulled here and Robert A. Levy’s presentation here.

The Constitutional Case for Marriage Equality is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

In 2006, then-Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney (R) fought for and enacted a health care law now known as RomneyCare – though the law is so nearly identical to ObamaCare that one could call it ObamaCare 1.0.  Romney is seeking the GOP nomination for president in 2012.  But since 84 percent of Republicans want ObamaCare repealed, the fact that he paved the way for ObamaCare is causing problems for Romney among the party faithful.  The most recent manifestation came in the form of a tongue-lashing from former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee (R), whose book criticizes Romney both for enacting RomneyCare and for refusing to admit it was mistake.  In a recent interview, Huckabee said:

The position he should take is to say: “Look, the reason Obamacare won’t work is because we’ve tried it at the state level and we know it won’t work.”

Through a spokesman, Romney has — once again! – defended ObamaCare 1.0:

“Mitt Romney is proud of what he accomplished for Massachusetts in getting everyone covered,” Romney’s spokesman, Eric Fehrnstrom, told the Boston Globe, in the first direct response Team Mitt made to Huckabee’s criticism of the health plan in his new book.

Fehrnstrom added the usual stuff about how, even though Romney is proud of what RomneyCare/ObamaCare has done for Massachusetts, RomneyCare/ObamaCare may not be right for the entire nation.  As David Boaz and I explain in this Cato video, to which Romney has lent enduring relevance, Romney can’t have it both ways:

It’s as if the guy has just awakened from a 20-year nap and doesn’t realize the world has changed.

Romney Van Winkle is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Apologies in advance for the epic-length post.

There’s been a fair bit of wailing and garment-rending about war on the op-ed pages.  In addition to the cloying and tiresome Mark Helprin piece to which David links below, E.J. Dionne, Glenn Greenwald, and Fred Hiatt have all touched on the subject in recent days.  One common theme is the idea that Americans are insulated from the costs and benefits of war, and that this is a problem.

To their credit, some of the writers offer proposals for redressing matters: Helprin suggests American citizens should force congressional declarations of war characterized by “extraordinary, penetrating debate” in order to ensure that decisions to go to war have been “ratified unambiguously by the American people through their constitutional and republican institutions.”  (Do we also owe the troops good decisions?)  Further, citizens must recognize that it is “unacceptable” to “starve the means to fight” in order to defray the costs of war.  “If the general population  must do with less, so be it, for the problem is only imagined.”

What planet does Helprin live on?  The ways in which citizens and legislators behave when it comes to war are shaped by the incentives each group faces.  Helprin — and the other writers — should try to think about those incentives if they actually care about solving these problems.

Why, for example, has the U.S. Congress, since its last declaration of war (against Romania during World War II), insisted on “delegating” the prerogative to go to war to the Executive in spite of its clear obligation under the U.S. Constitution?  Because it’s in their interests to do so.  In this way, Congresspeople can position themselves to take credit when wars go well but blame the Executive when they go badly.  The requirement that Congress declare war was designed in part to force the hand of the legislator, to put him on the record, in an effort to localize the costs and benefits of wars on those launching them.  But then Congress ingeniously figured out that it could shirk this responsibility by delegating authority up to the Executive, at which point it could claim credit for victories and point fingers after defeats.  (Recall the Democratic legislators who absurdly claimed of the Iraq war resolution that they didn’t think President Bush actually intended to use the congressional resolution to take the country to war…)

And what about the voters?  Greenwald writes that

One significant cause of America’s indifference to the wars we are waging is that those wars have virtually no effect on the overwhelming majority of Americans (at least no recognized effect), while they impose a huge cost on a tiny sliver of the population:  those who fight the wars and their families.

Rational choice theory has taken a beating in the wake of the financial meltdown, but it would be dumb to throw its central insights.  Helprin, Hiatt, Dionne, et al, should think about the views of a notional Rational Voter.  Why should he or she care enough about America’s wars to do something about them?

I care about U.S. foreign policy a lot, and I think it’s deeply mistaken and destructive.  But even I would have a hard time telling most utility-maximizing Americans why they should care enough about our military spending and our wars — rather than other political issues — to mobilize their elected officials to do something about them.  As the Beloved Founder of one of America’s most vital institutions has been known to remark, the U.S. tax code “treats us like so many gerbils. Do this and you’ll get some sugar water. Do that and you’ll get an electric shock.”

And it turns out people really like sugar water and hate electric shocks!  If you want a voter to respond, either zap him or give him a coke.  (Politicians seem to prefer the latter, as do voters.)  For most voters, the implications of the wars are neither refreshing and delicious nor directly painful.  Given this, how could war and peace possibly become as salient as other policies that directly impact people’s lives on a daily basis?  Unemployed?  Have a mortgage?  Taxes too high?  Poised to collect Social Security or Medicare?  Employed in or consuming health care or financial services?  Can the intellectuals above get their rhetoric cranked up high enough that they can make people put aside these sorts of direct material concerns in order to carry on a sustained and probing debate about foreign wars?

As this discussion demonstrates, the problem for non-interventionists is how to get voters to care enough about America’s crazy foreign policy to stop it.  Keep in mind that it’s unlikely that material constraints will force us to rein in our ambitions any time soon.  America is blessed by geography and an economy that seems impossible to defeat, despite our rulers’ best efforts.  Given the unlikelihood of severe costs like conquest or bankruptcy, in all likelihood the American Goliath will keep lumbering along.  And the pundits will keep carping.

War and the Intellectuals is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

• Progressives are outraged that the Supreme Court overturned limits on corporate political advertising last month. Here’s why they should be rejoicing.

• Policy forum today at Cato: “Will the Senate Health Care Bill Keep the Poor Poor?” Click here to watch live from 12:00-1:30 PM EST.

• Idea of the day: Cut the Commerce Department to boost real business.

• Harvard economist Jeffrey Miron: “Economists find weak or contradictory evidence that higher government spending spurs the economy. Substantial research, however, does find that tax cuts stimulate the economy and that fiscal adjustments—attempts to reduce deficits by raising taxes or lowering expenditure—work better when they focus on tax cuts.”

• Cato’s Ilya Shapiro wrapping up daily dispatches from the Winter Olympics in Vancouver. More here.

• Podcast: “How Many Libertarians?” featuring David Boaz.

Monday Links is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

• David Boaz debates at The Economist: Is Obama failing? “In many ways, Obama has just doubled down on George W. Bush’s policies of bailouts, takeovers, expanded Fed powers and nationalizations. In a recession he is adding debt, taxes and regulation to the burdens already felt by business.” Readers can vote and join the debate.

• Ever wonder why weather forecasters can get things so wrong?

• Looking for a primer on the causes of the financial crisis? The new Cato Policy Report has answers.

• How to tell when the government health care overhaul is dead.

• Podcast: “Citizens United and SpeechNow.org” featuring Steve Simpson of the Institute of Justice.

Wednesday Links is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

In a recent Cato study, “The Libertarian Vote in the Age of Obama,”  authors David Boaz and David Kirby found that libertarian voters, who make up about 14 percent of the electorate, are a leading indicator of how independents will cast their ballots.

Appearing on Freedom Watch earlier this week, Boaz explained the results of the study, and what it means for the next election. Watch:

How Will the Independents Vote? is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

• David Boaz on Obama’s first year: “From this libertarian, Obama’s first year looks grim. …He may well end up like Lyndon Johnson, with an ambitious domestic agenda eventually bogged down by endless war. But I don’t think his wished-for FDR model — a transformative agenda that is both popular and long-lasting — is in the cards.”

• The message from Massachusetts: “There can be no denying that this election was a clear cut rejection of the Democratic health care bills.”

• Attacks from all sides: See what happens when the Right takes on free enterprise.

• A new dictator in Iraq?

• Podcast: Daniel Ikenson discusses Obama’s trade policy.

Wednesday Links is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Last week, President Obama unveiled a plan for something he called a ”Financial Crisis Responsibility Fee,” to be fleshed out in his forthcoming budget proposal. He will seek to have some set of financial services providers pay money to the government as comeuppance for the recent financial crisis and government involvement in trying to remedy it.

The naming of the “Financial Crisis Responsibility Fee” is a fairly conspicuous attempt to avoid calling it a tax. (My colleague David Boaz points out the sheer number of taxes the Obama administration and its allies are considering.) But it’s fairly clear that this thing is, indeed, a tax.

The galaxy of government revenues has a number of different planets—taxes, fees, penalties, and a few others. If they’re well constructed, fees are generally favored because the recipients of services or benefits pay their costs. Fees avoid redistribution of wealth (either toward or away from payers). But this doesn’t mean that you can name any payment to the government a ”fee” and produce fair and appropriate results.

When I worked on Capitol Hill, I was tasked with writing a bill to deny federal agencies the power to raise taxes, requiring them to be approved by Congress. (You’d think that only Congress should set or raise taxes, right? Sorry to disappoint.) The goal was not to draw fee-setting into the ambit of the bill.

After extensive reasearch into the dividing line between fees and taxes, which is not as simple as one might imagine, I produced the following definition, as found in the Taxpayer’s Defense Act (introduced in the House during the 105th Congress, and the House and Senate in the 106th Congress):

[T]he term “tax” means a non-penal, mandatory payment of money or its equivalent to the extent such payment does not compensate the Federal Government or other payee for a specific benefit conferred directly on the payer.

Parsing it briefly: A penalty is not a tax. A voluntary payment is not a tax. Both payments of money and tranfers of value not denominated in dollars can be taxes. A payment that compensates a benefit conferred is not a tax, but the part of a payment going above the benefit conferred is. Non-tax payments are for a specific benefit conferred directly on the payer, not benefits conferred on regulated entities generally or on the country as a whole. (Though this isn’t specified in the definition, being regulated isn’t a benefit.)

With even the New York Times referring to President Obama’s “Financial Crisis Responsibility Fee” as a “tax,” there doesn’t seem to be much chance of that the administration will get the “fee” label to stick. But, just in case, here’s confirmation: It’s a tax.

In Case This Needs Saying: It’s a Tax is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

• David Boaz: “Suddenly, I find myself nostalgic for Bill Clinton….Come back, Bill, all is forgiven. Or most, anyway. As long as you bring a Republican Congress with you.”

• So, have you been following the health-care debate on C-SPAN? Oh wait…

• Obama administration preparing a new arms package for Taiwan.

• Nat Hentoff to Castro et al: “Roar, tyrants, you cannot hide your racist deeds.“

• Podcast: “Price Controls in Obamacare” featuring Michael F. Cannon.

Monday Links is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Yesterday, David Boaz riffed off of Michael Petrilli’s recent Wall Street Journal piece on the need for Republicans to stop denigrating well-educated, social-progressive types and make them feel welcome in the party. That is, make them feel welcome as long as they don’t try to impose their progressivism on everyone else through government.

That’s certainly good stuff — I’m all for making the GOP as libertarian as possible — but libertarianism extends far beyond just saying nice things about people who eat arugula or who own their own wind farms. Fundamentally, it means government leaving people alone in all facets of their lives as long as they aren’t inflicting harm on others.

Unfortunately, as Petrilli’s Thomas B. Fordham Foundation — perhaps the foremost neoconservative education think tank in the nation — has made clear for years, that’s definitely not something Petrilli and Co. are prepared to do.

Petrilli’s piece was a nice first step, but both he and the GOP still have a long way to go.

Selectively Small-Government is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

• Well, is conservatism “brain dead” after all? David Boaz: “What does conservatism stand for today, other than opposition to President Obama?”

• Why Congress should not renew the PATRIOT Act’s “lone wolf” provision.

• Sex and security in Afghanistan.

• Barack Obama: “The omnipresent omnipresident.“

• Federal spending has doubled in less than a decade. Here’s what we can do about it.

• Podcast: “Unemployment and Stimulus Part II“

Tuesday Links is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Okay, well maybe Tax Tips for Democrats won’t ever make it to the publisher, but while speaking at Cato University this summer, David Boaz offered a few tips to any more Democrats with tax problems who are thinking about joining the current administration.

“Some people say the best thing about electing a Democratic president is all the back taxes we collect from their appointees,” says Boaz. “It helps to balance the budget.”

Watch the whole thing:

C-SPAN 2 will air Boaz’s talk on the state of freedom in America this Sunday at 11:30 AM EST.

A New Book from David Boaz? Tax Tips for Democrats is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Obama Considering Another Round of Stimulus

With unemployment continuing to climb and the economy struggling along, some lawmakers and pundits are raising the possibility of a second stimulus package at some point in the future. The Cato Institute was strongly opposed to the $787 billion package passed earlier this year, and would oppose additional stimulus packages on the same grounds.

“Once government expands beyond the level of providing core public goods such as the rule of law, there tends to be an inverse relationship between the size of government and economic growth,” argues Cato scholar Daniel J. Mitchell. “Doing more of a bad thing is not a recipe for growth.”

Mitchell narrated a video in January that punctures the myth that bigger government “stimulates” the economy. In short, the stimulus, and all big-spending programs are good for government, but will have negative effects on the economy.

Writing in Forbes, Cato scholar Alan Reynolds weighs in on the failures of stimulus packages at home and abroad:

In reality, the so-called stimulus package was actually just a deferred tax increase of $787 billion plus interest.

Whether we are talking about India, Japan or the U.S., all such unaffordable spending packages have repeatedly been shown to be effective only in severely depressing the value of stocks and bonds (private wealth). To call that result a “stimulus” is semantic double talk, and would be merely silly were it not so dangerous.

In case you’re keeping score, Cato scholars have opposed government spending to boost the economy without regard to the party in power.

For more of Cato’s research on government spending, visit Cato.org/FiscalReality.

Sarah Palin Resigns as Governor of Alaska

Alaska Governor Sarah Palin resigned from office last week with 18 months left in her term, setting off weeklong speculation by pundits.

Cato Vice President Gene Healy comments:

Palin’s future remains uncertain, but it’s hard to see how her cryptic and poorly drafted resignation speech positions her for a presidential run. Nonetheless, her departure presents a good opportunity to reflect on the Right’s affinity for presidential contenders who – how to put this? – don’t exactly overwhelm you with their intellectual depth.

It’s one thing to reject liberal elitism. It’s another thing to become so consumed with annoying liberals that you cleave to anyone they mock, and make presidential virtues out of shallow policy knowledge and lack of intellectual curiosity.

Writing at Politico, Cato scholars David Boaz and Roger Pilon weigh in on what her resignation means for the former Vice-Presidential candidate’s political future:

Boaz:

Will we one day say that her presidency was ‘born on the Fourth of July’? I doubt it. This appears to be just the latest evidence that Sarah Palin is not ready for prime time. The day McCain chose her, I compared her unfavorably to Mark Sanford. Despite everything, I’d still stand by that analysis. At the time I noted that devout conservative Ramesh Ponnuru said ‘Palin has been governor for about two minutes.’ Now it’s three minutes.

Running for president after a single term as governor is a gamble. Running after quitting in the middle of your first term is something else again. If this is indeed a political move to clear the decks for a national campaign, then she needs adult supervision soon. But I can’t really believe that’s what’s going on here. I suspect we’re going to hear soon about a yet-unknown scandal that was about to make continuing in office untenable.

Pilon:

It seems that since her return to the state following the campaign, activist opponents and bloggers have bombarded the governor’s office with endless document requests. And she’s faced 16 ethics inquiries, with no end in sight. All but one have since been resolved, but the politics of personal destruction has cost the state millions, as Palin noted. Add to that the unrelenting, often vicious and gratuitous attacks on her and even on her family, and it’s no wonder that she would say ‘Enough.’ It has nothing to do with ‘quitting’ or with being ‘unable to take the heat.’ It has everything to do with stepping back and saying you’re not willing to put your family and your state through any more. She seems confident that history will judge her more thoughtless critics for what they are. I hope she’s right.

Honduras’ President Is Removed from Office

In reaction to Honduran President Manuel Zelaya’s attempt to stay in power despite term limits set by the nation’s Constitution, armed forces removed him, sending the Latin American nation into political turmoil.

Juan Carlos Hidalgo, an expert on Latin American affairs, comments:

The removal from office of Zelaya on Sunday by the armed forces is the result of his continuous attempts to promote a referendum that would allow for his reelection, a move that had been declared illegal by the Supreme Court and the Electoral Tribunal and condemned by the Honduran Congress and the attorney general. Unfortunately, the Honduran constitution does not provide an effective civilian mechanism for removing a president from office after repeated violations of the law, such as impeachment in the U.S. Constitution. Nonetheless, the armed forces acted under the order of the country’s Supreme Court, and the presidency has been promptly bestowed on the civilian figure — the president of Congress — specified by the constitution.

To be sure, Hidalgo writes, the military action in Honduras was not a coup:

What happened in Honduras on June 28 was not a military coup. It was the constitutional removal of a president who abused his powers and tried to subvert the country’s democratic institutions in order to stay in office.

The extent to which this episode has been misreported is truly remarkable.

Week in Review: Stimulus, Sarah Palin and a Political Conflict in Honduras is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Two freedom lovers who bought an old RV to travel across the country and film an online documentary called The Motorhome Diaries stopped by Cato this week to interview Cato Executive Vice President David Boaz.

Boaz chatted with Diaries rider Pete Eyre about libertarianism, Cato’s role in Washington and why he’s optimistic about the future of liberty.

You can follow them on their trek at MotorhomeDiaries.com or on Twitter at @MHDiaries.

‘Motorhome Diaries’ Crew Makes a Stop at Cato is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog