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Gabriella Beaumont-Smith

In December 2020, Mexico’s President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO), issued a decree banning genetically modified (GM) corn for human consumption. Mexico is the US’s third top trading partner for agricultural products and the number two export market for US corn. The ban poses concern for many American corn farmers because more than 90 percent of US corn is genetically modified.

The original decree was very vague and created uncertainty around the definition of “for human consumption.” In February 2023, AMLO modified the decree but the updated version does not clear up much.

The new decree explicitly states that GM corn for human consumption through “nixtamalization” (a traditional corn preparation process) or flour production for dough and tortillas is prohibited. However, it remains unclear whether GM corn used as animal feed and for industrial uses for human food would be affected by the ban. The use of GM corn for these purposes is not explicitly prohibited—the updated decree only states that GM corn used as animal feed and in products intended for human consumption should be gradually substituted.

Since Mexican law already requires permits for the use of GM corn, the decree states that the agencies administering permits for the release of GM corn seeds and GM corn for human consumption should revoke the permits and refrain from granting new ones. However, the decree provides no clarity or guarantee that permits provided for GM corn used as animal feed or for industrial uses for human food will not be revoked or granted in the future.

Although the decree is intended for the use of GM corn for tortillas, most tortillas are made with non‐​transgenic white corn that is already primarily supplied by Mexican production. However, Mexican production cannot completely satisfy demand. Nonetheless, in June 2023, Mexico announced it would temporarily apply a 50% tariff on white corn imports, which was initially suspended last year to help ease inflationary pressures.

Complicating matters is that the GM corn ban and the application of these tariffs is likely illegal under the United States‐​Mexico‐​Canada Agreement (USMCA). The ban could violate the agriculture and sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) chapters, while the tariffs could violate the national treatment and market access for goods chapter.

The agriculture chapter specifically lays out agricultural biotechnology provisions. These were not included in USMCA’s predecessor, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and likely added to the USMCA given the problems around agricultural biotechnology and trade with Mexico. Mexico has been inactive on food and feed products biotechnology applications since May 2018, and in 2019 ceased and rejected applications for genetically modified cotton seeds, citing the precautionary principle. This principle dictates that action should be taken before there is necessarily complete scientific proof of risk. In fact, the principle is codified in the USMCA and states provisional action can only be taken to mitigate risk to human, animal, or plant life or health when scientific proof of risk is insufficient.

Moreover, the trade agreement specifically includes provisions for standards that are “science‐​based.” The Mexican government has not provided any scientific evidence that GM corn poses a risk to human, animal, or plant life or health, and it cannot legitimately argue that the scientific evidence about the safety of GM corn is insufficient. Mexico’s reasoning for the ban is to “reach self‐​sufficiency and food sovereignty,” thus it is seemingly a pretext for a protectionist scheme to keep out US corn and prop up Mexican corn production.

Some even posit that Mexico’s actions against GM corn are a retaliation against the US government’s heavy subsidization of domestic corn production, particularly since Mexico eliminated most direct subsidies to its agriculture sector when it joined NAFTA.

The US and Mexico attempted formal consultations to resolve differences on the ban but the talks failed, so the US Trade Representative, Katherine Tai, announced the establishment of a dispute settlement panel under the USMCA, in August 2023. The decision from this third‐​party panel remains to be seen. In the meantime, Mexican farmers, American farmers, other businesses, and consumers face uncertainty about how this decree affects their future, which undoubtedly will have consequences for US‐​Mexico trade.

The longer that this matter goes unresolved, not only will Mexicans and Americans lose but the disruptions to North American trade will cost Canadians too. Bypassing important trade rules only serves to create turmoil while providing little (if any) new value for Mexicans.

Jordan Cohen and Dominik Lett

The Biden administration is asking for a $100 billion supplemental spending package for Israel, Ukraine, Indo‐​Pacific allies, border security, and more. This legislation would evade spending limits agreed to back in May and spend future taxpayer money that is not necessarily in US interests. By tying together more than a dozen separate issues, this request uses an all‐​or‐​nothing approach.

Congress should reject tying together fundamentally unrelated priorities and consider the Israel emergency request as a standalone. If Ukraine, Indo‐​Pacific allies, border security, or any other issue merits additional funding, they should be considered as part of the ongoing appropriations process.

Biden’s latest emergency funding request arose after the atrocities committed by Hamas against Israel in early October. The administration has framed Israel’s need for military assistance as an emergency and has requested $14 billion in Israel‐​related assistance. The attacks by Hamas and Israel’s military retaliation certainly demand an urgent response, but the current military situation does not justify a massive surge in emergency military aid.

Israel’s early bombing campaign has forced Hamas underground and on its heels. To achieve its mission of ending Hamas, Israel will need to fight through Hamas’s extensive tunnels and in an area where the Israel Defense Forces are more unfamiliar with the territory than their opposition.

In its most limited version, this war will be an isolated ground invasion where Israel uses ground sensors, navigation technology, and ground‐​penetrating munitions alongside armed troops to fight a war against Hamas in the terrorist organization’s tunnels. In this scenario, Israel needs few weapons from US stockpiles.

The weapons it does need do not require extra spending on the defense industrial base and tend not to be in limited supply or in high demand with other partners, like Ukraine and Taiwan.

Take “bunker buster” munitions like GBU‐​28s. Israel will need these specialized bombs to penetrate Hamas’s tunnels. But neither Taiwan nor Ukraine require them, the US has some available in its inventory, and they are not particularly expensive. There are some exceptions, however. Stinger and Avenger anti‐​aircraft missiles used against drones and aircraft are in high demand with limited inventories. Here Israel would compete directly with Taiwan and Ukraine.

Thus, if Congress wants to support Israel’s campaign, any emergency effort to ensure that Israel receives necessary weapons for this operation should be focused and not particularly costly.

Israel does not need expansive emergency military aid. Israel already has most or all the weapons it needs to carry out a limited campaign. If the scale and scope of the conflict change dramatically, such as other actors getting involved (Iran, Syria, or Hezbollah), then Congress and the administration can reassess. Otherwise, barring some near‐​term need for their defense, giving Israel a de facto blank check with Iron Dome and offensive weapons funding is senseless and could escalate to a more expansive war.

In the case of Ukraine, the Indo‐​Pacific, and the border, new funding cannot be justified as responding to unexpected, sudden, and non‐​permanent emergencies. Thus, the necessity for more US funding is questionable.

The Biden administration requests $61 billion in funding for Ukraine, double the administration’s previous Ukraine supplemental request. Most of the new funding is for military aid and replenishing US weapons stockpiles. It is irresponsible to increase military assistance to Ukraine without mandating accountability to successfully use and track these weapons, especially as Ukraine is suffering from a less‐​than‐​effective counteroffensive and is losing US weapons.

Without stricter monitoring of US weapons transfers, Washington will inevitably accidentally arm groups that will act against US interests. It is not in America’s interest to continue to arm stalled offensives that reduce US weapons stockpiles without meaningfully bringing the Ukraine conflict any closer to an end.

Biden requests a further $7 billion in assistance for the Indo‐​Pacific, with much of that funding aimed at supporting US allies near China. Competing with China through an emergency supplemental budget is absurd. There is no active conflict in East Asia, and emergency funding is not necessary to deter China. If the administration and Congress agree that China is an upcoming threat, they should plan for it accordingly in the base budget. Relying on supplementals to implement longer‐​term foreign policy objectives results in worse strategy and overspending.

Across multiple issue areas, the administration brags that the supplemental provides over $50 billion for the defense industrial base. Legislators should be skeptical of the need to use taxpayer dollars to “strengthen” the defense industrial base. The undue influence of defense lobbyists on a Congress eager to create jobs has resulted in a mismatch between budget and strategy. Overreliance on emergency appropriations is part of the problem – not the solution.

Washington needs to prioritize its goals in key foreign policy areas. The US does not have the existing weapons or military inventory to successfully fund wars in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East while maintaining the strongest military and the world’s largest weapons stockpile.

Finally, the administration is asking Congress for $14 billion for increased border security, three times the annual Border Patrol budget. Some of those funds will go towards hiring additional border patrol agents and countering fentanyl‐​smuggling efforts. Stronger border enforcement did not stop marijuana smuggling in the 2000s. It won’t work for fentanyl either, especially given that a vast majority of convicted fentanyl smugglers are US citizens.

If the administration and Congress are serious about tackling illegal immigration, they should focus on creating legal pathways for immigrants to live and work in the United States. Stop‐​gap border security funding is the wrong approach and is very likely to do more harm than good.

The grand total in Biden’s supplemental funding request is $105 billion. That’s more money than the Department of State, Department of Labor, or Environmental Protection Agency received in funding this year. Any new emergency funding should be heavily scrutinized because it bypasses the normal budget process. Congress has a bad habit of using emergency designations in supplementals to evade spending limits and avoid the trade‐​off considerations involved in good budgeting.

Excessive emergency spending reduces oversight at the expense of the taxpayer. To address this broader problem, Congress should consider adopting emergency accounts and offset today’s emergency spending with future spending reductions to avoid further adding to the already excessive federal debt.

Emergency funding should be used only for priorities that are vital, sudden, urgent, unforeseen, and non‐​permanent. Taking the most charitable reading of Biden’s proposed funding, questions need to be raised about whether the current situations with Ukraine, the Indo‐​Pacific, and the border qualify as unforeseen, sudden, and non‐​permanent. There is no reason that these issues cannot be integrated into the regular budget. At best, only Israel meets these criteria. Even then, the United States already sends billions in military aid to Israel every year.

Packaging these issues together is a budget trick to fund the administration’s priorities. In essence, it forces members of Congress—who likely find one of these many issues necessary to fund—to vote for all of them. This hostage‐​taking is a way for the Biden administration to override the traditional democratic process. Instead, these issues should stand on their own merit and face separate votes in Congress.

There is no doubt that Biden’s supplemental request is smart politicking. Nonetheless, hostage‐​taking key foreign policy issues in a massive supplemental spending request is bad budgeting and promotes bad strategy. The last two decades are replete with examples of well‐​intentioned alternate funding paths (read: slush funds) becoming budgetary and strategic nightmares. Accordingly, Congress should consider the issues the administration highlights separately and, wherever possible and necessary, incorporate this spending as part of a base budget that reflects US national priorities.

Walter Olson

As I’ve noted before, there are many genuine reasons to be concerned about the practice of so‐​called ballot harvesting, in which political operatives collect signed ballots from many voters, perhaps hold them at campaign headquarters for a while, and then drop them off in batches. In particular, the practice “poses real dangers to voter privacy, security, and freedom from improper pressure, especially when there is no feasible way to keep collectors from seeing how a ballot was marked or even helping the voter mark it,” before or after the fact.

Ballot harvesting has been at the center of numerous scandals, from North Carolina to Arizona to California to the United Kingdom. The latest has arisen in corruption‐​plagued Bridgeport, Connecticut, where a judge will consider whether to set aside the results of a Democratic primary for mayor decided by 251 votes out of 8,173 cast. (Despite what one hears from #StopTheSteal enthusiasts, most systematic election irregularities appear to occur in local party primaries rather than national partisan contests, for the simple reason that these local races can sometimes be swung by dozens of votes, and it’s harder to keep conspiracies quiet if they get much bigger than that.)

Videotape evidence suggests that a party official dropped off more ballots than could plausibly have belonged to her immediate relatives, in likely violation of Connecticut’s relatively restrictive rules on the practice. (There do not appear to be allegations that the ballots were from persons not qualified to vote, and courts often take the position that misconduct by a third party should not stand in the way of counting an otherwise lawfully cast ballot.)

Some Connecticut lawmakers reacted by attempting unsuccessfully to ban lock boxes, which seems to me to draw exactly the wrong lesson from the episode. Assuming that absentee voting remains legal, this would place on wayward campaign operatives in the future at most the minor burden of buying stamps and dropping the same ballots in a U.S. Postal Service mailbox. As a bonus, conventional mailboxes almost never come with video monitoring, which is how the Bridgeport episode came to light. In what sense does this make anything more secure?

Indeed, if improved security is the goal, we should want to encourage wider use of drop boxes in place of conventional post boxes. As I argue in a forthcoming paper on omnibus election reform for the Nevada Public Research Institute, drop box receipt of ballots can readily be made much more secure than postal delivery. To quote from my forthcoming paper:

[D]rop boxes, unlike the postal system, can be heavied up, protected and surveilled with the specific goal of election security in mind. New technologies for monitoring, anti‐​tampering, and secure transfer are developed regularly, in distinct contrast with the relatively static technology of conventional mail (which, again, is never optimized for the needs of election security). Even mediocre drop box setups start out with real advantages over mail, such as ensured delivery to the election office, and there is no reason to settle for mediocre amid continually improving security options, from sensors to chain of custody protocols and other user‐​integrity controls.

There is evidence that user preference in some vote‐​from‐​home environments is in fact leaning toward drop boxes over mail. In Oregon, the state with the longest experience of vote‐​by‐​mail, ballots dropped off in boxes or at offices substantially outnumber those sent by mail. “According to the Oregon secretary of state’s office, from 2012 to 2018, slightly more than 36 percent of ballots were returned by mail; 63 percent of voters put their ballots in drop boxes or returned them directly to county officials,” reports Vox.

We should also be glad that opponents managed to block the misnamed For the People Act in the last Congress, an omnibus bill that among dozens of other provisions would have required states to adopt liberal rules on ballot harvesting.

Colleen Hroncich

When you visit a Montessori school, there’s a unique feel to it. The multi‐​age classrooms are full of hands‐​on materials that allow children to explore and learn in a very natural way. Rooms are ordered in a purposeful way designed to give students a lot of freedom to learn individually and collaboratively. Teachers are called guides and are there to support the children in their learning journeys rather than directing them down pre‐​set paths. This is exactly what I saw when I recently toured St. Joseph Montessori School in Columbus, Ohio.

SJMS started in 1968 as a preschool program attached to St. Joseph Academy. When the Academy was closing in 1977 due to declining enrollment, parents worked to transition it into a private pre‑K through eighth grade Catholic school with a Montessori approach. St. Joseph Montessori is now home to around 270 students from eighteen months through eighth grade.

The Montessori method of education is based on the research and teachings of Italian physician and educator Maria Montessori (1870–1952). She emphasized a child‐​led approach that respected individual differences and aimed to educate the whole person rather than teaching a specific content. One of her more famous quotes is, “Our care of the child should be governed, not by the desire to make him learn things, but by the endeavor always to keep burning within him that light which is called intelligence.”

Melanie Steadman, Director of Operations, was my tour guide when I visited St. Joseph. She explained how the design of a Montessori classroom is geared toward the developmental stage of the children in it. Each classroom is divided into multiple learning areas that are dedicated to language, mathematics, practical life, or culture. Within an area, there are shelves full of materials that are organized from simple to complex. Once students have had a lesson on a subject, they can choose to use the materials related to it. Many of the resources have a dual purpose—for example a shape tray that teaches children shapes also has a small nub to hold that mimics the fine‐​motor skill needed to hold a pencil.

“Our parents are seeking something other than a traditional education for their child,” Melanie explains. “They’re drawn to Montessori because of the child‐​focused and individualized approach to education. Montessori meets the child where they are developmentally and lessons are presented to the child as they demonstrate readiness. We teach to the needs of each child and provide them with the independence to experience learning in a nurturing, fun, and collaborative environment. Montessori isn’t focused on the teacher and what they can do for each child, but rather on what the child is capable of doing for themselves.”

Melanie’s youngest daughter attends SJMS, so she has seen the effects of the school first‐​hand. “She has morphed from the shy child hiding behind my legs into a confident and enthusiastic individual. She can speak with an extensive vocabulary and talk about the solar system, equivalent fractions, and the fundamental needs of humans,” says Melanie. “But more importantly, she loves to learn and is excited to go to school. We drive past a traditional elementary school every day on our way to school. A few weeks ago, my daughter looked out the window and said, ‘I hope that school is fun.’ I asked her what she meant and she said, ‘SJMS is so much fun, when my teacher gives me a lesson or shows me how to do a work, it’s just really fun.’ To me, that’s the most amazing part of her Montessori journey, at seven years old she has the awareness and compassion to recognize the educational experience she has had and wish for a similar experience for children she’s never met.”

Apparently, a lot of parents agree with Melanie on the benefits of St. Joseph Montessori School’s approach. The school is bursting at the seams, with most levels at capacity. The student body is diverse; only around 30 percent are Catholic.

Ohio’s school choice programs are helping families afford SJMS. Melanie says 65 percent of the students use one of the scholarships—including EdChoice, Ohio’s newly universal voucher. While the school is not a provider for the Jon Peterson Special Needs Scholarship or the autism scholarship, SJMS students can use the scholarships to receive services provided by a third party. The school also participates in Ohio’s tax credit scholarship program through the Diocese of Columbus.

As the long history of Montessori education shows, the desire for education alternatives beyond an assigned district school isn’t new. Parents have always known one size doesn’t fit all when it comes to education. In recent years, the growing awareness of other options and the expansion of school choice have helped more parents find and afford the learning environment that works best for their children.

Norbert Michel

In a perfect world, it would be out of bounds to use incidents of horrific violence against innocent people to revive an otherwise unrelated political agenda. Nonetheless, it seems that Senator Elizabeth Warren (D‑MA) and her colleagues are going to use the recent violence in Israel to gather support for the Digital Asset Anti‐​Money Laundering Act, a bill Warren’s been hawking for months.

In December 2022, Warren claimed that “crypto has become the preferred tool for terrorists, for ransomware gangs, for drug dealers, and for rogue states that want to launder money.” Such a broad and sweeping claim simply does not withstand scrutiny.

Yet rather than deal with the actual problem of terrorism, Warren’s bill would impose stricter anti‐​money laundering rules on Americans who use digital assets (crypto). It would heighten the financial surveillance of individuals and impose possibly unworkable requirements on users of self‐​hosted wallets as well as the operators of technological infrastructure that don’t even interface with transacting parties.

It would do nothing to address specific acts of crime or violence, or even the fraud that occurred with FTX. Simply put, it’s bad policy.

As I and my fellow Cato scholars have argued repeatedly, crypto is used for crime, just as the US dollar and a host of other financial (and nonfinancial) instruments. And all crime should be taken seriously. But it makes no sense to respond to acts of crime or violence by making it virtually impossible for law‐​abiding citizens to use any of these instruments, which is a likely outcome from Warren’s approach. To take just one example, a bill that throws sand in the gears of lawful American crypto activity would undermine those Americans volunteering to send crypto aid to Israel.

Her attempt is just the latest in the long‐​running effort to sacrifice Americans’ rights in the name of security. And if the metric is stopping criminals and terrorists, it’s very difficult to say that this effort has worked.

After decades of experience, spending billions of dollars, and requiring people to file millions of reports each year, the federal government still can’t make the case that the current regulatory regime has made any appreciable dent in criminal activity. Rather than force private businesses to serve as law enforcement and impose costly (and inefficient) regulations on Americans—all while running roughshod over their rights—it would be far better to directly focus resources on catching criminals and terrorists.

But for whatever reason, Warren and her colleagues remain fixated on making it difficult for Americans to use financial services because criminals or terrorists might use them as well. Terrorism and criminal activity are problems that law enforcement should tackle directly, irrespective of what method of payment is involved.

Exaggerating the connection between crypto and crime does not efficiently allocate law enforcement resources, but it does tarnish the great majority of crypto activity that is legitimate. Inflating risks and ignoring benefits will not lead to sound policy. Developing sound financial policy requires a clear‐​eyed assessment of crypto’s risks and benefits, and shamelessly exploiting an otherwise unrelated human tragedy does not fit that bill.

Alex Nowrasteh

Americans widely condemned Hamas’s terrorist attacks on Israel on October 7 and reacted with justified horror at the unconscionable brutality of the terrorists. The images of murdered civilians, children, and even babies should raise the fury and disgust of all civilized people. However, some American policymakers and commentators used the news of those attacks in Israel to draw unreasonable parallels with US‐​Mexico border security. Donald Trump is the most prominent Republican who linked Hamas’s terrorist attack in Israel to US‐​Mexico border security, but Nikki Haley, Ron DeSantis, Vivek Ramaswamy, and Kevin McCarthy also responded to Hamas’s attack in Israel by worrying about terrorists crossing the US‐​Mexico border like they crossed Israel’s border.

Israel’s problems with border security are vastly different from those faced by the United States on its border with Mexico.

Many of Israel’s borders are aspirational ceasefire lines from numerous wars and conflicts over the last several generations. Rockets, terrorists, warplanes, and soldiers frequently cross Israel’s borders, and the Israeli government retaliates with force. Palestinian cross‐​border workers also crossed the border to work in Israel. However, that program is currently suspended and the Israeli government is likely to cancel it entirely, significantly reform it, or limit it to Palestinians from the West Bank.

By contrast, the US‐​Mexico border is riven with arms smuggling, drug smuggling, illegal immigration, and the violence that comes with all black market activity. The US federal government, state governments, and the Mexican government sometimes deploy troops to crack down on crime, smuggling, and illegal immigration. But there are no bomb shelters for civilians to defend themselves against frequent rocket attacks, and acts of terrorism or military incursions don’t punctuate a long‐​simmering insurgency.

In other words, the US‐​Mexico border is standard, while Israel’s borders are anything but. The security situations in both regions are radically different.

For instance, the amount of terrorism in the countries is vastly different. The annual chance of being murdered in a terrorist attack in Israel is about 1 in 108,728 (from 1975 until October 12, 2023). The annual chance of being murdered in a terrorist attack in the United States during that period is about 1 in 3.6 million. The annual chance of being murdered in a terrorist attack in Israel is about 33 times greater than in the United States.

There are other ways to compare. In the United States there were 190 murders for every person killed by a terrorist from 1990–2022. During the same time in Israel there were just under two murders for every person killed by a terrorist (it appears that intentional homicides and murders in terrorist attacks are separated in Israel crime data, but I’m not entirely sure). The American homicide rate was 6.6 per 100,000 during that time, about 3.2 times higher than Israel’s homicide rate of about 2.1 per 100,000.

If the US had the same homicide rate as Israel, there would still be over 56 homicides for each person killed by a terrorist. That’s a vast difference between the two countries.

The above numbers include all terrorists and are not separated by their nationality. The Hamas terrorists unlawfully crossed the border from Gaza to Israel before murdering approximately 1,400 people on October 7 (the numbers will probably rise). Meanwhile, zero Americans have been murdered or injured in terrorist attacks committed by border crossers who entered illegally from 1975–2022, including those who entered through the southwest border.

But that’s not the end of it. Nine foreign‐​born terrorists entered the United States illegally during 1975–2022. Three of the nine convicted illegal immigrant terrorists entered illegally by crossing the US‐​Mexico border. They are Dritan Duka, Eljvir Duka, and Shain Duka, and they entered illegally in 1984 when they were aged 5, 3, and 1, respectively. They were arrested almost 23 years later, in 2007, while plotting to attack Fort Dix, New Jersey.

The Duka brothers were “got aways,” which is defined as an unlawful border crosser who (1) is directly or indirectly observed making an unlawful entry into the United States; (2) is not apprehended; and (3) is not a turn back. There have been many “got aways” in recent years, likely over 1.2 million in total. Of the other illegal immigrant terrorists, five illegally crossed the US‐​Canada border (Walid Kabbani, Darren Thurston, Gazi Ibrahim Abu Mezer, Ahmed Ressam, and Nuradin M. Abdi) and one was a stowaway on a ship (Abdelghani Meskini).

Furthermore, the countries bordering the United States are not a significant source of terrorism. There have been zero terrorists from Mexico who attempted, were convicted of attempting, or committed an attack on US soil since 1975. There were three from Canada during that time who didn’t kill or injure anybody. Including Mexicans and Canadians, there were 24 terrorists from the Western Hemisphere who attempted or committed attacks on US soil since 1975. Twelve were from Cuba, three were from Haiti and Cuba each, two were from the Bahamas and Trinidad and Tobago each, and there was a single terrorist from Honduras and the Dominican Republic each. Together, they murdered seven people in attacks and injured one person.

By comparison, almost all the attacks in Israel come from terrorists who are either Israeli, Palestinian, or from a nearby country, if not from a country directly bordering Israel. There is nothing like a Mexican, Central American, or South American Hamas targeting the United States.

The chance of terrorists crossing the US‐​Mexico border and carrying out an attack in the United States is greater than zero—it could happen. Customs and Border Protection should continue to weed out potential security threats to protect Americans’ life, liberty, and property. Still, the chance of such an attack occurring is small if experience is any guide.

It’s so small that Americans must rely on poor measurements like hits on the error‐​filled Terrorists Screening Database or whether illegal immigrants are from Muslim countries (known as Special Interest Aliens) to talk about a terrorist threat along the border. Israelis don’t have to rely on poor measurements to proxy the terrorist threat along their borders. They unfortunately have actual terrorism to analyze. For these reasons, US‐​Mexico and Israeli border security concerns are distinct, and American commentators irresponsibly conflate them.

Romina Boccia

The Fiscal Commission Act is a Promising Start

“It’s time for a bipartisan fiscal commission,” writes the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB). I couldn’t agree more. Congress and the executive should empower a fiscal commission with real authority to stabilize debt as a share of the economy and address the unsustainability of Medicare and Social Security.

Federal debt and high interest rates are squeezing economic growth. Higher interest rates, unsustainable health care cost growth, and unfunded Social Security benefits further threaten Americans with more than $110 trillion in additional borrowing over the next three decades—an amount more than four times the size of the already excessive public debt ($26 trillion). Meanwhile, some market analysts are suggesting that investors driving up Treasury bond yields are doing so to convince Congress to address deficits and debt before the United States suffers a more severe fiscal crisis.

A fiscal commission can resolve America’s predictable fiscal decline, but only if it has the power to act. The CRFB explains that “[h]istorically, commissions have helped policymakers to extend the life of Social Security, consolidate military bases, identify government waste, develop frameworks for tax reform, improve homeland security after 9/11, and draw attention to our unsustainable fiscal outlook.” Time is running out for Congress to merely draw attention to America’s rapidly deteriorating fiscal state. We need action and soon.

The House of Representatives recently voted on the Fiscal Commission Act of 2023. Introduced by the chairs of the Bipartisan Fiscal Forum, Representatives Bill Huizenga (R‑MI) and Scott Peters (D‑CA), this proposal would establish a sixteen‐​member fiscal commission, composed of twelve lawmakers and four independent experts, with all members appointed by House and Senate leadership from both parties.

Its charge: to stabilize the debt at no more than 100 percent of GDP (gross domestic product, the main measure of economic activity) within 10 years, by addressing the growth in direct spending (so‐​called mandatory programs, including major entitlements), and narrowing the gap between projected federal expenditures and revenues over the long‐​term. There’s also the suggestion that any changes to programs that are governed by trust funds (Medicare, Social Security, Highway) should improve 75‐​year solvency.

If a simple majority of the commission members (including at a minimum three legislators from each party) were to agree on a proposal, its recommendations would be expeditiously considered in Congress. More specifically, legislators from both chambers would have to affirmatively vote for the recommendations to go into effect, and would do so without consideration of amendments or points of order, and under expedited procedures, which limit debate time.

I’ve written previously that a critical function of an effective fiscal commission is to provide legislators with political cover for making fiscally necessary, and yet politically unpopular, changes to entitlement programs. Given that Medicare and Social Security’s long‐​term unfunded obligations (the difference between projected spending and revenues over the next 75 years) jointly make up 95 percent of the federal government’s entire unfunded obligation, there’s simply no way out of the debt crisis without tackling unsustainable entitlement spending. Medicare spending grew by 18 percent and Social Security spending by 11 percent this fiscal year (FY 2023).

Most constituents haven’t yet caught on that their beloved entitlement programs are the main culprits in driving the country toward a debt crisis. And that’s the catch. How to stay in office and reform entitlement programs?

A fiscal commission will likely be most effective in providing Congress with the necessary political cover if legislators are removed from commission proceedings and don’t have to take a public vote to enact the commission’s recommendations. The Base Realignment and Closure Commission is a model example for enacting politically difficult changes by letting Congress off the hook.

The Fiscal Commission Act of 2023 is a promising start but risks suffering a similar doomed fate as fiscal commissions of the recent past. To increase the chances of a fiscal commission succeeding, Congress should consider strengthening provisions in the Fiscal Commission Act in two main ways:

Independent experts should make up a majority of commission members. If legislators insist that the commission must include members of Congress, they should flip the current approach on its head by designating twelve independent experts and four legislators to compose the commission (or some combination that ensures a simple majority of outside experts). Legislative participation can provide valuable insights and oversight to commission proceedings, without potentially undermining the prospects of effective reforms that could prove unpopular with voters.
The commission’s recommendations should go into effect with silent approval from Congress. Instead of requiring legislators to take an affirmative vote before commission recommendations may be implemented, Congress should be able to reject the commission’s proposal in full, without amendments. The default option should be adoption, after presidential approval, unless Congress passes joint resolutions of disapproval in both chambers. Washington Post columnist George Will calls this “the Odysseus measure.”

The rising tide of support for a fiscal commission in Congress is encouraging. Seeing legislators put pen to paper and propose an actual fiscal commission, as Representatives Bill Huizenga (R‑MI) and Scott Peters (D‑CA) have done, is a good first step. Congress should build on this success by ensuring that any fiscal commission they establish has a high potential for success. We can’t afford to waste any more time with a fig‐​leaf proposal that will end in yet another failed commission. This time, Congress should empower a fiscal commission with real authority.

Jeffrey A. Singer

Birthing centers have been gaining popularity as alternative venues for labor and delivery. Nurse midwives usually operate them. In some regions of the country, such as rural Alabama, they enable African‐​American women to give birth in culturally familiar places with more compassionate treatment than hospitals. An added benefit of birthing centers in areas like rural Alabama is that mothers in labor often must travel long distances to deliver at a hospital. For instance, about 28 percent of women in Alabama have no hospital within a 30‐​minute drive.

Alas, the state of Alabama has decided to deny these women the ability to exercise their right to choose from whom and how they wish to seek health care services. Alabama announced new regulations threatening to close many of Alabama’s birthing centers effective October 15.

The new regulations require birthing centers to have a physician on call and within a 30‐​minute drive of the center. In a recent New York Times article, Emily Baumgartner and Erin Schaff powerfully profile the roadblocks many state laws and lawmakers in Alabama and elsewhere place in the way of birthing centers.

In some states, such as Kentucky, Certificate of Need (CON) laws block the opening of birthing centers without a commission—often strongly influenced by entrenched incumbents—deciding that there aren’t “enough” places for women to deliver babies and allowing them to exercise their right to have their babies at a proposed new birthing center.

I have written about how CON laws protect incumbents, raise health care costs, and reduce access to health care services. But CON laws are not the only culprit. States also impose onerous licensing requirements on birthing centers that block pregnant women from access.

Women have had babies in their homes since the beginning of recorded history, and in modern times are increasingly opting for home births. Fortunately, they don’t need to obtain a Certificate of Need or meet other state requirements before having their baby at home.

Yet home birthing carries risks. Meanwhile, free‐​standing birthing centers only take low‐​risk patients. The evidence to date suggests that free‐​standing birthing centers are associated with lower pre‐​term delivery rates, higher birth weights, higher breastfeeding rates, and lower rates of Cesarean sections.

In Alabama, as in many states, most board members who impose regulations on free‐​standing birthing centers are appointed by the state medical association or hospital association. As with Certificate of Need commissions, the entrenched incumbents have a vested interest in making it difficult for innovations and entrants to threaten their positions.

In Recovery, a new book from the Cato Institute, Michael F. Cannon writes, “In many ways, U.S. residents are less free to make their own health decisions than residents of other nations.” Erecting obstacles to free‐​standing birthing centers is just one example.

Chris Edwards

Government legislators pursue spending increases because they believe that spending solves problems in society and benefits their constituents. However, they use methods of fiscal illusion to try to hide the costs of spending. One method is debt. By borrowing, legislators push the costs down the road for future legislators and taxpayers to deal with.

Spendthrift legislators can get away with borrowing more and taxing less in the short run, but in the long run taxes will rise to cover the higher interest costs on the accumulating debt. Relative to state gross domestic product, state and local taxes tend to be higher in states that have higher state and local debt, as shown in the chart below. The tax and debt data are from the Census Bureau for 2021.

The chart includes a fitted regression line showing the strong positive correlation between taxes and debt. Perhaps states that borrow more end up raising taxes to cover the rising interest costs. Or perhaps states that favor higher spending tend to pursue it with both taxes and debt. There are some outliers—Kentucky has high debt and average taxes, whereas Maine and Vermont have high taxes and average debt.

People living in the top‐​right states should be asking questions. Residents of Vermont, Maine, and Hawaii should be asking why their tax burdens are almost twice as high as the burdens in the lowest‐​tax states. And residents of Kentucky, West Virginia, New York, and Hawaii should be asking why their states have racked up debt burdens three or four times higher than the burdens in the lowest‐​debt states. And all of us should be asking why the federal government is vastly more irresponsible with debt than the worst‐​run states.

Neal McCluskey

Over the last few years, there has been a surge in challenges to books in public school libraries. These “banning” battles have drawn considerable attention – and alarm – but they miss deeper questions: How do public schools select books in the first place, and do they offer a balance of opinions on controversial issues?

Findings in a Cato Policy Analysis released today, “Are Public School Libraries Accomplishing Their Mission?” suggest that public schools do not tend to stock a balance of views, but lean, perhaps strongly, to the left.

To test whether public school libraries carry balanced viewpoints, we randomly selected 200 “regular” public school districts (no charter schools or special districts) and looked for eleven titles in libraries serving middle and high schools. We selected books seeking a balance of views on race and the fundamental nature of American society.

Basically, is the country grounded in liberty and equality, or has it always suffered from systemic racism?

As the figure above shows, we were far more likely to find titles that suggest the country suffers from systemic racism – books in the Stamped series by Ibram X. Kendi, and Ta‐​Nehisi Coates’s Between the World and Me – than books that take issue with the thrust of Kendi’s and Coates’s arguments, or that present the United States as fundamentally good.

The titles directly addressing the kinds of arguments put forth by Kendi and Coates are Woke Racism by John McWhorter and Cynical Theories by Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay. Books in the Rush Revere series by Rush Limbaugh represent the view that the United States is fundamentally good.

Far more schools had libraries that made the Kendi and Coates books available than the others. Especially stark was that almost 40 percent of schools with searchable libraries – 135 total – had access to Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You, but less than 1 percent had access to Woke Racism or Cynical Theories. Each of those conservative books was found in just one school.

And as seen in the next figure, when we broke districts down by the 2020 presidential election winner in their county, schools in Trump‐​won counties were much more likely to stock at least one Rush Revere title than in Biden‐​won areas. But more schools in Trump‐​won counties held Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You, and Between the World and Me than held a Rush Revere book.

These findings suggest that public school libraries have a yawning left‐​leaning bias in acquiring books. As the paper lays out, this is consistent with substantial evidence that the library profession has a pronounced liberal lean.

This seems to be assumed within the profession, and librarians who donate to Democrats outnumber those who give to Republicans roughly 9 to 1.

It also appears that publications on which librarians draw to assess what books to stock, such as School Library Journal and Kirkus Reviews, have liberal biases. They were more likely to have reviewed the liberal books on our list than the conservative books, and to have done so favorably. So not only might librarians favor liberal views, they also draw on recommendations from sources with their own liberal filters.

Is it, then, case closed that liberal bias among librarians and their preferred reviewers has created unbalanced inventories? No. The paper discusses other, very plausible explanations for some or all of the imbalance we found.

Based on our sample of books, it appears that conservative authors might not target public school libraries as aggressively as liberal writers. In particular, Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You has been heavily marketed to schools, including through a giveaway by the publisher in 2021. The Rush Revere titles have been significantly marketed, especially on Limbaugh’s own site, but that appears to have been more toward families directly than schools.

And Woke Racism – which is written in a clear way most high schoolers could likely follow – does not appear to have had any special outreach to schools. Nor has Cynical Theories, though it might be more complex than would be read by most high schoolers.

Another possible explanation for our findings that undermines the librarian‐​bias conclusion is that our list might not have included some balancing conservative books. We simply might not have thought of them. In addition, most public school book conflicts have been about fiction, often for kids younger than middle school. We did not examine fiction (Rush Revere is probably best described as historical fiction) and we focused more on older students. Our results, then, tell us little about book selection in the more commonly disputed areas.

As we were working on this paper, Columbia University professor Kirsten Slungaard Mumma released a much broader analysis of public school library holdings than ours, which suggests that school libraries tend to reflect the political makeup of their district populations. It included possible evidence of an overall left‐​leaning bias, though that was not a focus of her research. She also noted what motivated our paper: There is almost no research on public school library holdings and what leads to them.

If there is one clear conclusion about public school libraries, it is that they need to be studied more closely. Our paper, which includes not only the findings of our balance analysis but an overview of what researchers know about how these libraries work, is a step in that direction.