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Scott Lincicome

Today we’ve published two new essays for Cato’s Defending Globalization project:

“The Conservative Case for Globalization” by Jeb Hensarling explains that free trade has historical, intellectual, economic, geopolitical, and moral justifications that conservatives have long embraced—and still should.

“The Progressive Case for Globalization” by Inu Manak and Helena Kopans‐​Johnson explains that globalization has contributed to central components of the progressive policy agenda by significantly reducing poverty and promoting shared prosperity at home and abroad.

This content joins 30 other essays and additional multimedia features on the main Defending Globalization project page.

Make sure to check it all out and stay tuned for future releases.

Jeffrey A. Singer

In 2016, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) assumed the authority to regulate all nicotine‐​containing products, including electronic nicotine delivery systems, such as e‑cigarettes. E‑cigarette manufacturers were given until September 9, 2020, to submit applications to the FDA for the agency to approve the marketing of their products. The agency received nearly seven million applications by the deadline and is still reviewing many of them. It has rejected more than a million flavored vape applications.

However, non‐​nicotine synthetics that have chemical structures resembling nicotine are exempt from FDA regulation. Thus, people who wish to consume relatively harmless nicotine because they value its stimulative and calming effects can work around government obstructions by accessing nicotine‐​analog products. The government does not require makers of synthetic nicotine analogs to obtain FDA approval before they can market them to consumers. And consumers are purchasing these products.

According to a letter to FDA Commissioner Robert Califf, MD, from Altria LLC, a nicotine product manufacturer that has complied with FDA regulations, several companies, including many in other countries, are marketing nicotine analogs to consumers. The letter states, “The introduction and growth of chemicals intended to imitate the effects of nicotine, if left unchecked, could present unknown risks to U.S. consumers and undermine FDA’s authority,” urging the FDA to “carefully and quickly evaluate these new compounds to determine what regulatory authority it has over these products.”

Now comes a report by the Reuters news agency stating that the FDA and independent researchers believe that many of these analogs, such as 6‑methyl nicotine, might be “more potent and addictive” than nicotine.

This is another example of the “iron law of prohibition”—the harder the law enforcement, the harder the drug—in action. In this case, the government, largely driven by nicotinophobia, is prohibiting the manufacture and sale of numerous nicotine products, many of which have helped smokers quit the habit.

Prohibition resulted in drug trafficking organizations moving from diverted prescription pain pills to heroin, from heroin to fentanyl, from fentanyl to fentanyl mixed with xylazine, and now from that to fentanyl mixed with medetomidine and nitazenes.

Rinse and repeat.

We are now seeing the same process at work with nicotine. Nicotine prohibition begets more potent forms of nicotine, and new opportunities appear to be on the horizon for the prohibition/​law enforcement complex.

Chris Edwards

Government interventions create vicious cycles of collateral damage, larger bureaucracies, and further interventions. As one example, high taxes on cigarettes have been causing damage for years, yet governments keep jacking the tax rates up further.

State cigarette taxes now average $1.96 per pack, as shown below. Maryland recently raised its rate from $3.75 to $5.00 per pack, and New York raised its rate from $4.35 to $5.35 per pack. Federal taxes of $1.01 per pack are stacked on top, as are local taxes in numerous cities.

This 2003 Cato study describes how high cigarette taxes generate black markets and crime. It discusses how interstate cigarette smuggling is a source of terrorism finance, including raising money for Hezbollah. This Tax Foundation study discusses cigarette taxes and smuggling, and this government study found that cigarette smuggling “fuels transnational crime, corruption, and terrorism.”

The political zeal for cigarette tax hikes creates headaches for the nation’s law enforcement. In researching the upcoming Cato Governors Report, I noticed that (paywalled) State Tax Notes reported last October 24:

Arkansas police have arrested a man for transporting hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of untaxed cigarettes. … a state trooper stopped a cargo van on I‑40 outside the city of Carlisle and noticed numerous cartons of cigarettes in the cargo area. The trooper and an Arkansas Tobacco Control enforcement agent seized over 3,270 cartons of unstamped cigarettes.

“Contraband cigarettes are one of the leading sources of funding for terrorism in the United States,” Arkansas State Police Colonel Mike Hagar said in the release.

… The final count amounted to 32,671 packs of untaxed cigarettes, with an estimated value of more than $311,000. Police also seized the cargo van. The driver — Ali Ali Ashabi of El Paso, Texas — was arrested and charged with possession of untaxed tobacco and unauthorized use of another person’s property to facilitate certain crimes.

Data here.

Thomas A. Berry, Brent Skorup, Jennifer J. Schulp, & Alexander Khoury

The quest for security is too often invoked to justify an infringement of civil liberties. In 2021, Congress did this when it passed the Corporate Transparency Act (CTA). Nestled within a 1,500-plus-page defense bill, this innocuous‐​sounding law dramatically expands government surveillance of millions of Americans by requiring most entities incorporated under state law to collect and send information about their “beneficial owners”—a catchall term for people directly or indirectly exercising control over a business or nonprofit—to a massive database used for financial crime enforcement and regulatory investigations.

This new database will be maintained by the US Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, popularly known as “FinCEN.”

The CTA requires that each entity produce sensitive information about its owners, managers, and—in many cases—its senior employees and the family members of its managers and owners. In this way, the CTA burdens small businesses and undermines the ability to remain anonymous in connection with a business or nonprofit corporation. Anonymity can protect entrepreneurs, shield politically unpopular enterprises, and encourage economic interests.

Critically, the CTA also empowers FinCEN to function as a new, global tipster. Congress has authorized FinCEN to share beneficial owners’ sensitive information with international law enforcement and international intelligence agencies, US intelligence agencies, the IRS, and state and local law enforcement agencies.

In the fall of 2022, the National Small Business Association and others sued the Treasury Department in federal court, alleging that the CTA violated several constitutional provisions. In March 2024, a federal district court agreed with the association that the law exceeded Congress’s authority under the Commerce Clause by regulating state‐​chartered LLCs and nonprofits. The district court permanently enjoined enforcement of the CTA, prompting the government to appeal to the Eleventh Circuit.

Cato has now submitted an amicus brief to the Eleventh Circuit in N.S.B.U. v. U.S. Department of the Treasury urging the court to affirm the lower court decision. Our brief focuses on one of the law’s constitutional problems: the CTA compels testimony in violation of the Fifth Amendment.

The Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution provides that “no person … shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself .…” In our brief, we explain that the reporting requirements function as an indefinite production order to millions of business and nonprofit managers and some of their employees that amounts to compelled testimony. The “compulsory organization, filing, and creation of documents are acts that clearly are testimonial and may be self‐​incriminating,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote when he was deputy assistant attorney general.

Regarding such compulsory record keeping, the future Justice Alito added, “The individual should be free to refuse to create or organize records on fifth amendment grounds.”

Congress requires Americans to self‐​report to FinCEN so that international and domestic law enforcement agencies can investigate and prosecute financial crimes. Even worse, the CTA criminalizes asserting one’s Fifth Amendment privilege—refusal to contribute one’s information to this international surveillance system risks civil and criminal penalties.

Simply, the CTA’s records requirement for business and nonprofit managers and their senior employees and family members compels testimonial information in violation of the Fifth Amendment. If the court were to reach that issue, our brief urges the Eleventh Circuit to affirm the lower court decision and maintain the permanent injunction.

Colleen Hroncich

When her husband suggested she create a “pod school,” longtime teacher Becky McNichols was initially dismissive. “I don’t even know what that is,” she told him. “That’s silly. That can’t work.” But it got her thinking.

“I went to school to be an elementary teacher and did my student teaching in Washington state. Then I moved to Japan, and I taught English there for two years,” she recalls. When she came back to America, she moved to California and taught preschool, third grade at a charter school, and then kindergarten and transitional kindergarten for a few years.

When COVID-19 hit, Becky and her husband felt called to move. “Our children at the time were four and two, and we felt like we needed out of California. Things were just changing really quickly. And so we were led to move to Kansas,” she says. She taught second grade in two different school districts in Kansas, but she wasn’t really happy with it.

“I noticed that COVID really changed so much of what was happening. Or not even changed it, but it brought a lot of new things to light that I hadn’t necessarily seen prior,” she explains. “And at the same time, one of my children was now school‐​aged. And so here I was teaching, and I had a daughter who was at my school, and I saw public school from a completely different standpoint as a parent.” She always thought her kids would be fine in public schools because she’d know the teachers and the other children. But it wasn’t like she pictured it, and that’s when her husband suggested the pod school.

Not long after that conversation, Becky visited a friend who was running a homeschool pod from her house. “I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, I could do this.’ And I came home and told my husband about it. He was so eager to hear all about it. And I said, ‘I think I could do this in a few years.’ And even as I spoke those words, I was like, ‘I think I can do this next year.’ And my husband said, ‘I think you need to do this next year.’”

That was March of 2022. She went to work figuring out the details. “It’s hard to Google something that you don’t even know what it’s called, but slowly I learned that microschooling is one of the biggest terms for it,” she says. “I went the homeschool enrichment route and then started working on all the things behind the scenes: what I wanted it to look like, what I was going to teach, what ages I was going to teach, how I was going to make that happen.”

Becky launched Rooted Life Academy with eight students, kindergarten through second grade, that fall. She’s just wrapping up her second year, during which she had eleven students, kindergarten through fourth. Her plan is to add on ages each year to accommodate the students she has currently, including her own children, and the needs she sees in her community. She’s hoping to hire another teacher for next year, in part to dive in more deeply with what they’re already doing, but also because she’ll be in a new space with room to grow to around twenty students. She’s very committed to having small class sizes that are focused on individualized instruction and personalized learning so the kids get exactly what they need.

Rooted Life Academy meets Monday through Thursday, so the full‐​time program is four days a week. There are also part‐​time options of two or three days a week. Becky acknowledges that can be tricky for families that have more traditional work settings. But there’s a wide variety of options in her area. “There’s something for everybody. There are secular programs and faith‐​based programs. There are programs that are five days a week with or without parents helping. There are co‐​ops. There are even just enrichment classes one day a week,” she says. “I think that’s really valuable to know that even though my program might not fit everybody’s needs or wants or finances, there are all these other options. And I think in general that helps this movement flourish and helps the movement be a sustainable long‐​term option for families looking for non‐​traditional education outside of the regular public school setting.”

Becky says she’s had to recondition herself somewhat when it comes to evaluating education and consider if various metrics measure realistic things or are just checking off boxes and making sure that kids can move through the system. Her former colleagues are often quite curious about things like standards. She tells them that she doesn’t have to adhere so tightly to the standards. She can fill in the gaps where kids have holes and continue working with their strengths and weaknesses. As she explains it:

I like to stay within the content areas that are taught within each grade level. For example, third grade is multiplication and division and area and perimeter. So I want to make sure my third graders are learning those main content areas for their grade level, but I’m not going to assess them or measure them necessarily with the same standards that the public school would be using. I want to make sure that these kids are understanding how to see these patterns of multiplication and division within the real world and how to apply them in applicable ways that makes sense. And I don’t think that that necessarily comes back to what the Common Core state standard says.

I also recognize that if they’re a third grader and they’re not at that spot, they’re going to be OK. We’ll fill it in, and we’ll keep working on it. And I think that’s one of the blessings of having a multi‐​age setting where I get to work with these kids for several years together is I know exactly where they are, how they’re doing, what they’re interested in, and how to motivate them to learn or look at learning in different opportunities in their lives—versus being in the public school when it takes a few months to get to really know these kids and then by the time you’re in a sweet spot, it’s time for them to go to the next grade level and then the next teacher needs to do those same activities to get to know their students.

While Becky doesn’t follow a public school method of evaluating students, she gives parents and students regular feedback. “Every few months, I give what I call a glow and grow. I mark out the glow and grows for reading, phonics, writing, math, and then an ‘other’ section. And so I tell the parents where the kids are glowing and doing really great. And then I put in a couple areas of where their child is currently working or needing to grow,” she says.

She has parent‐​teacher conferences at least once a year, but if they’d like more than that then she accommodates that, too. And she connects with parents daily at drop off and dismissal, as well as through a private app where she posts details and photos of what they did that day. She also shares ideas for families to incorporate into their everyday lives to keep that learning relevant and help the kids realize learning happens everywhere.

For other teachers who are considering creating their learning environments, Becky’s best advice is to get connected. “There are so many incredible people on this journey. It’s hard to find them at first, but once you do it’s just this absolutely amazing and collaborative space to be a part of,” she says. “It’s a very hard place to be in isolation, but in community—especially a virtual community of other people that are doing these things—it is so empowering and so inspiring and so encouraging.”

Chris Edwards

New York’s state and local governments appear to be incredibly bloated. New York State’s population is 10 percent less than Florida’s, yet governments in New York spend 81 percent more, have more than twice as much debt, and have 32 percent more public employees than governments in Florida.

The Empire State’s bloat is clear in public school spending, based on new data from the US Department of Education. The chart below shows K‑12 spending per pupil for fiscal year 2022. The spending in each state is funded by federal, state, and local taxpayers.

New York spent $29,284 per pupil, which was three times the spending in Utah of $9,496 and Idaho of $9,662, and it was almost twice the US average of $15,591.

Are New York schools better than those in Utah and Idaho? The Nation’s Report Card says that grade eight kids in New York score about the same on writing as kids in Utah and Idaho, but they score worse on math, science, and reading.

New York schools: skyscraping costs for so‐​so results.

Notes

The school data are for “current” expenditures, as these are the most comparable between states, according to the US Department of Education. “Total” public school expenditures for the nation are 15 percent higher than current expenditures.

Perhaps New York spending is high because NYC is an expensive place to run public schools. But NYC is just 42 percent of the state’s population. By comparison, Virginia’s school spending is below the US average even though expensive Northern Virginia accounts for 37 percent of the state’s population. Also, to the extent that NYC is an expensive place to run schools, that partly stems from the excess bureaucracy and labor unions. I think all New York State’s teachers are covered by collective bargaining, but virtually none were in Virginia until recently.

More on New York’s bloat here and here. More on public school policies from Neal McCluskey here, and a Cato study examining public school rankings here.

David J. Bier

America is often said to have two “foundings”: the first after the Revolution and the second after the Civil War with the abolition of slavery. These events were certainly momentous in our history, but there is a third “founding” that occurred in 1924—one that changed the future of America almost as much as these other foundings. Unlike the first two, America’s third founding was fundamentally illiberal, inspirational to Hitler, and a rejection of America’s first two foundings.

The third founding occurred on May 24, 1924, when President Calvin Coolidge signed the National Origins Quota Act, which imposed the first permanent cap on legal immigration. Prior to the 1924 Act, all would‐​be immigrants were presumed eligible to immigrate unless the government had evidence showing that they were ineligible. The 1924 law replaced this system with the guilty‐​until‐​proven‐​innocent, Soviet‐​style quota system that we have today.

No law has so radically altered the demographics, economy, politics, and liberty of the United States and the world. It has massively reduced American population growth from immigrants and their descendants by hundreds of millions, diminishing economic growth and limiting the power and influence of this country. Post‐​1924 Americans are not free to associate, contract, and trade with people born around the world as they were before.

The legal restrictions have erected a massive and nearly impenetrable bureaucracy between Americans and their relatives, spouses, children, employees, friends, business associates, customers, employers, faith leaders, artists, and other peaceful people who could contribute to our lives. It has made the world a much poorer and less free place for Americans and people globally, necessitating the construction of a massive law enforcement apparatus to enforce these restrictions.

As shown in Figure 1 from my recent paper, America approved nearly all immigrants seeking to become legal permanent residents prior to 1924—98.1 percent. However, a backlog developed once the first temporary caps were imposed in 1922, causing the approval rate to plunge. The 1924 Act and its successors sealed off America to most immigrants permanently. Every year since, fewer than half of the applicants have been approved. After the caps, the average approval rate dropped to just 16 percent admitted annually. In 2024, it will fall to just 3 percent.

The number of new legal immigrants as a share of the US population plummeted after 1924, and it has only slowly recovered. If the United States had granted legal permanent residence at the same per‐​capita rate that it did from 1900–1914—before World War I disrupted travel—another 164 million immigrants would have been permitted to settle in the United States legally. Many of these immigrants would have ultimately returned to their home countries, as they did in great numbers even before airlines shrank the globe. Easier travel would likely have caused the rate of immigration to increase after World War II.

With far more immigrants, the US‐​born population would have swelled as well. It is plausible that the United States would be twice its size today if immigration had continued. The United States would not have lost nearly as much diplomatic, social, and market influence to China and other countries in recent years if its economy and consumer base were twice as large as they are now. The larger population would mean a larger economy and more production of goods and services to benefit all Americans.

A century of freer immigration would have made the United States a vastly wealthier, freer, stronger, and more powerful country, while also raising hundreds of millions globally out of poverty and freeing hundreds of millions more from tyranny. The implications are too massive to summarize quickly, but Cato’s Alex Nowrasteh has written an excellent alternative history, exploring some less obvious implications for US and world history had immigration not been cut off. 

Contrary to much of the commentary commemorating the 1924 act that claims it was “repealed” in 1965, the Immigration Act of 1924 established all the essential features of our current system: a presumption against legal immigration, a low overall cap, country‐​by‐​country caps, and a preference for family unity. The system has produced huge quantities of illegal immigration since then, resulting in about 56 million arrests by Border Patrol. 

Indeed, the only reason that the immigrant share of the US population has recovered is due to the decades of illegal immigration combined with a low birth rate—not a liberal legal immigration system. In fact, many immigrants who now have since received legal status (through legalization programs or other programs) are only here because they chose to violate these onerous restrictions. People shouldn’t have to violate the law to join our society and contribute to our country.

There was nothing inevitable about this strange system. It was a choice to make immigration illegal. It is a choice to keep it illegal. America should reject its un‐​American third founding and restore the laws governing immigration to the ones our founders gave us: a presumption of liberty. A century of arbitrary immigration restriction is too long. 

Romina Boccia and Dominik Lett

Irresponsible emergency spending practices have eroded fiscal norms, contributing directly to America’s mounting debt challenge. Over the last three decades, Congress designated 1 in 10 dollars of federal spending for emergencies. Most of this emergency funding was provided through deficit spending with no plan to pay down the accumulated debt with future surpluses. Myopic spending practices harm the fiscal credibility of the federal government, elevating the risk of a devastating fiscal crisis.

On May 3, Cato hosted a Hill briefing featuring panelists Veronique de Rugy (Mercatus Center), Kurt Couchman (Americans for Prosperity), and Cato’s Romina Boccia (that’s me!), moderated by David Ditch (The Heritage Foundation). Together, we delved into America’s deteriorating fiscal trajectory, recent episodes of emergency spending, the erosion of fiscal norms, and budget reform. We are grateful to all who attended. Here are some insightful excerpts from our otherwise not‐​public discussion.

Irresponsible Emergency Spending Habits Have Eroded Fiscal Norms

Since the 1990s, Congress has spent roughly $12 trillion on emergencies (plus an extra $2 trillion, including associated interest costs). That’s equivalent to roughly half of the $27.5 trillion public debt. Most of that spending, especially recently, hasn’t been offset in any meaningful way. This stands in stark contrast to most of the nation’s history, where legislators generally followed informal fiscal norms.

One Hamiltonian fiscal norm is that emergency spending can be paid with borrowed funds, assuming it will be repaid later. Many major emergency borrowing episodes before the 21st century, including World War II, followed this norm. Borrowing skyrocketed to fund the war effort, and legislators maintained primary surpluses for years after the conflict ended to reverse the growth in the debt.

This norm has eroded significantly in more recent decades. Even between the Great Recession and the pandemic, there are notable differences in the national dialogue over budgetary responsibility. Following the 2008 financial crisis and the subsequent fiscal stimulus, policymakers engaged in a national debate on austerity. Legislators on both sides of the aisle and President Obama worked together to put together a fiscal reform package that constrained spending.

Not only was the fiscal stimulus significantly larger in response to the pandemic than was the case for the Great Recession, but efforts to rein in spending have been far tamer by comparison. A lackluster spending cap deal and repeated emergency spending supplementals are two major reasons why the federal deficit is reaching unprecedented new heights. As Veronique concluded,

“It’s because we followed these budget norms that US treasuries have become the cornerstone of the financial world. Losing that is at risk. And how you lose this is by borrowing money without ever talking about repaying your debt.”

The Fiscal Trajectory Is Dire before Considering Emergencies

Debt is set to surge over the next three decades. According to CBO, public debt as a share of GDP will exceed the World War II record high in just four years (2028). This high debt will slow the economy and reduce American incomes.

Worse still, CBO’s projections don’t assume the realistic possibility of another war, pandemic, or other emergency in the next 30 years. Should the deficit continue to grow at an unprecedented rate, the US may not be able to respond adequately to a future crisis. As I noted,

“We are going to have unexpected emergencies, but we don’t have the fiscal space to fund the programs that are already on the books, let alone respond to major emergencies which we should be able to do. One of the most important features of a nation‐​state is to be able to defend itself when under attack, and the nations that survive major wars are those that are able to borrow during times of crisis. We are hamstringing our ability to do that by borrowing during peacetime in a way that will eliminate our ability to borrow when crisis calls.”

In the last year, several weak Treasury auctions have indicated lower investor demand for government bonds. At some point in the future, investors may decide treasuries are not worth the risk at prevailing interest rates. Such a scenario could quickly spiral into a fiscal crisis with catastrophic implications for the US economy. As Couchman pointed out,

“I think the inherent challenge with all of this is we’re not going to see it coming. We see some indicators. We saw Moody and Fitch downgrade the rating, downgrade the outlook. We’ve seen the IMF, World Bank, CBO, OMB, and everyone else in the world be like, ‘Woah, things are getting pretty bad; we better do something.’ If you’re tearing down the mountainside in a mountain bike, when do you know you’ve gone off the cliff? It’s when you’re dropping really fast, and then you’re screwed.”

Unlike what happened in Europe when Greece suffered a debt crisis in 2009, there is no equivalent to Germany to bail out the US should the fiscal situation go south, noted de Rugy. Indeed, if America faces a fiscal crisis, it’s not just Americans who will suffer the economic consequences. A US debt crisis will likely manifest as a crisis of global proportions.

Designing Better Budget Controls

Kurt Couchman outlined three main principles that should guide budget reforms:

First, “You want things to be neutral. If it’s not something that will get broad support from Republicans and Democrats, or at least most of them, you’re not going to get it passed, and it’s not going to stick around.”

Second, “Reforms have to be comprehensive. Our budgeting is very piecemeal. That disjointedness is a lot of the reason for the dysfunction that we’re seeing.”

Finally, “You need to have fiscal targets that are reasonable, stable, and predictable.”

The Responsible Budget Targets Act introduced by Rep. Emmer (R‑MN) and Sen. Braun (R‑IN) (H.R.7420 and S.772, respectively) is a good example of a sensible budget reform. Alongside establishing realistic spending caps, the bill would implement emergency offsets over a six‐​year period. Establishing an offsetting mechanism gives appropriators the flexibility to address emergencies when necessary while also incentivizing forward‐​thinking budget planning. Additional legislative proposals can be found in the PDF below or in Couchman’s Townhall article.

Sensible and commonsense budget reforms can improve the appropriations process and reduce the risk of a debt‐​driven fiscal crisis. It is up to us, the American people, to cultivate a culture where deficit spending and irresponsible fiscal practices are the exception, not the rule. Congress will follow the wishes of its electorate.

David Boaz

The Libertarian Party presidential nominating convention is coming up this weekend, with Donald Trump as a featured speaker. This is apparently the first time in US history that a political party has had another party’s nominee at its own nominating convention. And what a choice!

The Libertarian Party was founded to “challenge the cult of the omnipotent state and defend the rights of the individual” and to specifically run candidates for office on a platform of personal liberty, economic liberty, and a peaceful foreign policy.

Needless to say, that’s not Donald Trump’s platform, nor does it describe his actions as president. Which is why most libertarians, except the LP faction that won control of the party in 2022, are mystified and appalled about why a self‐​proclaimed libertarian party would invite a would‐​be autocrat to dominate media coverage of its convention.

Cato libertarians have always operated outside of the political system. We do not support politicians or political parties. However, we stand ready as always to work with Republican or Democrats when we share common ground and objectives and oppose them when we disagree.

Just posted at the Washington Post is a column by Cato president and CEO Peter Goettler exploring this mystery. Goettler explains what libertarianism is:

Libertarianism, at its core, is the modern manifestation of classical liberalism, the transformative movement that, beginning in the 18th century, challenged monarchs, autocrats, mercantilism, caste society, slavery and religious persecution. As heirs to that tradition, libertarians believe in individual freedom, equality under the law, pluralism, toleration, free speech, freedom of religion, government by consent of the governed, the rule of law, private property, free markets and limited constitutional government.

And how Trump differs (as if it wasn’t obvious):

He allowed government spending and debt to continue to spiral upward, increasing the national debt by $8.4 trillion. Federal outlays soared from $4 trillion his first year (2017) to $6.8 trillion in his last year. He persists in railing against immigration and free trade, supports further expansion of presidential power and seeks to crack down on political enemies.

He also points out how sadly un‐​libertarian the LP’s current leadership and its messaging are.

Read the whole thing.

Chris Edwards

School choice reforms are spreading across the nation. Governments in 33 states are now providing financial support for private schooling through 80 different programs, as shown in this figure from EdChoice. About one million students are benefiting from these reforms.

Cato’s Neal McCluskey has been particularly supportive of reforms based on education savings accounts (ESAs). A number of states have now made eligibility for their ESAs universal or near universal. Recent reports in Arizona and Iowa illustrate the cost savings possible compared to traditional public schools. Glenn Farley of the Common Sense Institute reports on Arizona’s Empowerment Scholarship Accounts, and Martin Lueken of EdChoice reports on Iowa’s ESAs.

Here are my thoughts based on their analyses.

Spending on choice programs represents a small share of overall school spending even in leading reform states. Arizona’s ESA program enrolled 77,571 students this year at a cost of $759 million, which is about 5 percent of public school spending in the state. Iowa’s ESA program enrolled 16,757 students, costing $124.2 million, which was less than 2 percent of public school spending in the state.

As choice programs grow, states should reduce funding for public schools that have declining pupil counts. Taxpayers should enjoy savings because the average per‐​pupil costs of choice programs are substantially less than the costs of public schools.

In Arizona, the average per‐​pupil ESA funding is $9,785, but if the type of student in the ESA program was the same as the average student in public schools, it would be $7,111. That figure compares to $13,541 for average public school costs in the state, as shown in Farley’s figure “Differences in Per‐​Pupil Funding.”

In Iowa, the average per pupil ESA funding is $7,413, which compares to $15,283 for the average public school costs in the state, as shown in Lueken’s figure “Comparing the Cost of Iowa’s ESA Program to Iowa Public School Costs.”

Will ESAs reduce the overall costs of K–12 education? Yes, but we need to consider that some ESA pupils had been in private schools paid for privately, although most are switchers from public schools. We also need to consider that some public school costs are fixed in the near term, although they can be cut in the longer term as public school enrollment falls. Lueken examined these factors for Iowa and estimated that the 2023–2024 cohort of 16,757 ESA students will save taxpayers a net $55 million a year. As the share of Iowa students using ESAs rises, the taxpayer savings will increase.

The main goal of school choice reforms is to improve education quality through competition and innovation. McCluskey further argues that choice programs allow support for education to be structured in a way that treats families with differing values and needs equally. But with the nation’s total public spending on K–12 about $900 billion a year, the cost savings from school choice are another major advantage.

Read more of McCluskey’s work on school choice: “A Bright Spot for Sure: Educational Freedom in 2023,” “School Choice Arguments For and Against,” and “Survey: 46 Percent of Private Schools See Enrollment Rise.”