To sell his tax-code tweaks, new regulatory schemes, and insatiable ardor for big government, President Obama invoked Abraham Lincoln in his State of the Union address: “I’m a Democrat. But I believe what Republican Abraham Lincoln believed: That government should do for people only what they cannot do better by themselves, and no more.” Was Lincoln the father of big government? In a new Special Report, Allen C. Guelzo, Ph.D., of Gettysburg College lays out the argument that the modern state’s paternity lies with the Progressives. If big government means … More
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By Michael F. Cannon
My Cato colleague John Cochrane – who is way smarter than I am — has a generally excellent op-ed in today’s Wall Street Journal on ObamaCare’s contraception mandate: Salting mandated health insurance with birth control is exactly the same as a tax—on employers, on Catholics, on gay men and women, on couples trying to have children and [...]
Cochrane on ObamaCare’s Contraceptive-Coverage Mandate is a post from Cato @ Liberty – Cato Institute Blog
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By Daniel J. Mitchell
When Ronald Reagan said that big government undermined the economy, some people dismissed his comments because of his philosophical belief in liberty. And when I discuss my work on the economic impact of government spending, I often get the same reaction. This is why it’s important that a growing number of establishment outfits are slowly [...]
Data in New World Bank Report Shows that Large Public Sectors Reduce Economic Growth is a post from Cato @ Liberty – Cato Institute Blog
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By Michael F. Cannon
Regarding legislation to create an ObamaCare “Exchange” in Virginia, the Richmond Times-Dispatch explains: Republicans at the General Assembly are falling prey to the fallacy of the false alternative… [H]ere are the real options facing Virginia: (a) federal bureaucrats determine the form of our exchange, or (b) federal bureaucrats determine the form of our exchange. There is [...]
RTD: ‘Insurance Exchange: Just Say No’ is a post from Cato @ Liberty – Cato Institute Blog
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By Michael F. Cannon
Politico‘s Jason Millman writes: How much does Rick Santorum hate President Barack Obama’s health care law? So much that he even opposes the parts a lot of Republicans like. The Republican presidential candidate, talking health care across the street from Minnesota’s Mayo Clinic Monday morning, blasted parts of the Affordable Care Act that poll well [...]
But, But…Price Controls Poll Well! is a post from Cato @ Liberty – Cato Institute Blog
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Associated Press photojournalist Noah Berger captured this thousand-word image near the Occupy Oakland demonstrations last month. Many Cato@Liberty readers will get it immediately. They can stop reading now. For everyone else, this image perfectly illustrates the ethos of what I call the Church of Universal Coverage. Like everyone who supports a government guarantee of access to medical care, [...]
The Ethos of Universal Coverage is a post from Cato @ Liberty – Cato Institute Blog
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The liberty-lovers at New Hampshire’s Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy have produced this video of my appearance before the New Hampshire House of Representatives where I argued against creating health insurance “Exchanges”: (Notice my rapt audience.) Should New Hampshire Create a Health Insurance Exchange? is a post from Cato @ Liberty – Cato Institute [...]
Should New Hampshire Create a Health Insurance Exchange? is a post from Cato @ Liberty – Cato Institute Blog
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Is it April Fool’s Day? Has somebody in Paris hacked the website at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development? Have we been transported to a parallel dimension where up is down and black is white? Please forgive all these questions. I’m trying to figure out why any organization—even a leftist bureaucracy such as the [...]
Acting as the Typhoid Mary of the Global Economy, the OECD Urges Higher Taxes in Latin America is a post from Cato @ Liberty – Cato Institute Blog
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In recent weeks, officials from two states have claimed that if they do not set up an ObamaCare health insurance “Exchange,” the state will lose federal Medicaid or State Children’s Health Insurance Program funds. Idaho Gov. Butch Otter (R), has since walked back that claim. New Hampshire Commissioner of Health and Human Services Nicholas Toumpas has [...]
Will States Lose Medicaid Funds If They Fail to Create an ObamaCare ‘Exchange’? is a post from Cato @ Liberty – Cato Institute Blog
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…is that it overshadowed news that the U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly voted to repeal one of two new entitlement programs created by Obamacare—the ironically named CLASS Act—with a bipartisan three-fifths majority. (With numbers like that, Congress could even repeal Obamacare’s death panel!) But really, one private organization pulling funding for another private organization is way [...]
The Real Tragedy of the Komen/Planned Parenthood Flapdoodle is a post from Cato @ Liberty – Cato Institute Blog
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