Michael F. Cannon As the United States government barrels toward a debt crisis, both House and Senate Republicans seem content to keep forcing taxpayers to overpay for low-quality health care. Senate Republicans especially are blindfolding the passengers while slamming on the gas. Former President Biden went on a health care spending spree. He created Obamacare premium subsidies for households earning up ...
Patrick G. Eddington A new book, The Triumph of Fear: Domestic Surveillance and Political Repression from McKinley to Eisenhower, by Cato’s Patrick G. Eddington, a senior fellow in homeland security and civil liberties, was released on April 1. The book, excerpted below, examines the rise and expansion of surveillance-enabled political repression in America from the late 1890s to early 1961 and ...
Jeffrey Miron and Jacob Winter According to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), its mission is partly to “[regulate] the manufacturing, marketing, and distribution of tobacco products to protect the public health.” Is it achieving that mission? Research suggests not. A recent study (Cato Research Brief no. 427) [evaluated] the full effect of FDA drug regulation—from initial application preparation to post-market ...
Michael F. Cannon Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., has announced and begun implementing the elimination of 10,000 positions at the Department of Health and Human Services. He is also reorganizing the department. He estimates savings of $1.8 billion per year. A further 10,000 HHS employees have taken buyout offers or retired early since President Trump resumed office. Altogether, these moves ...
Jeffrey A. Singer According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), over 6.1 million people over age 12 have opioid use disorder (OUD). Increasing access to OUD treatment would reduce the number of people who seek drugs in the dangerous black market and, in turn, reduce the risk and incidence of overdose deaths. In the United States ...
Colin Grabow As President Donald Trump threatens so-called “reciprocal tariffs” on US trading partners, some countries are offering lower duties to avoid the US leader’s wrath. Vietnam recently announced that it is cutting tariffs on a range of US exports, including energy and agricultural products, as well as approving the Starlink satellite internet system owned by Trump ally Elon Musk. ...
Andrew Gillen As momentum for closing the US Department of Education gains steam, questions about the transition are starting to surface, with the biggest ones concerning student loans. While we have argued for the privatization of student loans (full report or blog summary), which would eliminate the need for a new home for student loans, most of the current discussion ...
Walter Olson Number eight in our series of occasional roundups on election law and policy: I had a few things to say last week about President Donald Trump’s executive order purporting to overhaul election law by decree, something an American president doesn’t have the power to do. Our friend Stephen Richer supports some substantive elements of the scheme, including a ...
Chris Edwards President Trump is moving to shut down the federal Department of Education. Congress will need to make any cuts permanent, but downsizing the federal education bureaucracy is a long-overdue reform. The department, however, is not the only way that the federal government intervenes in the nation’s schools. The government also spends $35 billion a year on school food ...
Jai Kedia The Fed’s audited financial statements for 2024 show that it suffered operating losses of $77.6 billion. That’s on the heels of losing $114.3 billion in 2023, for a two-year total of $191.9 billion. The culprit of these losses? The large amounts of interest it pays on bank reserves. The Fed drastically changed its operating framework during the financial crisis of ...