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The latest blog posts from the Cato Institute:

The Case Against Antitrust

Posted on March 28, 2024 by Robert A. LevyThe threat of abusive public power is far larger than the threat of private market power. Read in browser »
 
 

Who You Calling Far Right?

Posted on March 28, 2024 by David BoazLibertarians are not far right; true liberalism is the opposite of illiberalism on both left and right. Read in browser »
 
 

Idaho Slides Backwards by Prioritizing Abstinence over Preserving Life

Posted on March 27, 2024 by Jeffrey A. SingerBy recriminalizing SSPs, Idaho lawmakers appear to prioritize preventing people from using illicit drugs over preventing them from dying due to illicit drug use. Read in browser »
 
 

Biden’s Corporate Welfare Bonanza

Posted on March 27, 2024 by Chris EdwardsPresident Biden signed into law three massive bills handing out hundreds of billions of dollars of narrow tax breaks and spending subsidies to big corporations. It is the biggest gusher of corporate welfare ever. Read in browser »
 
 

Powell's CBDC Puzzle: Deciphering Where the Fed Stands

Posted on March 27, 2024 by Nicholas AnthonyAs I recommended last year, the Federal Reserve should issue a statement addressing where things currently stand. Read in browser »
 
 

WSJ Ed Board Knifes Fourth Amendment, Betrays Journal's Reporters and Readers

Posted on March 26, 2024 by Patrick G. EddingtonI’ve been in Washington over 30 years, but sometimes even I can be stunned by the short memories and shortsightedness of members of the Fourth Estate. Today’s example is the editorial board of the venerable (and usually pretty sane) Wall Street Journal. Read in browser »
 
 

New Survey: Private School Enrollment Grew from the Last to the Current School Year, But the COVID Boost Might Be Ending

Posted on March 26, 2024 by Neal McCluskeyIn our latest national survey of private school enrollment—released today—46 percent of schools reported enrollment increases between the 2022–23 and current school year, 30 percent reported no change, and 25 percent reported decreases. Read in browser »
 
 

Energy Tax Subsidies Could Top $1.8 Trillion

Posted on March 26, 2024 by Adam N. MichelCongress should repeal the IRA and the pre‐​IRA energy credits. As a whole, these tax credits are a highly inefficient and expensive system of subsidizing energy from some politically popular low greenhouse gas emitting sources Read in browser »
 
 

State Officials Can't Appoint Federal Officers in Gulf Coast Fishing Case

Posted on March 25, 2024 by ArrayState governors have been given the power to nominate as few as three options for membership on a federal rulemaking body. But the Constitution does not allow state officials to wield such power. Read in browser »
 
 

Cato’s Erec Smith: 'DEI is Built Upon a Foundation Whose Very Mission Is to Perpetuate Racism'

Posted on March 25, 2024 by Michael ChapmanDEI is built upon a foundation whose very mission is to perpetuate racism. Read in browser »
 
 

New Oversight Board Decision Raises New Opportunities, and Concerns on Norms of Free Expression Online

Posted on March 25, 2024 by David InserraIf we want to better tackle hate speech and protect minorities, we must not reflexively reach for the tools of suppression. In this case, merely silencing Zemmour will not defeat the ideas that animate him and many others. Read in browser »
 
 

FTC Gets 2/3 of the Infant Formula Crisis Right

Posted on March 25, 2024 by ArrayA report by the Federal Trade Commission identified most of the policy‐​related impediments that we identified as exacerbating the infant formula crisis of 2022. Notably absent from the report, however, is any mention of how highly restrictive U.S. trade policies also contributed. Read in browser »
 
 

Call for Proposals: Junior Scholars Symposium 2024

Posted on March 22, 2024 by Eric GomezNow accepting applications for the 2024 Junior Scholars Symposium, a paper workshop for graduate students. Read in browser »
 
 

Electric Vehicles, Labor Unions, and Climate Hypocrisy

Posted on March 22, 2024 by David KempThe EPA’s concessions to labor unions in the recent tailpipe emissions regulations demonstrate a disconnect between the rhetoric and actions of politicians on climate change. Read in browser »
 
 

Some Welcome Trade Facts from White House Economists

Posted on March 22, 2024 by Scott LincicomeIn Washington today, the unfortunate consensus among many politicians and pundits is that trade and globalization have been an unmitigated disaster for America and the working class, regardless of the actual facts. It’s good to see that White House economists aren’t buying into this new consensus, though it’d of course be even better if their views were more reflected in U.S. policy too. Read in browser »
 
 

Friday Feature: UrbaNeXt

Posted on March 22, 2024 by Colleen HroncichUrbaNeXt aims to be a turnkey solution for churches that want to start microschools—because every child deserves an individualized education. Read in browser »
 
 

Money Still Matters: The Case of Argentina

Posted on March 21, 2024 by James A. DornDebunking the myth that money is immaterial in determining inflation is the first step toward a more rational monetary policy. Read in browser »
 
 

Don't Reward the Government for Hiding Constitutional Violations

Posted on March 21, 2024 by Thomas A. BerryThe government hid a constitutional violation until an appeal deadline passed, and a federal court said it was powerless to extend the deadline. The Supreme Court should reverse that mistake. Read in browser »
 
 

Taking Stock of Restrictive Financial Policies and Expansionary Government

Posted on March 21, 2024 by Nicholas AnthonyIt may not always be obvious, but Americans’ financial privacy and financial freedom is regularly under fire. Read in browser »
 
 

CBO Warns of Fiscal Crisis in Long-Term Budget Outlook

Posted on March 21, 2024 by ArrayThe Congressional Budget Office’s latest 30‐​year budget projections forecast rising debt, deficits, and interest costs, which will undermine US investment and economic growth and hurt American incomes. Rising spending on old‐​age entitlement programs, primarily Medicare and Social Security, is mostly to blame. Legislators must act to achieve a sustainable budget policy and avert a future fiscal catastrophe. Read in browser »
 
 

How Pharmacists Can Increase Access to Routine Health Care

Posted on March 21, 2024 by Array

Marc Joffe and Jeffrey A. Singer

pharmacist

How often do people have to leave work early for a medical appointment and wait for an hour for the doctor to perform a simple test and prescribe a routine medication that they knew in advance would happen? Like a routine urinary tract infection? Or a strep throat? Imagine if they could stop off at their local pharmacy on the way home from work, ask the pharmacist to perform the simple test, and prescribe the medication for the routine condition. There are several jurisdictions—including three states—where this convenience and accessibility is a reality.

Our new policy briefing paper, Let Pharmacists Prescribe, explores a reform that would improve the quality of US healthcare while partially addressing the shortage of primary care physicians. We propose that states allow pharmacists to leverage their education and experience to safely prescribe a wider range of medications to their customers.

The traditional arrangement under which physicians prescribe and pharmacists dispense has already been breached throughout the United States. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the federal government authorized pharmacists to dispense Paxlovid without a prescription on the grounds that patients needed to start taking the anti‐​viral medication soon after being diagnosed, so there was no time to wait for a doctor’s visit. States have also reached a similar conclusion about Naloxone (marketed as Narcan), which reverses the effects of opioid overdose if administered quickly. Several states authorize pharmacists to prescribe birth control pills and HIV prevention.

But shouldn’t a policy that works for COVID-19, drug overdoses, birth control, and HIV prophylaxis be applicable to other conditions?

In our paper, we consider the cases of Alberta, Ontario, and Queensland (Australia), all of which have extended pharmacist prescribing to more than a dozen common conditions. In the first six months of 2023 alone, Ontario pharmacists wrote over 250,000 prescriptions.

Among US states, Idaho has taken the lead in broadening pharmacist prescribing, specifying four general categories under which they may prescribe. Subsequently, Montana and Colorado enacted similar legislation.

When considering prescribing a medication, physicians often consult with pharmacists about interactions with drugs the patient is already taking. Pharmacists are well qualified to address such inquiries because they interact with a large number of patients and most receive as much classroom training as physicians.

States should eliminate unnecessary requirements for people to see doctors to make simple diagnoses and prescribe medicines. Patients should be allowed to go directly to the pharmacy, freeing up physicians for higher priorities and removing a hurdle for patients seeking relief.

Read in browser »
 
 

Affordable Housing: Subsidies Raise Costs

Posted on March 20, 2024 by Chris EdwardsPeople in the industry know that government subsidies generate complexity and high costs. To me, the solution for affordable housing is local deregulation and property tax cuts for apartment buildings, not federal subsidies. Read in browser »
 
 

Welcome to Free Society

Posted on March 20, 2024 by Peter GoettlerThe Cato Institute remains committed to providing the intellectual ammunition needed to win the battle for human liberty, both practically and morally. I believe you will find that passion for freedom on every page of Free Society. Read in browser »
 
 

FERC Nominees Can Avoid Pipeline Politics by Following the Law

Posted on March 20, 2024 by Travis Fisher

Travis Fisher

gas-pipeline.jpg

Tomorrow, the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources (ENR) will hold a confirmation hearing for three new nominees to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC)—David Rosner, Lindsay See, and Judy Chang. If confirmed, these nominees would represent a majority of votes on the five‐​commissioner panel and help shape the future of electricity and natural gas regulation in America.

The best (read: least bad) option from a libertarian perspective is for the future commissioners to uphold FERC’s organic statutes. In these statutes from the 1930s—the Federal Power Act (FPA) and the Natural Gas Act (NGA)—Congress has already answered the major policy questions that have plagued FERC in recent years, including the question of whether FERC should continue to approve natural gas pipelines despite their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (so long as there are willing natural gas customers, the answer is yes).

Based on my reading of the FPA and NGA, Congress dictated that (1) electricity should be reliable and available at just and reasonable rates, and (2) supplying natural gas to American consumers is in the public interest. These two statutes are complementary—without abundant natural gas, electricity will be unreliable, and electric rates will cease to be just and reasonable. The free market could do this on its own without federal regulation, but so long as public utility regulation exists, these organic statutes can be a bulwark against activist agencies.

To be clear, Congress—not to mention state governments across the country—can and should do more to free energy policy in the United States. Today’s energy policy is far from ideal, particularly from the free‐​market perspective. Still, administrative agencies like FERC should avoid overstepping their statutory bounds and subjecting energy markets to unnecessary intervention and political uncertainty. Paraphrasing Hippocrates, FERC nominees should “first, do no harm.”

Abundant Natural Gas and the “Public Interest”

The purpose of the NGA is to promote natural gas delivery to consumers. NGA section 1(a) states that “the business of transporting and selling natural gas for ultimate distribution to the public is affected with a public interest, and that Federal regulation in matters relating to the transportation of natural gas and the sale thereof in interstate and foreign commerce is necessary in the public interest.” The opening line of Section 1(a) refers to a Federal Trade Commission Report finding that federal regulation should ensure an adequate natural gas supply at fair, nondiscriminatory prices.

The existence of the terms “public interest” and “public convenience and necessity” in the NGA does not give FERC license to redefine those terms on a whim. However, that is precisely what FERC attempted to do just two years ago. In February 2022, FERC issued two related policy statements that dramatically departed from decades of natural gas permitting policy (an Updated Policy Statement on Certification of New Interstate Natural Gas Facilities and an Interim GHG Policy Statement).

A major policy change was the redefinition of the term “public interest” to reflect the climate focus of the chairman at the time. In other words, because the chairman deemed climate change an “existential threat” (his words), any definition of the public interest should surely include it.

Other commissioners vehemently disagreed. Quoting NAACP v. FPC, former Commissioner James Danly wrote in his dissent, “‘public convenience and necessity’ means ‘a charge to promote the orderly production of plentiful supplies of electric energy and natural gas at just and reasonable rates.’” Senators agreed with Danly. The new policies were so far off base that, once confronted by Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee members, FERC withdrew the policy statements and labeled them as “drafts.”

The February 2022 policy statements could be reinstated at any time. However, such uncertain policies reduce the development of natural gas infrastructure. When FERC withholds, slows, or redefines key terms in reviewing proposed natural gas pipeline projects, it contravenes its congressional mandate to ensure plentiful gas supplies at a reasonable cost. It also undermines the very markets it was created to protect (even though such protection is unnecessary and, indeed, often undermined by regulators). In contrast, by allowing natural gas to compete against other energy sources on its merits, FERC can help ensure that markets and consumer choice drive America’s energy future.

Gas‐​Electric Nexus: A Reliable, Affordable Grid Requires Abundant Natural Gas

FERC’s statutory responsibility for grid reliability was reinforced by Congress in the Energy Policy Act of 2005, which added a new Section 215 to the Federal Power Act to bolster FERC’s ability to improve grid reliability in the wake of the August 2003 blackout. Section 215 requires FERC to certify an Electric Reliability Organization (ERO) that creates mandatory reliability standards. FERC selected the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) as the ERO.

NERC repeatedly has observed that “[w]ith increasing levels of variable renewable generation in the resource mix, there is a growing need to have resources available that can be reliably called upon on short notice to balance electricity supply and demand if shortfall conditions occur.” Last year, as a result of the policy‐​driven expansion of intermittent renewables in the United States, NERC in 2023 identified energy policy as a top risk to electric reliability.

Given FERC’s statutory duty to protect grid reliability under the FPA, it should promote a robust natural gas infrastructure and avoid contributing to the reliability risks identified by NERC. Natural gas infrastructure is not only supported by the plain text of the NGA, it is a prerequisite for the reliable electricity at just and reasonable rates demanded by the FPA.

Under the FPA, FERC has a dual mandate to ensure just and reasonable rates in addition to reliability. To put it bluntly, restrictions on natural gas supply will raise electricity prices for consumers in America. The following graph from the 2017 Department of Energy Staff Report to the Secretary on Electricity Markets and Reliability illustrates the historical trend:

Natural gas and wholesale electricity prices

(Source.)

Wholesale electricity prices closely track natural gas prices. And as one might expect, regional electricity prices track even more closely with regional natural gas hub prices. Consumers benefit from the unrestricted flow of resources, including natural gas, and abundant natural gas significantly reduces the wholesale cost of electricity relative to supply‐​constrained areas.

Major Question: Will SCOTUS Make FERC Textualist Again?

On June 30, 2022, the Supreme Court ruling in West Virginia v. EPA applied the Major Questions Doctrine to the EPA, finding that the agency lacked clear direction from Congress to issue its Clean Power Plan. The Supreme Court ruling was a shot across the bow of administrative agencies and suggested that the trend of agencies deciding major public policy questions on their own was coming to an end.

As discussed above, on February 18, 2022, FERC attempted to decide a major policy question when it reimagined the statutory meaning of the “public interest” under the NGA. As another example, the FERC homepage reads in prominent type “Shaping the Grid of the Future.” This proactive posture is inappropriate for a creature of statute that Congress never tasked with shaping anything.

Others have taken notice. In 2022, American Enterprise Institute scholar Ben Zycher described FERC’s recent actions as “increasingly ad hoc, ill‐​defined, politicized, driven by decision criteria far outside FERC’s actual areas of expertise, and certain to display shifting standards over time.”

Perhaps the most critical policy question before FERC is whether to attempt—once again—to give itself climate authorities Congress never granted. Commissioner Mark Christie noted in his dissent against the now‐​draft policy statements that there is no textual support in the NGA for FERC to deny a pipeline application due to potential upstream and downstream GHG emissions.

Commissioner Christie wrote: “Whether this Commission can reject a certificate based on a GHG analysis—a certificate that otherwise would be approved under the NGA—is undeniably a major question of public policy. It will have enormous implications for the lives of everyone in this country, given the inseparability of energy security from economic security.”

Cato intern Zoe Galinsky contributed to this article.

Read in browser »
 
 

Medicare and Social Security Are Responsible for 100 Percent of US Unfunded Obligations

Posted on March 20, 2024 by Romina BocciaMedicare and Social Security funding shortfalls comprise 100 percent of the total unfunded obligation. Read in browser »
 
 

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