Cato Event Podcast

When President Barack Obama signed the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (Dodd-Frank) into law on July 21, 2010, he promised that "because of this law, the American people will never again be asked to foot the bill for Wall Street's mistakes." Three years on, the implementation of Dodd-Frank has turned out to be more costly, lengthy, and complex than most proponents anticipated. As of...

The 2012 Supreme Court decision in NFIB v. Sebelius held that the threatened loss of all federal Medicaid funds made ObamaCare’s Medicaid expansion unconstitutionally coercive. However, Secretary Sebelius has continued to hold federal Medicaid funds hostage in order to limit the effect of the decision in NFIB and coerce states into implementing elements of the Medicaid expansion that the Court ren...

Purchase book Lewis E. Lehrman, President Ronald Reagan’s gold commissioner and co-signer of the iconic commission minority report, The Case for Gold , will make a rare Washington, D.C., public appearance to debut his latest work, Money, Gold, and History . In his new book, Lehrman, founder and chairman of the Lehrman Institute, compiles many of his key writings from almost 40 years of publication...

Although it has been studied intensely by political scientists, the relationship between public opinion and U.S. foreign policy remains murky. Today, pundits argue about whether an "Iraq syndrome" among the public is inhibiting the Obama administration from going to war with Syria. Public anxiety about the debt and deficit has led to increased support for cutting military spending. In this context...

Purchase book Why do millions of people continue to risk their lives, sometimes losing them, in the pursuit of a chance to establish themselves in a foreign land? Alvaro Vargas Llosa will describe who immigrants are and why they move, and he will compare the immigrant experience today to that of previous eras, identifying far more similarities than differences. By reviewing such topics as religion...

The rise of the West can be understood only as a result of an ideological change that occurred in England in the 17th century and of the emergence of a “bourgeois deal” through which entrepreneurs were let free to engage in innovation and creative destruction, so argues Deirdre McCloskey in her forthcoming book, The Treasured Bourgeoisie: How Markets and Innovation Became Ethical, 1600-1848, and T...

Congress needs to reauthorize the federal gas tax and decide how to spend federal surface transportation dollars in 2014. Unfortunately, argues Cato’s Randal O’Toole, too much spending in the past has gone to obsolete transportation technologies. Author Scott Beyer argues that the federal government’s role in funding infrastructure has stripped both money and decision-making power from localities,...

The Social Security disability program has seen a significant increase in costs and enrollment in recent years. The Trustees project that the program will be insolvent as early as 2016. This recent growth and the program’s looming insolvency have brought it increased attention and added urgency to calls for solutions. Cato senior fellow Jagadeesh Gokhale, Social Security Administration chief actua...

Purchase Book The greatest reduction in mass poverty in human history has occurred during the current era of globalization. The world’s poor are now catching up with the rich at a rapid pace in terms of human well-being. Deepak Lal will discuss how, despite those achievements, confusion about poor countries abounds: the World Bank exaggerates the extent of poverty; the benefits of new development...

While many members of Congress claim to support free trade, Cato’s congressional trade votes database tells a different story. Rather than simply noting support or opposition to trade liberalization, Cato’s Free Trade, Free Markets methodology distinguishes between trade barriers and trade subsidies. As a result, the database allows researchers to evaluate members of Congress more precisely. In pa...

In Halbig v. Sebelius , four individual taxpayers and three employers are challenging a seemingly obscure IRS decree. The IRS claims the authority to issue hundreds of billions of dollars in subsidies to health-insurance companies, and to impose penalties on individual taxpayers and employers, in the 33 states that have refused to establish a health insurance "exchange" under the Patient Protectio...

In 1920, in Missouri v. Holland , the Supreme Court seemed to say, contrary to basic constitutional principles, that a treaty could increase the legislative power of Congress. That issue is now back before the Court in Bond v. United States , a case with deliciously lurid facts involving adultery, revenge, and the Chemical Weapons Convention. Cato has filed an amicus brief in the case, written by...

Purchase book Clint Bolick argues in his new book, written with Jeb Bush, that the three broad components of immigration reform—better immigration enforcement, a lawful pathway for future migrants, and the legalization of current unauthorized immigrants—must work together to produce a viable immigration policy. The 1986 Reagan amnesty failed because it was a partial reform that increased immigrati...

Purchase book "India grows at night while the government sleeps" is an Indian expression referring to the country's impressive economic rise despite the presence of a large, burdensome state. Gurcharan Das will explain how India's story of private success and public failure is not sustainable and that the country's recent growth slowdown signals the need for a strong liberal state that would ensur...

The Constitution gives the federal government no authority to govern education, and numerous laws prohibit Washington from influencing school curricula. How has the federal government gotten around these barriers? Primarily by attaching demands to federal money, which is exactly what it did to get states to adopt the supposedly “state-led" and "voluntary" Common Core curriculum standards. This unp...

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Top officials in the U.S. government, the International Monetary Fund, and the European Union blame Europe’s ills on fiscal austerity and advise Europeans to pursue stimulus spending or delay spending cuts. Simeon Djankov and Anders Aslund will show how the evidence counters that prevailing view. Countries that have reined in their spending are growing briskly while the profligate founder. Aslund...

Purchase book A common argument for intervening abroad is to alleviate potential or existing human suffering. Repeatedly, however, state-led humanitarian efforts have failed miserably. Why do well-funded, expertly staffed, and well-intentioned humanitarian actions often fall short of achieving their desired outcomes, leaving some of the people they intended to help worse off? Why are well-meaning...

Despite increasing population, global food production per capita is at all-time highs, even as the amount of agricultural land is reaching new lows. The prime driver has been technology, beginning with the Green Revolution of the 1960s, when Norman Borlaug discovered the key to high-yielding wheat. Since then, "slow" genetics has been replaced by DNA-splicing, giving rise to fears of genetic "mist...

Five years ago, the Supreme Court issued its landmark decision in District of Columbia v. Heller . By a 5-4 vote, the Court ruled that the strict gun-control laws in the nation’s capital—which amounted to a complete ban on any usable weapon for self-protection, even in the home—were unconstitutional. The Court finally confronted a long-simmering controversy over the scope of the Second Amendment a...

Congress may pass a major farm bill re- authorization this year for the first time since 2008. Farm bill supporters claim that draft bills in the House and Senate would save taxpayers billions of dollars, but that isn't the case. The bills would eliminate so-called direct payments to farmers, but the savings would be plowed into new subsidy programs and higher guaranteed prices for certain crops....

Purchase book In his new book, The End Is Near and It’s Going to Be Awesome , Kevin D. Williamson examines the crisis of the modern welfare state and demonstrates that the crucial political failures of our time, from education to health care, are the direct result of government monopolies providing and regulating these services. Entitlement programs have promised far more than they can deliver, an...