The Heritage Foundation

Solutions

Contents

The Heritage Foundation

Solutions

Welcome to The Heritage Foundation’s guide to the best solutions to America’s biggest issues. Here you will find easy-to-understand solutions to address issues such as improving health care choices and lowering costs, addressing climate change, reforming welfare, creating jobs, increasing individual liberty, and so much more.

This site provides a plain-language summary of each issue, solutions our elected leaders should act on, and facts and figures to support each recommendation. It also provides key points that you can use when talking to others.

Scroll down or click on any issue area on the left-hand menu to get started!

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Issue Area Title

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Policy Proposals
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Quick Facts
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Civil Society

Critical Race Theory

Policy Proposals
  1. Limit federal overreach in education, which is rightly within the purview of state and local governments.
  2. Oppose implementation of the harmful Equality Act in schools.
  3. Require that public schools make their curricular resources available to the public.
  4. Promote civics knowledge, not critical race theory inspired diversity training.
Quick Facts
  1. School districts that employ chief diversity officers (CDOs) have larger achievement gaps between students from different ethnicities.
  2. The average university has 3.4 staff members promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) for every 100 tenured or tenure-track faculty members, and many of these have more DEI staff than history professors.
  3. Fifty percent of all parents and 70 percent of school board members say that they do not want schools to use instructional material based on the idea that slavery is the “center of our national narrative.”
Require Transparency
  • Parents should know what is being taught in their children’s K–12 schools. Parents and taxpayers should have access to the material that teachers are using in the classroom.
Protect Teachers
  • District and school officials must not be allowed to mandate that public school teachers affirm claims of moral guilt or innocence based on their racial identity in order to remain employed in a public school.
Include Families in Decision Making
  • If a child’s school is using materials rooted in critical race theory, parents should object to the school’s principal and school board and, at a minimum, be allowed to opt out.
Expand Parental Choice
  • Lawmakers should lift the caps on scholarship programs, increase school choice, and ease the provisions that limit additional public learning options through charter schools.
This content was last updated: January, 2024.

Americans should defend civil rights and work actively to eliminate racism in the U.S.—and these noble aims are not the stated intentions of those who devised critical race theory (CRT). Harvard academic Derrick A. Bell, recognized godfather of CRT, does not mince words in laying out the theory’s radical aims. In “Who’s Afraid of Critical Race Theory?” he writes: “As I see it, critical race theory recognizes that revolutionizing a culture begins with the radical assessment of it.”

CRT has its intellectual origin in critical theory, a Marxist approach that evaluates every area of life through the prism of the oppressed and oppressors—counter to America’s promise of freedom and equality under the law. CRT’s adherents see the same power dynamics that proponents of critical theory see while considering these dynamics through the prism of race. Critical race theorists claim that America is systemically racist, and that this racism produced an alliance between working-class whites and the oppressor capitalist class that prevents working-class solidarity.

CRT teaches a toxic message to students of all backgrounds. Whether disguised as “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) programs, as “affinity groups,” or characterized in other euphemistic terms, CRT lessons and efforts are spreading in public and private schools. By its very nature, CRT is both a pseudo-academic discipline and a call to action that is designed to compel students to act on the idea that the world is divided between people who are victimizers and people who are victims based on their race or ethnicity.

Policymakers have a duty to prevent educators from applying CRT to K–12 public school activities since, by so doing, they possibly violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and federal laws known as Title VI and Title IX, which protect Americans from discrimination based on race, sex, or national origin in educational institutions that receive federal funds.

This content was last updated: January, 2024.

Policy Proposals (Federal)

In order to prevent divisive ideological indoctrination in America’s public schools, Congress should:

Limit federal overreach in education, which is rightly within the purview of state and local governments. Congress should allow states to opt out of existing federal education programs, eliminate duplicative and ineffective programs operated by the U.S. Department of Education, and equip parents with more control over how existing education dollars are spent through funding portability so that families can better avoid CRT indoctrination.

Oppose implementation of the harmful Equality Act in schools. Around the country, 10 states have explicitly prohibited sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) curricula. Under the Equality Act, if adopted, federal courts could mandate SOGI ideology in schools by prohibiting traditional teachings on sexual morality as “discriminatory.” States should also enact policies that protect single-sex private facilities and athletics. Congress should respect states’ authority in setting curricula, parental rights to the upbringing of their children, and the safety and privacy concerns of all students.

Policy Proposals (State)

In order to prevent divisive ideological indoctrination in America’s public schools, state legislators should:

Reject, alongside school board officials, the teaching of ethnic prejudice through CRT in academic subjects in their local schools. School board members should adopt civics and history standards that inform students correctly about how the establishment during periods of American history, such as slavery, Reconstruction, and the Jim Crow era, contradicted the principles in the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. These documents contain the national ideals of freedom and opportunity for all, regardless of race or any other immutable characteristic. The current generation—and every generation—must “let the proud fabric of freedom rest” upon the ideas of liberty, “a reverence for the constitution and laws,” and the pursuit of a civil society that offers freedom and opportunity to all Americans, regardless of the color of their skin.

Prohibit compelled speech and reinforce the Civil Rights Act of 1964. No public education employee shall compel a teacher or student to adopt, affirm, adhere to, or profess ideas that are in violation of Title VI and Title IX of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Such ideas include the notions that individuals should be adversely or advantageously treated on the basis of their race, ethnicity, color, or national origin or that individuals, by virtue of race, ethnicity, color, or national origin, bear collective guilt and are inherently responsible for actions committed in the past by others of the same race, ethnicity, color, or national origin.

Require that public schools make their curricular resources available to the public. Parents should know what is being taught in their children’s K–12 schools. Parents and taxpayers should have access to the material that teachers are using in the classroom. Some charter schools provide models and already make these resources available.

Promote civics knowledge, not diversity training. K–12 and postsecondary school officials are spending significant amounts of taxpayer money on so-called anti-bias training. No public school employee or student should be required to engage in training programs that affirm the idea that individuals bear guilt for actions committed in the past by people of the same race or ethnicity.

Offer alternative procedures for entry into the teaching profession that do not include the ideology of critical pedagogy. Nowhere has CRT permeated curricula and instruction more than in university-based schools of education. Colleges of education have a tremendous reach when it comes to training teachers who populate public and private schools across the country. State lawmakers should end requirements that teachers graduate or receive training from a university school of education, which significantly reduces enrollment in schools of education, and states should allow alternative teacher certification outside colleges of education.

Prohibit education officials from requiring public school teachers to participate in diversity training programs as a condition of employment. District and school officials must not be allowed to mandate that public school teachers affirm claims of moral guilt or innocence based on their racial identity in order to remain employed in a public school.

Give families access to school board decision-making processes with respect to the adoption of curricula. More than 14,000 school boards and nearly 100,000 school board members, who constitute the largest body of elected officials in the country, influence everything from districts’ budgets and construction projects to school textbook adoption and collective bargaining processes. School boards oversee much of the policies and practices in the public schools in their districts. Information about the curricula and textbooks used in those schools is opaque. Parents should engage with their local school boards by (1) identifying school board meetings to attend throughout the year; (2) staying up to date on school board activities by reading posted meeting minutes; (3) submitting questions about spending, curricula, and staffing at school board meetings; and (4) reading the school board’s mission statement. If a child’s school is using materials rooted in critical theory, parents should complain to the school’s principal and school board and, at a minimum, be allowed to opt out.

Expand parental choice in education. One of the most important tools for combatting CRT in the classroom is giving families control of where and what their children learn. More than half of all U.S. states offer some form of private school scholarship option for K–12 students; lawmakers in 44 states and Washington, DC, allow the creation of public charter schools; and every state allows parents to homeschool their children. State officials in every state should give students access to private schools, especially when in-person learning is not available at assigned schools because of teacher union strikes or other disruptions. Many states, however, have limits on student participation or the creation of public charter schools. Lawmakers should lift the caps on scholarship programs, increase school choice, and ease the provisions that limit additional public learning options through charter schools.

This content was last updated: January, 2024.

Fact: Critical race theory is taught in K–12 public schools.

  • In April 2021, the Portland, Oregon, public school district hosted a “Critical Race Theory Coalition Summit.”
  • The Loudon County, Virginia, public school district contracted with an organization called The Equity Collaborative to provide professional development to district teachers. The Equity Collaborative prioritizes CRT in its training.
  • The California Department of Education created a model ethnic studies curriculum that is replete with CRT’s racially discriminatory ideas, including “intersectionality.”
  • Kimberlé Crenshaw, one of CRT’s originators, designed the concept of intersectionality, which claims that all ethnic minorities are oppressed in American society and that they are oppressed in multiple ways—based on their gender, class, race, and other combinations of racial and personal characteristics.

Fact: School districts that employ chief diversity officers (CDOs) have larger achievement gaps between students from different ethnicities.

  • In districts without a CDO, the average black student is 1.9 grade levels behind the average white student on standardized test results. In districts with CDOs, the achievement gap is half a grade level larger with the average black student being 2.4 grade levels behind the average white student.
  • This pattern repeats itself for the white vs. Hispanic achievement gaps. The gap between the average white and Hispanic student on standardized tests is 0.44 grade levels larger in districts with a CDO than it is in districts without a CDO.
  • And again, the disparity continues in the non-poor vs. poor achievement gaps. In this case, the gap between the average non-poor and poor student is 0.37 grade levels larger in districts with CDOs than it is in those without them.
  • According to a nationally representative survey of parents and a subsample of school board members conducted by The Heritage Foundation in 2020, nearly two-thirds of school board members believe that schools do not provide enough instruction in civics.
  • Fifty percent of all parents and 70 percent of school board members said that they do not want schools to use instructional material based on the idea that slavery is the “center of our national narrative.”
  • Parents (57 percent) and school board members (65 percent) do not believe that schools should reframe American history to teach children that the United States is tainted by slavery and racism. Seventy percent of parents and 74 percent of school board members believe that students should be taught that slavery was a tragedy that harmed the nation but that freedom and prosperity, not slavery, represent who Americans are as a nation, offering a beacon to those who want to immigrate here.
  • Nearly 79 percent of districts with 100,000 or more students employ CDOs—individuals typically advancing a leftist agenda focused on students’ racial identifications, not student achievement.
  • On average, among postsecondary institutions in the Power 5 athletic conferences, universities employ 45 individuals exclusively for DEI programs—outside of academic instruction and for the purposes of advancing racially focused school initiatives.
This content was last updated: January, 2024.
This content was last updated: January, 2024.

Education

Policy Proposals
  1. Reduce the size and scope of the U.S. Department of Education dramatically.
  2. Reject critical race theory in schools with federal funding.
  3. Empower military families and children in DC with education savings accounts and equip Native American children on tribal lands with school choice.
  4. Decouple federal financing from higher education accreditation, enabling students to pay for individual classes and courses of study that are more applicable to the job market, and eliminate the federal PLUS Loan program.
Quick Facts
  1. Critical race theory (CRT) often leads to segregating students by race or other forms of racial discrimination that violate the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
  2. Individuals with a bachelor’s degree earn, on average, $1 million more over the course of their careers than those with only a high school diploma. “Forgiving” student debt shifts the cost of their education to those who can least afford it.
  3. On average, graduate students borrow $24,000 per year, while undergraduates borrow approximately $7,000. The wealthiest 40 percent of borrowers hold more than half—60 percent—of all loan debt.
Equip Families with Choice
  • Individuals and families—not government—make the best decisions about their families’ health, education, jobs, and welfare.
Root Out Critical Race Theory and Gender Ideology
  • Parents, not “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) bureaucrats, must be at the center of intimate questions about their children’s identity and mental and physical health.
Break the Federal Education Monopoly
  • Currently, large-scale federal intervention, coupled with the education monopoly in the states, drives up costs and holds back the growth of school choice in the states.
Reject Unfair Student Loan Forgiveness
  • Far from helping Americans afford higher education, canceling student loan debt would enable colleges to increase intuition at the cost of taxpayers, many of whom didn’t go to college and can’t afford that cost.
This content was last updated: January, 2024.

In March 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic brought traditional public education to a standstill, and families across the country became accidental homeschoolers. Nearly 50 million children in public schools were deprived of in-person instruction. The pandemic highlighted how badly families needed options so that their children would not be trapped in government schools that were still closed long after authorities knew it was safe to reopen. It also underscored the importance of education choice in enabling families to select learning environments that align with their values.

School choice has grown rapidly over the past two decades, with 32 states and the District of Columbia now offering private school choice to at least some children, and more than 10 million students of approximately 50 million are eligible for private school choice. States should follow the lead of Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Iowa, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Utah, and West Virginia, which recently established universal education choice programs, the majority of which are universal education savings accounts (ESAs). State lawmakers across the country—even in states with school choice programs—should follow this model.

The widespread use of online learning during the pandemic also gave families a front-row look at what their children are being taught in public schools. Many parents were greatly concerned to learn that their children’s schools were putting into practice ideas drawn from critical race theory (CRT), sorting their children by race into “affinity groups” and doing “privilege walks,” and hiring highly paid CRT consultants to conduct teacher training. Putting CRT’s discriminatory ideology into action in schools violates the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Schools that compel student speech by requiring students to affirm the tenets of CRT are also violating the First Amendment.

Parents should have the protection of parental bills of rights now being adopted in states across the country, including the protections found in the Given Name Act, which prohibits schools from using names or pronouns different than what is on a child’s birth certificate, absent written parental consent. Schools should also be maximally transparent about the curricula and training they are using. Curricula should be posted online, and parents should be able to find the materials being taught in their children’s schools with a few clicks on the schools’ websites.

Some public schools have become steeped in an ideologically driven LGBTQ+ agenda. Some guidance counselors are building “gender support plans” for students, which can lead to “gender”-confused students “socially transitioning”—such as dressing like the opposite sex and using opposite-sex pronouns—without their parents’ knowledge or consent. School faculty are also instructed to enforce transgender pronoun usage strictly. It is critical that parents are reaffirmed as children’s primary caregivers and that schools receive permission from parents before administering health services to students. Parents must be returned to the center of intimate questions about their children’s mental and physical health.

Higher education badly needs reform as well. To limit taxpayer exposure to student loan debt and better position higher education to meet future economic needs, Congress should eliminate the PLUS Loan program, pursue long-overdue accreditation reform to focus on quality assurance, decouple federal financing (student loans and grants) from accreditation to allow students more flexibility in pursuing career-oriented education options, and cap indirect cost payments to universities for research grants. Congress should withstand pressure to cancel student loan debt, which would be regressive, fuel further increases in college costs, and shift a massive debt burden onto American taxpayers.

This content was last updated: January, 2024.

Policy Proposals (Federal)

In order to return to a sane education system, federal lawmakers should:

Reject critical race theory in DC public schools by prohibiting District of Columbia public school and charter school employees from compelling any teacher or student to adopt, affirm, adhere to, or profess ideas that promote race or sex stereotyping or scapegoating or that violate the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Establish education savings accounts for children in DC and children of military families, two populations whose education is funded by federal taxpayers and under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Congress.

Decouple federal financing from higher education accreditation, enabling students to pay for individual classes and courses of study that are more applicable to the job market and eliminate the federal PLUS Loan program.

Situate decision-making about existing federal funding closer to the families who are affected by those decisions. The policies contained in the Academic Partnerships Lead Us to Success (APLUS) Act would accomplish this goal by allowing states to opt out of the programs authorized under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) and put those existing dollars toward any lawful education purpose under state law.

Dramatically reduce the size and scope of the U.S. Department of Education by eliminating programs that are duplicative, ineffective, or unconstitutional. The Department of Education should no longer have Cabinet-level agency status—a policy goal that can be achieved by eliminating more than 80 existing programs and moving 40 remaining programs to other federal agencies.

Cap indirect costs to universities. Currently, the federal government overpays universities for grant-funded research, requiring taxpayers to shell out more than the minimum indirect rate paid for research by the private sector to universities. Not only is this unfair to taxpayers, but it results in taxpayers subsidizing other agendas at universities, such as an ever-growing DEI staff. Congress should cap the indirect rate the federal government pays universities so that it matches or is closer to the rate that the private sector pays for research.

Policy Proposals (State)

In order to return to parents the right to direct their children’s education and to protect them from ideological agendas, state lawmakers should:

Pursue universal education savings accounts in the states. States should follow the lead of Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Iowa, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Utah, and West Virginia and adopt universal education choice. ESAs enable families to take at least 90 percent of their child’s share of state per-pupil funding to a private school or education provider of choice. ESAs allow families to pay for private school tuition, online learning, special education services and therapies, private tutors, and a host of other education-related services, products, and providers. Unused funds can be rolled over from year to year and should be eligible for deposit into a college savings account.

Protect children and families with parental bills of rights. States should respond to the radical ideologies that insert gender ideology as a replacement for biological sex into K–12 health instruction and adopt parental bills of rights. A parental bill of rights should affirm that parents are their children’s primary caregivers, require that schools receive permission from parents before administering health services to students, and allow parents—and taxpayers—to view the material that educators are teaching students.

Reject critical race theory and its discriminatory application in schools. States should prohibit schools from applying CRT and violating the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by compelling students to affirm racially discriminatory ideas. Parents should have a private right of action against public schools that violate these prohibitions.

This content was last updated: January, 2024.

Fact: Critical race theory transmits a toxic message to students of all backgrounds, and its application in schools may violate the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

  • CRT can be disguised as “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” “affinity groups,” and “privilege walks,” among other activities that segregate children by race. CRT includes a call to action against the U.S. constitutional system.
  • Education officials are obligated to uphold the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause as well as Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which protects Americans from discrimination based on race, sex, or national origin in education institutions that receive federal funds.
  • Students should learn about all American history, including slavery, Jim Crow laws, and segregation, as well as the remarkable progress that the country has made, the rule of law, and content that creates a shared sense of national identity, showing that America belongs to all Americans and that this nation and its progress are worth celebrating.

Fact: Individuals with a bachelor’s degree earn, on average, $1 million more over the course of their careers than those with only a high school diploma. This makes student loan forgiveness an unfair and regressive policy that shifts that payment obligation onto the two-thirds of Americans who do not hold bachelor’s degrees.

  • Cumulatively, Americans owe more than $1.8 trillion in outstanding student loan debt—a sum that exceeds cumulative credit card debt. Although the number is large in the aggregate, it is manageable at the individual level for most borrowers. Median monthly loan payments are $222.
  • Student loan amnesty is not the solution. It will likely encourage colleges to raise tuition, particularly if graduates expect student loans to be forgiven again in the future. New cohorts of students would understandably expect their loans to be forgiven, and that expectation could lead to increases in borrowing.
  • At the individual level, student loan debt is tough for some, but on average (and despite how it is often portrayed), it is not a crushing burden. The average student loan debt for members of the class of 2018 was $29,200. Median student loan debt stands at $17,000 per borrower, and median monthly payments stand at $222.
  • On average, graduate students borrow $24,000 per year, while undergraduates borrow approximately $7,000. The wealthiest 40 percent of borrowers hold more than half—60 percent—of all loan debt. Student loan forgiveness would result in lower-income borrowers receiving the least benefits.
  • If Congress wants to help, it should pursue policies like reducing federal subsidies that would drive down the cost of tuition rather than shifting debt payments onto the taxpayers. Congress should begin by eliminating the federal PLUS Loan program.
This content was last updated: January, 2024.
This content was last updated: January, 2024.

Health Care

Policy Proposals
  1. Roll back the expansion of government involvement in health care.
  2. Overhaul the public health bureaucracy.
  3. Offer patients the ability to use their health care dollars as they deem appropriate.
  4. Require more transparency in health care pricing.
Quick Facts
  1. Three hundred insurers offered coverage in the Obamacare exchange in 2023— down from 395 in the individual market in 2013, before Obamacare was in full effect. Government intervention has led to consolidation and the limitation of options in the health insurance industry.
  2. Premiums in the individual market increased from $244 per member per month in 2013 to $558 per member per month in 2019, a 129 percent increase.
  3. By 2040, Medicare’s current system of price controls will result in one-third of hospitals, and roughly half of nursing homes and home health agencies, operating in the red, threatening seniors’ access to quality care.
  4. Transparency initiatives, if accompanied by a robust set of policies to allow patients to compare and act on price differences, could save as much as $80.7 billion annually (7 percent) in medical spending for Americans.
Empower Patients
  • Empowering individuals to control their health care dollars and decisions is a far better approach to health care reform than government control.
  • Americans should have the freedom to choose the plan and doctors that best suit their needs, not a one-size-fits-all plan that the government creates.
Stop Government Overreach
  • During the worst public health crisis of the century, centralized, top-down, government-run health care utterly failed Americans.
  • Government policies have led to market consolidation among hospitals, insurers, and health care providers, leaving patients with fewer choices and higher costs while the government health care industrial complex continues to grow.
This content was last updated: January, 2024.

America has some of the world’s best medical care. However, excessive and ill-conceived government interventions in health care financing and delivery have fueled a health care system that is overly costly, complex, confusing, and inefficient.

Nearly every American, regardless of income or medical condition, has access to health insurance coverage, but too many Americans lack access to affordable, high-quality, patient-centered care. Due in part to government policies, market consolidation among hospitals, insurers, and health care providers has left patients with fewer choices and higher costs while the government and the health care industrial complex continues to grow.

The Biden Administration’s policies are failing Americans. Despite the promises, middle-class families face higher premiums and fewer choices than when Obamacare was enacted, low-income Americans are trapped in a ballooning safety-net program that rations care and access, and seniors on Medicare face an uncertain future with access and care at risk without needed reforms.

Aimed at expanding government control over health care dollars and decisions, the Biden Administration’s policies disregard the root causes of higher costs and are making matters worse, not better. Action by liberals in Congress have led to more government subsidies and more government price controls that exacerbate the underlying problems in health care and only further government involvement in personal health care decisions.

Federal government overreach and the failures of federal planning and faulty interventions became acute and most visible in the flawed responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. Notably, officials overreacted with comprehensive lockdowns, resulting in catastrophic social and economic damage; officials recommended unnecessary closure of schools in the face of the mounting evidence that children were not at severe risk from the coronavirus and were not a source of community transmission; officials created mass social conflict over their mixed messaging on the effectiveness or the ineffectiveness of masks and mask mandates; officials overreached their authority by imposing vaccine mandates on millions of Americans without the statutory authority to do so; officials ignored or downplayed the reality of natural immunity from viral infection; officials ignored or overlooked the frontline clinical experience of physicians who were combatting the virus on the ground and suppressed legitimate scientific dissent seeking to marginalize experts with differing views; and, finally, officials at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and other agencies, to this day, have continued to block the full disclosure of information to Congress about the origins of the coronavirus in Wuhan, China.

During the worst public health crisis of the century, centralized, top-down, government-run health care failed Americans. The solution is to reverse course on this broken system and give patients direct control of their health care dollars and decisions. Americans should be able to choose the care and coverage that is best for them, have access to more affordable coverage options, and receive the tools and incentive to make those choices; low-income families must be able to receive the private care they need; seniors must have a sound Medicare program; and Americans should be able to hold public health officials accountable for the failed federal response to the COVID-19 pandemic by reforming public health agencies, especially the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and ensuring that funding is primarily focused on the control of infectious disease. Giving Americans greater control over their own health care is the most powerful guarantor of higher-quality care at lower costs.

This content was last updated: January, 2024.

In order to give all Americans access to the health care they deserve, Congress should:

Roll back the expansion of government involvement in health care. Since the major provisions of the misnamed 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), known as Obamacare, were implemented in 2014, liberals have continued their mission to have the government take over America’s health care. During the pandemic, millions of Americans were added to the government health care rolls due in part to congressional actions. Congress must reverse course and remove ineligible people from Medicaid, scale back ACA subsidy expansions, and stop harmful administrative actions that stifle innovation, increase costs, and reduce choices for patients, including the imposition of government price controls.

Give states the flexibility to make coverage more affordable. States are better suited and equipped to oversee health insurance markets than the federal government. Rather than centralizing decisions at the federal level, Congress should give states greater flexibility to offer a broader menu of affordable health plans both in and outside federal exchanges to help to bring down costs and expand coverage options for their residents.

Offer patients the ability to use their health care dollars as they want. Patients want greater flexibility in choosing the health care coverage and services that best fit their needs and save for future health needs. To do that, Congress should expand access to patient-owned and patient-directed account-based coverage options, such as health savings accounts, as well as other non-government coverage and care arrangements, such as association health plans, health care–sharing ministries, and individual reimbursement accounts.

Require more transparency in health care pricing. Americans spend more on health care than any other people in the world. Yet, most have no idea of the actual cost even of the most common medical treatments or procedures. Lack of transparency partially explains the rising costs of health care, and price transparency can help to resolve this problem. Congress should require consumer-friendly information about hospital, insurance, and prescription-drug pricing and allow patients to share in savings from choosing lower-cost options. Furthermore, Congress should reform the way in which it supports health care providers that provide indigent care so that it is more transparent and accountable.

Offer low-income individuals and families private coverage options. Medicaid, the health care safety-net program for low-income individuals and families, locks them into an overstretched, rationed government-run health care program. Instead, Congress should give Medicaid enrollees the option of applying the Medicaid funds to the private health plan of their choice, including employer-based coverage.

Eliminate all taxpayer subsidies for, or funding of, abortion. Abortion is not health care. And post-Roe, it is, in fact, illegal in many states. The federal government has no business using taxpayer money to fund abortion. Aborted-fetal-tissue research organizations that perform or advocate abortions, like Planned Parenthood, should not receive any federal funding. Nor should the IRS allow tax breaks for abortion-related expenses.

Reform and expand private coverage options in Medicare. Medicare Advantage, the program that gives seniors access to private coverage options, is the fastest growing part of Medicare, because it is superior to traditional Medicare. To stabilize the Medicare program as a whole, Congress should reform the Medicare Advantage payment system to make it more market-based, expand the benefits that health care plans are allowed to offer seniors, allow seniors to share in savings for making less expensive choices, and make the Medicare Advantage program the default option for seniors in the future.

Overhaul the public health bureaucracy. The federal public health bureaucracy failed the American people during the coronavirus pandemic. Congress must use its oversight powers to hold these agencies accountable and make meaningful policy changes to ensure that such failures are never repeated. This entails separating the CDC’s research and policymaking functions and restoring it to its core mission of responding to infectious diseases; reforming the grant-making process at the National Institutes of Health based on merit; and realigning the Food and Drug Administration toward more efficient and effective review and oversight.

This content was last updated: January, 2024.

Facts + Figures

Fact: Government coverage is squeezing out private coverage options.

  • During the eight-year period from 2014 through 2021, individual-market enrollment (mainly subsidized coverage through the government exchange) was, on average, about 30 percent higher than before the implementation of the ACA, and the average Medicaid enrollment was about 20 percent higher.
  • Average enrollment in employer-based group coverage is 2 percent lower than before the ACA.

Fact: Americans have fewer health care options and face higher premiums than before Obamacare.

  • According to Heritage Foundation analysis, 300 insurers offered coverage in the Obamacare exchange in 2023, compared to 395 in the individual market in 2013, before Obamacare was in full effect.
  • Premiums in the individual market increased from $244 per member per month in 2013 to $558 per member per month in 2019, a 129 percent increase.

Fact: Medicaid enrollment and spending is exploding.

  • According to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, since the COVID-19 pandemic began, Medicaid (and Children’s Health Insurance Program) enrollment increased by 23 million, making total enrollment in these programs 95 million in March 2023.
  • Combined, federal and state Medicaid spending reached an estimated $824 billion in fiscal year 2022.

Fact: Medicare faces short-term and long-term challenges that put the future of the program at risk.

  • According to the Medicare Board of Trustees, enrollment in Medicare will jump from 65 million in 2022 to 83.4 million in 2040 while spending is projected to jump from roughly $1 trillion in 2023 to nearly $2 trillion in 2033.
  • By 2031, the hospital insurance (HI) trust fund is projected to become insolvent, and the total Medicare program faces $53.1 trillion in long-term unfunded obligations.
  • By 2040, Medicare’s current system of price controls will result in one-third of hospitals, and roughly half of nursing homes and home health agencies, operating in the red, threatening seniors’ access to quality care.

Fact: Overall health care spending continues to grow at excessive rates.

  • According to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, in 2022, national health care expenditures grew to $4.5 trillion and are expected to reach $6.8 trillion by 2030.
  • Transparency initiatives, if accompanied by a robust set of policies to allow patients to compare and act on price differences, could save as much as $80.7 billion annually. This would translate into a 6.9 percent reduction in medical spending for all Americans in private coverage and 7.4 percent for those with incomes below 100 percent of the federal poverty level.

Fact: The botched government response to the COVID-19 pandemic cost millions of lives and millions of livelihoods.

  • More than 1.1 million deaths in the U.S. are associated with COVID-19.
  • The economic costs related to the pandemic are estimated to reach $14 trillion by the end of 2023.
This content was last updated: January, 2024.
This content was last updated: January, 2024.

Life

Policy Proposals
  1. Eliminate taxpayer funding for elective abortion here and abroad and redirect federal funding of Planned Parenthood to health centers not involved in abortion.
  2. Protect conscience rights of doctors, nurses, and other medical practitioners.
  3. Protect unborn children, women, and girls from dangerous chemical abortion drugs.
  4. Resist the push for physician-assisted suicide (PAS).
Quick Facts
  1. Seven in 10 Americans believe that abortion should be limited to, at most, the first trimester.
  2. Pro-life pregnancy resource centers served nearly 2 million people in 2019, providing an estimated nearly $270 million in services such as ultrasounds, parenting and prenatal classes, diapers, clothing, and other supplies.
  3. Today, roughly 1 million abortions are performed in the U.S. every year.
  4. During the 2020–2021 reporting year, Planned Parenthood received $633.4 million in taxpayer funding, up from $618 million the previous year.
Establish Equal Rights
  • All human beings, from the moment of conception, are persons with intrinsic worth and have the fundamental right to life.
Redirect Planned Parenthood Funding
  • The abortion industry is well-funded, organized, and committed to expanding unlimited abortion at the expense of other essential medical services.
Protect the Vulnerable
  • Legalizing physician-assisted suicide is a grave mistake that endangers the weak and vulnerable, corrupts the practice of medicine and the doctor–patient relationship, compromises family commitments, and betrays human dignity and equality before the law.
This content was last updated: January, 2024.

In June 2022, the Supreme Court righted a legal and moral wrong when it overturned Roe v. Wade and opened the door for policymakers to pass more pro-life measures at the state and federal levels. This opportunity should not be squandered.

Many states have passed laws to protect women and unborn children since Roe’s reversal. Meanwhile, pro-abortion states are doing the opposite. Some have even enshrined abortion on demand until birth in state constitutions. At the federal level, the Biden Administration will continue to use the administrative state to achieve what it cannot accomplish through the democratic process.

Abortion-pill pushers, especially in pro-abortion states, undermine pro-life efforts by promoting and trafficking chemical abortion drugs across state lines to pro-life states. As a result, abortion pills are the next pro-life battlefield.

In the Dobbs decision, the Supreme Court made clear that the people can protect unborn life at any stage through “their elected representatives…in the States or Congress.” From gestational limits on abortion to protecting life and conscience in funding measures to government oversight and accountability, federal policymakers have an opportunity—and a constitutional duty—to legislate robust pro-life policies.

Policymakers and the American people should keep this fundamental principle in mind: From the moment of conception, every human being has inherent dignity and worth. American law should protect innocent human life, including in the womb.

This content was last updated: January, 2024.

In order to protect unborn children, U.S. policymakers should:

Enact robust gestational limits. Congress should protect unborn children with beating hearts through the Heartbeat Protection Act. While several states have already done so with similar or more robust laws, many others have not. Some states have no gestational limits at all. This status quo—where Texas protects unborn children fully, but California treats them as medical waste—is unacceptable. Congress should use its constitutional authority to protect the youngest and most vulnerable in every state.

Limit the interstate flow of chemical abortion drugs. Congress can, and should protect unborn children, women, and girls from dangerous chemical abortion drugs. Congress should also stop the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) from prioritizing the abortion industry over Americans’ health and safety. In the spring of 2021, under the cover of containing COVID-19 and contrary to long-standing safety protocol, the FDA ended the requirement that chemical abortion drugs be dispensed in person in limited health care settings. In 2023, the FDA formally sanctioned telemedicine abortion where a woman can be prescribed abortion pills via video call without a single in-person doctor visit. She can then receive the pills through the mail or in a pharmacy instead of in person from a physician, which was required by previous chemical abortion regulations. In the post-Dobbs landscape, many states have passed new pro-life laws. But abortion-pill pushers, especially in pro-abortion states, undermine these efforts by promoting and trafficking chemical abortion drugs across state lines to pro-life states. As a result, abortion pills are the next pro-life battlefield. Congress should step in. The Support and Value Expectant (SAVE) Moms and Babies Act is a start. The bill bars the FDA from approving any new abortion drugs. For abortion drugs currently approved, the bill reinstates the in-person dispensing requirement, once again disallowing mail-order and telemedicine abortions. The bill also improves post-marketing safety surveillance to better track health complications and adverse events. In practice, the bill would put a stop to the Biden Administration’s reckless disregard for women’s health and safety—just a start on the way to banning these dangerous drugs. Congress should use every tool at its disposal to limit the threats these pills pose to women, girls, and unborn children.

End taxpayer funding of elective abortion and the abortion industry. Congress should stop tax dollars from funding elective abortions and supporting the abortion industry once and for all. Rather than relying on a patchwork of “riders” that must be applied to appropriation bills every year, the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion and Abortion Insurance Full Disclosure Act would permanently end federal funding for elective abortion or health insurance coverage of abortions. Congress should also end federal funding for the abortion industry and direct funding to centers that provide real health care for women. The Protecting Life and Taxpayers Act would require that groups seeking federal funding certify that they will not perform abortions or fund other entities that do. This would in effect defund abortion providers, such as Planned Parenthood, the International Planned Parenthood Federation, and Marie Stopes International. Federal resources should instead go to pregnancy resource centers and entities that provide high-quality, comprehensive care that is not entangled with the abortion industry.

Protect the lives of abortion survivors. Congress should protect babies who survive abortion attempts. Federal law recognizes that infants born at any stage of development, regardless of the context of the birth, are “persons.” But this law does not specify duty of care for these babies. The Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act would require that an infant born alive after an abortion attempt receive proper medical care. It would punish health care providers who do not provide such care, and it would criminalize infanticide. It is known from government sources in the United States and across the world that babies can and do survive abortion attempts. Allowing these babies to suffer death by neglect is utterly unacceptable. Fixing this problem should not be controversial.

End “lethal discrimination” against Down syndrome babies. Congress should also protect babies from lethal discrimination in the womb. One way is through the Protecting Individuals with Down Syndrome Act, which would protect a child from abortion because a test result or diagnosis indicates the child has Down syndrome. The bill also prohibits forcing or coercing a woman to abort a child who has or may have Down syndrome. A 2022 Joint Economic Committee report finds that between 60 percent and 90 percent of baby boys and girls diagnosed with Down syndrome are aborted. It estimates that without these selective abortions, “the Down syndrome population would be 217,000 people greater in 50 years, an increase which is greater than the current Down syndrome population.” A dozen states protect unborn children from such lethal discrimination in the womb. The federal government should follow their lead.

Protect conscience rights. Many Americans cannot in good conscience provide, pay for, or refer women for, abortions. Congress protects American citizens and entities from being forced to do so through policies such as the Church Amendments, the Coats–Snowe Amendment, and the Weldon Amendment. (The latter is an annual rider in appropriations bills, not a permanent statute.) If someone believes that his conscience rights have been violated, he can file a complaint with the Office for Civil Rights at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). But the current Administration has failed to enforce conscience laws. The Conscience Protection Act would codify the Weldon Amendment and provide Americans with a private right of action for conscience violations. Such a right does not guarantee a certain outcome, but it would allow Americans to have their day in court rather than rely on potentially hostile government bureaucrats for relief.

Resist the push for physician-assisted suicide (PAS). Nearly a dozen states allow physician-assisted suicide, and proposals are filed in additional state legislatures each year. Legalizing PAS endangers the weak and vulnerable, corrupts the practice of medicine and the doctor–patient relationship, compromises the family and intergenerational commitments, and betrays human dignity and equality before the law. The experience of countries with PAS and euthanasia suggests that safeguards intended to limit PAS eligibility to the terminally ill or to certify autonomous consent often fail to ensure effective control. Instead of embracing PAS, policymakers should focus on the benefits of palliative care to improve a patient’s quality of life by alleviating pain and other distressing symptoms of serious illness.

This content was last updated: January, 2024.

Fact: Legalized abortion on demand has had a devastating impact on mothers, fathers, their unborn babies, and civil society.

  • Since the 1973 Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton decisions legalizing abortion on demand, more than 62 million humans have lost their lives to abortion in America. Today, roughly 1 million abortions occur in the U.S. every year.

Fact: The majority of Americans believe that abortion should be significantly restricted.

  • Seven in 10 Americans believe that abortion should be limited to, at most, the first trimester, or available only under rare circumstances.

Fact: Despite its claims to the contrary, the abortion industry is well-funded, organized, and committed to expanding unlimited abortion at the expense of other services.

  • Planned Parenthood’s annual report for 2020–2021 reveals that the organization performed 383,460 abortions in a single year, an all-time high.
  • Since 2010, cancer screening and prevention services have decreased by 74 percent, prenatal services have decreased by 72 percent, and the number of unique patients has decreased by 28 percent.
  • During the 2020–2021 reporting year, Planned Parenthood received $633.4 million in taxpayer funding, up from $618 million the previous year.
  • During that time, Planned Parenthood performed nearly 200 abortions for every adoption referral.

Fact: The rate of pill-induced abortion increased by 120 percent in the past decade, and the abortion industry is agitating to remove existing safety standards to make dangerous chemical abortions even more common.

  • Chemical abortion allows women to have abortions at home without medical supervision. Today, roughly half of abortions in the U.S. are chemical rather than surgical. Currently, abortion pills are approved for up to 70 days of gestation.
  • Since their approval by the FDA in 2000, abortion pills have been subject to heightened safety restrictions. For example, only certain providers may prescribe the pills, and until recently, they were required to dispense them directly. But now thanks to the Biden Administration, abortion pills are available via telemedicine, mail, and retail pharmacies.
  • Abortion pills have been associated with 28 deaths of women and thousands of adverse events, such as incomplete abortions, blood clots, and hemorrhaging. The complication rate for chemical abortion is four times the rate for a first-trimester surgical abortion.
  • Policymakers in more than a dozen states (and counting) have taken action against abortion pills through policies such as prohibitions on telemedicine abortion, heightened informed-consent requirements, and reporting requirements to improve the tracking of complications. These policies prioritize the health and safety of both women and unborn children.

Fact: America’s abortion laws in many states are permissive in the extreme compared to those of most other countries.

  • The United States is one of only seven countries in the entire world to permit elective abortion after 20 weeks (five months) of gestation.
  • Forty-seven of 50 European countries limit elective abortion to 15 weeks of gestation.

Fact: Pro-life pregnancy resource centers provide millions of mothers, babies, and families with life-affirming resources every year across America.

  • One study found that pregnancy resource centers served nearly 2 million people in 2019, providing an estimated nearly $270 million in services such as ultrasounds, parenting and prenatal classes, diapers, clothing, and other supplies.
  • Eight in 10 of those who work in pregnancy centers do so on a voluntary basis.
This content was last updated: January, 2024.
This content was last updated: January, 2024.

Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Policies

Policy Proposals
  1. Protect the freedom of all Americans to think, speak, work, and act according to their beliefs about marriage, the innate sexual differences between men and women, and biological reality.
  2. Protect minors from harmful “gender-transition” procedures and “therapies.”
  3. Oppose any federal bill and regulation that would enshrine gender ideology in law.
Quick Facts
  1. Religious institutions contribute $1.2 trillion to the economy every year. An estimated 350,000 religious congregations operate countless local services.
  2. Among minors who struggle with gender dysphoria, up to 88 percent of girls and 98 percent of boys who are not prevented from going through puberty reconcile with their biological sex.
  3. Three in four (73 percent) Americans say that parents should not lose custody of their child because they refuse to allow their child to use puberty-blocking drugs or cross-sex hormones.
Protect Civil Liberties
  • The United States must recognize and protect the beliefs of all Americans, not just those who agree with progressive orthodoxy.
  • Sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) laws are not about tolerance and have spawned lawsuits against countless businesses that affirm natural marriage or recognize that the two sexes are a biological reality.
  • A sweeping, federal SOGI law like the proposed Equality Act would hobble the services of religious organizations including pregnancy resource centers, soup kitchens, schools, drug addiction programs, and adoption agencies.
Inform Americans of the Real-world Consequences of SOGI
  • “Gender-affirming” medical interventions put minors on a pathway to sterilization and lifelong medicalization of psychological distress.
  • Policies that allow boys to “identify as” female to compete in girls’ sports teams are fundamentally unfair and prevent girls from reaching their full potential.
  • Parents should not lose custody of their children because they refuse to allow their children to use puberty-blocking drugs or cross-sex hormones.
This content was last updated: January, 2024.

Americans face growing pressure in education, culture, and the marketplace to embrace radical ideologies that deny the truth of natural marriage and the reality of biological sex.

From social media and Hollywood to cereal boxes and children’s books, a relentless flood of propaganda denounces those who do not affirm gender ideology and sexual radicalism. Mega corporations and tech giants threaten boycotts of cities and states that fail to toe the new party line. Boys and men who “identify as” female compete in female sports and use women’s private spaces with impunity and elite approval. And 22 states and hundreds of localities have enacted laws enshrining sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) in civil rights code to punish those who dissent from this state-sanctioned orthodoxy.

This is no accident. Tim Gill, whom Rolling Stone dubbed “the megadonor behind the LGBTQ rights movement,” has said that the goal of SOGI laws is “to punish the wicked.” That is, SOGI laws are designed to disparage those who affirm natural marriage or recognize that the two sexes are a biological reality.

SOGI laws are not about tolerance. Where passed, these laws have spawned lawsuits against countless businesses. They also cleared the way for dangerous and experimental medical procedures on minors, jeopardize the safety and privacy of women and girls, undermine parents’ rights and the conscience rights of medical providers, and violate freedom of religion and speech.

SOGI laws contradict what U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in the 2015 Obergefell case. In the majority opinion, Justice Kennedy, even while overturning state laws defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman, said that those beliefs and the people who hold them are worthy of respect. He noted that the natural view of marriage “has been held—and continues to be held—in good faith by reasonable and sincere people here and throughout the world.” Moreover, the Court ruled that many “reach that conclusion based on decent and honorable religious or philosophical premises, and neither they nor their beliefs are disparaged here.”

But the Court’s redefinition of marriage had consequences. Almost as soon as Obergefell overturned laws that recognized that marriage was grounded in nature rather than mere romantic preference, the floodgates opened, and gender ideologues stormed through. The tragic story of the Martinez family highlights the danger of SOGI laws. At her high school, Yaeli Martinez began to identify as a boy. The school, by policy, supported the “transition” but did not inform Yaeli’s mom, Abby. When she found out, Abby declined to put her daughter on cross-sex hormones and, for this, lost custody of her daughter to the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services.

For three years, Yaeli lived with a gender activist and took cross-sex hormones, and Abby could not intervene. Then the worst happened. Despite the department’s claim that “transitioning” Yaeli and removing her from her mother would keep her from committing suicide, Yaeli took her own life.

Cases like this have become far more common as schoolteachers, psychologists, social workers, and other activists are subverting parents’ rights by targeting minors with gender propaganda.

Holding perennial views on the nature of marriage and the reality of sex is not discrimination. Such views do not justify state infringement on parental rights. Policymakers should uphold Americans’ rights to think, speak, and act according to their moral, medical, and scientific views on these subjects. Protecting these rights will foster true tolerance and social peace. Pushing SOGI laws does just the opposite.

This content was last updated: January, 2024.

To protect children, parents, businesses, and all Americans from being forced to comply with radical sexual ideology, state and federal policymakers should:

Protect the freedom of all Americans to think, speak, work, and act according to their beliefs about marriage, the innate sexual differences between men and women, and biological reality itself. Americans should be free at school, in the workplace, and in the public square to live according to their moral, religious, and scientific beliefs on these matters. But sweeping bills like the misnamed Equality Act would impose gender ideology as state-sanctioned orthodoxy in all 50 states. In states where similar bills have been enacted, those who disagree with the new orthodoxy may face discrimination charges. “Compromise” solutions, such as the Fairness for All Act and the Respect for Marriage Act, also fail to protect Americans’ freedoms and restrict freedom of expression on marriage and sex to private spaces.

In contrast, conservatives should push for legislation that recognizes and protects the “decent and honorable” beliefs of all Americans, not just those who agree with government-enforced orthodoxy. Bills like the First Amendment Defense Act or the Civil Rights Uniformity Act would do just that. The first prohibits the federal government from punishing any entity with which it contracts or which it accredits or licenses for affirming that marriage is exclusively between a man and a woman. The second would prevent any executive branch agency from defining “sex” in civil rights code to include “gender identity.” Such laws will ensure that medical professionals, school faculty, religious institutions, and parents can live and act freely without fear of punishment.

Preserve and protect the right of parents to approve what their children are taught and exposed to and to oversee their children’s medical treatment. The Supreme Court has long recognized that parents have the primary right and duty to care for and guide their children. As the Court affirmed in Pierce (1925), “The child is not the mere creature of the State; those who nurture him and direct his destiny have the right, coupled with the high duty, to recognize and prepare him for additional obligations.” Increasingly, however, educators and medical professionals are undermining these rights. In schools, children are secretly taught radical ideology and are bombarded with inappropriate sexual content without parental permission and even contrary to parents’ stated wishes. In some cases, schools have withheld vital information from parents about their children’s mental and physical health. In some states, minors can receive “sensitive” health care, including “gender transition,” without parental consent. All this can profoundly harm minors’ health and development. State and federal policies must protect children by ensuring that parental rights are treated with the strictest respect. Legislators should support bills that require opt ins (rather than opt outs) for sensitive curricula and protect parental consent when it comes to medical and mental health care for minors.

Protect minors from harmful “gender-transition” procedures and “therapies.” Contrary to activists’ claims, the best medical research does not show that “gender transition” improves mental health for minors. The longest-term study found that even adults who fully transition are 19 times more likely than the average person to commit suicide. Moreover, those who transition chemically or surgically experience irreversible damage, such as sterilization, sexual dysfunction, atrophy, loss of bone density, or heart disease. This damage is especially tragic, as among minors who struggle with gender dysphoria, up to 88 percent of girls and 98 percent of boys who are not prevented from going through puberty reconcile with their biological sex. Internationally, the U.K. has closed its only pediatric gender clinic. And the U.K., as well as Denmark, Finland, and Sweden, have now put strict limits on these procedures. In the U.S., as of July 2023, 23 states have passed laws protecting children from experimental “gender transition” procedures. The other states and the federal government should do the same.

Anchor the definitions of sex, male, and female firmly in biological reality. Through administrative rulemaking, the Biden Administration is attempting to legally redefine “sex” to include “gender identity” and “sexual orientation.” To protect their citizens from the threat of these ideological constructs, states should anchor the legal definitions of sex, male, female, man, and woman in biology and oppose the adoption of the “LGBTQIA+” lexicon.

Oppose any federal bill and regulation that would enshrine gender ideology in law. Activists have been trying to expand the “discrimination” prohibitions on the basis of sex to include sexual orientation and gender identity. A federal SOGI law like the Equality Act would have a devastating effect on Americans. Tying SOGI language to federal funding or tax-exempt status would curtail religious freedom. Disqualifying all groups that object to the new sexual orthodoxy would cost the federal government some of its best partners in serving the public.

In addition, bills like the Fairness for All Act and the Respect for Marriage Act are not enough to protect the common good. They wrongly elevate sexual orientation and gender identity to protected categories of civil rights law and contain only narrow religious exemptions for limiting the harms. Indeed, new regulations from the Department of Education and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission would compel millions of Americans to affirm falsehoods or risk losing their jobs and reputations. Short of stand-alone bills, gender activists push for laws and regulations that accomplish the same goal—one word or phrase at a time. Legislators must learn to spot buzzwords that disguise such efforts. These include the use of “gender” to refer to “gender identity,” terms such as “gender minorities,” “sexual minorities,” and “gender equity,” and offensive euphemisms, such as “menstruating individual” or “birthing person” rather than “woman” or “mother.”

At the United Nations and other international organizations, the U.S. should:

Strengthen the protection of individual human rights and oppose creation of new rights based on gender ideology. Gender activists view the U.N. as a beachhead to advance their social policies in ways that influence American law and policy. The U.S. should promote reform of the U.N. human rights bureaucracy and hold it to its mandate to promote and protect basic freedoms. The U.N. should not be imposing an extreme ideology that is contrary not only to the Western tradition but to the views of every other traditional culture. The U.S. should respect the sovereignty of other U.N. member states in these matters and reject any insertion of SOGI language into negotiated U.N. texts.

This content was last updated: January, 2024.

Fact: Contrary to activists’ claims, medical “transition” procedures that modify sex traits are harmful and should be prohibited, especially for minors.

  • A major long-term study on gender transition found that adults who medically “transitioned” were more than 19 times more likely to commit suicide than the average person.
  • According to the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, up to 88 percent of girls and 98 percent of boys experiencing gender dysphoria will reconcile with their biological sex if allowed to go through puberty.
  • A Heritage Foundation study found that U.S. states where minors have access to puberty-blocking drugs without parental consent had higher teen suicide rates than states that require parental consent.

Fact: SOGI laws harm Americans in countless ways.

  • “Gender-affirming” medical interventions put minors on a pathway to sterilization and lifelong medicalization of psychological distress.
  • Despite a Supreme Court ruling protecting his freedom of speech, Jack Philips, owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop, is being sued by activists a third time for refusing to violate his conscience by affirming same-sex marriage and gender ideology.
  • In 2018, the City of Philadelphia passed an ordinance that shut down Catholic Social Services for its view of marriage.
  • In 2018, a man who identifies as a woman sued a women-only shelter in Anchorage for refusing to let him in.
  • Policies that allow boys to “identify as” female to compete in girls’ sports teams harm girls. In Connecticut, high school track and field athlete Chelsea Mitchell lost four state championship titles to a boy who identifies as a girl. This cost Chelsea her well-deserved athletic and scholarship opportunities.

Fact: Most Americans believe that those who support natural marriage and recognize biological sex should be free to express their beliefs.

  • Three in four Americans (73 percent) say that parents should not lose custody of their children because they refuse to allow their children to use puberty-blocking drugs or cross-sex hormones.
  • About six of every 10 Americans believe that employers and insurers (66 percent) and doctors and medical professionals (59 percent) should not be forced to pay for or perform “gender-affirming” (which are in effect sex-erasing) surgeries.
  • At least two-thirds of Americans oppose letting boys and men compete in girls’ and women’s sports.
  • Most Americans support laws restricting minors’ access to puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, or surgeries for purposes of gender transition.
  • Sixty-five percent of Americans agree that nonprofits should be free to follow their convictions rather than affirm same-sex marriage and gender transition.
  • Eighty-nine percent of Americans agree: The best way to help foster kids and orphans is to draw from a wide range of adoptive families and agencies—including those that affirm the natural truths of sex and marriage.

Fact: A sweeping, federal SOGI law like the Equality Act would hobble the services of some 350,000 religious organizations. These include pregnancy resource centers, soup kitchens, schools, drug addiction programs, and adoption agencies.

  • Religious institutions contribute $1.2 trillion to the economy every year.
  • These organizations serve 70 million Americans a year, and their services are valued at more than $44.3 billion annually. Such private services are often better at meeting human needs than are government programs.
This content was last updated: January, 2024.
This content was last updated: January, 2024.

Welfare

Policy Proposals
  1. Strengthen and enforce work requirements in welfare programs. Replace existing means-tested welfare spending programs with a more effective and efficient system to reduce poverty.
  2. Promote marriage as America’s greatest weapon against child poverty by reducing or eliminating the penalties for marriage in the welfare system.
  3. Promote the success sequence: finishing high school, entering the workforce or attending college, getting married, and having children.
Quick Facts
  1. In 2018, more than 90 government means-tested welfare programs provided more than $1.16 trillion in cash, food, housing, medical care, and social services to poor and lower-income Americans.
  2. After welfare reform, the non-marital pregnancy rate fell from 89.3 per 1,000 in 1992 to 59.6 per 1,000 in 2020. This contributed to a sharp reduction in the non-marital abortion rate, which was cut in half falling from 44 abortions per 1,000 non-married women to 21 per 1,000 non-married women.
  3. Welfare reform cut the rate of dependence on traditional, work-free cash aid by nearly 80 percent. Before reform, 9 million children were receiving cash benefits from the government. By 2019, only 2.2 million received these traditional cash benefits, and many had working parents.
Winning the War on Poverty
  • The War on Poverty produced a rapid decline in married, two- parent families, a steady growth in non-marital birth rates, a rise in abortions, and the spread of long-term government dependence.
  • The principles of successful reform have been abandoned and forgotten. For two decades, there have been no serious efforts to strengthen marriage or work requirements within the remaining vast welfare state. Conservatives have remained largely silent on welfare.
Encourage Marriage and Empower the Poor
  • It is time for welfare to truly improve the well-being of the poor, encourage work, and remove barriers to marriage.
  • The welfare system should not penalize parents when they get married.
  • Able-bodied adults who receive cash, food, housing, and medical assistance should be required to work or prepare for work as a condition of receiving those government benefits.
  • To help the poor, the government should pay for outcomes like ensuring people get off drugs or find a job—not just for providing services.
This content was last updated: January, 2024.

When President Lyndon Johnson launched the War on Poverty in 1965, he said that its purpose was to strike “at the causes, not just the consequences of poverty.” He added, “Our aim is not only to relieve the symptom of poverty, but to cure it and, above all, to prevent it.”

In fact, the actual War on Poverty policies had the opposite effect, with devastating consequences for lower-income families. Dramatically increasing government spending and creating an ever-growing number of new welfare programs, the War on Poverty produced a rapid decline in married, two-parent families, a steady growth in non-marital birth rates, a rise in abortions, and the spread of long-term government dependence.

Congress took crucial steps to reverse these negative trends with the enactment of welfare reform in 1996. Welfare reform replaced the primary, failed welfare program called Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) with a new program: Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF). In contrast to other welfare programs, the new TANF program established work requirements and time limits on benefits for recipients. In addition, state governments that wished to expand dependence and welfare spending would be required to finance that expansion with state, rather than federal, funds. Even blue states were reluctant to spend their own funds in that manner.

Around 90 percent of recipients in the AFDC and TANF programs were single parents. The welfare reform law had the explicit goal of reducing out-of-wedlock births and promoting marriage. The new work requirements and time limits were implicitly aimed at strengthening marriage by reducing the economic utility of single parenthood and non-marital births.

Marriage. For more than two decades before welfare reform, the percentage of children residing in married two-parent families fell steadily. In 1970, 85 percent of children lived in two-parent homes; by 1996, the number had fallen to 68 percent. Welfare reform was intended to stop this steady collapse of marriage by limiting the utility of government subsidies to single parenthood relative to marriage. The reform was remarkably successful: The decline in two-parent families halted abruptly. The married family rate has remained stable for nearly three decades. If the pre-reform trend in family disintegration had continued, an additional 9 million children would live in single-parent rather than married two-parent homes today.

Abortion. Some 86 percent of abortions are performed on non-married women. Non-marital births and non-marital abortions are often seen as the opposite ends of a seesaw. In this view, a rise in non-marital births will cause a fall in non-marital abortions. Conversely, a rise in non-marital abortions should cause non-marital births to fall. This view is inaccurate because both abortions and births are driven by a key background factor: the non-marital pregnancy rate (births per 1,000 non-married women). The non-marital pregnancy rate can be viewed like the pivot at the center of the seesaw. When the pivot rises, both non-marital abortions and births will rise together; when the pivot falls, both non-marital abortions and births will fall together.

The combination of Roe v. Wade and War on Poverty welfare programs led to an explosive growth in the non-marital pregnancy rate. This was a disaster. Before welfare reform, nearly one in 10 non-married women became pregnant each year; this obviously led to high simultaneous levels of non-marital abortions and non-marital births. But with welfare reform, the non-marital pregnancy rate fell for the first time. The shrinkage in non-marital pregnancy reduced both non-marital births and abortions together, resulting in at least 400,000 fewer abortions each year. Altogether, the behavioral and social changes initiated and promoted by welfare reform have led to 9.8 million fewer abortions.

Teen Births. Between the launch of the War on Poverty in the early 1960s and the onset of welfare reform in the mid-1990s, birth rates for unmarried teenage girls skyrocketed. By the early 1990s nearly one in 10 births in the U.S. was to an unmarried teenager. With the onset of welfare reform, this mind-numbing upward trend promptly and sharply reversed; birth rates for unmarried teens plummeted back to levels from the early 1960s. Teen pregnancies and abortions fell at the same precipitate rates.

Poverty and Dependence. Before welfare reform, the poverty rate among single parents was relatively flat. Immediately after reform, poverty among single parents began to decline sharply, falling from 33 percent in 1996 to 11 percent in 2020, due in part to work requirements and time limits on benefits. Furthermore, before welfare reform, nearly one in seven children was receiving monthly cash welfare benefits. More than 90 percent of these recipient children were in single-parent homes, and, on average, these families remained on the program for 13 years. After reform, caseloads plummeted. By 2019, only 3 percent of children were receiving traditional cash benefits, cutting the rate of traditional dependence by nearly 80 percent.

But welfare reform affected only a small part of the welfare system. While reform did dramatically overhaul the main welfare program for families with children, it left the remaining 90 programs in the welfare state largely intact. Although long-term spending was cut sharply, spending in the rest of the welfare state has grown rapidly.

Even worse, rather than building on and expanding the highly successful and popular reform of the 1990s, conservatives simply walked away from the issue. The principles of successful reform have been abandoned and forgotten. For two decades, there have been no serious efforts to strengthen marriage or work requirements within the remaining vast welfare state. Conservatives have remained largely silent on welfare.

The Left has taken advantage of this conservative silence. For two decades, it has steadily pushed to overturn welfare reform and dramatically expand the anti-marriage, anti-work welfare state. For example, in 2021, the Biden Administration sought to completely overturn welfare reform.

The Biden anti-work and anti-marriage plan sought to vastly expand the welfare state with a focus on pumping new cash benefits to non-working single parents. The plan would have provided the largest single-year increase in means-tested welfare spending in U.S. history, adding some $836 billion in new means-tested spending over five years. Having ignored welfare for decades, conservatives were caught off balance and President Joe Biden’s welfare spendathon came two votes short of final passage in the Senate.

Although welfare reform in the 1990s dramatically slowed the decline in marriage, the American family remains in a precarious state. Today, some 40 percent of children are born outside marriage. Aside from the TANF program, welfare spending has continued to rise.

Conservatives should no longer ignore the issues of work, marriage, and welfare. They should, instead, build on and expand the successes of welfare reform. Congress should inject the time-tested principles of reform into the rest of the vast welfare state.

This content was last updated: January, 2024.

In order to reverse the harmful decline in marriage and reform the welfare state, federal policymakers should:

Remove marriage penalties in welfare programs. If a single mother marries today, her family welfare benefits are substantially reduced. Traditional welfare benefits—by design—create this financial disincentive for low-income parents to marry. Eliminating these penalties across the nearly 90 means-tested programs would reverse this perverse incentive structure and thereby increase marriage among low-income families, create financial and emotional stability for parents and their children, and reduce long-term dependence on government welfare programs. Welfare marriage penalties can be reduced without added costs to taxpayers by eliminating widespread fraud, waste, and excess benefits within the existing welfare system.

Strengthen and enforce work requirements in welfare programs. The majority of Americans believe that able-bodied people should work in exchange for receiving benefits. Yet, most means-tested welfare programs enroll millions of adults who are able to work and choose not to. Congress should strengthen work requirements for non-elderly, able-bodied adults receiving TANF benefits. Congress should establish similar requirements for public housing and food stamps. Loopholes in the Earned Income Tax Credit, which enable recipients to evade work obligations, should be eliminated. Effective work policies should protect families with at least one working parent from poverty.

Replace existing means-tested welfare spending programs with a more effective and efficient system to reduce poverty. Federal and state governments spend more than $1.2 trillion on means-tested welfare programs. This spending, however, is fragmented, opaque, and nearly impossible to calculate and track accurately. The amount received by the typical recipient family is nearly unknowable and deliberately underreported. To create greater transparency and expose the true size and cost of the welfare state, the key welfare programs should be integrated into a single new program. The opportunity for individuals to receive duplicative benefits from many programs simultaneously should be reduced. The new integrated program should be designed to promote marriage and work, and to reduce fraud and waste. In addition, the deliberately flawed and inaccurate system by which government measures and reports poverty and economic inequality should be replaced with a modern system that, for the first time, counts income and benefits accurately at the macro and family level.

Promote the success sequence. Among young adults who follow the success sequence—finishing high school, entering the workforce or attending college, and then getting married before having children—97 percent are not in poverty. States should adopt laws adding the success sequence to their family life education standards, showcasing data illuminating the value of graduation, work, and marriage for young adults and their families.

This content was last updated: January, 2024.

Fact: Welfare reform reduced government dependence, halted the decline in married, two-parent families, stopped the rise in non-marital childbearing, and sharply reduced child poverty.

  • Welfare reform cut the rate of dependence on traditional, work-free cash aid by nearly 80 percent. Before reform, 9 million children were receiving cash benefits from the government. By 2019, only 2.2 million received these traditional cash benefits and many had working parents.
  • In 1970, 85 percent of children resided in married, two-parent families. By 1996, the year of welfare reform, the number of children in married, two-parent families had fallen to 68 percent. Since reform, this decline has halted and the number has remained largely steady.
  • The non-marital birth rate more than doubled in the three decades before welfare reform, rising from around 20 per 1,000 women in 1960 to 45 births per 1,000 in 1990. Since reform, the non-marital birth rate has remained largely stable.
  • Because of welfare reform, today, an additional 9 million children live in married two-parent homes.
  • Child poverty in single-parent families has fallen by two-thirds.

Fact: Welfare reform dramatically reduced abortion.

  • Some 86 percent of abortions in the U.S. occur among unmarried women. Non-marital abortions are driven by non-marital pregnancy. Welfare reform reduced the non-marital pregnancy rate for the first time.
  • After welfare reform, the non-marital pregnancy rate fell from 89.3 per 1,000 in 1992 to 59.6 per 1,000 in 2020. This contributed to a sharp reduction in the non-marital abortion rate, which was cut in half falling from 44 abortions per 1,000 non-married women to 21 per 1,000 non-married women.
  • Altogether, changes initiated and promoted by welfare reform have led to 9.8 million fewer abortions.

Fact: Marriage is one of the top factors in promoting human happiness and reducing poverty among children.

  • Children raised in single-parent homes have higher crime rates, lower educational attainment, aimlessness, and despair and are five times as likely to be poor as are their peers in married-parent homes.
  • Family structure is the most important factor in predicting the upward social mobility of children; children with married parents do best economically, educationally, socially, and emotionally.
  • Nearly all means-tested welfare programs have significant marriage penalties. More than 80 percent of the public believe that “the welfare state should not penalize parents when they get married.”

Fact: Requiring work or work-related training for able-bodied individuals as a condition of receiving welfare benefits enjoys broad public support and has positive benefits.

  • In 1996, before welfare reform, nearly nine of 10 families on welfare were jobless and dependent on government benefits for more than 13 years.
  • More than 90 percent of the public believe that “able bodied adults who receive cash, food, housing and medical assistance should be required to work or prepare for work as a condition of receiving those government benefits.”
  • When mothers who were formerly on welfare find employment, they experience increased physical, emotional, and psychological well-being, and the health and behavioral outcomes for their children are even better.
  • Work requirements in welfare also strengthen marriage, encouraging mothers to bond with husbands in marriage rather than seeking open-ended support from the taxpayers through innumerable government welfare programs.

Fact: Total spending on means-tested welfare programs at all levels of government is more than $1.2 trillion annually.

  • In 2018, more than 90 government means-tested welfare programs provided more than $1.16 trillion in cash, food, housing, medical care, and social services to poor and lower-income Americans.
  • In 2018, the average poor family with children identified as “poor” by the government had around $18,000 per year in earnings; $21,000 in government cash, food, and housing benefits; and $17,000 in free government medical care. Total resources came to $56,000 per year.
  • A major cause of apparent poverty in the U.S. is that the government ignores or undercounts roughly three-quarters of the actual resources received by the families it defines as “poor.” Of the $56,000 in total resources received by the average poor family in 2018, the government ignored roughly $41,000.

Fact: The Biden Administration’s rejected American Families Plan would have been the largest welfare increase in U.S. history.

  • As stated, the average poor family with children currently receives at least $56,000 in earnings and government cash, food, housing, and medical care each year. The Biden Administration’s plan would have added another $11,300 in government welfare support for these families.
  • The Biden plan would also have reversed the successful 1990s welfare reforms by resurrecting the failed policy of rewarding families for not working and exacerbating the existing marriage penalties in the welfare system.
  • These efforts would have laid the foundation for universal basic income or guaranteed-basic-income schemes. Controlled, random assignment experiments show that such policies reduce recipient earnings by $660 for each $1,000 in aid given.
This content was last updated: January, 2024.
This content was last updated: January, 2024.

Economic Freedom

Agriculture

Policy Proposals
  1. Eliminate the federal sugar program, which falsely inflates sugar prices, hurting consumers and manufacturing jobs.
  2. Oppose tariffs and non-tariff trade barriers that prevent farmers from reaching new customers through exports and keep Americans from having access to agricultural imports.
  3. Separate food stamps from agricultural programs.
Quick Facts
  1. The federal sugar program costs consumers about $3.7 billion a year, with a disproportionate impact on the poor because they must spend a greater share of their income on food than higher-income households.
  2. From 2014 to 2016, just six commodities (corn, wheat, soybeans, cotton, rice, and peanuts) received 94 percent of the farm program support, while accounting for only 28 percent of farm income.
  3. According to the Economic Research Service, agricultural exports created an additional $162.9 billion in economic activity and more than 1 million full-time jobs in 2018.
Fight Inflation
  • Excessive regulations can hinder food production, reduce farm revenue, and cause food price inflation for Americans.
  • Taxpayer assistance should only be given when a disaster occurs; it should provide a true safety net, not create a corporate welfare system.
  • The interests of taxpayers and consumers should not be ignored, as they often are, when providing assistance to farmers.
Respect Americans’ Choices
  • Americans should have the freedom to make their own decisions about what they eat. Federal intervention to influence or restrict personal dietary decisions holds Americans back from making the best choices for their own health and lifestyle.
  • Excessive environmental regulations trample property rights and discourage farmers from using their land even for ordinary farming activities. A federal one-size-fits-all approach to regulation ignores both the role of states and farmers’ natural incentive to be good stewards of their land.
This content was last updated: January, 2024.

Agricultural policy does not merely affect farmers. It is a broad, sweeping issue that affects Americans who have to buy food for their families and the businesses that produce and distribute that food to consumers. Federal government intervention in the food and agricultural sector is far too prevalent, thereby limiting competition, raising prices, stifling innovation, and creating waste.

One of the primary issues in agricultural policy is federal farm subsidies. There is a misconception that these subsidies exist primarily to help farmers when they experience crop losses—a “safety net” for major losses connected to natural disasters. In fact, these subsidies are an out-of-control corporate welfare system that primarily insulates a small number of large agricultural producers from competing in the marketplace. It is easy to see that agricultural producers can flourish without such harmful government intervention: Most U.S. agricultural producers, just like other businesses, do not receive special taxpayer handouts to help them to compete.

Excessive federal intervention in agriculture and food production does not end with farm subsidies. Recent trade disputes, such as those with China, have led to significant retaliatory tariffs on agricultural goods. This makes it more difficult for farmers to export their goods and reduces the range of high-quality and low-cost food options available to consumers. In addition, major environmental regulations trample on the property rights of farmers and ranchers and continue to hamper their ability to produce food. (For more on these regulations, see the “Environment” section.) These regulations often reflect federal agency overreach that can block ordinary farming activities or discourage farmers from even trying to engage in such activities out of fear of civil and criminal penalties.

Increasing federal control of the food that people eat (even to the extent of hindering food innovation that would better meet consumer demand) is an alarming trend. Federal policymakers have unduly influenced or restricted personal dietary decisions, imposing overly stringent and often arbitrary standards on how food can be produced and labeled, failing to respect the basic individual freedom of choosing which foods to eat. This intervention reflects an arrogant assumption that federal bureaucrats know what other people should eat, without regard for rising food prices, the complexity of individual diets, and respect for individual choices.

Too many policymakers simply defer agricultural policy to legislators serving on agriculture committees or to those with large farming constituencies. If the country is going to reduce this federal intervention, which distorts markets, wastes taxpayer dollars, and limits freedom, then all policymakers should take a proactive stand to promote the principles of free enterprise and limited government in agriculture.

This content was last updated: January, 2024.

In order to allow Americans—consumers, farmers, and business owners—to purchase and grow the food that is right for them, Congress should:

Stop paying farmers twice for revenue shortfalls and for price losses in the same year. Agricultural producers can receive support from the Agricultural Risk Coverage (ARC) program or the Price Loss Coverage (PLC) program and the federal crop insurance program to cover price declines and revenue shortfalls in the same year. In years during which farmers receive a crop insurance indemnity to help with revenue, the U.S. Department of Agriculture should not also provide an ARC or PLC payment. It is duplicative, unnecessary, and wasteful to force taxpayers to provide those same producers with more than one federal revenue-related payment in the same year.

Reduce the premium subsidy rate for crop insurance from an average of 62 percent to 47 percent or lower. Taxpayers should not pay more for the cost of premiums than the farmers who benefit from crop insurance policies are required to pay. The Trump Administration, the Obama Administration, and the Government Accountability Office have recommended reducing the premium subsidy. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has identified reducing the premium subsidy to as low as 40 percent as an option for reducing the federal deficit. When analyzing a 47 percent premium subsidy, the CBO found that it would save taxpayers $8.1 billion over 10 years. It would also have very little impact on crop insurance participation—a reduction in insured acres of just 0.5 percent, and only 1.5 percent of acres with lower coverage levels.

Shutter the Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC). A relic of the New Deal era, the CCC’s statutory authority is deliberately broad and vague, allowing it to function as a de facto agricultural slush fund. This leads to a lack of transparency for the public, a lack of proper control for Congress, and allows abuse by the executive branch. An excellent example is the Biden Administration’s Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities program, which is poised to deliver billions of dollars in corporate welfare benefits based on dubious environmental claims. There is no direct statutory authority for any program along these lines, let alone a program of such size, yet the CCC’s authorizing language is so poorly crafted that the Biden Administration is abusing the program. Congress should end the CCC and only retain programs that Members are willing to reauthorize directly.

Eliminate the sugar program. The federal sugar program intentionally drives up food prices by limiting the sugar supply. As would be expected, American sugar prices are consistently higher than world prices, which negatively affects American consumers and workers in industries that use sugar to manufacture goods. The program costs consumers about $3.7 billion a year, and there is a disproportionate impact on the poor because a greater share of their income goes to meeting food needs than in higher-income households. Sugar producers and processors should compete in a free market as other businesses do without price guarantees, supply restrictions, import quotas, and other government interventions.

Separate food stamps from agricultural programs. For decades, Congress has passed farm bills by combining food stamps with agricultural programs. This unholy alliance has existed entirely for political purposes to promote the enactment of legislation, with rural legislators presumably pushing for farm subsidies, and with urban legislators presumably pushing for food stamps. Real reform requires that these categories be separated because, like food stamps, agricultural policy needs to be addressed on its own merits. Congress should therefore consider food stamps and agricultural programs in two separate bills, and these programs should be authorized on staggered schedules so that there is no potential for overlap in the future.

Free agricultural trade from government intervention. Trade is often discussed in connection with how it affects countries, but trade as a general matter is about the freedom of individuals and businesses to exchange goods and services voluntarily. American farmers and ranchers, like those in other businesses, should generally be free to sell to customers all over the world. Likewise, consumers should generally be free to purchase goods and services that best meet their needs, regardless of national origin. Government-imposed barriers, such as tariffs, undermine these freedoms. To address unfair practices, the United States should rely on the World Trade Organization’s (WTO’s) dispute-settlement system instead of relying on tariffs. One of the most important benefits of membership in the WTO is having a legal venue through which to challenge foreign trade barriers.

Stop federal efforts to control or change individual dietary choices. Federal government intrusion into the dietary choices of Americans is growing. Underlying these mandates is the arrogant presumption that the government must guide or even compel the public to make the “right” choices. Congress should respect the most basic and private aspect of Americans’ lives: food choices. This should include stopping the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA’s) overreach in implementing Obamacare’s menu-labeling law. Even though the law applies to “restaurants and similar retail food establishments,” the FDA is using it to regulate grocery stores, convenience stores, movie theaters, and other businesses that no reasonable person would think are the same as restaurants. Congress should also clarify that the FDA’s role in food safety does not include micromanaging nutritional information.

Refrain from blocking food and agricultural innovation. Congress ignored science when it mandated the adoption of misleading food labels suggesting that foods using genetically engineered crops are somehow less safe than their non–genetically engineered counterparts. Efforts at the state and federal levels (including at the FDA) are making it difficult for producers of new products, such as plant-based dairy alternatives and plant-based and cell-based meat alternatives, to convey the nature of their products accurately to consumers. For example, almond milk producers, who have long included the term “milk” in their product name, might no longer be able to use the dairy-related term due to FDA concern over non-existent consumer confusion. Congress needs to repeal the genetically engineered food labeling law and ensure that the government is not creating protectionist schemes, such as name restrictions, to hinder the sale and development of food products that appeal to consumers.

This content was last updated: January, 2024.

Fact: While agricultural special interests try to perpetuate the myth of the struggling small farmer to help to justify government intervention, farm households in general are much better off than non-farm households. According to the Economic Research Service, in 2020:

  • The median household income for all family farms was $80,060, which is 19 percent greater than the median income for all U.S. households ($67,521).
  • The median farm household wealth for all family farms was $1,048,208, which is 8.5 times greater than the median household wealth for all U.S. households ($123,358).
  • Commercial family farms (a classification that includes midsize, large, and very large family farms), which received 70 percent of commodity-linked program payments and 76 percent of crop insurance indemnities, had a median household income of $167,000 or more.
  • Large family farms, which received 36 percent of commodity-linked program payments and 41 percent of crop insurance indemnities, had a median household income of $375,000—almost six times the median income for all U.S. households.

Fact: Most farmers and most commodities receive very little or no subsidies, and if they do receive assistance, it is generally to help to offset actual crop losses.

  • A small number of farmers growing a small number of commodities receive almost all the farm handouts, generally for revenue and price protection, not for actual crop losses.
  • Entire sectors of the farm economy, such as livestock and specialty crops (fruits, vegetables, and nuts), receive few if any subsidies, especially when it comes to revenue-protecting subsidies, and they thrive without them.
  • According to the Congressional Research Service, from 2014 to 2016, just six commodities (corn, wheat, soybeans, cotton, rice, and peanuts) received 94 percent of the farm program support while accounting for only 28 percent of farm receipts.

Fact: For many American farmers and ranchers, agricultural trade is a necessity because they produce more than they can sell domestically.

  • According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 95 percent of the world’s food consumers live outside the United States.
  • From an economy-wide perspective, according to the Economic Research Service, agricultural exports created an additional $162.9 billion in economic activity and over one million full-time jobs in 2018.
  • The Economic Research Service has stated that “U.S. consumers benefit from imports because imports expand food variety, stabilize year-round supplies of fresh fruits and vegetables, and temper increases in food prices.”
This content was last updated: January, 2024.
This content was last updated: January, 2024.

Big Tech

Policy Proposals
  1. Ensure enforcement of antitrust law and reform or modernize antitrust laws where necessary. Prohibit the government from using social media platforms as its agents to censor speech.
  2. Ban TikTok from operating in the U.S. market and set standards for foreign-owned digital platforms that want to operate in the United States.
  3. Establish a federal data protection framework with appropriate standards and oversight for how the federal government and commercial entities collect, store, and share U.S. user data.
  4. Protect children from the predations of technology companies through legislation like the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA).
Quick Facts
  1. Habitual social media use is rewiring the brains of children in ways that diminish impulse control, which is vital to life success.
  2. Ten percent of the collective artificial intelligence (AI) research labs of Facebook, Google, IBM, and Microsoft were based in China at the end of 2020.
  3. China is Apple’s second-largest consumer market, with sales there comprising nearly a fifth of the company’s annual revenue.
Expose and Respond to Big Tech’s Abuses
  • Big Tech erodes individual liberties, divides Americans, and stunts human flourishing and self-governance.
  • Big Tech companies censor the speech of Americans and manipulate access to information at the behest of the government.
  • Big Tech’s practices result in concrete negative effects on the development and well-being of young Americans.
Recognize China’s Role in Big Tech
  • Apple’s dependence on Chinese engineering, manufacturing, and consumers leaves the company at the mercy of Communist Chinese demands. Technology transfers and intellectual property theft from American companies empower China.
This content was last updated: January, 2024.

Big Tech is damaging the fabric of the country. A multipronged effort is required to combat its specific harms on children, the digital public square, the free market, and America’s national security. A layered approach at redressing Big Tech’s abuses should expose its negative influence on civil society, promote the principles of federalism through state legislative action, and build platforms that protect freedom of expression. Absent campaigns on every one of these fronts, Big Tech will continue to erode individual liberties, segment the American citizenry, and stunt human flourishing and self-governance.

Big Tech’s practices result in measurable, deleterious effects on young citizens. Researchers are now able to reify a causal link between social media and negative effects on children and teenagers in the Western world. A January 2023 study conducted by neuroscientists at the University of North Carolina found that social media use, particularly “social media checking behaviors,” could be associated with changes in sensitivity to social rewards and punishments in children’s brains. In other words, habitual social media use is rewiring the brains of kids as young as 12 in ways that diminish impulse control, which is vital to life success.

Another study published by Cambridge University researchers in March 2022 found a direct relationship between social media use and life satisfaction in younger adolescence. The researchers discovered that “higher estimated social media use predicts a decrease in life satisfaction ratings” and that “lower estimated social media use predicts an increase in life satisfaction ratings” during these critical developmental stages. Companies like Facebook are aware of these effects yet continue to double down and expand efforts targeted at children. As Representative Bill Johnson (R–OH) said at a congressional hearing in March 2021: “Big Tech is essentially giving our kids a lit cigarette and hoping they stay addicted for life.”

In the information environment, Big Tech is leveraging its market dominance to shut off Americans’ direct access to digital information and engage in public information manipulation—often hand in glove with the government—and squelching America’s culture of free speech. As a practical matter, Big Tech companies can now control Americans’ ability to access information. Censorship conducted at the cloud-hosting level or Internet service provider (ISP) level severely curtails direct access to viewpoints and people who run afoul of these providers. By controlling these lower levels of the technical stack on which many other layers (such as digital platforms and applications) depend, a small group of unelected and unaccountable tech executives can pull the plug on entire companies, nonprofits, or even state and local governments—and with very limited recourse.

Big Tech companies have successfully policed the speech of Americans at the behest of the government and manipulated their access to information due in part to anticompetitive practices. Big Tech firms seek to entrench their monopolies by erecting high barriers to entry, engaging in rampant self-preferencing and other anticompetitive practices, and buying and killing innovative young companies. Common behavior includes Apple’s penchant for “Sherlocking” (stealing the core functions of the third-party applications it hosts) and demanding 30 percent commissions on in-app purchases from smaller companies. Amazon effectively requires smaller companies to give it the right to buy massive stakes in those companies for extremely deep discounts rather than at market value. Tech companies also hoard talent by hiring programmers to “work on next to nothing,” in the words of venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya, solely to prevent them from being hired by other companies where their skillsets could disrupt the incumbent’s business. Similarly, Big Tech companies are no strangers to the practice of “killer acquisitions” (buying out innovative young businesses just to kill them so they cannot compete with the acquirer in the future). As part of this strategy, Big Tech companies specifically target and terminate the smaller company’s innovation initiatives in order to strangle the future competitor and its incipient ideas in the crib.

On the national security front, Silicon Valley companies that were built in part through partnerships with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) are reticent to disassociate themselves from the CCP. Apple, for instance, assembles nearly every iPhone, iPad, and Mac computer it produces in China. The country is Apple’s second-largest consumer market, with sales there comprising nearly a fifth of the company’s annual revenue. Apple’s dependence on Chinese engineering, manufacturing, and consumers leaves the company at the mercy of CCP demands. In addition to Apple, most Big Tech companies have few qualms about helping the CCP to preserve their access to the Chinese market. Amazon Web Services, for instance, operates at least five joint operations centers in China. Ten percent of the collective artificial intelligence (AI) research labs of Facebook, Google, IBM, and Microsoft were based in China at the end of 2020. Microsoft has also announced a collaborative AI initiative with ByteDance, the Chinese parent company of TikTok.

This content was last updated: January, 2024.

In order to protect Americans from Big Tech, Congress should:

Protect children from the predations of technology companies by enacting the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), for example. KOSA would create platform accountability and transparency, provide recourse for children and parents against companies that have become more aggressive in targeting children to maximize growth, and require public reports on breaches of parental tools and technical safeguards that include privacy by design, age verification, opt-in features, and stringent default settings.

Prohibit the government from using social media platforms as its agents to chill speech. Officials should not pressure social media platforms to take down content or remove a user for legitimate speech protected by the First Amendment.

Reform Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act. Lawmakers should strip Section 230 immunity if tech companies censor content based on political and other views protected by the Constitution (with clearly outlined exceptions for specific content, such as legitimate forms of political speech). Lawmakers should also clarify that a platform’s choice to algorithmically moderate content does not provide them with immunity for improper moderation decisions. Big Tech companies should not receive liability protection against lawsuits when they act as publishers and alter or restrict content based on political opinion, association, or viewpoint in such instances.

Institute additional reporting requirements. Congress or the Federal Election Commission (FEC), or both, should clarify that tech company equivalents of public accommodations, such as those that benefit from Section 230, that permit access to one political candidate or party but not to other candidates or parties to their platform will be deemed an in-kind and reportable campaign contribution to that candidate or party. Similarly, tech companies should be required to report suppression of political candidates’ voices as in-kind contributions for campaigns directly to Congress or the FEC with a public availability component.

Institute data privacy legislation. Establish a federal data protection framework with appropriate standards and oversight for how the federal government and commercial entities collect, store, and share U.S. user data. Consumers must affirmatively opt in to any system that allows their data to be shared with any third party (with possible exceptions for law enforcement and national security authorities), and they must be allowed access to platforms and core software functions if they choose not to opt in.

Ensure enforcement of antitrust law and reform or modernize antitrust laws where necessary. Lawmakers should set the stage for amendments to antitrust laws through scrutiny of Big Tech mergers—past, present, and future—and anti-competitive behavior oversight. Lawmakers should also launch aggressive investigations of relevant federal agencies, such as the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission, to ensure that Big Tech companies are not using legitimate oligopoly power in one market to gain an unfair advantage in another market. At a broader level, these investigations should also verify that Big Tech companies are not engaging in other illegal antitrust actions, such as colluding to erect barriers for competitors.

Prohibit joint ventures and R&D partnerships with Chinese state-owned entities. Congress should pass legislation which prohibits joint ventures and R&D partnerships with Chinese state-owned entities. This will limit the risk of technology transfer or intellectual property theft from American companies that could empower China’s global competitiveness and strategic initiatives.

Ban TikTok from operating in the U.S. market and institute a risk-based framework that triggers specific policies for foreign-owned digital platforms that want to operate in the United States. Congress should pass a country-neutral risk framework. If a particular criterion or set of criteria is met by a foreign-owned application, a particular policy would then go into action, such as sanctions or a ban on American assets.

This content was last updated: January, 2024.

Fact: Big Tech companies are aware of the impact of their products on children and teens yet continue to redouble their efforts to ensnare the next generation.

  • According to a 2021 report in The Wall Street Journal, 32 percent of teenage girls who use Instagram said that “when they felt bad about their bodies, Instagram made them feel worse.”
  • According to the same report, 6 percent of teenage Instagram users who reported suicidal thoughts traced their thoughts directly to Instagram.
  • According to a 2022 Bloomberg report, TikTok’s “blackout challenge,” where players attempt to choke themselves with various items until they faint, was linked to the deaths of approximately 15 children ages 12 or younger in the course of 18 months between 2021 and 2022.
  • In 2023, multiple Western media outlets found that TikTok provided registered 14-year-old users with self-harm and suicidal content within five minutes of creating the account, as well as depression and mental illness posts within similar time frames.
  • A 2019 study found a “consistent and substantial association between poor mental health and social media use,” especially among girls.
This content was last updated: January, 2024.
This content was last updated: January, 2024.

Climate Change

Policy Proposals
  1. Reject carbon taxes and stop regulation of greenhouse gases.
  2. Withdraw from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
  3. Withdraw the Environmental Protection Agency’s endangerment finding on greenhouse gas emissions and address the uncertainties in climate science.
Quick Facts
  1. If the entire industrialized world eliminated all carbon-dioxide emissions, only 0.5°C of warming would be averted by the end of the century.
  2. Low-income families would be hardest hit by climate-change policies. Americans with after-tax incomes of less than $30,000 spend 23 percent of their budgets on energy, compared to just 7 percent for those earning more than $50,000.
  3. Eighty percent of the world’s energy needs are met through natural resources like coal, oil, and natural gas.
Promote a Clean Environment and Affordable Energy
  • A clean environment and affordable energy fuel our economy and improve our lives.
  • Supporting a clean environment, however, does not mean giving in to climate alarmism that has consistently produced false predictions of catastrophe.
  • Many climate-change policies and proposals would be economically disastrous for American families and businesses, with no meaningful climate benefit.
  • The U.S. should implement energy policy that improves the well-being of Americans, not harsh policies that would make everything from groceries to gas more expensive for Americans, with little impact on climate-change.
This content was last updated: January, 2024.

No one knows the extent to which human activity plays a role in a changing climate, as do several naturally occurring factors, but global warming is neither a planetary emergency nor justification for any massive, costly government programs to curtail energy use. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), for example, does not conclude that the world has until 2030 to avoid catastrophic global warming. One must distinguish between what climatologists know and what they do not know or might know, so that objective, transparent science can inform public policy choices.

Mainstream climate science does not comport with climate change alarmism or catastrophe. The IPCC’s most recent report estimates that warming since 1850 amounts to 1.1°C. It found increasing trends in heat waves, heavy precipitation, and some kinds of drought, and it found downward or no trends for hurricanes, winter storms, and extreme cold, floods, tornadoes, or thunderstorms. The most extreme projections for warming—those deemed “most likely” in the IPCC’s 2014 Fifth Assessment Report—were downgraded to “low likelihood.”

Objective, transparent science should be an important tool in the formation of public policy. This is especially important because there are still significant areas of disagreement in the scientific community about the nature and pace of warming. Independent efforts to determine the severity of climate change more accurately would help policymakers to take any necessary cost-effective, verifiable, and effectual actions.

No matter how urgent the need to combat climate change, proposed federal policies like cap and trade, carbon taxes, or regulations on vehicles and power plants would be ineffective tools. The U.S. could eliminate all of its greenhouse gas emissions, and there would still not be any significant effect on warming overall. Even assuming that the alarmist projections are correct, because the United States represents only a portion of global greenhouse gas emissions, the entire world would have to change how it consumes energy to have any significant effect on global temperatures. It is pure fantasy to expect that developing countries—technically still including China—would be willing to forego inexpensive and abundant carbon dioxide–emitting energy in favor of more expensive, intermittent sources to provide energy for energy-poor families and their growing economies.

The costs of such aggressive policies are significant and would leave Americans with fewer resources to combat current and future environmental challenges, whether climate-related or otherwise. The direct effect of higher energy costs is just a small part of the story. Energy is a necessary input for nearly all goods and services. Consequently, Americans would pay more for food, health care, education, clothes, and every other good or service that requires energy to make and transport.

Far too often, so-called climate solutions seek to re-engineer America’s system of limited, representative government and free enterprise. For instance, the Biden Administration’s proposed regulations on power plants and vehicles would impose monumental changes on America’s electricity, transportation, manufacturing, and agricultural sectors to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. If enacted, these proposals would fundamentally change how people produce and consume energy, harvest crops, raise livestock, build homes, drive cars, and manufacture goods. Washington would make decisions on behalf of consumers and producers, and every American would bear the costs, with the poor suffering the most. These policies, in addition to being costly, would have no discernible effect on the climate and would strip freedoms and prosperity from the American people.

This content was last updated: January, 2024.

In order to preserve affordable and reliable energy for Americans, the U.S. government should:

Stop the regulation of greenhouse gases. The Biden Administration has implemented a suite of greenhouse gas emissions regulations and executive orders that have unnecessarily driven up energy prices and eliminated choices while having no meaningful climate impact. Worse are its regulatory efforts to regulate vehicle tailpipe and power plant emissions, that would essentially ban internal combustion vehicles and completely wipe out America’s current energy-producing infrastructure. Future Administrations should direct agencies to reconsider and withdraw most of these rules. However, lasting leadership and change must come from Congress. Congress should prohibit the federal government from regulating greenhouse gas emissions and clarify that the Clean Air Act was never intended to regulate greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide.

Make targeted spending decisions to build resilient infrastructure. Whether carbon-dioxide levels rise, fall, or stay the same, the United States and the rest of the world will experience extreme weather events. Climate and land will continue to change for a wide variety of reasons. Without question, extreme weather and long-term climate changes can adversely affect communities and infrastructure. The federal government (when applicable), state and local governments, and the private sector should address climate-related infrastructure vulnerabilities through site-specific and situation-specific analysis and spending. Federal, state, and local policymakers should use the best available science to prepare more effectively—before storms inflict damage—to maximize resilience and preparedness.

End the use of “social cost of carbon” in government cost-benefit analyses. Federal agencies perform cost-benefit analyses for a wide range of regulatory and permitting decisions. Under the Obama Administration, agencies began to incorporate a “social cost of carbon” in these analyses to assess the alleged social costs of an activity emitting carbon dioxide. The statistical models upon which the federal government relies offer significantly different results when using a variety of justifiable inputs; as a consequence, values are essentially arbitrary and are not credible tools for policymaking. Congress should prevent any agency from using regulatory analysis metrics with the “social cost of carbon” and the “social cost” of other greenhouse gas emissions in any cost-benefit analysis or environmental review. If federal courts force regulators to estimate the costs of climate change, they should assess climate effects in terms of global temperature change as a result of the proposed project, using a tool like the Model for the Assessment of Greenhouse-Gas Induced Climate Change.

Withdraw the endangerment finding and address the uncertainties in climate science. The Environmental Protection Agency should reconsider its endangerment finding on greenhouse gas emissions, recognizing that greenhouse gas emissions are affecting the climate but that no credible evidence suggests that the Earth is heading toward catastrophic warming. Physicist Steven Koonin, former Undersecretary of Energy for Science in the Obama Administration, proposed a climate “Red Team/Blue Team.” Inspired by the national security community’s Red Team exercise to challenge assumptions, reduce risks and uncertainties, and correct for biases, a Red Team/Blue Team would provide a public, transparent exchange on major issues surrounding climate science.

Withdraw from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The most effective way to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement is to withdraw from the entire UNFCCC, the treaty underlying the Paris agreement. The Paris agreement specifies that any government withdrawing from the UNFCCC “shall be considered as also having withdrawn from this Agreement.” The process for withdrawing from the UNFCCC requires one year, which accelerates the process considerably. Moreover, departure from the UNFCCC would prevent future Administrations from using that framework to avoid obtaining the Senate’s advice and consent in the treaty process. Congress should urge the Administration to withdraw from the UNFCCC.

Reject carbon taxes and carbon tariffs. Carbon-based resources account for 80 percent of the energy resources used by Americans. A carbon tax is a tax on energy and, in effect, on the entire economy. Levying a price on carbon dioxide would directly raise the cost of food, electricity, transportation, manufacturing, and nearly every good and service that Americans need and consequently would be regressive, hurting poor Americans—who spend a larger share of their incomes on energy—the most. Similarly, a carbon tariff would impose a carbon tax on imported goods, which would increase prices throughout the economy. Even if Congress implemented a plan to return the revenue to the people and avoid carving out revenue for special interests, Americans would still face higher costs overall and would therefore lose much more than they would gain. Like every other regulatory or subsidy scheme to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions, a carbon tax is by no means a free-market solution, nor would it have any meaningful impact on global temperatures.

This content was last updated: January, 2024.

Fact: Big-government policies to slow down global warming would have no meaningful impact on climate.

  • Using the Model for the Assessment of Greenhouse-Gas Induced Climate Change, the United States could eliminate all greenhouse gas emissions immediately and expect only 0.2°C of averted warming by 2100. If the entire industrialized world eliminated all carbon-dioxide emissions, only 0.5°C of warming would be averted by the end of the century.
  • Carbon dioxide–emitting natural resources like coal, oil, and natural gas meet 80 percent of the world’s energy needs. Coal remains a dominant source of energy globally. Since 2000, global coal-fired power capacity has doubled, and roughly 6,700 coal plants are in operation around the world providing heat and electricity. Even as some Western countries try to phase out coal production and use, new coal plants are being built in Asia, the Middle East, and Africa where access to electricity is desperately needed.

Fact: Climate policies would be costly and would disproportionately harm the poor, farmers, and small business.

  • The Green New Deal and other extreme climate policies aim to achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Because 80 percent of America’s energy needs are met by coal, oil, and natural gas, reaching that target would be incredibly costly.
  • Using a derivative of the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s National Energy Model, Heritage analysts employed a $300-per-ton carbon tax on the economy that achieved a reduction of 50 percent to 52 percent below 2005 levels by 2030.
  • The average employment shortfall would be more than 1.2 million jobs with a peak shortfall of more than 7.8 million jobs. The cost to the overall economy would be $7.7 trillion through 2030, and the loss of income for a family of four would be more than $87,000.
  • Gasoline prices would increase by more than $2 per gallon beginning in 2024.
  • Low-income families would be hit the hardest by climate policies. Americans with after-tax incomes of less than $30,000 spend 23 percent of their budgets on energy, but those who earn more than $50,000 spend just 7 percent of their budgets on energy, according to the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity.
  • Small businesses would be affected because they rely on vehicle transportation, often pickup trucks, for their businesses.

Fact: “The science is settled” and “97 percent of climatologists agree” talking points are wrong.

  • The 97 percent figure comes from a 2013 Environmental Research Letters study by John Cook and eight colleagues that examines the abstracts of nearly 12,000 academic papers on climate change and global warming between 1991 and 2011. Of those papers, 66 percent expressed no opinion on anthropogenic warming, 34 percent “endorsed” anthropogenic warming, 0.7 percent rejected anthropogenic warming, and 0.3 percent were unsure of the cause. Of the 34 percent expressing an opinion on man-made global warming, “97.1 percent endorsed the consensus position that humans are causing global warming.” The claim says nothing about the urgency or danger of climate change.
  • David Legates, former director of the University of Delaware’s Center for Climatic Research, and three other researchers analyzed the same set of papers analyzed in the Cook study. They found that a mere 0.3 percent of all papers, or 1 percent of the 4,014 papers expressing an opinion on the matter, claim that the majority of warming since 1950 is man-made.
  • There are major areas of uncertainty in climate science. They include the accuracy of climate models (exaggerating warming), how a doubling of carbon-dioxide emissions impacts global temperatures, and which trajectory of greenhouse gas concentrations most accurately reflects the future. There is no consensus on imminent climate catastrophe.
This content was last updated: January, 2024.
This content was last updated: January, 2024.

Debt and Annual Spending

Policy Proposals
  1. Eliminate federal central planning programs that pick winners and losers.
  2. Reform major entitlement programs to make them fiscally sustainable.
  3. Adopt an accountable, responsible, and transparent budget process.
  4. Reject tax increases.
Quick Facts
  1. The federal debt is currently more than $257,000 per household—almost the cost of a house. Left unchecked, it will grow by more than 189 percent per person by 2053. Adjusted for inflation, federal spending per capita soared by more than 416 percent, from $3,782 in 1965 to $19,515 in 2021.
  2. Major health care programs, Social Security, and net interest accounted for 64 percent of federal spending in FY 2022.
Unleash America’s Wealth
  • America’s families, workers, businesses, and innovators—not the government — produce and own the wealth of this society. They—not government bureaucrats—should decide how to spend it.
Support American Taxpayers
  • Current debt and spending levels are unprecedented and unsustainable and threaten economic opportunity and future prosperity for all Americans.
Prevent Inflation from Crushing Purchasing Power
  • Every dollar spent by the government is taken from present and future taxpayers, and deficit spending makes inflation worse.
  • Out-of-control government spending wastes the money of hard-working Americans that they could have used to expand their businesses, support their families, and invest in our communities.
This content was last updated: January, 2024.

In 2000, the federal budget was balanced, and the national debt stood at $5.6 trillion. In just over 20 years, the annual deficit has climbed to $1.7 trillion for fiscal year (FY) 2023, and the gross debt now exceeds $257,000 per household at $33.7 trillion. Moreover, this mounting debt and deficit are only two of the many symptoms of the dramatically expanding size and scope of the federal government—a government that consumes more and more of the resources produced by the American people.

Driven in part by response to the pandemic, the federal government spent $13.4 trillion in FY 2020 and FY 2021—an unprecedented amount by any metric, especially during peacetime. Federal deficits since the start of the pandemic have increased the federal debt by $10.3 trillion. For perspective, the total debt only reached $10.3 trillion in October 2008. The massive pandemic-era deficit spending spree was a driving force behind the crushing wave of inflation that began in 2021, followed by punishing interest rate hikes as the Federal Reserve seeks to minimize the damage.

To clarify: Every dollar spent by the government must first be taken from the economy. This money represents real goods and services that are produced by American workers and businesses and then redirected by the government based on the whims of politicians and bureaucrats. Though this growing issue has been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic and the related expansion of the federal government, it also is deeply rooted in the largest and oldest federal programs. As the government consumes and redistributes more and more of the economy, it also inevitably stifles growth and destroys opportunities.

It is equally important to understand the sources of this runaway trajectory. This unsustainable path is the result of exponentially growing entitlement programs, runaway interest costs on the already mountainous federal debt, and Congress’s recent binge spending on new non-defense programs. When federal programs grow at a faster rate than the economy—as they have for decades—the share of all resources consumed by the government increases. That is the definition of an unsustainable budget, as the government cannot extract more in tax revenues to pay for this spending than the economy can produce.

Federal spending represents the volume of goods and services produced by Americans that is either redirected to federal government operations and projects or redistributed among Americans. The federal government had already grown to more than one-fifth of the economy before the COVID-19 pandemic and is now projected to grow to almost one-third of the economy in just over another generation. The Left’s attempt to frame fiscal policy as a matter of dollars in and out of the government intentionally masks this reality. Ultimately, fiscal policy is a determination of the size of the check signed by the taxpayer.

It is of paramount importance that policymakers remember that the private sector—America’s families, workers, businesses, and innovators—produces the wealth of this society. Government, at best, guarantees law and order to facilitate economic activity, but it is not the source—the American people are. Federal spending beyond its original limited mandate is simply the mechanism by which a government redirects resources and redistributes that wealth.

The process through which governments raise revenue and then spend it unavoidably destroys productive arrangements in the private sector and then repurposes what real goods and services remain. Taxation directly hurts productivity by disincentivizing activities such as investment, savings, and work, while deficit spending does so indirectly by crowding out private investment. The immediate stifling of economic activity causes ripples into the future in the same way that planting fewer seeds today means smaller harvests tomorrow. Compounding this stagnation, runaway deficits today mean that far higher rates of taxation will be required in the future simply to manage the debt.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects that the current fiscal trajectory will bring the debt to one-and-a-half times the size of the economy over the next two decades. Net interest on the debt alone will be the largest federal program, eclipsing the entire national defense budget and the Social Security and Medicare programs. This projected future—in which the largest federal program could be paying interest on money borrowed (in some cases from foreign entities) long ago—is perhaps the starkest reminder of how far the fiscal reality is from what the Founders laid out in the Constitution.

This content was last updated: January, 2024.

In order to rein in spending and reduce the debt, Congress should:

Limit federal programs to responsibilities enumerated in the Constitution. For at least the past 100 years, the federal government’s reach has expanded well beyond its constitutional limits, pushing federal spending to unsustainable heights and stifling the freedom and creativity of the American people. All federal spending comes at the expense of some productive private-sector activity, which must be justified by some compensating benefit. It is therefore vital to limit this harm by restricting the federal government’s consumption of resources to what the government requires to fulfill its constitutional role.

Reform major entitlement programs to make them fiscally sustainable. Spending on Social Security and major health care programs is driving the unsustainability of the federal budget. The CBO projects that spending for these programs and net interest on the debt will swell to more than total federal revenues in 2046. Left unaltered, these programs—intended to protect Americans from poverty—would increasingly crowd out economic growth and sap the retirement savings of all Americans. On their present trajectory, Social Security and Medicare are expected to deplete their trust funds in 2034 and 2026, respectively. Policymakers cannot resolve this problem of budget unsustainability without also addressing entitlement spending. Fortunately, reasonable policy options are available that would modernize Social Security and health care programs, return control to Americans, and expand their choices of health care and retirement decisions while at the same time saving money. Lawmakers should make entitlement programs more affordable and fiscally sustainable by returning control of health and retirement decisions to the people.

Eliminate federal central planning programs that pick winners and losers. Mission creep and the overly expansive scope of federal activity undermine congressional and executive focus on performing core federal functions. This tendency has led to the creation of numerous federal programs that micromanage both private activity and the activity of state and local governments. When Washington creates these programs, it acts as a pass-through, absorbing monies, adding layers of bureaucracy, and redistributing wealth to well-connected and politically favored businesses and other entities. Congress should work toward reducing or ending most spending on welfare, health, infrastructure, education, energy, and other domestic programs. Private entities and state and local governments are best able to manage such activities effectively and efficiently.

Reduce the growth of federal spending to less than the growth of the economy. Whenever government spending is set to grow faster than the economy—as it has been for decades—the government is consuming and redistributing an ever-larger share of the goods and services produced by Americans, stifling both innovation and job creation and limiting the freedom of all Americans. Furthermore, government cannot sustainably increase spending faster than economic growth increases over the long run. The only way to ensure the freedom and prosperity of the American people and allow greater innovative investment in the future is to reduce the growth rate of federal spending to less than the rate at which the economy grows.

Implement fiscal controls to ensure responsible long-term balance. The best way to achieve a balanced budget is by reducing spending, not by raising taxes. Caps on federal revenues, paired with controls that keep government spending from increasing faster than economic growth, would ensure that the ratio of debt to gross domestic product decreases to sustainable levels. Left unchecked, the current uncapped nature of federal taxation and deficits could well lead to economy-wrecking levels of taxation and the exponentially increased crowding out of private investment. Congress must focus both on its spending and on how that spending is financed. It is imperative that Congress reduce the footprint and long-term burden of the means by which the federal government raises revenue. The longer Congress waits, the closer the nation gets to a debt crisis, and the harder it will be to implement the needed reforms.

Eliminate budget gimmicks and unhelpful accounting practices. Budget gimmicks promote wasteful spending and thrive on a lack of transparency. Congress should eliminate them from the budget process. These gimmicks include creating temporary programs that are designed to force future Congresses to take hard votes to make them permanent, using scoring methods that undercut the true cost of programs rather than dynamic scoring or fair-value estimates, using scoring conventions that create false pay-fors, relying on baselines that assume continuous spending growth, or using shell budgets to ram large spending and tax bills through Congress. These practices and many more obscure the true cost of federal action and the incomprehensible mountain of federal programs: Even Washington lacks a firm accounting of how many federal programs exist. Supporters will claim that these practices bring order to the budget process, but they only help the federal bureaucracy to find new ways to expand itself and the burden borne by the American people.

Adopt an accountable, responsible, and transparent budget process. The 1974 Budget Act provides a timeline to guide completion of the congressional budget process and lays out clear deadlines to ensure that Congress enacts appropriations bills before October 1 of each fiscal year. The budget process allows Congress to evaluate priorities carefully and perform critical oversight of how agencies are spending taxpayer dollars. However, Congress has no will and little incentive to follow the budget process. The last time Congress completed each required step on time was in 1996. The rules intended to keep the process running smoothly are weak and largely ignored by both parties. This has led to a cycle of continuing resolutions, massive omnibus spending bills, and periodic lapses in appropriations. The budget and appropriations process has morphed from what was intended to be an orderly exercise into a continuing series of funding fights as Congress lurches from one crisis to the next. Amid this chaos, any semblance of fiscal restraint has been lost. Returning to the transparent budget process as laid out in law is a crucial step toward the restoration of a federal government that respects the American people.

Reject tax increases. While some on the Left look to tax hikes to reduce the deficit, this is an illusion that would simply trade one economic burden for another. Every dollar spent by the government must first be taken from the economy. Whether that dollar is taken through direct taxation, borrowing, or monetization of the debt (printing money just to finance the federal deficit), it is removed in a way that stifles investment and saps the purchasing power of all Americans. Tax cuts and pro-growth reforms, such as those implemented by the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, improve the economic outcomes of all Americans by removing disincentives for private investment. These reforms led to the lowest unemployment and fastest real wage growth in 50 years. Tax increases, on the other hand, serve only to destroy productive economic endeavor. Instead of offsetting the true cost of federal spending, they mask the burden while destroying the foundations of the economy. The problem is not that taxes are too low, but that the government spends too much of what Americans earn and produce.

This content was last updated: January, 2024.

Fact: If the country is to avoid a fiscal crisis, Congress must reform entitlements.

  • Major health care programs, Social Security, and net interest accounted for 64 percent of federal spending in FY 2022.
  • Major health care programs, Social Security, and net interest will account for 79 percent of federal spending growth over the next decade.

Fact: The growth rate of federal spending—and the government’s consumption of the economy—is unsustainable.

  • The growth of non-defense spending has driven the increase in the size and scope of the federal government.
  • The problem with the federal budget is the rate of spending growth. While tax revenues will grow above the historical norm under current law, federal spending is projected to surge every year moving forward, which means that the federal government will consume and redirect almost one of every three dollars’ worth of the work done by all Americans within a generation.
  • Adjusted for inflation, federal spending per capita soared by more than 416 percent, from $3,782 in 1965 to $19,515 in 2021.

Fact: The current federal debt trajectory and the Left’s plans for more spending would lead to a catastrophic debt crisis.

  • The federal debt is projected to nearly double as a percentage of the economy in just over one generation.
  • The federal debt is currently more than $257,000 per household—almost the cost of a house—and, left unchecked, will grow by more than 189 percent per person by 2053.
This content was last updated: January, 2024.
This content was last updated: January, 2024.

Deregulation

Policy Proposals
  1. Require congressional approval of new major regulations issued by agencies.
  2. Congress should set sunset dates for all major regulations.
  3. Subject independent agencies to executive branch regulatory review.
  4. Require regulatory standards to be based on factual data, and ensure that public access to all such data be provided.
Quick Facts
  1. Private sector regulatory costs increased by $122 billion annually during the Obama Administration.
  2. Based on fiscal year 2017 budget figures, administering red tape will cost taxpayers nearly $70 billion, an increase of 97 percent since 2000.
  3. Excessive regulation stunted average GDP growth by 0.8 percent annually since 1980.
  4. Total regulatory costs are commonly estimated to exceed $2 trillion annually from an estimated 3,500 regulations imposed each year.
A Focus on Savings
  • A typical American household could save thousands of dollars each year on everything from housing and gas to food and clothes with better regulation.
Cost of Regulation
  • Not all regulations are unwarranted, but volumes of outdated and unscientific regulations cost hundreds of billions of dollars per year, hitting low-income families and fixed-income seniors the hardest.
Congressional Approval
  • It is time for a serious national discussion about the federal government’s extensive role in regulating activities that can be overseen more effectively by those closer to the activity.
  • No regulation should be adopted if the American people and their representatives in Congress do not agree that it is legally authorized, necessary, and properly designed.
This content was last updated: August, 2020.

Thousands of federal regulations have been eased as a result of the COVID-19 crisis to speed production of protective gear and development of treatment tools. This deregulatory sweep represents explicit acknowledgement that unnecessary regulation undermines public health and well-being. Economic recovery post-COVID-19 likewise requires Congress and the White House to lighten the regulatory burden on employers and investors.

President Donald Trump’s executive order of May 19, 2020, directs federal agencies to exercise regulatory restraint. But it will require action by Congress as well to ensure that meaningful reform outlasts the current Administration. Conventional wisdom has long held that government regulation is the only way to protect the public interest. We now know better: Forty years of command-and-control regulatory schemes have led to massive, ineffective, and unaccountable bureaucracies and a raft of costly unintended consequences.

Most regulatory intervention embodies the Progressive conceit that government knows what is best for us all. But even well-intentioned central planners cannot possibly possess the vast and ever-shifting knowledge necessary to determine the optimal course of action—especially when global markets are involved.

The self-interest of entrepreneurs and investors increases the likelihood of success. Consumers and competitors impose penalties for errors in judgment swiftly and stringently. In contrast, political imperatives trigger government action, which is largely insulated from consumer demand, competition, and financial discipline.

Government remedies are inherently weak because political concessions are necessary for them to gain acceptance. As economist Richard Stroup noted, “A political solution cannot be purchased—only rented.” Regulatory schemes are also unreliable because neither Congress nor the White House is bound by the actions of its predecessors, except in the granting or sale of private rights.

Regulations also shift labor and capital away from productive activities, such as innovation and job creation, to compliance activities. The burden falls heaviest on new businesses, which inhibits job creation, undermines competition, and secures the dominance of incumbent firms. Unsupportable compliance costs also drive mergers, further consolidating markets.

Regulatory costs are not a problem just for business. Low-income families and fixed-income seniors are also hit hard by government edicts. The costs of compliance increase the prices of products and services across the economy, including soaring energy bills from renewable energy dictates, increased food bills from excessive production standards, restricted access to credit due to some 400 Dodd‐Frank regulations, and higher medical costs as a result of the inaptly named Affordable Care Act—to name a few.

Conservatives rarely shape the debate on environmental policy, too often focusing on regulatory costs rather than on an alternative agenda. But green eyeshades cannot compete for public support against the seemingly selfless agenda of green activists. Americans care deeply about the environment and expect public officials to act. Conservatives must avoid merely opposing the green lobby’s agenda and must put forth a platform for responsible stewardship. As noted in a previous Heritage report, Protecting the Environment: A Free Market Strategy, “While the conservative critique is well known, the conservative agenda is not.”

Reform is hindered by the immensity, complexity, and lethargy of the federal regulatory apparatus. A simple repeal requires adherence to a ream of administrative procedures, such as analyzing alternatives and presenting justification for public notice and comment. Litigation is rampant and protracted.

The need for reform has never been greater. Regulation acts as a stealth tax on the American people and the U.S. economy, and exacts an incalculable toll on individual liberty.

It is not enough to repeal individual rules or tweak the rulemaking process. A more substantive national debate must address the extent to which it is appropriate for the federal government (or any level of government) to intervene in matters that can be managed by the states and, in many instances, by the private sector, more effectively.

This content was last updated: August, 2020.

Permanently eliminate regulations that were waived as unnecessary during the COVID-19 crisis. There is no need to maintain red tape that interferes with the delivery of medical care and the health of the economy. The Administration and Congress should prioritize the repeal of rules deemed unnecessary in combating COVID-19.

Require congressional approval of new major regulations issued by agencies. Congress, not regulators, should make the laws and be accountable to the American people for the results. No major regulation should be allowed to take effect unless and until Congress explicitly approves it. In addition, legislators should include requirements for congressional approval of rules in every bill that expands or reauthorizes regulation.

Congress should set sunset dates for all major regulations. Rules should expire automatically if not explicitly reaffirmed by the relevant agency through the formal rulemaking process. As with any such regulatory decision, this reaffirmation would be subject to review by the courts.

Codify regulatory impact analysis requirements. All executive branch agencies are currently required to conduct regulatory impact analyses (including cost-benefit calculations) when proposing any new major rules. Codifying these requirements would ensure that they cannot be rolled back without congressional action, and provide the basis for judicial review of agency compliance.

Subject independent agencies to executive branch regulatory review. Rulemaking is increasingly being conducted by independent agencies outside the direct control of the White House. Regulations issued by agencies such as the Federal Communications Commission, the Security and Exchange Commission, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau are not subject to review by the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) or even required to undergo a cost-benefit analysis. This is a gaping loophole in the rulemaking process. These agencies should be fully subject to the same regulatory review requirements as those to which executive branch agencies are subject.

Increase professional staff levels within OIRA. OIRA is one of the only government entities in Washington that is charged with limiting, rather than producing, red tape. More resources should be focused on OIRA’s regulatory review function. This should be done at no additional cost to taxpayers: The necessary funding should come from cuts in the budgets of regulatory agencies.

Require agencies to base decisions on factual data, and to disclose any such data for public review. Federal agencies routinely mask politically driven regulations as scientifically based imperatives. The supposed science underlying these rules is often hidden from the public and unavailable for vetting by experts. Credible science and transparency are necessary elements of sound policy.

This content was last updated: August, 2020.

Fact: Total regulatory costs are commonly estimated to exceed $2 trillion annually (although there is no official tracking).

  • There is no accurate accounting of the hundreds of departments, agencies, sub-agencies, and commissions from which an estimated 3,500 regulations materialize each year.

Fact: Private sector regulatory costs increased by an astonishing $122 billion annually during the Obama Administration, according to analyses by Heritage experts.

  • That was nearly double the $68 billion in private sector costs imposed under the Administration of President George W. Bush.

Fact: Regulatory costs have increased by 97 percent since the year 2000.

  • Based on fiscal year 2017 budget figures, administering red tape will cost taxpayers nearly $70 billion, an increase of 97 percent since 2000.
  • A big part of the increase is the growing legions of regulators—who now number an all-time high of 279,000.

Fact: The United States is currently ranked as only “Mostly Free” in The Heritage Foundation’s Index of Economic Freedom.

  • Francis Scott Key’s characterization of America as the “land of the free” is no longer accurate. The United States ranked only “mostly free” in The Heritage Foundation’s 2019 Index of Economic Freedom, trailing Hong Kong, Singapore, New Zealand, Switzerland, Australia, Ireland, the United Kingdom, Canada, the United Arab Emirates, Taiwan, and Iceland.

Fact: Excessive regulation stunted average GDP growth by 0.8 percent annually since 1980, according to a 2017 report by the White House Council of Economic Advisors.

Fact: Five of the six richest counties in the United States ring Washington, D.C., which may demonstrate that the greater government interference grows, the more essential political influence becomes.

This content was last updated: August, 2020.
This content was last updated: August, 2020.

Energy

Policy Proposals
  1. End ineffective regulations that increase the cost of energy while doing little to improve air quality or reduce pollution.
  2. Eliminate government subsidies for all energy resources and technologies.
  3. Curb government energy efficiency mandates that override consumer preferences.
  4. Make it easier to introduce alternative energy sources such as nuclear energy, a proven source of safe and clean energy.
Quick Facts
  1. The U.S. is the world’s number one producer of petroleum and natural gas.
  2. Federal energy subsidies cost American taxpayers $15 billion in FY 2016, with over $6.5 billion going to renewable energy.
  3. The U.S. generates almost 20 percent of its electricity from 97 nuclear power plants, representing over 55 percent of America’s emissions-free electricity.
Fueling Our Lives
  • Energy is essential to every product and service Americans use and every activity we engage in, from heating our homes and running our schools and hospitals to fueling our vehicles and producing the goods we buy.
Empowering Americans, not Bureaucrats
  • It is not the government’s role to promote one energy source over another or force people to use a particular type of fuel. Energy policy should be consumer-centric, not Washington-centric.
  • Allowing energy choice empowers American families and businesses, rather than bureaucrats, lobbyists, and politicians, to make decisions.
This content was last updated: August, 2020.

Energy is essential to nearly every product and service Americans use and to every activity in which they engage. Whether with electricity, energy technologies, or fuels, energy heats homes and meals, runs schools and hospitals, powers businesses that create jobs, and fuels vehicles that connect people with products that use energy resources as basic feedstock—products as wide-ranging as cosmetics, athletic equipment, pharmaceuticals, paints, and pipelines. Affordable, reliable energy is worth continuing to strive for and should be enjoyed unapologetically.

Perhaps because energy is so intertwined with the economy, politicians routinely meddle in energy markets to micromanage for preferred outcomes. Big government approaches to energy policy aim to centrally plan, actively manage, and pre-condition energy choices in order to serve political agendas. Unnecessarily burdensome laws and regulations have driven up energy costs, reduced those choices, and opened the door to cronyism.

Subsidies through the tax code, grants, guaranteed market share, loans and loan guarantees, and government-funded research and development have become popular ways to implement energy policy. This has wasted billions of taxpayer dollars and distorted private sector investments. Politicians, bureaucrats, and companies with effective lobbying arms not infrequently also use the regulatory process to block access to some resources and technologies or hedge out competitors.

While subsidies may appear to benefit the recipients, advantages are short term at best. When government insulates technologies or certain companies from the prospect of failure or competition, it removes healthy forces that drive creativity and solutions in the long term. Government subsidies also create barriers to entry for innovative, unsubsidized energy companies that must compete for customers against companies backed by the government and U.S. taxpayers. Further, although government experts might appear to know how best to plan energy resources and use for the future, they are often wrong, slow to adapt, and incapable of complete knowledge of a dynamic global sector. Indeed, almost no one anticipated the oil and gas boom in America created by hydraulic fracking, which has fundamentally transformed global energy markets.

Relying on free enterprise and the private sector’s ability to innovate to meet America’s diverse energy needs is a far better approach. Fuel and technology-neutral competitive markets allow prices to communicate accurate information to producers and customers about the value and cost of energy. This allows the endless creativity of people to anticipate and meet customer energy needs and preferences. Ultimately, competition to meet consumer preference in energy services empowers American families and businesses, rather than bureaucrats, lobbyists, and politicians, to make decisions. Congress should focus on reducing ineffective and economically harmful regulations, opening access to resource development, and eliminating subsidies for all energy resources.

This content was last updated: August, 2020.

Stop the regulation of greenhouse gases. The Obama Administration implemented a suite of greenhouse gas emissions executive orders and regulations under the Clean Air Act1 that have unnecessarily driven up energy prices and eliminated choices, while having no meaningful climate impact. President Trump rightly directed agencies to reconsider and withdraw some of these rules. However, lasting leadership and change must come from Congress. Congress should prohibit the federal government from regulating greenhouse gas emissions and clarify that the Clean Air Act never intended to regulate greenhouse gases.

End use of social cost of carbon in government cost‐benefit analyses. Federal agencies perform cost‐benefit analyses for a wide range of regulatory and permitting decisions. Under the Obama Administration, agencies began to incorporate a “social cost of carbon” in these analyses to assess the alleged social costs of an activity emitting carbon dioxide. The statistical models upon which the federal government relies offer significantly different results using other reasonable inputs, such that values are essentially arbitrary and are not credible tools for policymaking. Congress should prevent any agency from using regulatory analysis metrics with the “social cost of carbon” and the “social cost” of other greenhouse gas emissions in any cost‐benefit analysis or environmental review. If federal courts force regulators into estimating the costs of climate change, they should assess climate impacts in terms of global temperature change as a result of the proposed project using a tool like the Model for the Assessment of Greenhouse-gas Induced Climate Change rather than using the social cost of carbon.

Eliminate subsidies for all energy resources and technologies. In 2015, Republicans and Democrats reached a compromise to extend wind and solar tax credits one more time and put them on a schedule to sunset. Congress should hold to that promise and wind down tax credits for all energy technologies. It should also reform the tax code to allow for immediate expensing for all capital investments. Relatedly, Congress should eliminate Department of Energy (DOE) subsidized research and development for commercial energy technologies. It is neither appropriate for taxpayers nor a necessary role of the federal government to fund or conduct such research. Furthermore, Congress should prohibit any further taxpayer-backed loans to private companies and eliminate the DOE’s loan-guarantee program.

Reform offshore energy leasing. America keeps the vast majority of its territorial waters off-limits to energy production, but that has not always been the case. Congress should open America’s coasts for offshore oil, gas, wind, and other energy resource exploration and development. It should eliminate the Department of Interior’s five-year leasing plans and authorize the Department of the Interior (DOI) to conduct lease sales, if interest for development exists, while considering the interests of states that would be most impacted by that development. Such a reform would allow the safe development of energy off America’s coasts and replace the lengthy and unnecessary planning process for a system that is more responsive both to price changes and to the needs and interests of states. Bidding on the leases would not be exclusive to energy companies but open to all parties, including those interested in environmental preservation rather than resource development. Reform should also include transferring environmental review and permitting process to the states, along with at least 50 percent of the revenues generated by onshore oil and natural gas production on federal lands.

Eliminate government energy efficiency mandates. Federal efficiency mandates, rebate programs, and spending initiatives too often assume either that all Americans use energy the same way, or that the government knows better how Americans should use energy. Congress should affirm the ability and freedom of Americans and businesses to make decisions that best meet their needs by eliminating all mandatory efficiency regulations and subsidies for vehicles, appliances, and buildings. At a minimum, mandates should be restructured as voluntary standards under which businesses and consumers can choose their level of participation.

Overhaul nuclear energy regulation. The regulatory system that licenses and permits nuclear reactors failed to keep up with technological innovations and overregulates existing nuclear technologies. Instead of addressing underlying government-imposed problems, policymakers have focused on mitigating the cost of those policies through subsidies, leading to a predictable path of failure: While such an approach may spur some commercial activity, that commercial activity is limited only to what is subsidized. Nuclear plants in America today continue to exhibit superior safety performance. Policy and regulations should reflect that track record. Congress should instill regulatory discipline at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), direct the Environmental Protection Agency to right-size radiation-exposure standards, review foreign ownership caps, reform the NRC’s cost-recovery structure, and address the convoluted export regulatory regime.

Complete the review of Yucca Mountain, and introduce market forces into nuclear waste management. Congress has failed either to change current law or appropriate the funds necessary for the NRC to review the DOE’s permit for a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain. This unnecessary limbo has been costly to taxpayers and has created problematic uncertainty for the current and future nuclear industry. Congress should provide enough funding to complete the license review to allow contentions to be adjudicated, and all of the information should be brought together for Congress, the State of Nevada, and the nuclear industry to make prudent decisions about next steps. Ultimately, Congress must introduce market forces in nuclear waste management for it to be a successful, dynamic part of the fuel cycle and nuclear industry. Nuclear waste management should be primarily a business activity, not an inherently governmental activity.

Encourage choice in electricity markets. Competitive electricity markets have served customers well. Some states have accomplished the transition from monopolies to competition more successfully than others, and additional free-market reforms are necessary to spur more entrepreneurial activity in electricity markets. However, when the underlying structure of competition is sound, the benefits to energy consumers are unambiguously positive. Competition in electricity services allows greater customer choice through the power of the consumers’ own dollars rather than through the disconnected votes of a small panel of public utility commissioners. Consumer choice comes not only in the form of resource choice (renewables, conventional fuels, or a mix) but also in the form of financial choices (e.g., fixed rates, risk preferences, indexed rates, or short-term or long-term contracts).

In the end, because electricity providers have to work for their customers, prices are competitive and quality improves. States should fix anti-competitive energy policies like renewable energy mandates, which have wreaked havoc in the electricity sector by putting politics and special interests over customers. Similarly, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission should work vigorously to uphold fuel and technology neutral competition in electricity markets.

Repeal the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS). There is near universal agreement among energy, agriculture, food industry, and environmental groups that the RFS is bad policy and that it has had negative unintended consequences. Despite nearing the goal of the mandate to use 36 billion gallons of ethanol by 2022, this policy has proved unworkable. Tinkering around the edges will not rescue it. Moreover, the federal government should not mandate what type of fuel drivers use in the first place. Instead of attempting to reform the RFS, or continually calling on the EPA to waive or negotiate annual mandates, Congress should repeal the RFS to protect Americans from artificially higher food and energy prices, and eliminate unfair subsidies that go to a small set of special interests that benefit from the mandate.

This content was last updated: August, 2020.

Fact: Energy subsidies waste taxpayer money and actively prevent innovative energy technologies from thriving in the market.

  • Federal energy subsidies cost American taxpayers $15 billion in fiscal year 2016. Renewable energy activities received 45 percent of this, more than any other sector. While this is a decrease from the record high from the Obama Administration’s Recovery Act, the Energy Information Administration found that hundreds of energy subsidy programs still exist.
  • Energy companies do not need government incentives. With the enormous value of the energy market (over $6 trillion for electricity and transportation fuels), any innovative technology or company that could capture even a tiny sliver of this market would be enormously successful.
  • There is no such thing as a perfect energy resource or technology. All have tradeoffs and benefits that should be weighed by investors and customers rather than politicians and bureaucrats. Subsidies muddle this rational decision-making process.

Fact: 80 percent of energy consumed by American families and businesses came from coal, oil, and natural gas.

  • Three decades ago, proven world oil reserves were 645 billion barrels; at the end of 2018, it was more than 1.73 trillion barrels. Despite constant cries that the world is running out of oil, innovative technologies have allowed increased discoveries around the world. There is no shortage of energy resources, and attempts to limit access to energy only hurt Americans.
  • The U.S. has an abundance of natural resources and is the world’s number one producer of petroleum and natural gas. Since 2010, U.S. exports of crude oil and petroleum products have more than doubled. America also has nearly 500 years’ worth of coal underneath its soil at current consumption rates.

Fact: Competition has been good for the nuclear industry; however, the industry is over-regulated and faces significant government-induced risk.

  • The U.S. generates almost 20 percent of its electricity from 97 nuclear power plants. In 2018, nuclear reactors generated over 801 million megawatt-hours of electricity—more than ever before. This power is reliable, safe, and free of air pollutants. Though many states do recognize nuclear energy in greenhouse gas emission mandates, nuclear energy also produces over 55 percent of America’s emissions-free electricity.
  • Since 2013, seven reactors have closed, in most cases before their operating licenses expired. This is due to a variety of reasons, some legitimate (like competing low natural gas prices) and others a result of government interference (unnecessarily high regulatory costs on the nuclear industry and subsidies for competitors).
  • However, market pressure also has been good for the nuclear industry. A Nuclear Energy Institute initiative to find industry-wide operating efficiencies reduced costs by 19 percent, resulting in $1.6 billion in savings.
  • The federal government’s inability to collect nuclear waste as stipulated by the law has cost taxpayers $7.4 billion in legal damages to nuclear power plants. Today, the federal government remains liable for over 81,000 tons of commercial nuclear waste. The DOE projects future liability to be $28.1 billion, but this is misleading because it assumes work on Yucca Mountain will restart in 2021. The nuclear industry estimates at least $50 billion in liabilities.

Fact: Renewable energy technologies supply a growing share of electricity; however, government intervention hides costs and harms competitiveness.

  • Renewable energy technologies supplied 17 percent of American’s electricity in 2018, with 7 percent coming from hydropower, 6.5 percent from wind, 1.5 percent from solar, and the rest from biomass and geothermal. Costs continue to fall; however, subsidies prevent true costs and demand from being known.
  • Policies like the wind production tax credit and solar investment tax credit create harmful dependency on taxpayers and boom and bust cycles based on political calendars rather than actual customer demand. Other government interventions like monopoly-run electricity markets and federal tariffs have rewarded failing companies at the expense of others, blocked access to customers, and prevented American companies from using competitive components in order to provide the best, most affordable service.
  • Wind and solar energy impose hidden costs on other power plants, especially in states that mandate renewable energy use. Consistently reliable plants—usually coal, natural gas, or nuclear—must be available as backup power and consequently must run inefficiently to accommodate wind and solar. According to a study by the Institute for Energy Research, this imposes hidden costs of at least $21 extra per megawatt-hour for solar, and $24 per megawatt-hour for wind.
This content was last updated: August, 2020.
This content was last updated: August, 2020.

Entitlements

Policy Proposals
  1. Make entitlements more targeted and sustainable by giving Americans greater control of their health and financial well-being.
  2. Preserve Social Security for the most vulnerable, modernize the program’s structure, restore to workers more control of their own money, and improve Social Security’s Disability Insurance program so that it can serve individuals with disabilities more effectively while ensuring efficiency for taxpayers.
  3. Modernize Medicare to adapt to changing demographics, restore Medicaid to a true safety net, and replace Obamacare with a patient-centered approach that expands choices, improves access, and lowers costs.
Quick Facts
  1. America has four major entitlement programs—Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and Obamacare—and nearly 90 other means tested programs. Congress recently attempted to establish but has not yet passed two new entitlement programs for government-provided paid family and medical leave and childcare.
  2. The Social Security payroll tax has grown from 2 percent in 1935 to 12.4 percent today and would have to increase to 16.53 percent in 2035 for the program to remain solvent.
  3. Medicare enrollment is expected to increase from 60 million in 2018 to over 77 million by 2030, at which point it will cost $1.67 trillion annually.
  4. Medicaid enrollment is expected to increase from 74 million to 82 million by 2027 at a cost of over $1 trillion annually to federal and state taxpayers, and Obamacare subsidies are expected to reach 8 million by 2030 at a cost of $87 billion.
High-Cost, Low-Control Entitlement Programs
  • Each of our country’s major entitlement programs has proven to be inefficient, costly, and restrictive.
  • These programs take money and personal health and financial decisions away from Americans and put it into one-size-fits-all benefit programs that are controlled by politicians.
  • Entitlement programs also strip Americans of opportunity and autonomy, cost more and provide less than options that offer personal control and ownership, and unfairly burden younger generations and future workers with crippling costs.
Refocus and Reform
  • America’s entitlement programs have grown far beyond their purpose, and their financial instability threatens their ability to protect even the most vulnerable.
  • Entitlement programs should refocus on protecting the most vulnerable while giving the people they serve greater control and ownership of their health care and financial well-being.
This content was last updated: July, 2022.

America’s major entitlement programs—Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and Obamacare—provide income and health care benefits to older Americans as well as health care benefits to lower-income and middle-income individuals and families. But those benefits come at an extreme cost to current and future Americans and their families because these programs strip people of opportunity and autonomy, cost more than is necessary or prudent, and shift current costs onto younger and future workers.

Entitlements take money from taxpayers—money that they could otherwise use or save according to what works best for them and their families—and use that money to support programs that provide restricted, government-prescribed benefits. On average, for example, Social Security’s Disability Insurance program requires workers to spend more than a year navigating a burdensome application process before receiving final approval or denial of benefits. Because of the heavy regulation and top-down government mandates in Medicaid and Obamacare, Americans now have fewer choices and less access. Meanwhile, because the number of workers who support each Medicare beneficiary is declining, those workers will have to pay more and more in taxes to pay for seniors’ health care. And Social Security’s taxes prevent workers from maximizing their savings over their lifetimes for purposes like buying a home, saving for a child’s college education, or paying for living expenses during a period of unemployment.

In addition to limiting choices, entitlement programs drive up costs. Pay-as-you-go entitlement programs like Social Security that use current workers’ payroll taxes to fund retirees’ benefits strip workers of the opportunity to earn a positive return on their savings. Consequently, average retirees could receive two to three times as much by saving on their own as they can by having their money go into Social Security. And Obamacare rewards insurance companies for raising prices—matching their increases dollar for dollar, which incentivizes higher health care costs for everyone.

Social Security and Medicare are so popular partly because recipients receive far more from them than they pay in—about 2.5 times as much on average. If workers had to pay the true cost of the benefits they receive, few would be willing to sacrifice nearly 40 cents—roughly 2.5 times as much as they pay in current payroll taxes—of every dollar they earn. Instead, all of those extra costs have been piling up, creating a $422,000 debt (including just Social Security and Medicare) to be unloaded on every worker when America’s day of debt reckoning comes.

America’s entitlement programs have value as social safety nets, but they have grown far beyond that purpose and discourage some individuals who are able to provide for their own health care and retirement needs from doing so. America’s entitlement systems should return to their original intent of protecting America’s most vulnerable while giving individuals greater control and ownership of their health care and financial well-being.

This content was last updated: July, 2022.

Preserve Social Security for the most vulnerable while restoring to workers more control of their own money. Social Security started out as an old-age social insurance program intended to protect a relatively small number of elderly individuals from living in poverty. Over the decades, however, it has expanded massively in size, scope, and cost to the point that two out of every three Americans pay more in Social Security taxes than they do in income taxes and 42 percent of Americans rely on Social Security for at least half of their retirement income. Social Security’s more than fivefold increase in taxes and its dominant role in Americans’ plans for retirement income leave workers with less control and lower incomes than they otherwise would have. Moreover, the program’s insolvency—which will result in benefit cuts of approximately 25 percent beginning in 2033—threatens workers’ retirement security.

To ensure that Social Security is there for workers who need it and to increase workers’ incomes both before and during retirement, the program’s eligibility age should reflect rising life expectancies and increased work capabilities. Benefits should better target workers’ needs by shifting to a predictable, poverty-prevention, and modernized benefit structure. Social Security should apply a more accurate inflation measure to annual benefit increases, and workers should have an option to save for retirement outside of Social Security. These changes would make the program solvent over the long run and would allow for a significant reduction in workers’ payroll taxes, enabling workers to spend, save, and invest more of their own money.

Improve Social Security’s Disability Insurance (SSDI) program so that it better serves individuals with disabilities while ensuring efficiency and integrity for taxpayers. The SSDI program has served as a lifeline for certain individuals with disabilities, but its more than tenfold expansion in size and scope since 1970 has produced inefficiencies and inadequacies that prevent it from meeting workers’ basic needs on a timely basis. Because of inefficient and flawed government policies, individuals who receive SSDI benefits must wait an average of well over a year to learn whether they qualify to receive SSDI benefits and during that time receive no support to help them remain at work or get back to work. Those who do receive SSDI benefits face a lifetime of inactivity and government dependence that leads to lower physical, mental, and financial well-being than if they had pursued meaningful work, and nearly a third of SSDI beneficiaries receive benefits that are lower than the poverty level.

A rehabilitated and modernized SSDI system would promote independence and physical and mental well-being by helping individuals with disabilities to receive the assistance they need when they need it and with less stigma and cynicism than are currently associated with the receipt of SSDI benefits. Such a system could be achieved by implementing a predictable, poverty-prevention benefit; providing a needs-based benefit period; eliminating non-medical vocational grid factors; providing an optional private disability insurance component; ending direct payment of SSDI representatives; correcting unintended payments; and improving program integrity and efficiency. These changes would improve the SSDI program for individuals with disabilities and would save taxpayer costs by significantly reducing the payroll tax rate, enabling workers to buy more generous private insurance to meet their needs and to spend, save, and invest more of their own earnings.

Improve Medicare’s quality of care for a rapidly aging senior population while retargeting taxpayer subsidies to those who are most in need. Medicare, created in 1965, provides a guaranteed health care benefit to seniors and some people with disabilities. Over the past 50 years, although it has delivered hospital and physician services and some financial security, Medicare spending routinely has outpaced inflation, growth in the general economy, and growth in the federal budget. Meanwhile, the addition of new benefits and services has been accompanied by progressively tougher price controls and increasingly detailed conditions of reimbursement that have led to more intrusive bureaucracy and costly red tape for doctors, hospitals, and other medical professionals. These changing dynamics leave seniors, health care providers, and taxpayers at risk.

Reforms to improve the delivery of care in Medicare should both ensure that seniors have access to quality care and protect taxpayers from bankrupting costs. Such reforms include simplifying the traditional Medicare program, harmonizing eligibility with Social Security, updating premiums and cost-sharing arrangements, building on the success of the competitive and integrated Medicare Advantage plans, and transitioning to a defined-contribution, premium-support model for long-term sustainability.

Restore Medicaid’s strong health care safety net to the most vulnerable while ensuring financial sustainability. Enacted alongside Medicare in 1965, the Medicaid program began as a safety net to provide health care to certain vulnerable low-income populations. Like Medicare, the program has expanded beyond its original core functions, providing additional benefits to larger populations at a significant cost to federal and state taxpayers. The program’s joint federal‐state design further complicates administration and oversight, creating new and disparate sets of incentives and outcomes. Changing demographic, structural, and fiscal challenges undermine this critical safety net program.

Restoring Medicaid to its original purpose as a functioning safety net would require a major overhaul of its financing structure to realign and reset priorities and incentives for those who need the program the most. Specifically, the financing of Medicaid should be sustainable and realistic, and it should be aligned with the needs of the most vulnerable, which can be accomplished by giving states greater flexibility in managing the delivery of care to those who are in need.

Rein in Obamacare to expand health care choices and access while lowering costs. The 2010 Affordable Care Act put in place two new federal health care entitlements and a massive federal regulatory infrastructure, all financed by an unrealistic set of new taxes and cuts in payments to providers in other health care programs. Since its enactment, premiums have climbed, coverage options have dropped, provider networks have narrowed, and many people are left with higher costs, less access, and fewer choices. Moreover, the open-ended ACA subsidies scheme and the ACA Medicaid expansion encourage more spending instead of delivering higher-quality care at lower costs. Fundamental changes are needed to restore choice, improve access, and lower costs. The way to begin is by reining in Obamacare federal spending and mandates, restoring state authority over health care, and making available a wider range of private coverage options that best meet individual needs.

This content was last updated: July, 2022.

Fact: Social Security is a bad deal.

  • The Social Security payroll tax has grown from 2 percent in 1935 to 12.4 percent today (including the 1.8 percent disability insurance tax) and would have to increase by one-third to 16.5 percent in 2035 for the program to remain solvent.
  • For every $1 spent on the core constitutional function of defense, the federal government spends $1.34 on Social Security’s retirement benefits.
  • Life expectancy is 17 years higher today than when Social Security began (up from 61 to 78), yet Social Security’s normal retirement age has risen by only two years from the original 65 to 67 (and an early retirement age of 62 has been added).
  • In 1960, the average retired worker received $758 per month (in 2021 dollars) compared to more than twice that at $1,560 per month today; the highest-income earners receive $3,240 per month.
  • Every dollar that workers pay in Social Security taxes goes directly to pay current retirees’ benefits. A worker who is 26 today and has average earnings throughout his lifetime can expect to receive $29,100 in Social Security benefits per year. If he instead were able to invest his payroll taxes, he would receive three times as much—an estimated $83,900 per year—by purchasing an annuity with his accumulated savings.
  • Social Security is on track to become insolvent around 2033, at which point incoming revenues will only be enough to pay about 75 percent of scheduled benefits, thereby threatening automatic benefit reductions or sudden, steep tax increases.

Fact: Disability insurance fails individuals and taxpayers because of its inefficiencies, lack of integrity, and poorly targeted benefit structure.

  • At a minimum, individuals who become disabled wait at least eight months before receiving benefits, and many wait for two to three years as they go through three different determination stages.
  • Private disability insurance provides higher benefits at roughly half the cost of SSDI.
  • Recently, up to half of all SSDI beneficiaries qualified for benefits based at least in part on the non-medical grid factors of age, education, and experience, which neither cause nor exacerbate disability but nevertheless facilitate entry into the program for those with marginal conditions that would not otherwise qualify them for benefits.
  • Fewer than 3 percent of SSDI beneficiaries ever exit the program to return to work.

Fact: A rapidly aging senior population and growing costs threaten Medicare’s future.

  • Medicare enrollment is expected to increase from 60 million in 2018 to over 77 million by 2030 as the baby boomer generation moves fully into retirement.
  • Total Medicare spending is expected to double over the next 10 years from $862.1 billion (the equivalent of a $5,300 annual tax on every worker) in 2021 to $1.673 trillion (the equivalent of a $10,400 annual tax on every worker) in 2030.
  • Medicare’s 75-year unfunded obligation (long-term debt) is $48.3 trillion— over $147,000 for every man, woman, and child in America.
  • Medicare Part A, the Hospital Trust Fund, will be insolvent in 2026, leaving the program without the authority to pay all of its scheduled hospital benefits.
  • Medicare Part B, part of the Supplemental Medical Insurance program, will require a dramatic increase in general fund revenue transfers, rising from 1.8 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2020 to a projected 3.3 percent of GDP in 2040.

Fact: Medicaid faces demographic, structural, and fiscal challenges that threaten its future sustainability.

  • It is estimated that one in four Americans (77 million) were enrolled in Medicaid in 2020, a significant increase from the one in 15 Americans (14 million) who were enrolled in 1970.
  • By 2027, total spending on Medicaid is expected to reach more than $1 trillion (including $624.8 billion in federal costs and $383 billion in state costs).
  • In 2017, people with disabilities and the aged accounted for 23 percent of enrollment but 53 percent of program costs, while children and adults accounted for 78 percent of enrollment and 46 percent of spending.
  • Less than half (47.4 percent) of Medicaid benefit spending was for mandatory populations receiving mandatory services, 21.1 percent was for mandatory populations receiving optional services, and 31.5 percent was for optional populations receiving mandatory or optional services.
  • Despite spending increases, Medicaid recipients continue to have difficulty finding doctors who will accept Medicaid.

Fact: Obamacare has led to higher health care costs and fewer health care choices.

  • Obamacare subsidies and associated Medicaid expansions will cost federal taxpayers approximately $1.8 trillion from 2021 to 2030.
  • By 2030, 8 million Americans are expected to receive a subsidy for the purchase of coverage through the Obamacare exchanges at a cost of $87 billion—the equivalent of $8,710 per person.
  • By 2030, 14 million able-bodied adults are expected to be enrolled in Medicaid because of Obamacare, adding $144 billion to the program’s federal costs.
  • After Obamacare’s enactment, premiums in the individual market more than doubled (an increase of 129 percent) between 2013 and 2019.
  • In 2021, more than half (53 percent) of all counties in the country had two or fewer insurers selling coverage through the Obamacare exchanges.
This content was last updated: July, 2022.
This content was last updated: July, 2022.

Environment

Policy Proposals
  1. Turn responsibility for environmental regulation and land management back to the states and the private sector.
  2. Properly define the waters covered under the Clean Water Act to provide clarity and protection for property owners.
  3. Improve the Endangered Species Act (ESA).
  4. Require congressional approval for more stringent National Ambient Air Quality Standards.
Quick Facts
  1. The federal government owns and manages 640 million acres of America’s land—an area larger than California and Mexico combined.
  2. The federal government has recovered and delisted less than 3 percent of the listed domestic species—an average of less than one per year—since 1973 when the ESA was enacted.
  3. From 1980 to 2020, several air pollutants showed dramatic declines, including a 94 percent decline in sulfur dioxide and a 98 percent decrease in lead.
A Clean Environment
  • We all want a clean environment for ourselves and for future generations.
Local Stewardship
  • Our land and resources are best cared for by the people closest to them—not by the federal government.
  • The state of our air and water has improved dramatically over the past several decades through innovation and investment in new technologies.
  • Meanwhile, federal management of national sites often leads to bureaucratic mismanagement and stagnation. Catastrophic wildfires and species overpopulation devastate national parks, while nuclear cleanup efforts go unaddressed.
This content was last updated: July, 2022.

Americans, regardless of ideology, want a clean environment, but the path to achieving environmental objectives leads to disagreement. Some look to the federal government to promote command and control policies, but the best approach to environmental policy is to recognize the importance of private property rights, state and local innovation, and free markets.

Advocates of command and control invariably point to federal laws like the Clean Air Act as examples of success. The Clean Air Act has certainly played an important role in the notable improvements in air quality that have been realized over the past 40 years, but these improvements could have been accomplished at far less cost—both economic and social—had lawmakers foregone centralized government control in favor of the transformative power of market incentives and private property rights.

Touting the Clean Air Act as an example of the success of command and control also ignores other foundational environmental statutes from the 1970s that have failed miserably, including the Endangered Species Act. Innovation and investment in new technologies have caused the state of our air and water to improve by leaps and bounds over the past several decades. For policymakers, the question should not be what laws have done in the past, but whether these laws are sound policy for the future.

Federal environmental law is comprised of environmental statutes that are overly broad, unclear, or woefully outdated, failing to reflect current conditions. In addition, almost 50 years of agency implementation of these laws has led to government overreach that is inconsistent with the statutes themselves. The size and scope of the federal role in environmental management are now well beyond what was envisioned with these statutes even as the federal government has become increasingly unaccountable to the people and their representatives in Congress. Congress has delegated much of its power to set environmental policy to executive agencies, which exercise this power through standards, regulations, permitting requirements, and multi-decade management plans. Moreover, while Congress envisioned a cooperative role for states in many of these laws, that role has been eroded over time. Consequently, federal bureaucrats often function as economic planners and local zoning boards.

The result is sweeping decisions on nuanced issues and increasingly stringent standards that achieve marginal benefits at great cost. Often, these decisions are defended by scientific analyses that present an incomplete picture, are biased toward regulatory action, ignore evidence that contradicts regulatory agendas, and are inaccessible to the public. Regulators argue that they are merely “following the science,” but they are really making policy decisions that reflect their own value judgments.

Even in areas where most Americans would support some measure of continued federal management, current policies are problematic when divorced from principles of limited government, individual freedom, and free-market incentives. National parks are discouraged from employing innovative solutions to raise park revenue, address catastrophic wildfires, and manage invasive species and overpopulation of native species. Laws like the Endangered Species Act disincentivize solutions and partnerships with private property owners. And because of bureaucratic and legislative mismanagement, government nuclear weapons research and development sites that helped the U.S. win World War II and the Cold War remain what may well be America’s greatest unaddressed environmental liability.

The need to reform the nation’s environmental laws has never been greater. The foundational federal environmental statutes should be changed to apply the lessons learned over the past half-century. They should be modernized to reflect the current environment and to rein in the agency overreach that has expanded beyond the plain language of the statutes and the will of Congress. In general, to the extent that there is a federal role, it should be to ensure that environmental gains achieved over the years are not lost. The responsibilities and the rewards of environmental stewardship belong with property owners and the states, which are more knowledgeable about local conditions than are federal bureaucrats.

A true commitment to the environment means advancing policies that achieve measurable, positive outcomes. The best way to achieve these outcomes is by respecting American values of federalism, the rule of law, and economic freedom. Ultimately, policymakers should never lose sight of the fact that America’s most important, unique, and precious natural resource is its people.

This content was last updated: July, 2022.

Devolve more responsibility for environmental regulation and federal lands management to the states and the private sector. Congress should allow state programs to function in place of federal leasing, permitting, management, and regulatory programs both to benefit from local knowledge and to free federal resources for issues that are more federal in nature. America benefits from experimentation and innovation that could be cultivated with a more decentralized approach. Some states would doubtless make mistakes in their management by being too restrictive or too lax, but such mistakes would provide lessons to guide future policy decisions and would have far less adverse impact on the nation than would be the case if the same mistakes were made by the federal government.

Prohibit the Environmental Protection Agency from abusing cost-benefit analysis to justify costly air regulations (ancillary or secondary benefits abuse). When the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issues a rule to reduce emissions of a certain air pollutant, the direct benefits of reducing those emissions should exceed the costs. However, for years, the EPA has made an end run around this common-sense requirement. Even when a rule’s stated objective has massive costs and few to no benefits, the EPA points to the ancillary benefits (most often from reducing particulate matter) as justification for the rule. This overreliance on ancillary benefits allows the EPA to regulate an air pollutant without making the case that reducing emissions of that pollutant is warranted. This abuse has become so egregious that the EPA has issued major rules without quantifying whether there are benefits associated with their regulatory objectives, instead relying solely or primarily on ancillary benefits from reducing particulate matter.

Clean up facilities that are used to manufacture and test nuclear weapons. The facilities remaining from World War II and the Cold War that were used to manufacture and test nuclear weapons may be America’s greatest remaining environmental liability. The U.S. Department of Energy is chiefly responsible for cleaning up these sites at an expected cost to the taxpayers of $406 billion. Cleanup of these sites should not be treated as an everlasting jobs program. The federal government has a legal and moral obligation to clean up these sites, and this mission should receive the commensurate level of attention from Congress.

Define which waters are covered under the Clean Water Act. Congress should clarify in statute the regulatory reach of the Clean Water Act. The statute currently prohibits the discharge of pollutants into “navigable waters” without a federal permit. It further clarifies that “navigable waters” include “the waters of the United States, including the territorial seas.” However, the EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers have failed to follow the plain language of the law and have tried to expand their regulatory reach by broadly defining “waters of the United States.” They have also adopted subjective and vague definitions while inconsistently enforcing the law. Congress should define which waters are covered under the Clean Water Act, recognizing the important role that states play in regulating lakes, rivers, and streams. This definition should be narrow in scope and generally consistent with Justice Antonin Scalia’s plurality opinion in Rapanos v. United States (2006).

Eliminate the Land and Water Conservation Fund. The Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF), established by Congress in 1965 and administered by the U.S. Department of the Interior, allows the federal government to use royalties from offshore energy development to buy private land and turn it into public parks and other public recreation areas. It is the primary vehicle for land purchases by the four major federal land-management agencies: the Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, Fish and Wildlife Service, and National Park Service. Congress also uses the fund for a matching state grant program. The federal government cannot effectively manage the lands it already owns, and Congress should not enable further land acquisition.

Improve the Endangered Species Act. The Endangered Species Act (ESA) is failing to achieve its fundamental purpose—to protect endangered or threatened species—and this failure is exacerbated by the blocking of important projects and trampling of property rights. To improve the conservation of species under the ESA, Congress should codify the regulatory clarification (consistent with the statute) that threatened and endangered species are to be treated differently when it comes to Section 9’s take prohibition. The listing process should be a distinct process that is separate from whether any regulatory requirements should be triggered. States should be allowed to play a greater role in protecting species, in large part because they are closer than the federal government to any situation that needs to be addressed. Improvements in the ESA should ensure that its costs are borne by society, not by individual property owners.

Require that Congress make any changes in the National Ambient Air Quality Standards. The EPA regularly sets standards for six principal air pollutants: carbon monoxide, lead, nitrogen dioxide, ground-level ozone, particulate matter, and sulfur dioxide. Under the Clean Air Act, the EPA is required to review the standards every five years and make changes, if necessary, disregarding costs in the development of the standards. The EPA continues to develop stricter standards even as states and metropolitan areas have yet to meet older standards (for example, in the case of ground-level ozone). New standards are also becoming extremely expensive to meet while yielding smaller margins of tangible benefits; in fact, some standards are close to or at background levels. Congress should reconsider the mandatory review process. Congress, not the EPA, should make any decision to tighten standards, given the scope of their impact and the magnitude of success that has already been achieved in improving air quality.

Repeal or limit the scope of the National Environmental Policy Act. The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) is a 50-year-old procedural law that requires federal agencies to assess the potential environmental impacts of their actions, including permitting for infrastructure projects. NEPA has evolved to serve more as a tool by which to delay and obstruct projects that are unpopular with special-interest groups or politicians than as a way to assure the proper consideration of environmental impacts. Major problems contributing to NEPA delays include differing interpretations of NEPA requirements, nuisance litigation, failed interagency coordination, administrative bottlenecks, and outdated requirements that fail to take into account a dynamic environment.

Far from compromising environmental stewardship, repealing NEPA would provide an opportunity to remove duplication of state and federal environmental requirements. NEPA was America’s first major federal environmental law and was passed before the other numerous federal environmental statutes that now exist. It seems unlikely that NEPA would even be enacted today given that environmental issues are constantly being considered independently of NEPA through other federal environmental laws.

Short of NEPA’s full repeal, reforms should include narrowing the scope of review to include only major environmental issues, mandating time limits and requiring a lead agency on projects, eliminating analysis of greenhouse gas emissions from the review process, and allowing agencies to consider environmental impact analyses conducted under other federal statutes as the functional equivalent of a NEPA analyses.

Compensate property owners for regulatory takings. When the government seizes private property for a public use, it must provide just compensation to property owners. However, there is little to no protection for property owners when the government imposes regulations that restrict the use and enjoyment of property even if most of the property’s value has been lost. These restrictions on property use, while not a physical seizure of property, are still a taking of a specific use of the property. Compensation mechanisms should be created, either within individual federal environmental statutes or in broad-based legislation, to offset the costs borne by property owners because of federal environmental regulation. In addition to improving the protection of private property rights, this change would require agencies to be transparent with respect to the true costs of their regulations and to take those costs into account when establishing agency priorities.

This content was last updated: July, 2022.

Fact: The U.S. has made dramatic improvements in air quality, but the EPA has continued to use an ever-expanding authority to implement stringent regulations with increasingly high compliance costs and diminishing marginal environmental returns. The aggregate emissions of six common pollutants decreased by 73 percent from 1980 to 2020. During that same period:

  • Gross domestic product increased by 173 percent,
  • Vehicle miles traveled increased by 85 percent,
  • Energy consumption increased by 19 percent, and
  • The U.S. population increased by 46 percent.

From 1980 to 2020, the following decreases in pollutants were observed:

  • Carbon monoxide (CO) decreased by 75 percent;
  • Lead (Pb) decreased by 99 percent;
  • Nitrogen dioxide (NO2) decreased by 70 percent;
  • Ozone (O3) decreased by 33 percent;
  • Fine particulate matter (PM2.5) decreased by 44 percent (from 2000 to 2020); and
  • Sulfur dioxide (SO2) decreased by 93 percent.

Fact: The Endangered Species Act (ESA) was enacted in 1973 to promote the conservation of species. Unfortunately, the law has failed to achieve this goal.

  • The federal government has recovered and delisted only about 3 percent of the species on the endangered species list in the nearly 50 years since the ESA became law.

Fact: Reducing the massive federal estate through privatization and by shifting ownership to states and counties would yield better economic and environmental results.

  • The federal government owns and manages 640 million acres (28 percent) of the land in the United States—an area larger than California and Mexico combined.
  • The federal government owns approximately 80 percent of Nevada, 63 percent of Utah, 61 percent of Alaska, 62 percent of Idaho, and 53 percent of Oregon.
  • States earn more revenue per dollar spent than does the federal government on a wide range of economic activities such as timber, grazing, minerals, and recreation. According to a Property and Environmental Research Center report, the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management lost $4.38 per acre from 2009 to 2013 while trust lands in four western states earned $34.60 per acre. Similarly, Idaho and Montana averaged $6.86 per dollar spent on recreation on state trust lands, but federal lands realized a net loss.
This content was last updated: July, 2022.
This content was last updated: July, 2022.

Financial Services and Monetary Policy

Policy Proposals
  1. Repeal the Dodd-Frank Act.
  2. Eliminate federal credit subsidies, guarantees, and insurance.
  3. Eliminate Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and shrink the role of the Federal Housing Administration.
  4. Reform the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
  5. Reduce regulatory impediments to capital formation.
Quick Facts
  1. Due to Dodd‐Frank, regulators added more than 16,000 pages of financial regulations in six years.
  2. Americans currently shoulder approximately $20 trillion in debt exposure from loans, loan guarantees, and subsidized insurance provided by roughly 150 federal programs.
  3. Deregulation did not cause the 2008 financial crisis; poorly designed government policies did. Between 1999 and 2008, the government implemented more than 800 separate rules and regulations.
Debunking a False Narrative
  • Contrary to popular belief, the financial regulations existing prior to Dodd‐Frank contributed significantly to the 2008 crash.
Centralized Solutions Have Not Worked
  • Monetary policy from the Federal Reserve has been increasingly relied on to fix an expansive list of economic problems.
  • However, the evidence shows that the Fed has not been as effective as expected in stabilizing the economy.
  • Meanwhile, the long-term purchasing power of the dollar has dramatically declined under the Federal Reserve’s watch.
Reform and Restrain
  • It is time to reform and consolidate financial regulations while reexamining the Federal Reserve’s track record and its role in our economy.
This content was last updated: August, 2020.

The dominant narrative regarding the cause of the 2008 financial crisis is that deregulation in the 1990s was responsible, but that story is dead wrong. In fact, even if Congress were to repeal the entire Dodd‐Frank Act, which it should, a highly flawed regulatory structure would still remain. There has never been a substantial reduction in the scale or scope of financial regulations in the U.S., especially not in the 1990s, and the pre-Dodd‐Frank system contributed mightily to the 2008 crash. For nearly all of U.S. history, financial regulations—not simply banking regulations—have increasingly focused on risk management conducted by regulatory agencies rather than on disclosure and fraud prevention. Simultaneously, monetary policy has been increasingly relied upon to fix an expansive list of economics problems, well beyond the scope of the original stated purpose of creating a central bank (to provide an elastic currency), and well beyond what can reasonably be expected of monetary policy.

Preventing problems at financial firms from turning into system-wide banking crises has been a main justification for this approach, but it has failed miserably. The U.S. has had 15 banking crises since 1837, one of the highest totals among developed countries. Of the severe economic contractions that occurred in six developed nations between 1870 and 1933, banking crises occurred only in the U.S., and the U.S. is one of only three developed countries to have had two or more banking crises between 1970 and 2010. Furthermore, the evidence shows that the Federal Reserve has not been as effective as was once thought in accomplishing its stabilization goals. The long-term purchasing power of the dollar has dramatically declined under the Federal Reserve’s watch, and the benign deflation that arises from improved productivity has all but disappeared in the U.S.

In addition to these shortcomings, the U.S. regulatory and monetary framework, for at least a century, has protected incumbent firms from new competition—the very market force that drives innovation, reduces prices, and prevents excessive risk-taking. As a result, entrepreneurs have suffered from fewer opportunities, and consumers have suffered from fewer choices, higher prices, and less knowledge regarding financial risks. Thus, the U.S.’s approach to regulating and stabilizing financial markets has made it more difficult to create and maintain jobs and businesses that benefit Americans.

This content was last updated: August, 2020.

Repeal the Dodd‐Frank Act. The Dodd‐Frank Act became law during the Obama presidency when Nancy Pelosi (D‐CA) led the House of Representatives and Harry Reid (D‐NV) presided over a near filibuster-proof Senate majority. It was a partisan bill that garnered no Republican votes in the House and just three in the Senate. Dodd‐Frank was largely a progressive wish list of policies that failed to address, much less fix, what caused the 2008 financial crisis. The more than 800-page boondoggle expanded the failed regulatory approach that helped create the 2008 crisis in the first place, and increased the federal government’s involvement in planning for, protecting, and propping up the financial system, thus enshrining “too-big-to-fail” policy into law. Repealing Dodd‐Frank would be a good first step—but only a first step—toward protecting taxpayers and allowing private firms to easily provide the financial services that consumers need. In June 2017, the House passed the Financial CHOICE Act, a comprehensive financial regulatory reform bill that would have replaced the core of Dodd‐Frank. Key provisions in the Financial CHOICE Act would have helped to restore market discipline and reduce regulatory burdens, thus moving the nation’s financial markets in the right direction. The Senate, however, passed the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act (S. 2155), a tremendously watered-down (compared to the CHOICE Act) bill that failed to repeal a single title of Dodd‐Frank. (The bill did not even include those reforms that passed the House with strong bipartisan support.)

Rather than negotiate a compromise between the two approaches, the Senate forced the House to accept the Senate’s bill, and the President signed S. 2155 into law. The bill left all of Dodd‐Frank in place, but provided special exemptions to various Dodd‐Frank requirements for (mainly) smaller banks. While those banks were surely happy to have any regulatory relief, even the new exemptions came with the type of regulations that the CHOICE Act would have eliminated.

Provide an off-ramp style federal financial charter. Although banks are more heavily regulated than other financial firms, virtually all financial companies are subject to extensive restrictions on their activities, capital, and asset composition. Simultaneously, U.S. taxpayers have been forced to absorb more of these institutions’ financial losses in the name of ensuring stability. The result has been a massive substitution of government regulation for market competition, which culminated in the 2008 financial crisis. Fixing this framework requires rolling back both government regulation and taxpayer backing of financial losses, making it possible for private citizens to build a stronger financial system that efficiently directs capital to its most valued uses. Creating a new federal charter for financial institutions that relieves the regulatory burden for those who absorb more of their own financial risks and forgo government assistance would help achieve these goals.

Eliminate federal credit subsidies, guarantees, and insurance. Americans collectively shoulder approximately $20 trillion in debt exposure from loans, loan guarantees, and subsidized insurance provided by roughly 150 federal programs. This scheme erodes the nation’s entrepreneurial spirit, increases financial risk, and fosters cronyism and corruption. The programs and subsidies have given rise to powerful constituencies of beneficiaries because any losses are dispersed among millions of taxpayers. The government’s credit portfolio consists of direct loans and loan guarantees for housing, agriculture, energy, education, transportation, infrastructure, exporting, small businesses, and other purposes; federal insurance programs cover bank and credit union deposits, pensions, flood damage, declines in crop prices, and acts of terrorism. Capital for mortgage lending by banks (and non-banks) is provided by government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, while federally-backed deposit insurance creates distortions and risks. Congress should immediately reduce federal deposit insurance coverage and ensure that coverage is provided on a per individual basis. Congress should also phase out government-backed deposit insurance along with all other credit subsidies, guarantees, and insurance.

Eliminate Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and shrink the role of the Federal Housing Administration (FHA). Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored mortgage giants, should be shut down for good. Both enterprises remain wards of the federal government, and they distort the market by issuing mortgage-backed securities with subsidized government guarantees. If such guarantees are necessary, the private sector can issue them and price them appropriately. Congress should take steps to liquidate Fannie and Freddie’s mortgage portfolios, as well as the companies themselves, and to ensure that they are not simply replaced by a new government-sponsored agency. Federal policies implemented through these government-sponsored enterprises have made housing more expensive and increased Americans’ risky debt. To begin winding them down, the GSEs should be prohibited from purchasing mortgages for homes that are not owner-occupied homes or for “cash out” refinances. Congress should also ensure that the GSEs only purchase smaller loans and charge higher fees, and that bank capital requirements no longer favor the GSEs’ mortgage-backed securities. For decades, the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) has competed with the GSEs for the riskiest mortgage loans, and the scope of the FHA’s mortgage insurance program must be addressed at the same time the GSEs are eliminated. Otherwise, all the risky loans financed by the GSEs will simply be insured by the FHA. The solution is simple: Restrict the FHA to insuring only a fraction of each mortgage (instead of 100 percent coverage), and do so for creditworthy low-income, first-time home buyers only.

Reform and consolidate financial regulators. Financial regulators’ budgets should be entirely composed of money appropriated by Congress. A commission governing structure for all financial regulators should be considered. Congress should also consolidate related powers in one regulator; remove authorities from agencies ill-equipped to use them; and revamp processes to ensure appropriate accountability for, and public input in, rule-making. Ideally, Congress would merge existing agencies and create only one federal banking regulator and one capital markets regulator. In the process, Congress should remove the Federal Reserve entirely from regulation and supervision. Congress should also eliminate the (Dodd‐Frank created) Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). Most of the Bureau’s authority could easily be handled by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), an agency whose mission is to protect consumers. These policy reforms would produce more effective financial regulation by making financial market participants, including regulators, more directly accountable for their actions.

Restrain the Federal Reserve with rules-based monetary policy and emergency lending restrictions. Congress can greatly improve monetary policy by replacing the Federal Reserve’s current legislative mandate to promote stable prices and maximum employment. In its place, Congress should give the Federal Reserve a mandate with the single goal of achieving monetary neutrality (supplying only the amount of money the economy needs to keep moving, no more and no less) by stabilizing overall spending in the economy. Maintaining a reasonable growth path for total spending—often referred to as nominal gross domestic product (NGDP) targeting—is the best way for the Federal Reserve to maintain monetary neutrality. Among other benefits, this new framework would allow the price level (overall prices) to decline as productivity improves, thus making it easier for people to enjoy the benefits of more goods for sale at lower prices. Congress should also limit the Federal Reserve so that it can only provide system-wide liquidity on an ongoing basis, rather than allocating credit to specific firms on an ad hoc basis. Emergency lending authority is unnecessary for conducting monetary policy, and Congress should replace the Federal Reserve’s existing primary dealer system with a single standing facility to meet extraordinary as well as ordinary liquidity needs. This change would make Fed lending to insolvent institutions—even during a crisis—unnecessary.

Reduce regulatory impediments to capital formation. Congress should remove regulatory impediments that limit entrepreneurs’ access to the capital necessary to launch and grow new businesses. Congress should preserve the existing thresholds for private offerings and expand the ability of sophisticated investors to invest in private offerings (usually Regulation D offerings). Current law allows large public companies to raise capital without having to deal with 50 different expensive and time-consuming state registration and qualification requirements (known as blue sky laws). Congress should allow smaller public companies and other smaller companies with extensive federal disclosure requirements to also be free of this burden. Congress should replace the 14-plus categories of securities-issuing firms (as described by the existing rules) with three disclosure regimes: public, quasi-public, and private. Just as important, Congress should replace the current complex and arbitrary federal disclosure system with a reasonable, coherent, and scaled disclosure system that imposes increasing requirements as companies grow and have more shareholders with more capital at risk. Congress, or the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), should clarify that entrepreneurs may use finders and private placement brokers to assist them in raising capital. Finally, it is time to create a micro-offering exemption allowing very small private companies to raise capital without having to comply with complex SEC rules.

Design an efficient securities-fraud deterrence regime. For capital markets to function well, investors need accurate information about securities. If investors do not trust firms’ disclosures, they will discount what they are willing to pay for securities. This increases the cost of capital and makes it more difficult, even for honest firms, to cost-effectively raise capital. Deterring fraud in the capital markets should be a government priority, but the current U.S. approach to securities-fraud deterrence falls far short of the ideal. Congress and the SEC should implement a system that: (1) places more emphasis on culpable individual and manager liability, (2) reduces the reliance on corporate criminal penalties borne by shareholders, and (3) limits private enforcement to traditional common law remedies or other compensatory remedies possessing similar safeguards against over-deterrence.

Reform the SEC. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is the most important regulator of U.S. capital markets. Although its budget has increased by 82 percent over 10 years, its effectiveness remains in doubt. Resources have flowed into unnecessary management, “support,” and ancillary functions, while core functions have been neglected. Its organizational structure is unwieldy. The Commission needs to be better managed—it does not need (as has been proposed) more managers. The number of direct reports to the Chairman needs to be reduced. Its information technology programs appear to be poorly managed and are unnecessarily costly. The SEC bases its decisions on inadequate data. It does much less than most agencies to provide data to Commissioners, other policymakers, and the public. Its enforcement efforts directed at fraud and other malfeasance by managers of large financial institutions are inadequate. The Commission does little to remove unnecessary regulatory impediments to entrepreneurial capital formation. Reforms are necessary so that the SEC can better support well-functioning capital markets.

Reform FINRA. FINRA is the primary regulator of broker-dealers and their employees. It is neither a true self-regulatory organization nor a government agency. It is largely unaccountable to the industry and to the public. Due process, transparency, and regulatory-review protections normally associated with regulators are not present, and its arbitration process is flawed. Reforms are necessary. FINRA itself, the SEC, and Congress should reform FINRA to improve its rule-making and arbitration process.

Do not impose beneficial ownership reporting requirements. Congress is seriously considering imposing a beneficial ownership reporting regime on American businesses and other entities, including charities and churches. The most recent legislation, the Corporate Transparency Act (CTA) and the ILLICIT Cash Act, would create a large compliance burden on businesses with 20 or fewer employees (the only non-exempt category) and would create as many as one million inadvertent felons. Under the CTA, religious organizations, charities, and other exempt entities and their employees would be subject to fines and imprisonment unless they file the proper certification of exemption with the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. The rules are easily and lawfully avoided by the sophisticated—and would do virtually nothing to achieve their stated aim of protecting society from terrorism or other forms of illicit finance. Furthermore, the vast majority of the information that the proposed reporting regime would obtain is already provided to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Allowing the IRS to share this information with the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network would better meet the needs of law enforcement by providing more comprehensive information and better enforcement than would the proposed reporting regime.

This content was last updated: August, 2020.

Fact: Deregulation did not cause the 2008 financial crisis.

  • In the time period between the supposed deregulation in 1999 and the Lehman Brothers’ failure in 2008, financial regulators issued 7,100 pages of regulations.
  • These regulations implemented more than 800 separate rules.

Fact: Extensive regulation is supposed to prevent problems at financial firms from turning into system-wide banking crises, but the approach has failed.

  • The U.S. has had 14 major banking crises in the past 180 years, one of the worst track records in the developed world.
  • The U.S. is one of only three developed countries with two or more banking crises between 1970 and 2010.

Fact: Dodd‐Frank doubled down on the failed approach of the past.

  • From the enactment of Dodd‐Frank in 2010 to July 2016, regulators added more than 16,000 pages of financial regulations to the Federal Register.
  • Dodd‐Frank required regulators to implement approximately 400 separate rules.

Fact: The regulatory relief bill signed into law in 2017 merely provides special exemptions to certain Dodd‐Frank regulations.

  • This bill—S. 2155—did not repeal one single title of the Dodd‐Frank Act.

Fact: Poorly designed government policies led to the 2008 financial crisis.

  • Special bankruptcy safe harbors induced firms to rely more heavily on derivatives and repurchase agreements (repos) than they would have in the absence of the special protections. Data show that the portion of total investment bank assets financed by repos doubled between 2000 and 2007. The market would not have supported such high increases in leverage without the special protections.

Fact: The Federal Reserve’s track record deserves a closer look.

  • Research with updated data shows that the pre‐Federal Reserve era economy was about half as volatile as previously thought in terms of both unemployment and overall output.
  • Overall, inflation volatility has barely declined relative to the pre-Fed era, but average inflation has gone from approximately 0 percent to more than 3 percent.
This content was last updated: August, 2020.
This content was last updated: August, 2020.

Infrastructure

Policy Proposals
  1. Limit spending by the Highway Trust Fund to highways and focus on programs that are truly national in nature.
  2. Reduce federal spending on highways and lower the federal gasoline tax.
  3. Unburden infrastructure from mandates and regulations.
  4. Reform the environmental review process.
  5. Privatize federal transportation services.
Quick Facts
  1. Roughly $10 billion per year is diverted to mass transit from gasoline taxes paid into the Highway Trust Fund even though many transit riders have never paid into the fund, and even though transit accounts for just 1 percent to 5 percent of total travel.
  2. The number of the nation’s National Highway System bridges that the Federal Highway Administration deems in poor condition (requiring maintenance) decreased from 5 percent in 2000 to 3 percent in 2023.
  3. Overspending on mass transit projects has led to more than $200 billion in spending diversions from the Highway Trust Fund as of 2022.
Recognize Ownership and Jurisdiction
  • The vast majority of transportation infrastructure assets are owned, operated, and maintained by state and local governments, businesses, and individuals.
  • Excessive federal involvement has led to inefficiencies, delays, and waste, rather than superior infrastructure for the nation.
Reestablish Local Decision Making and Control
  • Infrastructure decisions should be made at a local or state level or by the private sector, all of which are more accountable to the public and knows their community’s transportation needs better than Washington.
Ensure That Those Who Pay Benefit
  • Specific transportation infrastructure funds should not be diverted to other unrelated programs. Highway motorists should not have to subsidize urban transit or bike paths.
This content was last updated: January, 2024.

Transportation infrastructure is vital to the nation’s economic health. Ease of movement in the air and on highways, roads, rails, bridges, and waterways contributes to the productivity of workers, manufacturers, and other businesses. Yet the current Washington-centric approach hampers transportation investment through bureaucracy, mismanagement, and record resource misallocation in spending of more than $100 billion per year. The inefficacy of federal management undermines the basis of federal transportation policy: maintaining nationally significant infrastructure to improve mobility in a cost-effective manner. Instead, workers have received longer commutes, growing congestion, and lackluster benefits for the federal taxes they pay.

Politicians often justify increased infrastructure spending with hollow promises of job creation, economic growth, and idyllic dreams that are incompatible with the day-to-day lives of most Americans. They invoke the nation’s allegedly “crumbling” infrastructure to justify wasteful special-interest spending. As a result, spending from the Highway Trust Fund is diverted to low-value programs that are unrelated to highways, thereby diluting the fundamental “users pay, users benefit” model by shortchanging the motorists and truckers who pay gasoline taxes.

The question is not whether America should be investing in transportation infrastructure, but how much the federal government should be responsible for this investment and how Americans can improve their infrastructure most effectively. To achieve maximum efficiency and accountability, as many infrastructure decisions as possible should be made by the appropriate entity where most of the benefits reside. In most instances, this means at the local and state levels or by the private sector.

Moreover, these decisions should be made free from federal mandates and burdensome regulations. Local and state governments, along with businesses, are more accountable to those who rely on their infrastructure and know their transportation needs better than Washington ever could. In fact, they already enact policies independently to generate their own transportation funding. Congress and the Administration should seek to empower states and the private sector by limiting the role of the federal government to concerns that are truly national in scope.

This content was last updated: January, 2024.

In order to improve the public value of transportation infrastructure programs, Congress should:

Reform the Highway Trust Fund to reflect 21st-century realities. Reducing Highway Trust Fund spending and taxes can produce tens of billions of dollars’ worth of gains in efficiency per year and empower state and local governments in the process. Reforming the Highway Trust Fund would involve:

  • Eliminating non-highway diversions, such as mass transit, the Transportation Alternatives Program (which funds bike and foot paths), ferry boats, and more. These diversionary programs account for approximately 30 percent of trust fund spending, support modes of transportation that do not pay into the fund, are littered with pork projects, and are the root cause of trust fund insolvency.
  • Reducing federal spending on highways and lowering the federal gasoline tax. When the Highway Trust Fund was created in 1956, many Western states did not have the resources to build or maintain their portions of the budding interstate highway system. Today, the interstate system is complete from a national perspective, and states have the capacity to maintain highways. As a result, continued federal involvement only adds a layer of bureaucratic cost and delays and makes it easier to fund marginal projects. In addition, the current leftward trend of the U.S. Department of Transportation means that decision-making must take account of “social justice” priorities. Substantially reducing the federal role and the federal gasoline tax over a period of five to 10 years would provide more room for states to manage highways with less red tape and encourage responsible highway spending.

Remove barriers to non-federal infrastructure investments. Such regulations affect a variety of sectors that can be liberated by:

  • Providing parity between municipal and private infrastructure bonds. The federal government subsidizes state and local infrastructure projects with the tax-free treatment of an unlimited amount of municipal bonds. In contrast, the Private Activity Bond program has a cap of $30 billion in active bond value, which is miniscule compared to the scope of infrastructure needs. As a result, public financing is the default for infrastructure. Either increasing the private bond cap or placing a cap on municipal bonds would level the playing field. Eliminating preferential tax treatment altogether would be ideal.
  • Eliminating airline ticket taxes, ending airport subsidies from taxpayers, and allowing airports to fund their own infrastructure. The aviation industry is hobbled by federal micromanagement that reduces investments at high-demand airports and massively subsidizes low-demand airports. The $4.50 limit on the Passenger Facility Charge, which was set in 2000, makes it needlessly difficult for airports to finance improvements and expansion. The federal ticket tax funds the Airport and Airways Trust Fund, which disproportionately benefits low-use airports as does the Essential Air Service program. Clearing away these rules and programs would enable more competition among airports and airlines while incentivizing investment across the aviation industry, benefiting both the sector and consumers.
  • Reforming the prohibition on interstate highway tolling. The tolling ban, which affects highways created since the start of the Highway Trust Fund, causes overreliance on gasoline taxes and overreliance on the federal government. It also gives preferential treatment to states that were more developed during the Eisenhower Administration. Allowing all state governments to make use of highway tolls, perhaps with rules to ensure that toll revenue is used for highways, would bolster the user-pays, user-benefits principle and provide more stable revenue as the vehicle fleet shifts toward low-gasoline and no-gasoline vehicles. This would also provide an opportunity to reduce or eliminate the federal gas tax as states take more responsibility for highways.

Reform the environmental review process to increase the speed and efficiency of federally funded projects without endangering the environment. The Trump Administration made long-overdue headway on this issue, and Congress should follow suit by:

  • Establishing time limits on reviews, which currently take several years to complete on average.
  • Requiring agencies to produce public data on the duration and length of submitted environmental reviews. This would enable better oversight of the issue.
  • Streamlining the National Environmental Policy Act by limiting it to major environmental issues, excluding greenhouse gases from the review process, and requiring agencies to incorporate previous analyses into similar projects.

Eliminate federal subsidies for mass transit, which encourages inefficient operations and unnecessary expansions, produces negligible public benefit, and acts as a transfer of wealth from rural and suburban areas to cities.

  • Mass transit is suited to high-density metropolitan areas. The U.S. has only one truly high-density metropolitan area—New York City—and much lower overall population density than Western Europe, Japan, and China, which the Left cites as examples to emulate. Decades of federal transit subsidies have not changed this reality, and more subsidies will yield the same result.
  • U.S. metropolitan areas with the highest transit usage also have income levels above the national average and should be responsible for operating and maintaining their own transit systems.
  • The increase in remote work since 2020 has caused a permanent reduction in transit usage, further reducing the value of transit subsidies and expansions.
  • Special handouts for electric buses are a boondoggle. Due to the extra weight of batteries, such buses cause tremendous damage to roads. The added expense of purchasing new fleets of buses and spending more on road maintenance for the sake of trivial environmental effects is profoundly wasteful.

Eliminate regulations that needlessly increase the cost of federal infrastructure projects. The Davis–Bacon Act and project labor agreements increase labor costs. The Foreign Dredge Act makes it more expensive to improve overburdened ports. Buy American rules, a blunt instrument that hit allies and China equally hard, increase the cost of materials. These types of red tape are equivalent to lighting billions of taxpayer dollars on fire every year for the sake of political special interests.

Privatize federal transportation services. The federal government is responsible for the operation of many important transportation assets. The importance of these assets makes privatization more important, not less, because it would yield better management through efficiency and market incentives. Privatization opportunities include:

  • Amtrak. The federal government has a de facto monopoly on intercity rail service, yet it loses money every year due to a combination of poor service and excessive operational area. Proposals to expand the Amtrak network have the problem exactly backwards. Aviation is a much better method of long-distance travel in terms of time and cost, which is why rail service has such low demand across most of the country. Privatization would enable viable lines, such as the Northeast Corridor, to continue with better service and eliminate subsidies for routes with low demand.
  • Air Traffic Control. The Federal Aviation Administration’s Air Traffic Organization (ATO) is responsible for providing air traffic control services. Worldwide, it is one of the last air navigation service providers housed within an aviation safety regulatory agency. There is bipartisan agreement that air traffic control is not inherently a government function. Government bureaucracy has led to an ATO that should be run like an advanced business but instead is slow to react, mired in red tape, and managed by an often-inattentive Congress. The ATO struggles with such basic functions as hiring employees and investing in capital projects. Privatization would bring private-sector flexibility and efficiency to the essential service and allow it to innovate outside the confines of federal bureaucracy.
  • Waterways. The federal government controls both a majority of inland waterways (managed by the Army Corps of Engineers) and the St. Lawrence Seaway (managed by the St. Lawrence Seaway Development Corporation). Federal mismanagement results in poor infrastructure quality, unnecessary taxpayer subsidies at the expense of freight competitors, and funding for pork projects that narrowly benefit areas with political connections. Privatization would ensure investments in high-demand areas, better operational efficiency, and an end to hidden cross-subsidies.
This content was last updated: January, 2024.

Fact: Mass transit is subsidized far beyond its use, and this excessive subsidization leads to perverse outcomes.

  • Roughly $10 billion per year is diverted to mass transit from gasoline taxes paid into the Highway Trust Fund even though many transit riders have never paid into the fund, and even though transit accounts for just 1 percent to 5 percent of total travel. This transit diversion is an artifact from the 1980s, when urban House Members held highway funding hostage and demanded a set-aside for transit.
  • Major transit agencies receive over two-thirds of their funding from subsidies rather than self-generated revenue. As a result, there is little incentive to focus on the needs of the public and every incentive to focus on unnecessary expansions and lavish salaries.
  • Compensation costs for transit workers average over $150,000 per year in cities such as New York, Washington, DC, and San Francisco.

Fact: The state of America’s major infrastructure assets has improved over time.

  • Members of Congress often use language like “crumbling roads and bridges” to justify increases in federal spending. However, the number of the nation’s National Highway System bridges that the Federal Highway Administration deems in poor condition (necessitating maintenance) decreased from 5 percent in 2000 to 3 percent in 2023.
  • Similarly, the portion of airport runways rated in poor condition decreased from 10 percent in 1990 to 2 percent in 2020.

Fact: The Highway Trust Fund fulfilled its original purpose 30 years ago and needs to be reformed.

  • The trust fund was started to facilitate a full nationwide highway system. The work of building these vital arterial highways was finished in 1992.
  • Rather than declaring victory and reducing the federal role, Congress has increased spending, both in dollar amounts and in the number of things supported by the trust fund. This now includes decidedly non-federal projects, such as bike paths, sidewalks, and streetcars. Such non-highway diversions account for approximately 30 percent of trust fund spending.
  • Overspending has led to more than $250 billion of deficit-funded bailouts of the highway fund. For perspective, mass transit has received roughly $200 billion in spending diversions from the fund as of 2022.
This content was last updated: January, 2024.
This content was last updated: January, 2024.

Taxes

Policy Proposals
  1. Make the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act permanent and expand expensing.
  2. Enact universal savings accounts (USAs) to encourage saving.
  3. Cut tax subsidies; eliminate all individual and corporate deductions, credits, exclusions, and exemptions that are not economically justified; and lower tax rates.
  4. Ensure permanent tax relief by pairing further tax reductions with spending cuts that are as large as or larger than any tax cuts.
Quick Facts
  1. The federal government collected $3.4 trillion in revenues in 2020. Combined with $1.6 trillion in state and local taxes, the payment of taxes consumes about one-quarter of U.S. economic production.
  2. Americans spend over 6.2 billion hours a year complying with the tax code and other Treasury Department information collection requirements.
  3. In 2018, because of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, households saved an average of $1,400 in taxes, and married couples with two children saved an average of $2,900.
A Necessary Evil
  • Our tax system should be simple, transparent, and fair. Even after the historic 2017 tax cuts—which benefited all Americans—the tax code is still complex, unjust, and a threat to growth and prosperity.
  • Taxes that are too high or poorly designed can destroy wealth, discourage investment, and stifle economic opportunity.
The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017
  • The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 (TCJA) simplified tax paying for many Americans, reduced taxes on individuals and businesses, and updated the business tax code.
Opportunity for Permanent Relief
  • Tax reform gives American families much-needed relief, with larger paychecks and more jobs.
  • Tax reform makes the U.S. more competitive, encouraging companies to move jobs and investment to the U.S.
  • In 2025, most of the individual tax cuts will expire. Congress should take this opportunity to revisit the tax code and make many of the cuts permanent.
This content was last updated: July, 2022.

As the federal government has expanded, taxes have assumed an oversized role in American life. Taxes influence how much Americans work, what they produce, what they buy, how much they save, and when they retire. It is therefore critical that policymakers design a tax system that minimizes the negative impact of taxes on the economy and people’s lives.

Federal taxes in America are largely paid in three ways. The individual income tax, including taxes paid on investments (capital gains and dividends) and taxes on business profits paid directly by the owners on their individual tax return, raises 49.6 percent of federal revenue; payroll taxes account for 35.9 percent; and the corporate income tax accounts for 6.6 percent. Investors, workers, and consumers pay business taxes like the corporate income tax. Workers shoulder the largest burden through lower wages.

Taxes often determine winners and losers in the economy. Under a well-designed revenue system, taxes would be neutral. If taxes are applied consistently and evenly, they are less likely to be the driving factor in economic decisions. All too often, America’s tax system favors certain industries over others, incentivizes consumption over saving, and discourages work and entrepreneurship. Different tax treatment of different activities acts like a wedge that drives individuals and businesses away from the most economically beneficial activities.

Federal taxes should be low. When taxes are low, they cause less harm and smaller distortions in the economy. However, taxes are directly tied to how much the government spends, and the federal government has a spending problem. Partly in response to the coronavirus outbreak, the federal government spent $13.4 trillion in 2020 and 2021 and racked up over $5.9 trillion of new debt. Since the United States is obligated to pay its debts, Congress must dramatically reduce spending to avoid painful future tax increases.

Taxes should be simple and transparent. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 (TCJA) simplified taxpaying for individual Americans and lowered taxes, but the U.S. tax code is still far too complex. A vast array of subsidies and carve-outs for the politically connected add to complexity and economic distortions. Based on government estimates, Americans dedicate over 6.2 billion hours a year to complying with the tax code and other Treasury Department information collection requirements. Business taxpayers especially must dedicate vast amounts of time and money to comply with the tax code, IRS regulations, and official guidance. Small businesses often lack the resources to devote to this time-consuming process. Under a simpler tax system, most of these resources could be put to better use.

The biggest distortion in the tax code is caused by the hidden double tax on savers, who face a tax on wages and a second tax on any earnings if the wages are saved and invested. The lower tax rate on capital gains and dividends (with a top rate of 20 percent on long-term capital gains versus a 37 percent top marginal rate on income) helps to move the income tax toward a more neutral treatment of saving but is still an example of double taxation.

Americans benefitted from many pro-growth provisions in the TCJA. In 2019 and early 2020, the unemployment rate was at a 50-year low, wage growth was at a 10-year high, labor force participation had reversed a 20-year downward trend, inflation was low, and the poorest Americans were benefitting the most from the thriving economy. (State-mandated economic shutdowns erased these gains in many parts of the country in 2020 and 2021.) Most of the TCJA’s individual tax cuts are set to expire in 2025. This deadline gives Congress an opportunity to revisit the tax code, prevent tax increases by making much of the TCJA permanent, and address many remaining issues not included in the 2017 tax bill.

Ultimately, the tax system should use the least economically destructive forms of taxation to raise the revenue necessary to fund a limited government that carries out its constitutionally delegated powers. To this end, Congress needs to make pro-growth features of the TCJA permanent and lower taxes on saving while simultaneously eliminating tax subsidies and cutting spending.

This content was last updated: July, 2022.

Make expensing permanent and extend it to long-lived assets. The U.S. tax code generally imposes years of delay between the moment businesses pay for an investment and the point at which they can deduct the full cost of that investment on their taxes. This raises the cost of the investment, which in turn slows gains to future worker productivity and shrinks incomes. The TCJA temporarily fixed this problem for some short-lived investments through “expensing,” allowing businesses to write off some new investments immediately. Congress should prioritize making these pro-growth provisions permanent.

While the TCJA reduced the tax code’s bias against investing in short-lived assets, this provision was too limited. Buildings, such as new manufacturing floor space and storefronts, still must use the costly and complicated pre-TCJA system, characterized by arbitrary depreciation schedules concocted by federal bureaucrats who often have little or no business experience. The budgetary impact of expanding expensing to all investments would be high in the first few years because of transition costs, but the economic benefits would be huge. Alternatively, an intermediate approach with a smaller upfront budget impact would allow neutral cost recovery for buildings. Inflation makes delayed expensing especially harmful, because by the time taxpayers can fully claim deductions, the value of the dollar has fallen, reducing the value of the deduction compared to the real cost of the investment. A neutral cost recovery system allows taxpayers to adjust deductions to account for inflation and a real rate of return, providing an economic benefit that is similar to expensing.

Prevent tax increases and make the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act permanent. The 2017 tax cuts reduced federal income tax rates, increased the standard deduction, doubled the child tax credit, repealed the personal and dependent exemptions, and capped the state and local tax (SALT) deduction, among many other reforms. Most of the law’s individual tax provisions expire at the end of 2025, and taxes are scheduled to increase beginning in 2026.

Although most media attention surrounding the TCJA centered on lower tax rates for individuals and businesses, the TCJA’s adjustments to investment rules, such as expensing, had important benefits for American workers, supporting higher wages and more jobs. A permanent version of the 2017 tax cuts could increase the size of the economy and further boost Americans’ paychecks, and permanent tax cuts and expanded expensing could boost the size of the economy by 4.3 percent over the pre‐tax cuts baseline. That would more than double the economic benefits that are expected to result from the temporary provisions under current law.

Congress should resist proposals to increase Americans’ tax burden or to create new taxes. Americans already pay federal individual income taxes (including capital gains), corporate income taxes, payroll taxes, estate taxes, tariffs, and excise taxes like those on gasoline, tobacco, alcohol, firearms, and sporting goods. There is no need to add a new revenue source, whether it is a value added tax, a border adjustment tax, or a tax on carbon, wealth, unrealized capital gains, or financial transactions. Adding yet another federal revenue source would add needless complexity and make it easier for elected officials to collect more revenue to fund an already bloated federal government. Rather than thinking of new sources of revenue, policymakers should consider eliminating or consolidating revenue sources.

Pair tax reductions with spending cuts. The federal government needs to get spending under control. By allowing deficits to rise, Congress makes future tax increases inevitable. Moreover, any increase in the debt will create an imbalance between tax rates now and tax rates in the future, which in turn can create harmful economic distortions by causing people to avoid activities that might lead to future taxes on, for example, entrepreneurship and saving. Therefore, any further tax reductions should be offset by spending cuts that are as large as or larger than any tax cuts. In addition, there are many tax subsidies that could be removed from the tax code to pay for pro-growth reforms that make the code simpler and fairer.

Enact universal savings accounts. The current tax code discourages most forms of savings compared to consumption. People’s paychecks are subject to individual income tax (and payroll tax), but no further tax is due on the portion of one’s paycheck that is spent. However, if an individual puts a portion of the paycheck into savings or investments (except tax-preferred forms), the individual will face additional tax on any interest or capital gains earned. This is an additional layer of tax. Individual retirement accounts (IRAs), Roth IRAs, 401(k)s, and defined contribution plans allow investors to save limited amounts while avoiding this double taxation. Such plans, however, restrict the use of funds and penalize early withdrawal. This lack of flexibility especially discourages less wealthy Americans from using tax-preferred savings.

Universal savings accounts (USAs) would reduce taxes on savings for all Americans and help families build their own financial security through a single, simple, and flexible account. Unlike holders of existing retirement savings accounts, USA holders would not be bound by limits on when savings can be withdrawn or for what purpose people may use their personal savings. Individuals would contribute post-tax earnings, and all withdrawals from a USA would be excluded from taxable income; any gains accrued would thus be tax-free. USAs would allow Americans at all income levels to save more of their earnings with fewer restrictions on where and when they can spend their own money.

Index capital gains for inflation. For purposes of capital gains taxes, the tax base is the difference between the value of the asset upon sale (or other taxable event) compared to the basis of the asset (usually its value when purchased). Part of the increase in asset values over time is offset by general economy-wide inflation, but the full increase in asset prices is subject to capital gains tax, so investors are subject to tax both on real gains and on inflation. This inflation tax is higher and more distortionary the longer capital assets are held and, of course, the higher inflation rises.

This defect in the tax code is especially harmful because taxes on investments already represent a second layer of taxation. Taxpayers can avoid the tax on real capital gains and inflation by simply spending wage income rather than investing, but this perverse incentive reduces Americans’ savings and deprives businesses of the capital funding they need to grow and innovate. Congress can stimulate economic growth and create a more neutral tax system by indexing the tax basis of capital gains for inflation.

Cut tax subsidies. Each year, the tax code is used to hand out billions of dollars in subsidies to politically connected interests, thereby picking winners and losers and distorting market outcomes. Future tax reform should eliminate all individual and corporate deductions, credits, exclusions, and exemptions that are not economically justified. Some of the most egregious tax subsidies are the wide range of tax breaks for the production and consumption of politically favored types of energy and energy-efficient products that distort energy markets, making them less efficient and more dependent on government subsidies. Other examples include tax credits for college expenses that contribute to the inflated cost of college for every American student, the research and development tax credit that is an inefficient subsidy for an activity in which most companies would engage anyway, and the low-income housing tax credit that creates incentives for local government corruption and primarily subsidizes developers, not renters.

The 2017 tax reform introduced new tax preferences that should be rolled back, like the temporary tax credit for paid family leave, the new 20 percent deduction for pass-through businesses, and place-based opportunity zone credits. The bill also did not fully eliminate existing subsidies like the newly capped state and local tax (SALT) deduction, which should be zeroed out as it is harmful for individuals and businesses. Each of these tax preferences and many others add unnecessary complexity to the tax code and reduce economic growth because they cause individuals and businesses to rely on government subsidies rather than market signals when making decisions about where to live or what to produce. The TCJA’s provisions that eliminate double taxation on savings and investments are sound tax policies and should not be viewed as “tax expenditures.”

Limit the power of the Internal Revenue Service. The U.S. Constitution delegates the power to lay and collect taxes to Congress, but Congress has ceded much of this power to the IRS and, more broadly, the Department of the Treasury and the executive branch. When Congress writes tax laws, those laws are typically riddled with instructions for the Secretary of the Treasury to issue new regulations covering various aspects of the law. If these occurrences were limited to mere administrative issues, this would not be especially problematic, but the tens of thousands of pages of IRS regulations and other official guidance meaningfully shape tax law and add significantly to the burden imposed on taxpayers. Businesses often must wait a year or more for IRS regulations to be published before they can really understand how a new tax law affects them. Congress should avoid relying on the IRS to issue highly consequential tax regulations.

The IRS’s power in setting tax policy is also problematic at a time when global taxation is in vogue. As the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) develops proposals to institute a more globalized tax system, Americans should be wary of too much power resting in the executive branch. Under the Constitution, the President can sign international treaties but cannot circumvent Congress in making laws. Limiting the IRS’s regulatory power will help to ensure that constitutional checks remain in place.

This content was last updated: July, 2022.

Fact: High-income taxpayers already pay the lion’s share of federal income taxes, and the 2017 tax cuts made the tax code more progressive.

  • Households in the bottom half of income earners paid 3 percent of the federal income taxes and earned 12 percent of the income in 2018 (the most recent year for which tax data are available).
  • The top 1 percent of income earners paid 40 percent of federal income taxes and earned 21 percent of the income.
  • The 2017 tax cuts made the tax code more progressive by reducing taxes paid by the lowest-income taxpayers more than it reduced taxes paid by high-income taxpayers as a percentage of the income taxes they would otherwise have owed.
  • It is mathematically impossible for the rich to pay for all of the government spending proposed by progressives.
  • In 2018, an income tax of 100 percent on all individuals earning more than $1 million would have increased tax collections by $1.3 trillion. In 2020, Medicare for All would have required $2.8 trillion of new federal funding.

Fact: Uncontrolled government spending, not tax cuts, drives U.S. deficits.

  • Federal revenues as a percentage of GDP have been near the historical average since 1968 and are projected to rise.
  • The Congressional Budget Office projects that by 2050, federal spending will be 80 percent higher as a percentage of GDP than it was in 2000.
  • A tax environment that rewards hard work and innovation is critical to the long-term growth of the economy, which is necessary if America is to pay down its debts.

Fact: The complexity of the tax code drains the economy of productive resources.

  • The Internal Revenue Code was 6,859 pages long as of November 2021.
  • The IRS has 14,312 pages of regulations and since 2000 has issued at least 48,895 pages of official guidance with which individuals and business must comply. Together, this amounts to 70,066 pages of rules—roughly the size of 58 King James Bibles.
  • Government estimates show that Americans dedicate more than 6.2 billion hours a year to complying with the tax code and other Treasury Department information collection requirements.
  • Despite improvements in accounting software, employment of accountants and auditors is projected to grow by 7 percent per year from 2020 to 2030. The population, by contrast, grows less than 1 percent per year.
This content was last updated: July, 2022.
This content was last updated: July, 2022.

Constitutional Government

Election Integrity

Policy Proposals
  1. Require all voters to present photo identification issued by the federal, state, local, or tribal government when voting.
  2. Require all individuals who register to vote to provide proof of U.S. citizenship.
  3. Prohibit private funding of any election officials and election offices and agencies.
Quick Facts
  1. A 2012 Pew Study showed that 24 million voter registrations were inaccurate, out of date, or duplicates.
  2. In 2020, the Public Interest Legal Foundation found more than 144,000 potential cases of fraud by individuals registering and voting more than once in the 2016 and 2018 elections.
Uphold Our Constitutional Republic
  • The right to vote in a free and fair election is the most basic civil right and one on which many other rights of the American people depend.
Establish Trust
  • The electoral system cannot inspire public confidence if no safeguards exist to deter or detect fraud or to confirm the identity of voters. The security of the ballot box cannot be left to the honor system.
Defend Against Fraud
  • The automatic mailing of absentee ballot request forms and absentee ballots to all registered voters presents serious threats to election security.
  • Congress and the states must ensure that all eligible Americans are able to vote and that their votes are not stolen or diluted by fraud or administrative errors.
This content was last updated: January, 2024.

As important as elections are—giving citizens rightful input into government spending, who receives benefits, and how the government exercises its power—some people will attempt to cheat. Examples abound throughout U.S. history, from the 135 percent of eligible voters who turned out for an 1844 election in New York to the infamous ballot Box 13 in Lyndon Johnson’s fraudulent 1948 Senate election. The 1997 Miami mayor’s race was overturned because of more than 5,000 fraudulent absentee ballots. A mayoral election in East Chicago, Indiana, in 2003 and a state senate race in Tennessee in 2005 were also overturned due to voter fraud.

In 2013, four people in Indiana were convicted of forging signatures on the ballot petitions that qualified Barack Obama for the state’s May 2008 primary election. In 2015, a city council race in the New Jersey town of Perth Amboy was decided by a mere 10 votes. A judge overturned the election and ordered a new one after it was revealed that at least 13 illegal absentee ballots had been cast. More recently, the 2018 election for the Ninth Congressional District in North Carolina was overturned after the State Board of Elections found organized absentee-ballot fraud that altered the outcome.

As the Supreme Court of the United States recognized when it upheld the constitutionality of Indiana’s voter identification law in 2008, flagrant examples of voter fraud “have been documented throughout this Nation’s history by respected historians and journalists…” Those examples “demonstrate that not only is the risk of voter fraud real but that it could affect the outcome of a close election.” The Heritage Foundation’s Election Fraud Database has documented almost 1,500 instances of voter fraud from across the country, and the number continues to grow.

Many partisan activists, liberal academics, and members of the media elite deny that election fraud exists or that any action is needed to protect the integrity of the election process. The nonpartisan Commission on Federal Election Reform, however, chaired by former President Jimmy Carter and former Secretary of State James A. Baker III, found that the “electoral system cannot inspire public confidence if no safeguards exist to deter or detect fraud or to confirm the identity of voters.”

The right to vote in a free and fair election is a citizen’s most basic civil right, the one on which many of the other rights of Americans depend. Congress and the states can and should guarantee that every eligible citizen is able to vote—and that no one’s vote is stolen. The Heritage Foundation has published a detailed and extensive list of best-practice recommendations for state legislatures, which have primary responsibility for administering elections, but there are actions that the federal government can take as well. Additionally, The Heritage Foundation’s Election Integrity Scorecard, which analyzes the election laws of all 50 states and the District of Columbia and grades each state on how well it protects the security and integrity of the election process, gives states a clear picture of where their laws and regulations meet the best practices and where vulnerabilities exist and how to fix them.

This content was last updated: January, 2024.

Policy Proposals (Federal)

In order to protect free and fair elections in the United States, Congress should:

Require all voters in federal elections to present photographic identification, issued by the federal, state, local, or tribal government, when they vote at their polling place and to send copies of such identification (or their driver’s license or non-driver’s identification card number) when submitting an absentee ballot. Such a photo ID should be provided free of charge to those who request it for voting purposes.

Allow state election officials to verify the U.S. citizenship of registered voters by making the Social Security Administration and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) databases available to those officials.

Require all federal courts to notify state election officials when individuals whose names are drawn from their voter registration rolls are excused from jury duty because they are not U.S. citizens and require all federal courts to notify the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) for purposes of investigation and possible prosecution of such cases.

Amend the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 to allow states to strike individuals who have not voted in two consecutive federal elections from the voter rolls. These individuals must be informed in writing that they will be removed unless they contact election officials by a certain time.

Amend the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 to clarify that states may require proof of citizenship from those who are registering to vote.

Require the DHS to provide the DOJ with all the information it has on non-citizens who have registered for, or voted in, federal, state, or local elections. Not only should the DHS revoke the visas and reject the citizenship applications of aliens who have registered or voted illegally, the DOJ must also investigate and prosecute non-citizens who have violated federal law.

Sunset the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, a federal agency created in 2002 to administer a one-time grant of federal funds to the states. Having this superfluous federal agency in place will tempt Congress to expand its authority to impose federal mandates through federal regulations, which could lead eventually to the complete takeover of the election process by the federal government.

Direct the Department of Defense to create voter registration offices on all military installations to provide voting assistance to military personnel and their families and allow nonpartisan veterans groups to hold voter registration drives at commissaries or other public locations on military posts and bases.

Policy Proposals (State)

In order to protect free and fair elections in the United States, state legislatures should:

Require all voters in federal, state, and local elections to present photographic identification, issued by the federal, state, local or tribal government when they vote at their polling place, and to send copies of such identification or their driver’s license or non-driver’s identification card number when submitting an absentee ballot. Anyone who does not have an ID should receive it free of charge from state authorities. Academic studies and election results both show that ID requirements do not depress voter turnout, including among minority voters. A vast majority of voters of all parties, races, and ethnic backgrounds support such a requirement, which increases public confidence in the integrity of elections.

Require all individuals who register to vote to provide proof of U.S. citizenship. States have an interest in preventing dilution of the votes of their citizens at the state level and must maintain citizen-only voting rolls for federal elections. When a state issues a driver’s license to a non-citizen, whether he is in the country legally or illegally, the license should indicate clearly that the holder is not a U.S. citizen.

Require state and local election officials to verify the accuracy of new voter registration information against other available state and federal databases. Section 303 of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) of 2001 requires states to coordinate their voter registration lists with “other agency databases” and to “verify the accuracy of the information provided on applications for voter registration.” Some election officials are not complying with this law and are not verifying new voter registration information against other available databases, such as Department of Motor Vehicles driver’s license records and Social Security Administration death records. Legislators should implement this requirement as a state law to ensure that their state election officials follow this commonsense requirement.

Require individuals who register by mail to vote in person the first time they vote. Section 6 of the National Voter Registration Act allows states to implement such a requirement, although it cannot apply to anyone entitled to vote by absentee ballot under the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act or the Voting Accessibility of the Elderly and Handicapped Act.

Require all individuals who register to vote by mail-in forms, whether mailed back to election officials or hand-delivered by the individual or third-party organizations, to comply with the applicable HAVA provision. HAVA requires persons who register to vote by mail and who have not previously voted in a federal election to provide a copy of certain identification documents when they register or the first time they vote, but some states have interpreted this to apply only to voter registration forms received through the mail and not when they are delivered through other means.

Require all third-party organizations that conduct voter registration drives to write the name of their organization, as well as the name of the volunteer or employee handling each registration, on the voter registration form, and that all completed forms be returned to election officials within 10 days of the date on which the forms are signed by the person registering. This would allow election officials to identify which organization and individual handled voter registration forms that are found to be incomplete or fraudulent and to ensure that completed registration forms are provided to election officials on a timely basis for proper processing before the state’s pre-election registration deadline.

Require all state courts to notify election officials when individuals whose names are drawn from the registration rolls are excused from jury duty because they are not U.S. citizens or no longer live in the jurisdiction. This measure would allow local election officials to remove ineligible voters and refer them for possible prosecution. Running data comparisons between voter registration addresses and property tax rolls is also recommended for detecting individuals who are registering illegally at commercial addresses or vacant lots.

Require that each state enter into agreements with other states to compare voter registration lists to find people who are registered in more than one state. Because there is no national voter registration list, it is relatively easy for individuals to register in more than one state without detection. Such agreements are critical to detecting and deterring double registration and possible double voting.

Reject any effort to eliminate the electoral college. Any state compact to manipulate or alter the electoral college requires congressional assent. Congress should reject such a compact, as well as any constitutional amendment to scrap the electoral college.

Reject same-day and automatic voter registration, the automatic mailing of absentee-ballot-request forms and absentee ballots to all registered voters, and permanent absentee-ballot lists.

Prohibit private funding of any election officials and election offices and agencies.

Ban ranked-choice voting. Ranked-choice voting is an opaque, confusing system that overly complicates the voting and election process, making it harder for individuals to vote and election officials to tabulate the results.

This content was last updated: January, 2024.

Fact: States have the right and responsibility to ensure the integrity of their elections and to ensure that the votes of eligible voters are not stolen or diluted by fraud.

  • The U.S. Constitution reserves to the states the exclusive authority for most election decisions, including voter qualifications.
  • A 2012 Pew study showed that 24 million voter registrations are inaccurate, out of date, or duplicates with 2.8 million people registered in two or more states and 1.8 million dead people still registered.
  • In 2017, the Public Interest Legal Foundation found that more than 5,500 non-citizens had registered to vote in Virginia. Of these illegal registrants, 1,852 cast nearly 7,500 ballots in a state in which two state-wide attorney general races have been decided by fewer than a thousand votes.
  • In 2020, the Public Interest Legal Foundation found more than 144,000 potential cases of fraud by individuals registering and voting more than once in the 2016 and 2018 elections, as well as individuals determined by state authorities to have votes cast in their name after their deaths, and individuals voting from nonresidential addresses, such as post offices, gas stations, parks, and vacant lots.
  • The evidence of voter fraud from specific cases shows which types of laws and regulations are most effective in preventing and deterring fraud. The Heritage Foundation maintains a growing database with a sampling of fraud cases from across the country.

Fact: Election fraud is a reality that has been documented repeatedly through the prosecution and conviction of criminal cases.

  • A 1984 New York grand jury report detailed extensive voter registration fraud and impersonation fraud at the polls that had been carried out for 14 years in state and federal elections.
  • A Chicago grand jury report described an extensive system of voter registration fraud and vote theft that resulted in 100,000 fraudulent votes being cast in the 1982 election. The U.S. Attorney in Chicago estimated that at least 80,000 illegal aliens were registered to vote in Chicago at the time. Many other states have had similar problems.
  • An extensive North Carolina State Board of Elections investigation of the 2018 Ninth Congressional District election found a “coordinated, unlawful, and substantially resourced absentee ballot scheme” that “corrupted” the election through fraud. The election was overturned.
This content was last updated: January, 2024.
This content was last updated: January, 2024.

Legal Immigration

Policy Proposals
  1. Establish a merit-based immigration system under which America selects the majority of future immigrants based on skills as opposed to the current majority family-based system under which immigrants select future immigrants based on their relations.
  2. End chain migration.
  3. End universal birthright citizenship.
Quick Facts
  1. Many countries around the world such as Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom use merit-based immigration systems successfully.
  2. In Canada, 56 percent of immigrants are admitted based on merit; in Australia, 62 percent of immigrant admissions are merit-based; in the United States, however, fewer than 15 percent of immigrant admissions are based on merit.
  3. In 2017, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that about 4.5 million U.S. citizens under the age of 18 have at least one inadmissible or deportable parent.
Safe, Prosperous, and Free
  • U.S. immigration policy should keep the American people safe, prosperous, and free.
A System for the 21st Century
  • Our current legal immigration system is outdated and fails both immigrants and Americans.
  • Prioritizing “merit”—the ways immigrants can contribute to the country—over distant family connections, like many other countries do, helps ensure immigrants can thrive in our country while maximizing the benefits of immigration for Americans.
Step-by-Step Reforms
  • Congress must consider the full range of necessary reforms to legal immigration, border security, and enforcement, using a step-by-step approach to address each on its own merits rather than a comprehensive approach that often leads to amnesty.
This content was last updated: July, 2022.

The Biden Administration has caused considerable damage to America by opening our southern border, and among those who have been most severely victimized by such poor policies are those who have sought to immigrate to the U.S. lawfully. By seeking to erase the line between legal and illegal immigration, the Administration’s policies force those who have followed the rules to wait longer for their immigration applications to be adjudicated. Additionally, efforts to effect needed reforms in our legal immigration system will be further delayed because those who care about border security will need to restore a secure border before tackling the legal side of the immigration equation. When legal immigration is addressed, reform must be designed for the 21st century to maximize the benefits of legal immigration for America and minimize its costs.

Under the current system, the U.S. provides lawful permanent residence—a green card—to around one million foreigners each year. In fiscal year 2019, for example, the U.S. granted 1.032 million green cards. Green cards are allotted according to decades-old statutes. As a result, the largest category of green card distribution is to family members of U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents. In 2019, the U.S. granted 709,904 green cards—more than two-thirds of the total granted—based on a recipient’s status as a family member or an immediate relative. Of this subtotal, more than 500,000 were given to spouses, children, and parents—“immediate relatives” under U.S. law—who can receive an unlimited number of green cards each year. By contrast, only 139,458 green cards were awarded based on employment. The Diversity Visa Program lottery issued approximately 43,000 visas, and approximately 139,000 green cards were issued to refugees, asylees, and individuals in other categories.

By comparison, countries like Canada and Australia grant the majority of their permanent visas for economic reasons. Other nations also define “immediate relatives” more narrowly to include only spouses and minor children. These policies make sense because these countries are using immigration to maximize national interests. By focusing on merit-based immigration, countries can ensure that immigrants contribute to the economy and will not consume government benefits at the expense of existing taxpayers. The U.S. system, however, minimizes American fiscal considerations and fails to maximize our national interests.

The COVID-19 pandemic has made the need for an economy-based immigration system even clearer. The premise behind such a system is not simply to bring in more employment-based immigrants and fewer family-based immigrants. Rather, the idea is to have an overall immigration system that is attuned to America’s needs. With unemployment at historic highs because of paid unemployment and other factors, the employment priority is to get Americans back to work. Accordingly, the federal government needs to exercise great care in crafting and revising immigration policies so that they benefit both individual Americans and the American economy.

Beyond issues of money and economic growth, immigration is also about assimilating people with certain values and principles. Historically, governments and institutions at all levels have played an active role in the Americanization process. The Founders knew that the new country would attract even more immigrants, so they believed in assimilating and educating them, as well as the native-born, to inculcate the nation’s philosophy into a new population, giving American democracy its “demos.” Over the past few decades, however, America has drifted away from assimilating immigrants: Elites in government, the culture, and academia have led a push toward multiculturalism, which emphasizes group differences. Instead of E pluribus unum—out of many, one—assimilation is seen as a humiliating demand that the purportedly marginalized conform to the identities of their supposed oppressors. This view must not be allowed to control U.S. policies.

This content was last updated: July, 2022.

Establish a merit-based immigration system. Congress should modify the family preference system and move to a new merit-based system of visas. A shift from family-based immigration to merit-based immigration would prioritize economically and fiscally beneficial immigration and better serve our national interest. Such a system should be designed in a way that recognizes that the market is the best and most objective way to identify those who will benefit the economy. This starts with requiring immigrants to have an offer of employment (an objective market signal) or financial means of self-support before entering the country. The government would not be picking winners and losers among industries, job categories, or immigrants.

If there are more requests than available green cards, Congress could consider a limited points system or an auction that again would emphasize the market. For example, the compensation offered to an immigrant by a company would have significant priority, as compensation provides objective evidence of market demand. Other heavily weighted factors could include financial resources and assets, educational achievement, professional credentials, job experience, and fluency in English. These factors, while not perfect or completely objective measures, would focus on reasonable measures of economic and fiscal impact, avoiding both government micromanagement and the need to burden American taxpayers with higher levels of government welfare assistance.

One way to ensure that merit-based green card candidates are indeed working or otherwise providing significant benefit to the U.S. would be to make their legal permanent residence conditional for the first several years. To transition from a conditional lawful permanent resident (LPR) status to full LPR status, immigrants should be required to maintain employment for most of the conditional period, although they would be allowed to switch jobs. The total time required to hold a green card before becoming a citizen—five years—would remain unchanged, but a requirement that the holder not be a public charge before becoming a U.S. citizen could be added.

Focus on the nuclear family and end chain migration. Congress should allow the number of immediate relatives who are granted residency to remain uncapped while restricting the definition of immediate relatives to spouses and minor children. Congress should cut all or almost all of the current family preferences for extended family, thereby ending chain migration. U.S. citizens could continue to sponsor their parents, but only for a renewable temporary visa that would not make them eligible for welfare benefits and would require the citizens to provide proof of health insurance and financial support of their parents. It is also worth noting that extended family members may have other legal avenues for immigrating to the U.S.

End the Diversity Immigrant Visa (Lottery) Program. Congress should eliminate the Diversity Immigrant Visa Program, which provides 50,000 immigrant visas annually to random individuals from countries with low rates of immigration to the United States. The United States should evaluate potential citizens individually. Rather than leave to chance the question of who gets an immigrant visa, Congress should decide based on the qualifications of potential citizens, taking into consideration experience, professional credentials, and education. The Diversity lottery treats people not as individuals, but as the means to artificially create representation from various countries. Congress should end this system because it does not serve the national interest and discriminates based on national origin.

End universal birthright citizenship. The granting of birthright citizenship to all children born in the United States regardless of the parents’ immigration status is both the result of a misinterpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment and inconsistent with the intent of the amendment’s framers. The legislative history of the amendment makes clear that its purpose was to bestow citizenship only on those who owed their permanent, undivided allegiance to the United States and were subject to the fullest extent of its jurisdiction. In particular, this meant the newly freed slaves, who were lawful and permanent U.S. residents and not subject to any foreign power. Congress should clarify the federal definition of “citizenship” in a manner that conveys its consistency with the original understanding of the Fourteenth Amendment by explicitly stating that only the U.S.-born children of individuals subject to the complete jurisdiction of the United States are citizens by virtue of birth on U.S. soil. This would include the children of lawful permanent resident aliens referred to in United States v. Wong Kim Ark but would exclude the U.S.-born children of illegal or temporarily present aliens.

Promote patriotic assimilation. Policymakers should overhaul policies that do not blend well with immigration. Concepts such as victimhood, oppressor-oppressed, compensatory justice, racial preferences, and coercive diversity are harmful and should not govern policy. Congress must put an end to measures that coerce immigrants and their American children and grandchildren into pan-ethnic identity traps. We must stop categorizing people as victims with protected status and start mandating that they participate in all aspects of society. Immigrants come to the United States to be American, not to join synthetic nations within the nation.

The executive branch should stop dividing society into groups. Specifically, it should rescind the 1977 Office of Management and Budget (OMB) directive and its 1997 revision that divides the population into “Hispanics,” “Asians,” and other such categories. In addition, the courts should finally declare racial preferences in admissions and government contracts to be unconstitutional.

Candidates for citizenship should demonstrate a strong understanding of America’s language, history, and civic life. The patriotic rituals surrounding the naturalization ceremony should be augmented to reinforce the event’s transformational character. Once immigrants go through naturalization, they are expected to have no other national loyalty, whether to the lands of their birth or to a “nation within a nation.” The government should return to the guiding principle that once an immigrant is naturalized, he or she should be encouraged, in George Washington’s words, to “get assimilated to our customs.”

Public schools should reinforce these values and should not use “culturally responsive” teaching methods (used to teach even mathematics) that divide children into different ethnic boxes. Rigorous studies indicate statistically significant positive effects of school choice or private schooling on the teaching of civic values while the civics education provided by public schools is falling short. Government schools must do a better job of instilling civic values, and policymakers at the state level should provide more charter schools and private school choice options for families.

This content was last updated: July, 2022.

Fact: Many countries around the world successfully use a merit-based immigration system to advance their national interests.

  • Countries that use a merit-based system include Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom, among others.
  • Fifty-six percent of those who immigrate to Canada are admitted based on merit, and 62 percent of those who immigrate to Australia are admitted based on merit, compared with fewer than 15 percent in the U.S.

Fact: Unlimited birthright citizenship is not required by the Constitution and is harmful to an effective immigration system.

  • The current implementation of the Fourteenth Amendment grants citizenship to nearly all children born in the United States, but this contradicts both the history and the original meaning of the amendment.
  • Few advanced global economies use unlimited birthright citizenship, as it attracts illegal immigration and birth tourism. For example, no country in Europe provides unrestricted birthright citizenship.

Fact: Assimilation and Americanization are essential correlates of immigration.

  • George Washington stated that immigration succeeds when “by an intermixture with our people, they, or their descendants, get assimilated to our customs, manners and laws: in a word, soon become one people.”
  • Abraham Lincoln pointed out that the Founding ideas present in the Declaration of Independence can be grasped by immigrants. He said that they act as “the electric cord in that Declaration that links the hearts of Patriotic and liberty-loving men together.”
  • In a 1919 letter to the American Defense Society, Theodore Roosevelt emphasized the importance of assimilation into American society, saying that “we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else.”
This content was last updated: July, 2022.
This content was last updated: July, 2022.

The Role of the Courts

Policy Proposals
  1. Policymakers should pledge to promote the appointment of constitutionalist judges.
  2. Senators should prioritize determining whether judicial nominees will be committed to the judiciary’s role as designed.
  3. Senators should not abuse their role of “Advice and Consent.”
Quick Facts
  1. Courts with judges who serve unlimited terms have a total of 860 seats around the country.
  2. The lower courts have the last word on most federal cases because the Supreme Court of the United States decides only about 80 cases per year.
  3. Judicial vacancies continue to compromise the judiciary’s ability to serve its proper purpose.
Constitutional
  • Judges are required to swear an oath to uphold the Constitution, and the Senate should ensure that nominees have a record of interpreting the law as written.
Unbiased
  • A judge’s responsibility is to interpret the written law, not to create laws that align with his or her personal policy preferences.
  • Judges should not have the power to redefine laws and traditions that Americans have known for more than two hundred years.
Unpoliticized
  • Judicial nominees at all levels should not be considered political pawns to be captured by one party or another. They are servants of the American people with a duty to uphold the Constitution.
This content was last updated: July, 2022.

America’s Founders believed that the purpose of government is to secure such inalienable rights as life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and they designed a system of government to further that purpose. This system limits government in several ways, such as separating the federal government into three branches, with checks and balances between them, and further dividing power between the federal and state levels of government.

The design of this system of government helps to define the role of each of its components, and those roles must be maintained for the system to achieve its purpose. To this end, not only is power separated into the three branches and divided between the federal and state levels, but the Constitution gives separate and distinct powers to each branch. Alexander Hamilton wrote that the exercise of these powers would involve will (the legislative branch); force (the executive); and judgment (the judiciary). Since the judicial branch is limited to using judgment in interpreting and applying the law to decide individual cases, Hamilton explained, it would be the “weakest” and “least dangerous” branch. This separation of powers, in both theory and fact, is so important, he wrote, that liberty itself depends on it.

As the Supreme Court explained in 1795, the Constitution contains “the permanent will of the people, and is the supreme law of the land; it is paramount to the power of the Legislature.” Some cases therefore require that the Court evaluate whether laws enacted by the legislative branch are consistent with the Constitution—a process often referred to as “judicial review.”

While the Marbury v. Madison (1803) decision established the practice of judicial review, it did not relieve the legislative and executive branches of their independent responsibility to evaluate the constitutionality of their own actions. For example, when Congress decides which laws to enact, it is interpreting the Constitution. When Members of Congress reject legislation that would violate the Constitution, they are acting in accordance with their oath.

Similarly, the President carries out this oath by determining which bills to sign into law. The President may sign or veto legislation for political or policy reasons, but faithfully discharging his oath may also require vetoing legislation he believes would violate the Constitution. He (or she) may also choose not to enforce a law signed by one of his predecessors if he concludes that it is unconstitutional. The responsibility of each branch to ensure that its actions are consistent with the Constitution is always a present duty.

America’s Founders designed a system of government in which the judiciary must exercise its judicial power, especially judicial review, in a particular way and not as the sole actor. With the Supreme Court taking the lead, however, the judicial branch has recently been pushing past those limits and has expanded its power beyond the design intended for it. In Cooper v. Aaron (1958), for example, the Court asserted that “the federal judiciary is supreme in the exposition of the law of the Constitution.” This trend has had several effects that undermine the liberty our system of government was designed to provide. For one thing, it has invited the other branches to ignore their independent duty to abide by the Constitution and to act as though they are free to do what they choose, in whatever manner, unless or until stopped by the courts.

In addition to proclaiming its superiority to the other branches in interpreting the Constitution, the judiciary has radically changed how it conducts that interpretation. Founder James Wilson, a signer of both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and one of the original six Supreme Court justices, explained that in a republic, “the people are masters of the government.” As a result, President George Washington said in his 1796 Farewell Address that the “basis of our political systems is the right of the people to make and to alter their constitutions of government.” Moreover, returning to Marbury, the Supreme Court emphasized that the Constitution is written so that the limits it imposes on government “may not be mistaken nor forgotten.”

If these principles are true, then they should direct how judges interpret and apply the law: A judge should use the Constitution as written and originally understood to conduct judicial review, not a constitution of the judge’s own making with the meaning a judge wants it to have. Judges are limited, as the Supreme Court said in Marbury v. Madison, to “say[ing] what the law is,” and the Constitution is not, as Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes would say a century later, “whatever the judges say it is.”

These principles apply as much to the judicial branch as they do to the other two branches. Judges therefore may not treat the Constitution in a way that takes control of the Constitution away from the people. For this to be a “government of laws and not of men,” as John Adams put it, the law, not judges themselves, must decide the cases and controversies that come before the courts.

In determining whether a contested law is consistent with the Constitution, judges act within their proper judicial power when they give effect to the original public meaning of the words and phrases of laws and the Constitution. A law’s compliance with the Constitution is no guarantee of its soundness or wisdom. In fact, judges acting in accordance with their constitutional duties sometimes will uphold laws that may be bad policy while striking down laws that may be good policy. Judicial review requires the judge to determine not whether a law leads to good or bad results or accords with his or her personal views or priorities, but whether that law violates the Constitution.

Under the opposite approach, often called “judicial activism,” judges use whatever process or method is necessary to achieve their desired result. This approach might be described as the political ends justifying the judicial means. A judge who employs judicial activism might ignore the law’s text or its original public meaning, relying on external sources such as foreign law, and might even fail to apply the law impartially. This is also sometimes called “living constitutionalism,” a theory in which the meaning of the Constitution itself evolves and changes not through the amendment process set out in the Constitution itself, but as a result of judicial decisions driven by the priorities and preferences of judges.

The following examples of Supreme Court activism, which involved high-profile issues, have garnered significant media attention:

  • Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin II (2016), which, rather than requiring the university to meet the strict standards of the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection, allowed it to discriminate against prospective white and Asian American students.
  • Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt (2016), in which the Court, going beyond constitutional issues to make policy decisions and acting as “the country’s ex officio medical board” as Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in his dissenting opinion, overturned reforms of substandard abortion clinics enacted by the Texas legislature.
  • King v. Burwell (2015), in which the Court, in upholding the IRS’s extension of tax credits to the federal health care exchange established pursuant to the Affordable Care Act, contorted the plain text of the statute to uphold President Barack Obama’s signature legislative achievement for a second time.
  • Obergefell v. Hodges (2015), which recognized a constitutional right to same-sex marriage with a decision that even supporters of the ruling have described as unintelligible and poorly reasoned.
  • Bostock v. Clayton County (2020), which construed “sex” in Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act to include sexual orientation and gender identity even though conceding that it meant only “biological distinctions between male and female” when Congress enacted it.

By contrast, a judiciary exercising its power as designed would decide each case in light of what the Constitution and the statutes say and what they originally meant, applying them impartially to the facts. Such judges respect the American people’s right to control the Constitution, to elect representatives who enact statutes, and to remain masters of the government.

This content was last updated: July, 2022.

Policymakers should pledge to promote the appointment of constitutionalist judges. Specifically, this means pledging to promote the appointment of judges who will follow the design for the judiciary by interpreting the law as written and applying it impartially to decide cases. It also means that the President should nominate—and Senators should confirm—only faithful constitutionalists.

Senators should prioritize determining whether judicial nominees are committed to the judiciary’s designed role in our system of government. In exercising “Advice and Consent,” which is a check on the presidential power to appoint new judges, Senators must determine whether nominees are qualified for judicial service. These qualifications include not only appropriate legal experience, but also the proper judicial philosophy. Senators should seek to determine a nominee’s understanding of the power and proper role of the courts, especially the process or method a nominee will follow to interpret and apply the law in deciding cases. Questions such as the following should inform the confirmation process:

  1. Are judges limited to deciding individual cases involving specific parties and particular facts, or may they address issues and solve broad problems?
  2. Should judges interpret the Constitution according to the original public meaning of its text, or may they find new meaning in other sources including foreign law?
  3. May judges take into account the political interests that might be served by their decisions?

Senators should not abuse their role of “Advice and Consent.” The Senate advises as to whether the President should appoint someone he has nominated by giving or withholding consent. This does not mean, however, that the Senate has an independent, coequal power of appointment. The Senate should not use procedural tactics that effectively highjack the President’s power to appoint judges.

This content was last updated: July, 2022.

Fact: Courts with judges who serve unlimited terms have a total of 860 seats around the country.

  • The Constitution gives Congress two categories of authority to create federal courts. Judges on courts established under Article I serve for specific terms. Those on courts established under Article III do not have specific terms, serving “during good Behaviour.”
  • Article III judges are nominated by the President and must be approved by the Senate.
  • Today, the U.S. District Court has 663 seats, the U.S. Court of Appeals has 179, the U.S. Supreme Court has nine, and the U.S. Court of International Trade has nine, for a total of 860 seats on Article III courts.

Fact: On average, judicial appointments do not keep pace with new judicial vacancies.

  • Judges on Article III courts serve for an average of 22 years, long past the presidency during which they were appointed.
  • During the past four decades, an average of 48 vacancies have occurred each year on Article III courts, more than 80 percent of them due to judges leaving their positions and the remainder due to the appointment of judges to different positions.
  • Since 1981, Presidents have appointed an average of 46 judges to Article III courts per year.

Fact: The judiciary can struggle to serve its purpose when the number of vacancies increases and individual positions remain unfilled for a long time.

  • The lower courts have the last word on most federal cases because the Supreme Court decides only about 75 cases per year, half as many as it decided per year two decades ago.
  • Vacancies on Article III federal courts remained in triple digits for 32 straight months, from January 2017 through August 2019, the longest period in three decades.
  • During the past two decades, an average of 45 percent of vacancies have been designated “emergencies” by the Administrative Office of the Courts because of their length and negative impact on caseloads.
This content was last updated: July, 2022.
This content was last updated: July, 2022.

National Defense

Border Security and Illegal Immigration

Policy Proposals
  1. Implement effective border security.
  2. Give immigration law judges summary judgment and contempt authority.
  3. Do not grant amnesty, which undermines rule of law and encourages more unlawful migration.
Quick Facts
  1. The number of illegal border crossers apprehended or individuals deemed inadmissible at ports of entry more than doubled from 2018 to 2019.
  2. As of October 24, 2018, 786,303 immigration cases were pending in immigration courts, up from 186,090 in 2008.
  3. It is estimated that almost half of the illegal immigrants in the U.S. came here legally and then overstayed their visas.
Safe, Prosperous, and Free
  • U.S. immigration policy should keep the American people safe, prosperous, and free.
Increase Border Security and Enforcement
  • We have a responsibility to secure the border and enforce our existing laws.
Amnesty
  • The problem with amnesty is clear: It only encourages more unlawful immigration by unfairly favoring those who came to this country illegally over those who follow our laws.
  • Amnesty would overwhelm our already unaffordable and failing entitlement programs.
Step-by-Step Reforms
  • Congress must consider the full range of necessary reforms to legal immigration, border security, and enforcement, using a step-by-step approach to address each reform on its own merits.
This content was last updated: August, 2020.

The issue of illegal immigration has been at the forefront of significant political and policy battles for the past decade or more. To deal with this problem, three aspects of illegal immigration must be understood: illegal immigration at the border and through visa overstays, and inadequate interior enforcement to catch and remove those in the U.S. illegally.

Over the previous two decades, the U.S. experienced a declining number of illegal immigrants at the U.S. southern border. The number of border patrol agents had significantly increased, border barriers were increased, and fewer immigrants were able to sneak across the southern border. That trend changed, beginning in 2014, when smugglers and immigrants began to exploit major loopholes in U.S. immigration law, which has, at times, overwhelmed border enforcement. In recent years, anyone showing up at the border, either crossing illegally or attempting to come through a port of entry, could bring a child, and the resulting “family units” were almost immediately released into the interior of the U.S., per the Flores ruling loophole. Successful exploitation of the catch and release loophole encouraged tens of thousands more illegal immigrants to come to the U.S., resulting in an historic surge at our southern border. Most claimed asylum, and, although many can say the right words to pass the initial “credible fear” screening, only around 12 percent will be granted asylum in the end.

While proper border infrastructure, barriers, and resources are important to catch illegal immigrants, the Flores loophole, weaknesses of the well-intentioned Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, and an easily gameable asylum system have overwhelmed the ability of U.S. Customs and Border Protection to operate and control the southern border.

A second aspect of illegal immigration is the long-standing issue of visa overstays. Before this recent surge at the border, most illegal immigrants were visa overstays, i.e., they legally entered the U.S. on a visa or other form of entry and then failed to leave when their visa or authorization expired. To counter this kind of illegal immigration, interior enforcement tools are needed.

Finally, approximately 11 million illegal immigrants currently reside in the U.S. The left argues in favor of amnesty for these immigrants who have broken the law, but amnesty would be unfair to Americans and legal immigrants, would encourage more illegal immigration by rewarding it, and would fail to solve the root causes of illegal immigration. While removing all illegal immigrants is infeasible, better immigration enforcement, both at U.S. borders and in the interior, would encourage existing illegal immigrants to return to their home countries and deter additional illegal immigration.

This content was last updated: August, 2020.

Implement effective border security. Congress must appropriate funding for cost-effective border security measures paired with robust enforcement. The U.S. must build a system that welds all of the nation’s border assets into a single, coherent security enterprise that deploys the right asset to the right place at the right time. This would require key investments in border infrastructure, organization, technology, and resources. These initiatives include such controversial but essential tools as additional border “wall,” expanded detention space, and (as required) the temporary and efficacious use of support from the Department of Defense.

Provide more funding for Coast Guard acquisitions. This would ensure that the Coast Guard can acquire the right mix of vessels, including Fast Response Cutters and Offshore Patrol Cutters, as well as appropriate unmanned aerial systems.

Align U.S. assistance funding levels to Mexico with U.S. national security interests. A safer and more prosperous Mexico would reduce the security threats to the U.S., lessen the impact of some of the drivers behind illegal immigration, and allow both countries to focus on productive matters in their bilateral relationship. Yet U.S. assistance to Mexico in the form of the Merida Initiative has decreased from an all-time high of $639.2 million in fiscal year (FY) 2010 to $130.9 million in FY 2017.

Assess the efficacy of the Central American development package, the U.S. Strategy for Engagement in Central America. Following the 2014 unaccompanied-minor crisis at the U.S. southern border, the U.S., El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras launched this program to address the factors driving illegal migration in the region. Guatemala’s northern neighbor Mexico collaborates with the U.S. in an effort to mitigate these shared challenges. The volume and frequency of illegal immigration toward the U.S. indicate a shortcoming. Congress should request impact reports from implementing agencies that gauge whether the programs are meeting their intended objectives.

Adjust the asylum claim process. Congress can improve the asylum system in many ways. Rather than applying for asylum at U.S. borders, asylum seekers travelling to the U.S. southern border should be required to have their asylum claims heard by a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) asylum officer at a U.S. consulate in Mexico or in another country in Latin America. Interviewers should also ask the asylum seeker why he or she did not assert asylum in another country. Immigration officials should consider failure to explain the refusal to pursue asylum in another country in making their decision. Congress could also consider new standards that make it harder for illegal border crossers to claim asylum, especially at U.S. borders. The Administration should also continue to pursue safe third country agreements and strengthen other agreements with countries in Latin America to promote better control of the asylum process.

Close the loopholes. Congress should reject the Ninth Circuit’s recent interpretation of the Flores settlement. Flores has been interpreted to require the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to release from its custody all children, even if they are with a parent or parents, within 20 days. Since the asylum process takes longer than 20 days, the government is left with the choice either to detain the parent and release the child, or to release both the parent and the child. Congress should legislate to allow accompanied children to remain with their parents while they are awaiting asylum adjudication or prosecution of misdemeanor violations of immigration law.

Strengthen immigration enforcement. U.S. laws must be enforced if additional illegal immigration is to be deterred. The U.S. should judiciously increase the number of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents; expand the 287(g) program that trains and deputizes state and local law enforcement officers to assist ICE in enforcing U.S. immigration laws; curb sanctuary cities; expedite removals of illegal immigrants caught at U.S. borders; streamline the removal process; increase resources to immigration courts; and ensure that aliens show up at court hearings by maximizing the use of detention facilities and alternatives to detention.

Give immigration law judges summary judgment and contempt authority. As of October 24, 2018, 786,303 immigration cases were pending in immigration courts, up from 186,090 in 2008. During that same 10-year period, the average wait time for the disposition of a case in immigration court went from 438 days in 2008 to 718 days in 2018. This is unacceptable and must change. One of the main reasons for the excessive backlog is the fact that immigration judges do not have the summary judgment authority that is common to federal and state court judges. Summary judgment authority allows judges to refuse to schedule cases that lack legal merit, but because immigration judges do not have that authority, meritless cases clog the dockets. Congress should amend existing statutes to give immigration judges this authority.

Do not grant amnesty. Amnesty undermines the rule of law and encourages more unlawful migration. Grants of amnesty, in whatever form, to aliens who knowingly enter or remain in the U.S. discourage respect for the law, treat lawbreaking aliens better than law-abiding aliens, and encourage future unlawful immigration into the United States. If America were to suddenly award legal status to aliens unlawfully in the United States, it would be treating them better than aliens abroad who follow America’s immigration procedures and patiently await a visa authorizing them to come to the United States. Such action—as past amnesties have proved—would also spur more aliens to enter or remain unlawfully in the United States in the confident expectation that Congress will continue to enact future amnesties that provide a shortcut to legal status. The government should pursue a measured set of approaches to a wide variety of immigration issues, but above all, it should exclude amnesty for aliens unlawfully present in the United States.

This content was last updated: August, 2020.

Fact: There is a crisis at the border.

  • The number of illegal border crossers apprehended or individuals deemed inadmissible at ports of entry more than doubled from 2018 to 2019. In April 2018, 51,168 were apprehended or deemed inadmissible; in April 2019, 109,144 were apprehended or deemed inadmissible.
  • This surge is primarily due to the increase in family units and unaccompanied minor children. In April 2018, 13,930 family units and unaccompanied children were apprehended, while 67,593 were apprehended in April 2019.
  • Managing the staggering flow of family units and children is consuming so much of DHS’s resources that our other security missions at the border are suffering. The U.S. Customs and Border Protection estimates that 40 percent of its agents on the southwest border have been diverted to deal with the humanitarian needs of children and families.

Fact: DHS enforcement resources have grown since 9/11 but have been undermined by bad policy.

  • The U.S. Border Patrol has doubled its workforce since 9/11, with 19,555 agents in FY 2018.
  • The number of immigration judges has nearly doubled from 219 immigration judges in 2000 to almost 400 in 2018.
  • Despite these and other increases in resources, illegal immigration has spiked in recent years, and waiting times in immigration courts have continued to rise from 430 days in 2009 to 736 days in 2019.
  • Weak laws and court settlements have created a system of catch and release for many illegal immigrants—especially for family units, unaccompanied alien children, and those claiming asylum—thus only encouraging more illegal immigration.

Fact: Interior enforcement is critical to address all aspects of illegal immigration.

  • It is estimated that between 10 million and 12 million illegal immigrants currently reside in the U.S.
  • While difficult to tabulate accurately, it is estimated that almost half of the illegal immigrant population in the U.S. came here legally and then overstayed their visas.
  • In 2017, visa overstays surpassed illegal border crossings, with 62 percent of new illegal immigrants overstaying a visa and 38 percent illegally crossing the border.
This content was last updated: August, 2020.
This content was last updated: August, 2020.

Cybersecurity

Policy Proposals
  1. Articulate a detailed, bold strategy for deterring and retaliating against cyber aggressors.
  2. Continue to invest in U.S. Cyber Command (USCYBERCOM), expand collaboration on cybercrime, and prepare to operate and thrive in zero-trust networks.
  3. Reexamine Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), FBI, and USCYBERCOM authorities to ensure that they have all they need to approach our cyber challenges aggressively.
  4. Clearly communicate standards that must be met for inclusion in U.S. markets and block foreign technology that creates vulnerabilities in U.S. infrastructure.
Quick Facts
  1. Ransomware attacks are going to cost the world approximately $20 billion in 2021—57 times more than the $325 million they cost in 2015.
  2. The world will have 3.5 million unfilled cybersecurity jobs by the end of 2021.
  3. Health care, information technology, and manufacturing are the top three sectors targeted by hackers.
Threats the U.S. Faces
  • The signs are clear: Cyber warfare is the latest battleground for nations like Russia, China, and, increasingly, non-state actors such as cyber-criminal syndicates.
  • The U.S. must prepare for significant cybersecurity threats that jeopardize America’s critical infrastructure, business, and online freedom.
Increase Cyber Efforts
  • U.S. cybersecurity will ultimately be led by the private sector, which faces the majority of cyber-attacks, and will create solutions.
  • The government should support private sector efforts, while leading on issues of foreign policy.
  • Cyberspace’s dynamic nature must be acknowledged and addressed by policies that are equally dynamic.
This content was last updated: July, 2022.

Nation-state hackers are the most serious cybersecurity challenge the U.S. faces, and Russia and China present the most sophisticated of these cyber threats. In an era of renewed great-power competition, cyber is a new battlefield on which some nation-states are seeking to exploit other nation-states’ vulnerabilities. The U.S. has indicted Russians for their efforts to hack such U.S. political entities as the Democratic National Committee. Russian hackers are also believed to be behind multiple cyberattacks that took down portions of Ukraine’s electric grid in 2015. Russian intelligence was behind the SolarWinds espionage campaign against U.S. computer networks, compromising the data of the U.S. Departments of Commerce, Treasury, and Homeland Security as well as several Fortune 500 companies in one of the largest cyberattacks ever reported.

China has used the theft of commercial intellectual property across many sectors of the economy to jump-start its own economic efforts. For example, Chinese hackers have targeted sensitive cancer research at multiple institutes in the U.S. in addition to other attacks aimed at U.S. intellectual property. Chinese actors have also been identified as being responsible for the Hafnium Microsoft Exchange cyberattacks in 2021. According to FBI Director Christopher Wray, “The greatest long-term threat to our nation’s information and intellectual property, and to our economic vitality, is the counterintelligence and economic espionage threat from China.”

Iran and North Korea are less sophisticated than Russia and China, but they have strong cyber warfare assets that allow them to punch above their geopolitical weight class. The 2012 so-called Shamoon virus unleashed on the Saudi Aramco oil production company, for instance, was a brute-force attack by Iran that destroyed 30,000 computers. In 2019, Iranian hackers continued to target hundreds of universities around the world, including some in the U.S., in an operation named Cobalt Dickens that was designed to steal intellectual property. In October 2021, a group with ties to Iran attempted to hack more than 250 Office 365 accounts. All the targeted accounts were U.S. and Israeli defense technology companies, had a focus on Persian Gulf ports of entry, or were maritime transportation companies with a presence in the Middle East.

North Korea has conducted high-profile cyberattacks against the U.S., the most notable being the attack launched against Sony Entertainment in 2014, allegedly over a movie depicting North Korea in a negative light. The hackers took terabytes of private data and released confidential information, including five undistributed Sony movies, to the public. In 2019, North Korean hackers were suspected of attempting to steal credential information of individuals working on North Korean issues at the United Nations and non-governmental organizations. The regime’s cyber guerrilla warfare has stolen classified military secrets, engaged in cyberterrorism, absconded with billions of dollars in money and cybercurrency, held computer systems hostage, and inflicted extensive damage on computer networks.

In addition to these nation-states, cyber criminals, hacktivists, and terrorists all seek to use cyberspace for their own ends. To address these growing threats, the U.S. should leverage the forces of the market and motivate the private sector to make the sort of continual and dynamic investment that is needed to secure the country’s diverse cyber networks.

This content was last updated: July, 2022.

Create a new, bolder strategy for U.S. global efforts in cyberspace. From deterring and retaliating against cyber aggressors to working with allies to reinforce our defenses against cybercrime, the U.S. should craft a new, detailed strategy that directs whole-of-government efforts to protect U.S. interests in cyberspace. This strategy must also take account of the central role the private sector plays and make use of its expertise and skills.

Develop a robust deterrence policy that tailors a proportionate U.S. response to bad actors. Deterrence is in the mind of the adversary, who chooses to alter his behavior if he believes the costs are too high or the benefits are too small. To achieve deterrence in cyberspace, the U.S. must establish a clear pattern of policy and action that leads an actor to rethink his plans. The U.S. has a variety of tools that it can use to retaliate against any sort of cyber aggression: diplomatic naming and shaming, cutting off cooperation, visa restrictions, commercial and financial limitations, sanctions, legal action, trade enforcement tools, action on other military or foreign policy matters, support to dissidents in malicious cyber states, and others that are not considered here. These tools should be used in a way that is tailored to fit the adversary and proportionate to the scale and effects of his aggressive action.

Increase cooperation with allies and partners. Many cyberattacks and incidents cannot be punished, and we may need stronger defenses and cooperation to defeat or mitigate them. The U.S. should therefore pursue deeper technical, legal, and policy cooperation with its allies and partners.

Prepare, along with allies, to fight in the cyber domain. The U.S. and its allies need to develop the tools and capabilities needed to fight in the cyber domain. NATO has taken some steps in this direction, but far more needs to be done. Any future conflict will require offensive and defensive cyber capabilities that are well integrated into U.S. and allied warfighting strategies. Creating such capabilities requires the political will to engage in this new domain as well as the resources to develop the means of engagement.

Require mandatory notification of cyber breaches. Congress can clarify the private sector’s responsibilities in the field of cybersecurity by enacting a single requirement to disclose breaches of cybersecurity to the federal government. Any legislation should provide incentives for companies to report hacks when there is still time for the government to help. A federal requirement for disclosure of cybersecurity incidents would be a first step in the improvement of cybersecurity defense.

Share threat information with industry. U.S. government concerns about Chinese technologies and related services cannot be expressed exclusively in classified or other constrained environments. If the U.S. government wants industry to operate in ways that do not provoke or worsen national security concerns, the government must share its telecommunications security concerns in a detailed and easily disseminated manner.

Determine disqualifying factors. The U.S. government should communicate clearly to industry and to America’s foreign partners and allies—as well as to the Chinese—exactly which legal frameworks, activities, and business practices will result in exclusion from U.S. 5G infrastructure, services, and other emerging technology integrations. The U.S. also should encourage other nations to adopt these standards as a way to maintain pressure on countries and companies that are working against U.S. and allied interests.

Block vulnerabilities. The U.S. should block any foreign technology from U.S. markets that creates vulnerabilities in critical infrastructure or gives hostile foreign actors “backdoors” to U.S. data. This would put significant pressure on China and others to improve poor security practices. It also would encourage domestic security research in the U.S. that would incrementally improve the safety of the hardware used by the United States as well as the software supply chains into the U.S. The U.S. should encourage the remaining four Five Eyes countries—Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom—to implement similar exclusionary measures.

Block untrusted companies. The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States should block foreign companies from U.S. investments if they have a history of producing hardware or software with known vulnerabilities. This would be especially helpful in mitigating the challenge of Chinese investment in and purchase of American start-ups that might embrace poor security practices in return for rapid access to capital.

Prepare for zero-trust networks. Huawei controls approximately 30 percent of the global mobile communications market and could win as much as 50 percent of the global 5G market. Even if the U.S. manages to secure its own wireless networks from foreign spying and interference, the vast majority of networks around the world will be developed and managed by the Chinese. The U.S. defense and intelligence communities must begin to mitigate this threat and develop new networking strategies that will allow the U.S. to operate and thrive in a zero-trust environment on networks that are owned and managed by China or other hostile actors. While it is too soon to cede 5G to challengers, beginning to prepare for worst-case scenarios is only prudent.

Continue to invest in U.S. Cyber Command. Both to strengthen the ability of the U.S. to engage in cyber warfare and to protect Defense Department and critical infrastructure networks, USCYBERCOM should continue to grow and mature into a premier cyberwarfare organization to enhance U.S. offensive and defensive cyber capabilities. These capabilities are important for increasing our ability to deter adversaries.

Give USCYBERCOM additional statutory authority. Congress should clarify that U.S. Cyber Command’s authority under the fiscal year (FY) 2019 National Defense Authorization Act goes beyond election interference and extend USCYBERCOM’s statutory authorization to include a wide range of cyber operations that can deter or degrade the ability of adversaries to attack critical U.S. infrastructure. Although the President has constitutional authority to carry out offensive cyber operations, additional statutory authority would send a clear signal to allies and adversaries alike that there is political support for offensive cyber operations.

Continue to delegate authority to operating agencies. Instead of restoring the Obama Administration’s paralysis by analysis, President Biden and his National Security Council should retain the Trump Administration’s approach and drive operating agencies to establish deterrence below the threshold of armed conflict. Siloed infighting among competing agencies and discussions of intelligence-collection gains and loss analysis should not be allowed to dominate consideration of proper and necessary responses. Policymakers should be clear-eyed with respect to the time, resources, and potential loss of technical capability that are needed to plan and execute offensive cyber operations as well as the level of their impact and the time it may take for an adversary to reconstitute. This framework should rely on metrics that enable the proper evaluation of risk and reward as well as the effect of actions and their long-term impacts.

Identify additional domestic law enforcement authorities and capabilities. The Department of Justice, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation, should review additional capabilities or authorities that may be needed to target and disrupt known ransomware and, when possible, recover illicit gains from criminals’ financial networks.

Consider ending the “dual-hat” relationship between the National Security Agency and USCYBERCOM. Currently, the NSA director is a four-star military officer who also serves as commander of USCYBERCOM. Initially, USCYBERCOM relied on the NSA for its capabilities, but President Trump elevated USCYBERCOM to an independent unified command in 2018, and the committee-passed Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2022 sets a road map for termination of the dual-hat arrangement. Congress should continue its oversight efforts while working with the Administration, NSA, and USCYBERCOM to evaluate whether this relationship should be ended. The dual-hat role is an enormous job for any one person, and separating the two organizations would help to prevent intelligence gain-loss considerations from dominating discussions of offensive cyber operations (although it might also lead to overlapping capabilities). In addition, if the dual-hat arrangement were ended, the director of the NSA—like the directors of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and the National Reconnaissance Office—could be a civilian official.

Deepen collaboration on cybercrime among like-minded nations. The U.S. should look to create an acceptance for active cyber defenses that are not harmful and allow better attribution of and intelligence on cyber threats. Laws and tools from the organized crime arena, such as the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), should be expanded to cover transnational criminal organizations involved in cybercrime.

Expand cybercrime cooperation beyond current signatories of the Budapest Convention. The U.S. should create a cyber forum of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) that combats money laundering and the financing of terrorism. While they need not abide by all terms of the Budapest Convention, non-signatory countries should still be encouraged to take reasonable actions against cybercrime. Nations that do not assist in international cybercrime investigations or that do little to stop cybercrime within their territories should be considered non-cooperative and face repercussions from members of the new cyber task force.

Encourage the private development of cybersecurity supply chain ratings and accreditation. Such a framework would contain different tiers or ratings for different levels of accreditation, ranging from minimal overview of a company’s supply chain to in-depth analysis of specific products’ supply chains. Consumers would find the additional information provided by these various levels of accreditation helpful when making risk-based decisions, and producers would find such accreditation valuable for sales, thus connecting security and a profit incentive. Instead of mandating cybersecurity solutions, the U.S. government should collaborate with the private sector. One way to encourage the adoption of this system would be to require government agencies that deal with large amounts of sensitive data or that have security-related duties to purchase technology only from organizations that are accredited by this ratings system.

Improve sensitive government and military cyber supply chain procedures. U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) reports and news accounts indicate that the government needs to improve its supply chain procedures for technology products. Such improvements should include the requirement that no technology for use in U.S. national security systems may be purchased from Chinese companies. Additionally, government agencies should be required to consider supply chain ratings when adding technology goods to their acquisition processes.

Enhance cyber resilience. Relevant agencies should consider using hardware that monitors itself for hardware attacks and other redundancies in critical government systems. Though such hardware is likely to be more expensive, this premium would help the U.S. to protect its most important systems. Agencies with systems that are less sensitive should consider expanding cloud computing to gain access to rapidly scalable and available computer resources as a way to enhance resilience and continuity of operations at low cost.

This content was last updated: July, 2022.

Fact: Cyberattacks and espionage are costly both for the U.S. and for the global economy.

  • Estimated global losses from cybercrime were just under $1 trillion for 2020, and the COVID pandemic provided new opportunities for cyberattacks.
  • The top three targets for hackers from 2019–2020 were health care, manufacturing, and information technology.
  • Multiple firms project that by 2020, 30 billion devices will be connected to the “Internet of things,” a huge growth in devices that connect more and more of our daily life to the World Wide Web.
  • The cyber-insurance industry is already estimated to be worth well over $3 billion and will provide a market mechanism for quantifying cyber risks and encouraging companies to improve their security.

Fact: China, Iran, North Korea, Russia, and hacking groups working with these countries continually attack U.S. economic interests and critical infrastructure. The United States must implement an all-tools-of-national-power approach to dealing with these bad actors.

  • In March 2021, China targeted Microsoft’s exchange server software, causing a massive worldwide cyber breach exposure.
  • In 2020, hackers linked to Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service used a SolarWinds update to install malicious software that allowed hackers to gain access to accounts across multiple U.S. Cabinet agencies.
  • The U.S. Department of Justice indicted three North Korean hackers for conspiring to steal and extort more than $1.3 billion in cash and cryptocurrencies.
  • Facebook revealed that it has tracked and at least partially disrupted a long-running Iranian hacking campaign that used Facebook accounts to pose as military recruiters, reeling in U.S. targets with convincing social engineering schemes before sending them malware-infected files or tricking them into submitting sensitive credentials to phishing sites.
  • According to Verizon’s most recent Data Breach Investigations Report, cyber espionage against government networks is up 168 percent in year-over-year data breaches; 79 percent of the external hacks are by state-affiliated hackers.
This content was last updated: July, 2022.
This content was last updated: July, 2022.

Homeland Security

Policy Proposals
  1. Privatize the Transportation Security Administration’s security screeners while leaving the TSA responsible for providing oversight.
  2. Authorize federal agencies to develop rules of engagement for counter-drone operations.
  3. Demand a comprehensive review of the U.S. Coast Guard to identify what capabilities it will need to complete its missions.
  4. Examine the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s grant program to eliminate grants and significantly cut funds for programs that do not protect the homeland and should not be federally funded.
Quick Facts
  1. Twenty-two airports participate in TSA’s Screening Partnership Program, which enables private companies to bid on airport screening jobs and staff them more efficiently.
  2. There are approximately 900,000 registered drones in the U.S., and a single Chinese drone manufacturer, DJI, accounted for 77 percent of U.S. market share as of 2019.
Protecting the Homeland
  • Protecting the U.S. homeland requires the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to be prepared to respond to a wide variety of threats—from natural disasters to terrorists seeking access to our country.
  • A number of its critical missions have been underfunded for years, or suffer from misused resources.
  • Much-needed reforms and resource reallocations—including increased funding for the U.S. Coast Guard, shifting disaster funding and preparation toward state and local responsibility versus more FEMA responsibility, and more efficient and effective TSA privatization—can help ensure success on these critical missions for years to come.
This content was last updated: July, 2022.

Protecting the U.S. homeland requires managing risk posed by a wide variety of human and natural threats. Transportation security, disaster response, vetting of immigrants and visitors, and providing security, assistance, and rescue in U.S. waters and beyond are just a few of the critical missions that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) carries out every day. Under the Biden Administration, however, DHS has put the country at greater risk by opening our southern border, failing to vet Afghan evacuees adequately after the Administration’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, prohibiting the enforcement of immigration laws and sharing of information with respect to illegal aliens, and prioritizing issues like climate change and white supremacy that are not relevant to its mission.

After 9/11, it was clear that more needed to be done to address the threat of terrorist attacks using airplanes. Today, it is also clear that the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) needs to be reformed. The TSA not only sets security rules, but also employs the workforce that carries out those rules—not a design for good governance or fiscal responsibility. Most advanced economies have a security agency that sets the rules and performs oversight while security contractors do the screening. The U.S. should privatize the TSA to increase accountability and save limited homeland security dollars. Similarly, more should be done to protect Americans from the threat posed by hostile and wayward aerial drones.

Increasing demands on the U.S. Coast Guard (USCG), especially in the Indo-Pacific and Arctic, have strained its small budget and fleet, which already needs to be modernized. The Coast Guard last updated its Program of Record (POR), the document that lays out its fleet needs, in 2004. A Coast Guard analysis from 2009 estimated that the existing POR accounts for only 61 percent of the cutters needed to fulfill the Coast Guard’s needs. That analysis also showed that there were gaps in capability and capacity across the service’s mission sets. The POR calls for 25 offshore patrol cutters, but the 2009 analysis suggested that the service would need 57 to meet its mission demands. To understand the risks and plan the fleet, the Coast Guard should update its POR to account for its current mission demands.

Disaster response also suffers from resource problems as well as misplaced sources for financial relief. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Disaster Relief Fund and National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) have frequently run out of funds or run vast deficits requiring taxpayer bailouts. Disaster relief policies have shifted responsibility from individuals and local governments, where it should lie, to the federal government and the taxpayers. This discourages state and local governments from taking common-sense precautionary steps to mitigate the impact of natural disasters. Moreover, since the bar for qualifying as a designated disaster is very low, states rely too heavily on FEMA after a disaster occurs and are less prepared for large disasters before they strike. Similarly, the NFIP subsidizes flood insurance policies, which means that it consistently runs a deficit and encourages building and rebuilding in higher-risk, flood-prone areas.

In addition, FEMA is responsible for providing DHS grant money to states, localities, and non-governmental organizations. When DHS was created, such grants were focused on equipment and training to protect ports, major urban targets, and other designated security priorities. Like all government programs, however, the FEMA grant program has expanded to provide taxpayer funds to non-security and other issues that are not relevant to the agency’s mission. For example, in 2021, DHS directed FEMA to provide grant money to house unaccompanied alien children who were crossing the border illegally. Such grant expansion has raised recipient expectations and led to taxpayer abuse.

This content was last updated: July, 2022.

Invest in the U.S. Coast Guard. The USCG fulfills many missions at home and around the world, but it does so with a fleet that badly needs to be updated. Congress should provide consistent funding to the USCG so that it can complete its program of record. Congress should also demand a comprehensive review of the program of record to identify what capabilities the USCG needs to complete its missions.

Reform FEMA and disaster response. FEMA currently spends too much of its time on relatively small disasters, leaving it less prepared for the “big one.” Similarly, much of the funding for such disasters comes from many different federal programs. This should be reformed to encourage state and local governments to be more prepared for disasters in terms of funding, capabilities, and planning. Resilient, prepared communities are needed to help the U.S. recover from a disaster in a cost-effective manner.

Privatize the TSA. The TSA’s government-only model does not effectively or economically provide the aviation security that America needs. At the 22 airports where TSA uses the Screening Partnership Program, private companies can set their own staffing targets and hire as many screeners as they need. To increase accountability and save funding, Congress should privatize the TSA’s security screeners while leaving the TSA responsible for setting rules and providing oversight. Congress can look to the Canadian model of aviation security as a potential road map for reform.

Develop counter-drone systems and rules. The number of unmanned aerial systems (drones) is increasing rapidly, and the U.S. needs to do more to protect itself from their potentially harmful uses. The Departments of Homeland Security, Defense, and Justice should be authorized to develop rules of engagement for counter-drone operations, but it will take time to develop these rules and field capabilities to detect and take down malicious drones. Congress must encourage and support these efforts while also expanding drone protection beyond just federal authorities: State and local law enforcement should be deputized and trained by DHS in counter-drone operations to help protect more sites and facilities across the U.S.

This content was last updated: July, 2022.

Fact: FEMA’s National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) currently owes $20.525 billion to the U.S. Treasury.

  • The NFIP has $9.9 billion in borrowing authority from a $30.425 billion limit in law.

Fact: Congress appropriated $20 million for FEMA to use for targeted violence and terrorism prevention grants in fiscal year (FY) 2021.

  • $5 million of this $20 million must be spent on an Alternatives to Detention (ATD) Case Management Pilot Program “to improve services for noncitizens in immigration proceedings.” The program will award funds to nonprofit organizations and local governments and will be chaired by the HHS Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Officer.

Fact: Both the use of drones and the need to protect against their malicious use have increased dramatically.

  • The Federal Aviation Administration reports nearly 900,000 registered drones in the U.S.
  • In 2019, a single privately owned Chinese drone manufacturer, DJI, held approximately 77 percent of the U.S. consumer drone market.
  • In 2018, then-Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen testified that drones are “a prime example” of “emerging threats [that] are outpacing our defenses.”
  • Until recently, the FBI, DHS, and other security agencies were unable to deploy and use systems for intercepting drones. This left a dangerous legal gap in U.S. defenses. Legislation was recently passed to fix this gap, but developing these tools and rules of engagement will take time, and more policy fixes are still needed.
This content was last updated: July, 2022.
This content was last updated: July, 2022.

Military Readiness

Policy Proposals
  1. Ensure that the U.S. defense budget is commensurate with the challenges the U.S. is facing.
  2. Support the transition to a posture of great-power competition.
  3. Increase the size of the Navy fleet.
  4. Commit to a major investment in naval shipyards.
  5. Accelerate the procurement of fighters.
  6. Sustain and support readiness.
Quick Facts
  1. The majority of America’s combat aircraft were purchased in the 1980s and 1990s and are now on average 31 years old.
  2. The Navy is currently too small and too old to accomplish all of its tasks.
  3. Nearly one-third of U.S. spending on defense is devoted to manpower, not to equipment or training.
  4. Weighed against the demands of great-power competition in the modern age, the U.S. is not spending enough on defense.
  5. America’s military presence overseas has declined significantly since the end of the Cold War.
A Constitutional Function
  • It is the federal government’s Constitutional duty to provide for the defense of the United States and its interests.
  • Our military should be ready, capable, competent, and large enough to defend U.S. interests at home and abroad.
  • A weak U.S. military incentivizes our enemies to act boldly and more aggressively, while a strong defense promotes peace.
The Aspects of Readiness
  • Troops must be properly educated, trained, and equipped. Equipment must be on hand and in working order.
  • Forces and assets must also be positioned strategically and fully practiced to be most effective.
Planning and Preparedness
  • A force cannot be made ready overnight, and it is too late to get ready once a crisis has emerged.
This content was last updated: July, 2022.

Americans expect the military to fulfill its constitutional obligation to defend our country and protect our national interests at home and abroad. They understand that a strong America garners respect, gains friends and allies, enjoys strong economic and trading relations with more countries, and deters bad behavior on the part of its competitors and enemies. Conversely, Americans understand that a weak military invites aggression and undermines the protection of our national interests.

A weak military incentivizes competitors to act boldly and more aggressively because they have less concern that the U.S. can impose any sort of cost or prevent them from imposing their will on others. A military that is ready, capable, competent, and large enough to defend U.S. interests globally both reflects and contributes to American confidence. It signals to the world that the U.S. prioritizes ensuring that its interests can be defended.

Military readiness can be measured in many ways and means many things: All aspects of readiness contribute to the ability of a military force to win in battle. Individuals are ready if they are properly educated, trained, and equipped. Readiness can be viewed as a measure of a unit’s equipment as well: If a specific percentage of necessary equipment is on hand and in working order, the unit is ready by that measure. Readiness is also a function of how the force is postured: where it is physically located in relative to anticipated threats; whether it has operational employment concepts that are relevant to anticipated battlefields and opponents; and whether the constituent parts of the force—ground units, aviation squadrons, battle groups at sea, space and cyber units, special operations elements, supporting logistics organizations, and the network of surveillance, intelligence, reconnaissance, and headquarters units that binds everything together—are competent at working together to accomplish tactical and operational objectives. The force can be fully manned, equipped, and individually trained, but if it has not practiced together to a level that ensures effectiveness, all other aspects are meaningless.

Military readiness means all of these things, and they all require funding, time, and sufficient capacity to ensure that the overall force is able to train even while parts of it are operationally committed. A force cannot be made ready overnight, and it is too late to get ready once a crisis has emerged. Readiness is the product of sustained and intentional investment in defense. It is expensive—but much less expensive than a lost war, lost markets, and lost influence. Investing in military readiness is a long-term investment in the strength, safety, and wealth of the United States.

This content was last updated: July, 2022.

Ensure that the U.S. defense budget is commensurate with the challenges the U.S. is facing. The Department of Defense has been trying to accomplish more (or the same) with fewer resources for years. Earlier in the 2010s, the Budget Control Act artificially constrained the defense budget to a ceiling. Since its end in Fiscal Year (FY) 2022, the administration has not requested the level of resources necessary to achieve the mission given to the Department. Since 2017, there have been multiple Secretaries of Defense and a bipartisan independent commission which have called for consistent increases of between 3 and 5 percent above inflation. This increase is necessary today in order to modernize and to expand the force as it pivots towards great power competition and away from counter-terrorism operations in the Middle East.

Support the transition to a posture of great-power competition. The 2018 National Defense Strategy (NDS) marked an important change and transition in our nation’s military by moving its focus away from a two-decade emphasis on fighting terrorism. The 2018 NDS outlined the importance of great-power competition against Russia and China, prompting all military services to change their postures and investment profiles. These shifts are ongoing and will take both time and resources to materialize. A good example is the Marine Corps, which is changing its operating concept toward distributed operations in contested environments to reflect the scenarios that it would most likely encounter in the Indo-Pacific region.

Increase the size of the Navy fleet. The Navy badly needs increased funding for its shipbuilding account. Ship construction costs are increasing, and the availability of shipyards to repair the ships it has is decreasing. The fleet bottomed out at 271 ships in 2015. It is our smallest fleet since 1916 and today faces growing challenges abroad as China aggressively builds its own blue-water navy and countries like Russia and Iran modernize their ships, maritime patrol aircraft, and mobile land-based vehicles with more capable anti-ship missiles. At current and projected levels of spending, the Navy does not expect to reach the minimum fleet size necessary to perform its role within the Joint Force until the mid-2030s. Ship manufacturers, the yards conducting related maintenance, and the web of suppliers that provide the parts and materials needed for new ships could expand capacity if there were some assurance that future work would offset the upfront costs of expanding facilities and hiring more workers. As things stand, constrained shipbuilding budgets and volatility in funding even for current contracts have made manufacturers and suppliers risk averse. This affects all ship classes, from a desperately needed small surface combatant to logistics support vessels, destroyers, and the new ballistic missile submarine that is meant to replace the aging Ohio class.

Commit to a major investment in naval shipyards. Over its history, the Navy has operated 13 naval shipyards; today, it operates only four. The oldest (Norfolk) was established in 1757, and the youngest (Pearl Harbor) was established in 1908. Most of these facilities are in various stages of disrepair, lack adequate drydocks, have outdated support equipment, and have trouble employing an adequate workforce. All of these problems contribute to substantial backlogs in ship maintenance, which in turn lead to lost steaming days (fewer ships available for use) and increased costs once a ship is inducted for maintenance. Commercial shipyards are contracted to perform much of the Navy’s ship maintenance, but some actions can be performed only by the Navy’s yards.

Accelerate the procurement of fighters. Because the Air Force has not been replacing retiring fighters with new ones rapidly enough, it is left with an older and smaller fleet that is unable to meet current demands. The service also has been investing more in research and development than it has in procuring contemporary aircraft. As a result, programs like the F-35A that could and should be accelerated have been operating at a slow rate of production and have not yet been fielded in sufficient numbers. Additionally, the Air Force has misguidedly been purchasing F-15EX fighters that are not survivable in any modern, high-end scenario against a peer adversary.

Sustain and support readiness. America’s ability to deter its adversaries is highly dependent on having a ready force that is capable of acting effectively when needed. Readiness is a consumable that requires investment and maintenance through the years. Members of a unit are ready to fight only when they train together and develop the skills they need to operate together. The same goes for a ship and for any aircraft. When called upon, the military will fall to its level of training, which is why there needs to be consistent investment in readiness levels at different level of formation.

This content was last updated: July, 2022.

Fact: The majority of America’s combat aircraft were purchased in the 1980s and 1990s and are now on average 31 years old.

  • Because of divestments and retirements in the 1990s, few aircraft were available for use as military operations ramped up in response to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
  • New aircraft are not being purchased fast enough to replace those that are being retired.

Fact: The Navy is too small and too old to accomplish all of its tasks.

  • At 296 total ships, the Navy is the smallest it has been since 1916.
  • While each ship is better than its predecessor, a ship can only be in one place at a time.
  • The Navy is not projected to grow to 350-plus ships until the mid-2030s; China already has 355 ships.

Fact: Nearly one-third of U.S. spending on defense goes just to manpower, not equipment or training.

  • To compete for talent with the civilian sector, the military services must offer competitive wages and benefits.
  • Of spending on manpower, the largest increases have occurred in healthcare costs, just as in the private sector.
  • Of American youth ages 17–24, almost three out of four are ineligible to serve in the military due to obesity, health problems, criminal records, or substance abuse, among other factors.
  • Consequently, the military must compete for a comparatively small pool of youth who have the willingness and the aptitude to serve, and who meet eligibility standards.

Fact: Weighed against the demands of great-power competition in the modern age, the U.S. is not spending enough on defense.

  • Manpower costs, especially with respect to health care, have dramatically outpaced inflation during the past 30 years.
  • The cost of platforms capable of surviving on a technologically advanced battlefield has also increased, making it more expensive to maintain a force that can win against other major powers like China and Russia.
  • The U.S. military must protect America with almost half the force that it possessed during the Cold War.
  • Entitlement spending and interest on the national debt (now at $30 trillion and climbing) continue to squeeze all other spending, including defense spending.
  • Measured both as a percentage of the federal budget and as a percentage of our nation’s gross domestic product (GDP), spending on defense is near historic lows.

Fact: America’s military presence overseas has declined significantly since the end of the Cold War.

  • The U.S. presence in Europe has been cut by two-thirds, leaving no permanently based U.S. armor brigades on the continent.
  • Facilities in Germany that once hosted U.S. forces and training ranges that provided opportunities to hone important combat skills have been converted to civilian use, increasing the challenges that would be involved in reintroducing U.S. forces should the need arise.
  • NATO forces have shrunk to all-time lows while Russian forces have been improving in quality and experience.
  • A minimal U.S. presence in Europe means that it would take much longer to deploy forces to counter Russian aggression against NATO allies, and U.S. forces could be forced to gain access through ports and airfields that were under attack.
This content was last updated: July, 2022.
This content was last updated: July, 2022.

Nuclear Threats

Policy Proposals
  1. Adequately fund U.S. nuclear weapons modernization programs and the infrastructure that supports them.
  2. Restore America’s strategic deterrence by building the nuclear arsenal of the 21st century.
  3. Develop new means of protection for the American public and continue to assure U.S. allies.
  4. Continue to support tools that make it harder for adversarial states to develop and procure nuclear weapons, and easier for the U.S. to detect such attempts.
Quick Facts
  1. Russia has threatened the United States and its allies with nuclear weapons numerous times in recent years. Russia’s war against Ukraine has only increased the nuclear saber-rattling out of Moscow, to include moving nuclear-capable systems into Belarus and de-ratifying the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.
  2. Since the end of the Cold War, the U.S. reduced its nuclear stockpile by over 90 percent.
  3. Iran has built up the largest ballistic missile force in the Middle East region as well as a huge nuclear infrastructure that it does not need for civilian purposes.
  4. The 44 U.S. long-range ballistic missile defense interceptors will not suffice to address the advancing ballistic missile threat to the United States.
Confront New and Old Threats
  • Russia is adding to its nuclear arsenal and fielding new delivery systems that include novel capabilities, such as nuclear-armed hypersonic missiles launched from the air, land, and sea.
  • China is building a nuclear weapons capability aimed at holding U.S. allies in the Western Pacific hostage to potential nuclear blackmail, and it is developing novel nuclear technologies, such as nuclear-capable hypersonic weapons.
  • The U.S. must also worry about non-state actors and the sale of nuclear technologies on the black market.
Invest in the American Arsenal
  • America’s foes have advanced their nuclear weapon systems while ours deteriorates. America needs a renewed commitment to the U.S. nuclear enterprise and the technological knowledge and infrastructure that supports it.
  • U.S. nuclear laboratories have a fundamental role in improving American understanding of the design and effects of our adversaries’ weapons.
  • The United States must continue to pursue the development of a comprehensive, layered missile defense system that can address incoming threats in all phases of flight.
This content was last updated: January, 2024.

The nuclear threat environment is more complex and dangerous to Americans than it was during the Cold War. During the Cold War, the United States had to worry primarily about one large adversary, the Soviet Union. Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the United States shifted its focus to smaller conventional operations and counterterrorism. As a result, U.S. policymakers have neglected nuclear issues.

Today, the United States relies on legacy Cold War–era nuclear weapons and supporting infrastructure as Russia, China, and North Korea expand their nuclear forces and Iran adds to its missile arsenal with the intent to build nuclear weapons.

In other words, the U.S. objective of deterring a large-scale attack against the homeland and America’s allies is as important as it was during the Cold War, while doing so has become far more challenging. At the same time, the United States largely has divested of its theater, non-strategic nuclear arsenal, while its adversaries are building up in this area.

Russia is adding to its nuclear arsenal and fielding new delivery systems that include novel capabilities, such as nuclear-armed hypersonic missiles launched from air, land, and sea. Russia continues to view nuclear weapons as central to warfighting—especially battlefield non-strategic nuclear weapons that could be used in an “escalate to de-escalate strategy.” In this scenario, Russia might use a low-yield nuclear weapon first in a conventional conflict to compel the United States or its allies to back down from further escalation. Indeed, today, Russia has roughly 2,000 such weapons, while the United States has 200.

China is engaging in a breathtaking expansion of its nuclear forces, potentially adding hundreds of new missiles to its intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) arsenal and putting it on track to achieve nuclear parity, if not superiority, over the United States within a decade. In addition, China is building a nuclear weapons capability aimed at holding U.S. allies in the Western Pacific hostage to potential nuclear blackmail, and novel nuclear technologies, such as nuclear-capable hypersonic weapons, are in development. With nuclear forces capable of striking both the U.S. homeland and U.S. forces and allies in the Indo–Pacific, Beijing conceivably could coerce the United States and potentially constrain U.S. response options, particularly given the lack of American theater nuclear weapons in the Western Pacific.

Since 2017, North Korea has fielded 10 new missile systems that are capable of reaching South Korea and U.S. forces stationed there in addition to successfully testing sea-launched nuclear capabilities, as well as two ICBMs capable of reaching the American homeland. Pyongyang also recently exploded a hydrogen bomb 10 times more powerful than the atomic bombs used at the end of World War II. Iran has built up the largest ballistic missile force in the Middle East and has been enriching uranium, which is required to build nuclear weapons. The United States, however, has fielded no new delivery systems in recent years and remains the only nuclear-weapons state incapable of producing new nuclear weapons in quantity, despite being in the 13th year of a decades-long nuclear modernization program.

Thus, for the first time in its history, the United States will need to contend with two large nuclear peer (or even, nuclear superior) adversaries—Russia and China—as well as a growing nuclear arsenal in North Korea.

Today, the United States must worry not only about state actors and nuclear weapon technologies, but also about non-state actors, as Pakistani scientist A. Q. Khan and his network have shown. (Khan was selling nuclear technologies on the black market to anyone willing to pay for them.) For decades, the United States has pursued nonproliferation policies that would keep the number of nuclear-armed states as small as possible by making it more difficult for state and non-state actors to obtain nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them.

America’s nuclear policy should account for negative developments in the threat area as well as for deterioration of the U.S. nuclear enterprise and the intellectual and physical infrastructure that supports it. Because nuclear weapons pose the only direct existential threat to the United States, Congress and the Administration must re-energize measures to understand new developments in this area and their implications for U.S. and allied security.

This content was last updated: January, 2024.

In order to protect the U.S. and its allies from nuclear attack, Congress and the Administration should:

Restore America’s strategic deterrence by building the nuclear arsenal of the 21st century. The U.S. government must understand what deters nuclear-armed states and structure its defense and nuclear postures accordingly. The changes in nuclear threats, especially China’s expected vast nuclear expansion, make it essential that the United States update its nuclear posture and expand and diversify its strategic and nonstrategic nuclear arsenals to meet new threat and deterrence requirements. It should reject the naive belief that U.S. unilateral disarmament and lack of nuclear weapons modernization will incentivize other countries to give up their nuclear weapons. Indeed, it is the lack of investment in nuclear capabilities that has emboldened U.S. adversaries and upset strategic stability.

Adequately fund U.S. nuclear weapons modernization programs and their supporting infrastructure. Washington must accept that modern and flexible nuclear weapons and their supporting infrastructure are necessary for deterring nuclear attack on the United States and its allies; outdated, Cold War–era nuclear forces will lose credibility over time. Congress and the Administration must fully fund U.S. nuclear forces and infrastructure. This includes continued support for the development of a nuclear-armed sea-launched cruise missile and potentially other diverse systems as the threats evolve.

Develop means of protection for the American public and allies. Missiles remain a delivery method of choice for U.S. nuclear-armed adversaries and competitors because of their relatively short flight times and low cost. The spread of these systems to countries like North Korea that threaten the United States and allies with ballistic and cruise missile attacks increases the imperative for the United States to develop a system that is capable of protecting the U.S. homeland and allies. The United States must continue to pursue development of a comprehensive, layered missile defense system that can address incoming threats in all phases of flight.

Continue to assure allies. Just as the United States must think through new deterrence strategies and requisite capabilities for different nuclear-armed actors, it must also think carefully about how it reassures its allies. Reassurance is critical because it dissuades other countries from building their own nuclear weapons. For example, both Japan and South Korea have the technological ability and access to material with which to build their own nuclear weapons should they question U.S. commitment to their security. More nuclear-armed states would further increase the complexity of today’s nuclear landscape, undermining U.S. interests and reversing decades of U.S. nonproliferation policy.

Continue U.S. nonproliferation and counterproliferation measures. The federal government should continue to support tools that make the development and procurement of nuclear weapons and the technologies that enable them more difficult and easier for the United States to detect. One way to accomplish this would be through a partnership with other countries through the global Proliferation Security Initiative launched in 2003. Another would be by developing the technological capabilities and skills that make tracking and attributing weapons-grade materials more difficult. Such interdiction efforts contribute to international security.

Restore U.S. nuclear intelligence capabilities. For almost a decade, the United States has focused most of its intelligence collection resources on ongoing low-intensity and counterterrorism operations in the Middle East. As a partial consequence, the ability of the U.S. to assess foreign adversaries’ nuclear weapons programs has deteriorated. Congress and the Administration should work together to provide the resources that the U.S. intelligence community needs to be more adept at understanding the development of adversaries’ nuclear weapons and capabilities. U.S. nuclear laboratories have a fundamental role in improving America’s understanding of the design and effects of its adversaries’ weapons.

This content was last updated: January, 2024.

Fact: At least three hostile countries—China, North Korea, and Russia—threaten the United States and its allies with nuclear attacks. These countries either have or are developing nuclear warheads and delivery systems to enable them to execute such attacks and add credibility to their threats.

  • In 2017, North Korea successfully tested two ICBM systems that demonstrated the ability to target the United States with nuclear warheads. In October 2020, Pyongyang paraded the world’s largest road-mobile ICBM. The regime subsequently announced that the missile would have multiple warheads. Combined with its recent ability to produce mobile ICBM launchers indigenously, this raises the possibility that North Korea might be able to overwhelm America’s missile defenses.
  • In February 2019, Russian President Vladimir Putin threatened to aim Russia’s nuclear weapons at the United States and its European allies should the United States position new intermediate-range missiles in Europe. This was by no means an isolated incident. Russia has threatened the United States and its allies with nuclear weapons numerous times in recent years. Russia’s war against Ukraine has only increased the nuclear saber-rattling out of Moscow, to include moving nuclear-capable systems into Belarus and de-ratifying the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.
  • Iran has built up the largest ballistic missile force in the Middle East region as well as a huge nuclear infrastructure that it does not need for civilian purposes. These moves make sense only if Tehran plans to arm the missiles with nuclear warheads. Since coming to power in the 1979 revolution, Iran’s radical leaders have denounced the United States as the world-devouring “Great Satan,” and Iran has become the largest state sponsor of terrorism.

Fact: There is no empirical evidence that U.S. nuclear weapons reductions have dissuaded other countries from developing their own nuclear weapons capabilities.

  • Since the end of the Cold War, the United States has reduced its nuclear stockpile by more than 90 percent from highs during the Cold War. Yet new nuclear weapon states have emerged, including India, Pakistan, and North Korea, and both Russia and China have expanded their capabilities.
  • Despite calls for future arms control treaties, Russia has violated or withdrawn from three nuclear arms control treaties in the past 10 years alone. China has rebuffed every attempt for a dialogue on its potential participation in nuclear arms treaties. All this took place as the United States reduced the role and salience of nuclear weapons within its own defense posture.
  • Other countries develop their nuclear capabilities based on their perceived individual national interests and security situation. To change their calculus, U.S. policy must address the underlying conditions that influence the decision to move forward with nuclear programs and make it too costly to pursue nuclear weapons programs.

Fact: Because other countries will continue to develop and rely on nuclear weapons for decades to come, the United States must develop means to defend itself and its allies from their devastating effects.

  • A safe, secure, reliable, and effective U.S. nuclear arsenal and modern and flexible supporting infrastructure are essential to deterring attacks against the United States and its allies.
  • The United States currently deploys only 44 long-range ballistic missile defense interceptors in Alaska and California. These interceptors cannot address the magnitude of the Russian and Chinese nuclear threats and will need to advance in both number and capability just to outpace the North Korean nuclear threat.
  • The federal government must work not only to increase U.S. abilities and those of its allies to disrupt other nations’ nuclear programs, but also to manage the consequences of a potential nuclear attack.
This content was last updated: January, 2024.
This content was last updated: January, 2024.

Radical Islamic Terrorism

Policy Proposals
  1. Finish the job against ISIS while encouraging regional Arab allies to assume greater responsibility for stabilizing eastern Syria.
  2. Renew U.S. commitment to preventing terrorist groups from controlling territory.
  3. Bolster intelligence sharing on foreign fighters while reassessing domestic security procedures.
  4. End the policy of U.S. government engagement with Muslim Brotherhood legacy groups.
Quick Facts
  1. As of August 2019, there had been 114 Islamist terrorist plots targeting the U.S. since 9/11.
  2. ISIS has affiliates in the Middle East, South and Southeast Asia, and Africa.
  3. The Muslim Brotherhood has had offshoot groups operating and recruiting in the U.S. since the 1960s.
An Ideology of Force
  • Radical Islamic ideology dictates that Islamism is an all-encompassing socio-political system in which sovereignty lies with god, and Muslims are required to live in a Caliphate governed by sharia law.
The War on Terror
  • After the 9/11 attacks, the U.S. took the fight to al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and Somalia.
  • After a U.S.-led coalition destroyed the ISIS Caliphate, ISIS’s supporters reverted to their roots as guerilla insurgents in Iraq and Syria.
Domestic Threats
  • Many of the plots that the U.S. has faced since 9/11 were the work of those radicalized right here in the U.S.
  • The U.S. must renew its commitment to prevent terrorist groups from controlling territory while containing future threats at home and abroad.
This content was last updated: August, 2020.

A Pew poll from 2018 found that terrorism was the number one priority for Americans—above the economy, education, and health care.1 A separate Pew poll from a year earlier found that approximately three-quarters of Americans were concerned by the threat of Islamist extremism specifically.2

This is an understandable fear. The most devastating terrorist attack in American history occurred on 9/11, resulting in the U.S. taking the fight to al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and Somalia. Many of al-Qaeda’s top leaders were killed, with Osama bin Laden tracked down in Pakistan in May 2011. Others were captured and detained at Guantanamo Bay, where 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed remains today. The U.S. also pinned al-Qaeda back with its ongoing campaign of drone strikes.

Despite these welcome developments, the threat endures. The rise of an al-Qaeda offshoot, the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), led to a reign of terror that saw countless innocents, including Americans, killed by Islamists across the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and Europe. While the U.S.-led Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS succeeded in destroying the Islamic ‘Caliphate’ that ISIS created in Iraq and Syria, the war is far from over. ISIS, which pulled in tens of thousands of foreign fighters, is reverting to its insurgency roots, while al-Qaeda remains a resolute adversary. The U.S. military remains active in Syria and Afghanistan, among other countries, in either a combat or a training role, in an effort to head off the risk this poses.

The threat overseas has been accompanied by an ongoing risk to American lives domestically: There have been well over 100 Islamist terror plots directed at the U.S. since 9/11. While the vast majority have been thwarted by the diligent work of U.S. law enforcement and intelligence communities, attacks in Boston, San Bernardino, Orlando, and New York in recent years are a reminder of the ongoing risk to American lives.

Troublingly, many of the plots that the U.S. has faced were not dreamed up by foreign terrorists, but were the work of those radicalized right here in the U.S. One of the most influential Islamist ideologues in the post-9/11 era was an American citizen—Anwar al-Awlaki, a charismatic al-Qaeda cleric responsible for a wave of plots against the West until his death in a September 2011 drone strike. Unfortunately, Awlaki’s online lectures continue to radicalize others.

ISIS, al-Qaeda, and their supporters are ultimately manifestations of a broader ideology: that of Islamism, an ideology that dictates that Islam is not just a religion, but an all-encompassing socio-political system in which sovereignty lies with god over man and Muslims are required to live in an expansionist Caliphate governed by sharia law.

ISIS and al-Qaeda insist that force is required to bring this about, whereas proselytizing Islamist groups like the Muslim Brotherhood believe it can be achieved by preaching, infiltration, and persuasion. While the tactics of violent Islamists may diverge from those of political Islamists, their vision for what the endgame looks like is the same. Complicating the problem, the U.S. is forced to engage Muslim Brotherhood‐linked groups overseas because they are part of various governments.

Military victories on the battlefield must be backed up by victory in the battle of ideas against Islamism. The U.S. has excelled at the former. The latter has, so far, proved much trickier to achieve. As long as this remains the case, Islamist terrorism will continue to imperil the U.S. and its allies.

This content was last updated: August, 2020.

Finish the job against ISIS while encouraging regional allies to step up. The U.S. needs to crush ISIS while avoiding the temptation to nation-build in Syria. While a military presence is still required for counter-terrorism and intelligence gathering, the U.S. should push for regional Arab allies to assume greater responsibility for stabilizing eastern Syria with troops and economic support. While this coalition would require continued U.S. support, it would lighten the burden on the military while bolstering Arab allies.

Renew the U.S. commitment to preventing terrorist groups from controlling territory. The U.S. plays a vital role in containing the terrorist threat emerging from the Middle East, Asia, and Africa. When terrorist groups control territory, it allows them space from which to plan attacks: The 9/11 attacks were planned from Afghanistan, and more recent attacks in Europe were planned from Syria. The control of territory also provides a source of revenue for terrorists, primarily through the extortion of those living under their control. The U.S. must work with its partners around the world to prevent the emergence of territory governed by Islamist groups, cutting off funding for terrorist groups while capturing and killing their fighters.

Harden defenses for the next wave of foreign fighters. Syria drew in tens of thousands of foreign fighters from across the globe. With the Caliphate broken and those fighters dispersing, the U.S. must be dynamic if it wants to stay ahead of the next foreign fighter threat. That would involve monitoring the travel patterns of terrorists and cajoling allies and partners into hardening their own security measures, while working to bolster intelligence sharing about developing threats to the U.S. and its allies. It would also involve an assessment of domestic security procedures and vulnerabilities.

Allocate resources to contain future threats from newly released terrorists—at home and abroad. There are tens of thousands of ISIS suspects being held in Kurdish-run detainee camps in Syria, including terrorists with ties to America. The next Administration should determine which of these detainees have a legal right to enter the U.S., assess whether they have committed federal crimes, and consider prosecuting them. The U.S. also has dozens of terrorists convicted of terrorism-related offences set for release from prison.3 It is possible that these convicted terrorists have not renounced Islamist ideology and could attempt to carry out attacks upon release. The U.S. must ensure it can safely monitor these newly released convicts.

Roll back the Muslim Brotherhood. A strategy is needed for political Islamists such as the Muslim Brotherhood. This strategy may involve designation of the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization if there is credible evidence of the Brotherhood committing acts of terrorism. However, with the Brotherhood tending to eschew overt acts of violence, the U.S. must also be prepared to try and weaken the movement’s ideology. This strategy would take as read that the Brotherhood are adversaries—not allies—and that their worldview does not represent the majority of American Muslim opinion. Putting an end to the policy of U.S. government engagement with Muslim Brotherhood legacy groups in the U.S. should also be part of the strategy.

This content was last updated: August, 2020.

Fact: Islamist terrorism is an ongoing threat to the homeland and to Americans overseas.

  • As of August 2019, there had been 114 Islamist plots targeting the U.S. since 9/11—approximately six a year.
  • Terrorists have shown themselves willing to attack civilians, the police, and the military. They have used whatever weapon were at hand to carry out these attacks, including homemade bombs, blades, firearms, cars, and even trucks.
  • The most devastating Islamist attack since 9/11 occurred in Orlando, Florida, in June 2016. Omar Mateen, an American citizen inspired by ISIS, shot and killed 49 people in a nightclub.
  • American civilians are regularly targeted in terrorists attack abroad. Americans have been murdered in France, Belgium, the UK, Tajikistan, Kenya, and Sri Lanka in recent times.
  • American embassies and government installations have been targeted by Islamist terrorists for decades. High-profile attacks have occurred in Kenya, Tanzania, Yemen, and Libya.

Fact: ISIS had success persuading a small number of American Muslims to travel to their ‘Caliphate.’

  • Dozens of Americans successfully traveled to Syria to take part in the fighting there, most going on to join ISIS.
  • ISIS recruits with close ties to America, including possible American citizens, remain detained in Kurdish-run camps in Syria.

Fact: Al-Qaeda and ISIS have terrorist affiliates around the world.

  • Al-Qaeda’s senior leaders are largely based in the AfPak (Afghanistan and Pakistan) region and Iran. Yet Al-Qaeda also has formal affiliates known to be operating in the Indian Subcontinent, the Sahel, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen.
  • ISIS has affiliates in the Middle East, South and Southeast Asia, and throughout Africa. Following the death of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, many of these affiliates then pledged allegiance to Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurashi, ISIS’ new leader.

Fact: The Muslim Brotherhood has a decades-old presence in the U.S.

  • The Muslim Brotherhood has operated and recruited in the U.S. since the 1960s, initially focusing on university campuses.
  • Mohammed Morsi, the former President of Egypt, was recruited into the Brotherhood while studying at the University of Southern California.
  • Muslim Brotherhood offshoot groups based in the U.S., such as the Council on American‐Islamic Relations, have been engaged with by both Democrat and Republican Administrations as well as members of Congress on both sides of the aisle.
This content was last updated: August, 2020.
This content was last updated: August, 2020.

Strategic National Defense

Policy Proposals
  1. Modernize the nuclear deterrent to ensure its reliability and effectiveness in the coming decades.
  2. Develop and deploy a comprehensive, layered missile defense system.
  3. Address vulnerability to an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) and increase the domestic electric grid’s resilience.
  4. Support the development of a space-based sensor layer to augment the data needed for missile defense systems.
Quick Facts
  1. The U.S. has not tested a nuclear warhead since 1992.
  2. The U.S. currently has only 44 Ground-Based Midcourse Defense interceptors to protect the homeland.
  3. Over 20 countries have ballistic missiles, including such U.S. adversaries as China, Russia, and North Korea.
The Duty to Defend
  • Providing for the common defense is one of the primary responsibilities of the federal government.
  • There is a widening gap between this responsibility and the readiness of the U.S. missile defense programs.
Nuclear Consequences
  • U.S. nuclear weapons have kept peace by deterring a large-scale attack against our country and allies.
A Developing Threat
  • As our adversaries build their missile arsenals, the U.S. nuclear weapons age, and our nuclear triad is overdue for modernization.
This content was last updated: July, 2022.

Ever since the end of World War II, U.S. nuclear weapons have kept the peace by deterring a large-scale attack against the United States and its allies. They are the most powerful weapons the United States currently has at its disposal. Nuclear weapons are an effective deterrent because they force adversaries that might be considering whether to attack the United States or its allies to face the prospect of immediate and overwhelming retaliation. Additionally, more than 30 countries around the world depend on U.S. nuclear security guarantees in exchange either for not developing their own nuclear weapons or, in the case of France and the United Kingdom, keeping their nuclear arsenals smaller than they otherwise would be.

At the same time, however, U.S. nuclear forces are old. The nuclear triad (bombers, intercontinental-range ballistic missiles, and submarine-launched ballistic missiles) is overdue for modernization. Nuclear warheads were last tested in 1992, and unlike its adversaries, the United States is currently unable to produce new warheads except for an extremely limited number in laboratory conditions. Because of their critical importance in maintaining national security, the government must ensure that America’s nuclear weapons remain safe, secure, and militarily effective. Modernizing these weapons and the infrastructure that supports them has therefore been a number one priority for U.S. defense policy since at least 2010.

Providing for the common defense is one of the federal government’s primary constitutional responsibilities. Perhaps nowhere is the gap between this duty and actual U.S. conduct as apparent as it is with respect to U.S. missile defense programs. Despite adversaries building up their missile arsenals, the United States deploys only a limited number of missile defense interceptors that are capable of defending the U.S. homeland from small-scale ballistic missile threats such as those posed by North Korea or, potentially, Iran. This means that America is vulnerable to Russian and Chinese missiles.

U.S. vulnerability to a missile attack is an issue because it leaves Americans with no protection if deterrence should fail. Another threat is an electromagnetic pulse (EMP). An EMP, which would be generated by the airburst of a nuclear weapon, would disable all electronics within its line of sight of the blast, potentially sending the United States back to a pre-industrial era. Americans deserve better than the perpetuation of these vulnerabilities.

This content was last updated: July, 2022.