There are, however, two related problems for the government with making the “it’s foreign, so defer to the executive” argument. One is that it is question-begging: It assumes that the president is acting within his Article II commander in chief powers, rather than exercising an Article I legislative power of Congress (taxation) and then trying to rebrand it as a foreign emergency power. As Justice Robert Jackson famously wrote in his celebrated concurring opinion in Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer (1952), about Harry Truman trying to seize steel mills to stop a strike during the Korean War, “The Constitution did not contemplate that the title Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy will constitute him also Commander in Chief of the country, its industries and its inhabitants.”
The other problem is that the very fact of the power being broad and mostly unreviewable is all the more reason for the Court to check the president’s ticket at the door by asking whether he has that power in the first place. That’s why the justices peppered [Solicitor General John] Sauer with questions about the limits and implications of his arguments.
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Sauer’s concession that the president has no inherent tariff power in peacetime put an end to any argument that the Court should just defer to the president without first determining that Congress had, in IEEPA, actually delegated a tariff power. By saying that Congress gave the president “Article I tools,” Sauer admitted that.
As Peter Calcagno and Edward López demonstrate in a forthcoming book, norms about deficits have changed over the past 30 to 40 years. They conclude that the combination of informal norms and increasing federal “responsibilities” have created “increased demand for federal expenditures while creating budgetary commons, thus imparting strong motivations to spend through deficit finance in normal times.”
Tomas Philipson’s recent letter in the Wall Street Journal is superb:
Your editorial “The Spin Doctors at the FDA” (Oct. 28) rightly urges the agency to speed up its drug approvals. Years ago Milton Friedman identified the FDA as Exhibit A in America’s overregulation problem. A medication that saves 100,000 lives kills a million when the agency sits on it for a decade.
About 86% of U.S. healthcare spending is outside the realm of prescription drugs and benefits us without any “help” from insulated bureaucrats determining its quality. More important, a large share of drug spending doesn’t require FDA approval. That is because “off label” use—taking a drug for a disease not approved by the FDA after the agency has accepted it for another purpose—is legal. This practice allows for robust private-sector research, all without government’s explicit say-so. For oncology, the largest drug class in the FDA pipeline, off-label use is often the norm.
If the private sector can determine effectiveness for subsequent uses of a drug not approved by the FDA, why can’t it handle the initial use too? The government isn’t the only arbiter of product quality. Insurance companies, providers and patients will all demand evidence before use but will accomplish it more efficiently.
Countless drugs have been stuck for years in the FDA quagmire. One shows great potential in slowing memory loss of early-stage Alzheimer’s. Another one is for the neurological disease ataxia that has been delayed for many years. Zynquista offers hope for type 1 diabetes—an important potential adjunct to insulin—and yet the FDA is dragging its feet in giving it the green light.
Congress could save lives and reduce suffering by relaxing or repealing the 1962 mandate that the FDA assess drugs for efficacy. It would be a humane solution for those afflicted with cancer, Alzheimer’s, diabetes, epilepsy, Parkinson’s and multiple sclerosis, among others. Call it Operation Warp Speed Part II and let the private sector get to work.
Economic facts are not static like the Rocky Mountains. They change with economic dynamism, and immigration energizes. Conservatives correctly insist on “dynamic scoring” of tax cuts — projecting positive revenue effects from tax cuts that incentivize productive behavioral changes. Such conservatives should also favor the dynamic scoring of immigration’s economic effects.
One of which is: Immigrants who fill jobs as domestic helpers, cleaners, waiters, car-wash attendants, meatpackers and other low-skill jobs drive productivity and social dynamism by allowing, even compelling, other workers to advance to more-skilled work. In 2023 House testimony, the Cato Institute’s David J. Bier noted that the Bureau of Labor Statistics predicted that most jobs created in this decade will not require a college degree.
Regarding America’s sagging birth rate, research finds that low-skill immigrants (nannies, housekeepers, meal-preparers) “substantially” reduce hesitation about having children. Today’s housing shortage? Bier: “Thanks to too few workers, it now takes about eight months to build a new home, which is up from four to six months” before 2020.
Three economists writing for the American Enterprise Institute have estimated that net U.S. migration might be negative this year — for the first time in history — by more than 200,000. Most economists think the question is not whether but how much this will subtract from economic growth.
Kathleen Parker is correct about Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens:
The toxic drivel emanating from these two popular podcasters corresponds to the conspiracy theories of white nationalists and other hate-mongers. As recent events affirm, this trend is too serious to treat with dignity. This isn’t a debate for polite disagreement. What Carlson and Owens are doing must be terrifying to Jews, and it should be to Christians and Muslims, too.
Zachary Yost offers thoughtful advice to true liberals.
People’s lives, in Mamdani’s world, can be improved only by government: “We will prove that there is no problem too large for government to solve, and no concern too small for it to care about.” The crowd cheered, of course, but a thinking person might wonder whether it’s good for the institution that has a monopoly on violence to insist that nothing is beyond its purview.
Such crass appeals have real support in New York, where overpriced housing is a real problem. But it’s important to recognize that high rents are a function of too much government rather than too little. Temporary relief because of the rent freeze he promised for 2 million housing units will inevitably lead to less investment, driving up costs in the long run.
