A Factually and Legally Flawed Impeachment

February 7, 2020

As someone who has focused intently on the need to reconnect the American people with their system of government, President Trump presents a serious threat to those who currently occupy positions of power in Washington. These individuals who are for the most part hard-working, well intentioned, well-educated, and highly specialized are also unelected and unaccountable.

President Trump has defied this ruling elite on many levels and he has infuriated them as he has done so. He’s bucked them on so many levels, declining to defer to the opinions of self-proclaimed government experts, who claim that they know better than any of us.

He pushed back on them, for example, when it comes to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA as its sometime described. When he insisted that FISA had been abused in efforts to undermine his candidacy, and to infringe on the rights and the privacy of the American people. When he took that position, Washington bureaucrats predictably mocked him, but he turned out to be right.

He called out the folly of engaging in endless nation-building exercises, as part of a two-decade long war effort that has cost this country dearly in terms of American blood and treasure. Washington bureaucrats mocked him again, but he turned out to be right. 

He raised questions with how U.S. foreign aid is used and sometimes misused throughout the world, sometimes to the detriments of the American people and the very interests that such aid was created to alleviate. Washington bureaucrats mocked him, but he turned out to be right. 

President Trump asked Ukraine to investigate a Ukrainian energy company, Burisma. He momentarily paused U.S. aid to Ukraine, while seeking a commitment from the then newly elected Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, regarding that effort.

He wanted to make sure that he could trust this recently elected President Zelensky, before sending him the aid. Within a few weeks his concerns were satisfied, and he released the aid.

Pausing briefly before doing so isn’t criminal, it certainly isn’t impeachable, it’s not even wrong.

Quite to the contrary, this is exactly the sort of thing the American people elected President Trump to do. He would, and has decided to bring a different paradigm to Washington. One that analyzes things from how the American citizenry views the American government. 

Because President Trump took a conclusion different than that offered by the so-called “interagency process” the House impeachment managers argued that that amounted to a constitutionally impeachable act. It is not an impeachable act. It is nothing of the sort. Quite to the contrary, when you actually look at the constitution itself, it makes clear that any president has the power to do what President Trump did here.

The very first section of Article 2 of the Constitution, this is the part of the Constitution that outlines the president’s authority, makes clear that the executive power of United States government shall be vested in the President of the United States.

When a newly elected president comes in, this president, or any president in the future and thinks hey, “We’re giving a lot of aid to this country, $391 million for the year in question. I want to make sure that I understand how that president operates. I want to establish a relationship of trust before taking a step further with that president. So, I am going to take my time a little bit, I’m going to wait maybe a few weeks in order to make sure that we’re on a sure footing there.” He did that and there’s nothing wrong with that. 

At the end of the day, this government does in fact, stand accountable to the people. This government is of, by and for the people. We cannot remove the 45th President of the United States for doing something that the law and the Constitution allows him to do without doing undue violence to that system of government to which every single one of us has sworn an oath. We’ve sworn to uphold and protect and defend that system of government. That means standing up for the American people and those they have elected to do a job recognized by the Constitution. 

These were factually and legally flawed articles of impeachment and anyone who voted for them undermined the very principles that our Constitution was designed to protect.

Pro-Life Legislators Call For Extension of Mexico City Policy

January 23, 2020

WASHINGTON - Sens. Mike Lee (R-UT), Steve Daines (R-MT), Thom Tillis (R-NC), Ted Cruz (R-TX), Roger Wicker (R-MS), Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), Mike Rounds (R-SD), Kevin Cramer (R-ND), Ben Sasse (R-NE), Bill Cassidy (R-LA), James Lankford (R-OK), Mike Braun (R-IN), John Thune (R-SD), James Inhofe (R-OK), John Cornyn (R-TX), Tim Scott (R-SC), Sen. Jerry Moran (R-KS), Marco Rubio (R-FL), and Kelly Loeffler (R-GA) along with Reps. Virginia Foxx (R-NC), Chris Smith (R-NJ) and 39 other representatives sent a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Thursday asking the administration to expand the “Protecting Life in Global Health Assistance” policy, formerly known as the Mexico City Policy, to address domestic non-government organizations (NGOs) that receive federal foreign assistance.

“The administration’s ban on funding overseas organizations that promote abortion has already saved and will continue to save countless lives across the globe,” Sen. Lee said. “President Trump and Secretary Pompeo have already demonstrated their willingness to step up to the plate in defense of innocent life here at home with protections put in place for Title X funding. We encourage the administration to hold domestic NGOs to the same standard in foreign assistance they are held to in Title X funding. Domestic NGOs should have to maintain physical and financial separation from abortion-related activities within federally funded programs.”

“As it stands, the United States is the largest provider of global health funding, and it’s imperative that federal funds for health care are used to preserve and protect the sanctity of human life,” Rep. Foxx said. Our position is clear: domestic NGOs must adhere to the same accountability measures outlined in Title X as they would if they received federal foreign assistance. If they choose to actively subvert these rules and engage in activities that support the termination of human life, their eligibility for taxpayer dollars should be forfeited.”

“Taxpayer dollars shouldn’t be used to perform abortions here or abroad.” Sen. Daines said.

“The Protecting Life in Global Health Assistance policy communicates the imperative that we hold children harmless in our family planning programs throughout the world,” Rep. Smith said. “Domestic NGOS must not serve as a trojan horse for the global abortion industry. It only makes sense to apply the same standards of protection for taxpayer funds to domestic NGOs as those that are applied to foreign NGOs.”

The letter also asks that the State Department require U.S. NGOs to certify that, during the term of any award for US funding, their foreign NGO subgrantees will not perform abortion as a method of family planning and it will not refer, train for, or counsel on abortion as a method of family planning.

How the Impeachment Trial Will Start

January 17, 2020

This Wednesday, seven Democrats selected by Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) to be Impeachment Managers for the House of Representatives presented two articles of impeachment against President Trump to the Senate.

Per Senate rules, the articles were then read on the Senate floor Thursday before Chief Justice John Roberts was sworn in to preside over the trial. Senators then swore en masse to “do impartial justice according to the Constitution” before signing a book acknowledging the oath they had taken.

This Saturday the House will deliver its trial brief to the Senate, and the White House response brief is due Monday.

On Tuesday the Senate will vote on a new set of rules for the trial that closely resemble the rules for President Clinton’s impeachment trial in 1999. If those rules are adopted, and it looks like they will be, the rest of the trial will unfold as follows.

First the House Impeachment Managers will have two days to present their case against the president. Then the president’s lawyers will have two days to present their defense.

After arguments by the prosecution and defense, senators will have one day to ask questions of the House Impeachment Managers and one day to question the White House. All questions will be submitted in writing to Chief Justice Roberts, who will then submit the questions to the proper party.

After those first six days (two for the House, two for the WH, one questioning the House, one questioning the White House), the Senate will have a debate and a vote about whether there is a need to hear from more witnesses.

If the Senate votes that more witnesses are not needed, then it can move to vote on a final verdict for both articles of impeachment.

If, however, the Senate votes to hear more witnesses, it will be up to the House Impeachment Managers to name the first witness they want to call. There will then be a vote on whether the Senate wants to hear from that particular witness.

But if the Senate votes to hear from a particular witness, that doesn’t necessarily mean that witness will testify. All of the witnesses that Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has said he wants to hear from (former National Security Adviser John Bolton; current acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney; Mulvaney’s chief deputy Robert Blair; and Office of Management and Budget Associate Director of National Security Programs Michael Duffey) are advisors to the president.

That means that the president, not the Senate and not the witness, can assert executive privilege to block that testimony. This is important. It is the president, not the witness, that owns the privilege.

Thus, even if the Senate votes to here from, say John Bolton, the White House will immediately initiate litigation seeking a declaratory judgment in federal district court quashing the Senate subpoena on the grounds that anything relevant to the facts of the impeachment trial would be covered by executive privilege.

At a bare minimum, it would take a week for the district court to issue a decision, another week for the appeals court to make a decision, and then another probably two weeks for the Supreme Court to decide. (This whole process would usually take years to complete, but might be expedited here; nevertheless, it’s hard to imagine it taking less than a month under any circumstance).

At that point either the Court would rule for the president, meaning the Senate had wasted an entire month (possibly longer) for nothing, or a new precedent would be established functionally ending executive privilege forever.

I can’t say I’m looking forward to this trial but I promise to give these issues the attention they deserve.

The Senate Is Not A Jury

January 10, 2020

On Jan. 15, 1999, near the end of the second day of the Senate impeachment trial of President Bill Clinton, Impeachment Manager Rep. Bob Barr, R-Ga., made a lengthy presentation during which he referred to the senators in his audience as “jurors” no fewer than six times.

At the close of Barr’s speech, Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, raised an objection with Chief Justice William Rehnquist, who was presiding over the trial. “I object to the use and the continued use of the word 'jurors' when referring to the Senate sitting as triers in a trial of the impeachment of the president of the United States,” Harkin said.

After a lengthy argument from the senior senator from Iowa, Rehnquist sustained Harkin’s objection. “The chair is of the view that the objection of the senator from Iowa is well taken,” Rehnquist replied, “that the Senate is not simply a jury; it is a court in this case. Therefore, counsel should refrain from referring to the senators as jurors.”

Not a single senator objected to Rehnquist’s ruling (even though the Senate could have overruled it by a simple majority vote). And no impeachment manager was allowed to refer to the Senate as a jury after Harkin’s objection. The ruling was correct because, according to both the Constitution and historical precedent, senators are absolutely not jurors.

Article I, Section 3, Clause 6 of the Constitution does state that senators “shall be on Oath or Affirmation” when trying an impeachment. And that oath includes the promise to “do impartial justice according to the Constitution and laws,” similar to the oath taken by ordinary juries.

But Article III, Section 2, Clause 3 specifically sets impeachment apart from jury trials, providing that “The trial of all crimes, except in cases of impeachment, shall be by jury.”

Why does the Constitution specifically separate juries from impeachment?

Because the authors of the Constitution knew impeachment – for good or ill – was an inherently political act. James Wilson, one of the nation’s first Supreme Court justices and one of the principal architects of the Constitution, described impeachment as “confined to political characters, to political crimes and misdemeanors, and to political punishments.”

Given the inherently political nature of impeachment, senators neither can nor should set aside political considerations when hearing an impeachment trial. Senators are expected to weigh the best interests of the country in each and every vote and defend the Madisonian institutions of government established by the Constitution from all attacks — including those from politicians who might seek to oust a sitting president over policy disagreements.

By its very nature, the Senate’s role in the impeachment process clearly indicates that senators are not passive observers of the trial. The Constitution gives the Senate the sole power to set its own rules. Under the Senate’s long-established impeachment rules, senators decide what evidence should be heard, how it should be presented and what witnesses should (or should not) be called. They can even override the presiding officer, who in the case of a presidential impeachment is the chief justice.

No jury can do that.

Juries also are expected to be ignorant of the facts of a case before they hear it, and they are generally precluded from serving if they know each other or the defendant. Again, the Senate possesses none of these attributes of a jury.

In Federalist 66, Alexander Hamilton argued that dividing the power of impeachment and removal between the House and Representatives and the Senate would “guard against the danger of persecution, from the prevalency of a factious spirit” in either chamber.

Considering how deeply divided our nation is, there can be little doubt that a “factious spirit” is driving this impeachment. It was both prescient and providential that our founding fathers saw fit to guard against this by placing the final say on conviction and removal not in the hands of the House of Representatives, a court, some specialized tribunal, or even a jury, but in the Senate. We, therefore, must not confuse the role of a jury with that of the Senate in an impeachment trial.

Another Spending Extravaganza

December 20, 2019

John F. Kennedy famously said “to govern is to choose.” But as the omnibus spending bill passed by the House and Senate this week shows, Congress’s defining dysfunction is that it doesn’t choose.

We don’t budget. We don’t reform. We don’t prioritize. We just spend, and hope we’re retired or working as lobbyists or consultants when the bill for our negligence and recklessness comes due.

This omnibus will add $2.2 trillion to the national debt over the next decade. By that time, we will be spending more on interest on the debt than we do on national defense.

Discretionary spending will be set at record-high levels in nearly every category.

Not only does this package feature reckless spending, but it includes many irrelevant bills that it should not – funding broken, inefficient, and even harmful programs.

For instance, this bill reauthorizes the National Flood Insurance Program – a program which subsidizes beachfront properties right in the middle of dangerous flood plains, and which is already in $20.5 billion in debt to American taxpayers – for a full year without a single reform.

The bill also includes $495 million for the Land and Water Conservation Fund – a 13% increase from the last fiscal year, and the highest appropriation it has had in 17 years – for a program that has been of particular detriment to my state of Utah.

The LWCF has been used as a tool for the federal government to greedily acquire more lands, even as it is failing to care for the ones it already owns, with a current maintenance backlog of $19.4 billion.

Worse, in addition to funding broken programs, it funds blatant cronyism.

The bill reauthorizes the Export-Import Bank -- Washington’s favorite corporate favor bank, which doles out taxpayer-backed loans to help American exporters – for a full seven years, without so much as a word of debate.

Their biggest customer is Pemex – Mexico’s famously corrupt, state-owned oil company. So corrupt, in fact, that its own employees collaborate with Mexico’s cartels to facilitate the theft of the best of their oil.

And ranked right after Pemex is the People’s Republic of China, whose state-owned enterprises are granted generous American taxpayer-backed financing for purchases they could fund through their own communist government.

To top things off, a last-minute tax-extenders deal was added to the package late on Monday night – spending billions of dollars on central economic planning and picking winners and losers in the marketplace.

Over the next 10 years, the package provides about $2.7 billion in tax benefits through programs that use the tax code to incentivize businesses to invest in government-selected communities, seeking to control the flow of investment instead of relying on the free market.

And it includes naked handouts to cronyist, special interests.

For example, it spends over $2.1 billion on subsidies for the energy sector – awarding $113 million for coal production on Indian lands, $331 million for facilities to refuel alternative fuel vehicles, and $1.5 billion for biodiesel and renewable diesel tax credits, for instance.

The legislation, however, does include some good measures that I support – like repealing the medical device tax, fixing a tax provision that would inappropriately subject new churches to more taxes, and making retirement account reforms that allow Americans to access these funds in times of particular need.

Sadly, I had to vote against these measures that I do support because they have been lumped into this massive package as a whole.

The thing about these omnibuses is that they put us in a take-it-or-leave it situation. We are given no choice but to support or oppose the whole thing – good and bad measures alike.

Unfortunately, this has become standard practice in the United States Senate. Every year we wait until the last minute to fund the federal government, and every year we spend more, and expand the federal government.

This can’t go on forever. Eventually our borrowing costs will rise. If we don’t start making hard choices now, the choices we have to make in the future will only be harder.

A Bigger Role for Community in Public Education

December 13, 2019

For three decades, education reformers have tried to improve our nation’s schools by injecting “choice” into the public square. These debates often turn contentious, pitting advocates on one side of “school choice” against the other. It’s time for a new chapter in how we think about education.

As laid out a new report from the Joint Economic Committee, which I chair, the American school system would benefit from a greater degree of pluralism – switching from a default of government-provided education to one in which government dollars fund a wide diversity of educational approaches and philosophies.

“Educational pluralism” is a fancy phrase for a simple concept – that we need to give parents more choices in tailoring their child’s education to their family’s needs.

Pluralism is not, however, simply a fancy way of saying “school choice.” It recognizes the vital roles that communities play in forming children in a way that framing education as a strictly individual choice does not. It points out the hollow myth of “neutrality” that the district school system promises, but can never deliver. And it recognizes the importance of maintaining high standards, ensuring that every child has the chance at a quality education.

A pluralistic system of education changes the default – instead of presuming the traditional district model is right for every family, government would see its role as guaranteeing and funding, not necessarily providing, education. A pluralist system offers a wide degree of diversity in educational approaches and philosophies, empowering civil society groups to build strong, supportive communities around every child. It is accompanied by a framework of evaluation that ensures that every school, regardless of which sector of society is operating it, is successfully transmitting knowledge to the students who attend it.

Americans may be unfamiliar with our country’s tradition of pluralist education, and may be unaware that the U.S. is in an outlier in our reliance on government provision of education compared with many other industrialized nations. Even in the days of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, for example, cities of fifty families or more were required to hire schoolteachers so young colonists were not only literate but also familiar with scripture. Today, in Sweden, each child’s per-capita share of funding can be used at a public or private school, and many other countries offer public funds to a wide array of school types.

The U.S. reliance on near-monopolistic state provision of education, however, has not led to narrow achievement gaps between the rich and poor, nor has it elevated debates over curriculum and content above deep-seated divisions. A system developed in the age of the assembly line is ill-suited for an age of innovation.

Shifting our thinking from education as a state-delivered good to one that is state-guaranteed gives us the opportunity to engage religious and community groups in a more meaningful way. Decades of social science research have stressed the importance of functional, intergenerational communities that form a web of supportive relationships around every child.

In many communities, public schools are a great treasure and an invaluable source of social capital. Pluralism does not minimize the value of a great public school, but encourages us to think harder about devolving authority down to the lowest appropriate level, allowing more parents to feel like they have an ownership stake in the direction of the school. A truly pluralist system also implies a level of assessment and accountability that ensures more sectors of society can be engaged in the great work of forming the next generation of citizens.

This approach requires a shift in thinking, but new approaches are sorely needed. It would require policy reforms primarily at the state and local levels. Federal policy can promote it only at the margins, primarily by giving states more flexibility in how the spend federal education dollars.

But we should learn from other countries – and our past – in imagining a better way to engage communities and parents in building an education system in which every child has the chance to thrive.

Making Welfare Reform Great Again

December 6, 2019

Our welfare programs need to provide a hand up, not a hand-out. We must pair government assistance with the tools for work-capable individuals to achieve self-sufficiency.

When welfare reform first inserted work requirements into our welfare system in 1996, some on the left predicted doom for America’s most vulnerable families. Sen. Patrick Moynihan (R-NY) predicted we would “find children sleeping on grates, picked up in the morning frozen.” Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) said we would see “children begging for money, children begging for food, eight- and nine-year old prostitutes.” And Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) called the bill “legislative child abuse.”

But guess what? None of those hysterical prognostications came true.

Between 1996 and 2000 single-mother welfare caseloads fell by 53 percent, their employment rate increased by 10 percentage points, and their poverty rate fell by 10 percent. And the consumption-based poverty rate among single-parent families has continued to fall since then: from 23 percent in 1995, to 15 percent in 2000, to 9 percent in 2010.

Unfortunately, previous administrations have since created loopholes in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, more commonly known as food stamps, that undermined the work requirements at the heart of welfare reform.

The number of SNAP recipients used to rise during recessions and then quickly fall as the economy recovered. But due to eligibility loopholes instituted by the last administration, that didn’t happen after the most recent recession. A full ten years after the recession ended in 2009, the proportion of the U.S. population receiving SNAP is 40 percent higher now than when the recession began in 2007.

We as a nation can and should do better. There are currently an estimated 1.3 million jobs open in our thriving economy, and we must do all we can to move more Americans to self-sufficiency.

Towards that end, the Trump Administration finalized a new regulation this Wednesday designed to close one of the largest loopholes some states are using to undermine welfare reform.

Under current regulations, states can request full or partial waivers from work requirements if they can show that an area has an unemployment rate of 10% or a rate 20% higher than the national average. In 2018, five states and the District of Columbia used this loophole to avoid work requirements and as a result, 44% of able-bodied adults without dependents lived in an area in which the work requirement were not in effect.

Work requirements have a proven record of success in moving people from welfare to self-sufficiency. In 2015, Maine began enforcing work requirements for food stamps despite partial waiver eligibility and saw an 80 percent drop in its work-capable caseload in just three months. Thirteen counties in Alabama saw similar results when they implemented work requirements for food stamps in 2017.

Additionally, the Joint Economic Committee’s Social Capital Project has found that work is a critical source of social capital for struggling communities. Many individuals consider work “a source of meaning and purpose, belonging, pride, friendship, and community.”

The Administration has taken laudable steps to improve work in SNAP, but it is Congress that should be doing more. That is why I plan reintroduce the Welfare Reform and Upward Mobility Act this Congress, which will make changes to the law to strengthen work and protect the integrity of our safety net. I hope that my colleagues will join me in pursuing the goal of getting more Americans off of the sidelines and back to work.

Why Work Matters

November 22, 2019

“What makes work meaningful doesn’t depend on its inspirational nature or on it having a transformative effect on the world,” Manhattan Institute Senior Fellow Oren Cass told the Joint Economic Committee this week. “Work is meaningful because of what it means to the person performing it, what it allows him to provide to his family, and what role it establishes for him in his community.”

Cass went on to document the many ways work has proven to be so important to people’s lives. Unemployed Americans are twice as likely to be depressed than Americans with jobs. Unemployment doubles the risk of divorce. Communities that lack work have higher rates of crime and addiction.

“Work relationships represent a crucial source of social capital, establishing a base from which people can engage in the broader community—whether it’s playing on a softball team, organizing a fund-raising drive, or hosting a field trip for the local preschool,” Cass testified.

Unfortunately for many men, work is no longer a part of their lives. The employment-to-population ratio of working-age men – those between the ages of 25 and 54 – not working, are near levels not seen since the Great Depression. According to the most recent data, 18 percent of working age men are not working, a number higher than anytime during the 1990 and 2001 recessions.

In its report, “Inactive, Disconnected, and Ailing: A Portrait of Prime-age Men Out of the Labor Force,” the Project found that disconnected men are more socially isolated and less happy than their employed peers. At the community level, the disappearance of work can lead to depopulation, brain drain, and the decline of other institutions of civil society.

If we are to expand opportunity by strengthening families, communities, and civil society, we must devote our attention to work—a means of supporting ourselves and our families, a source of meaning and purpose, and a site for affirming and satisfying relationships.

Cass and fellow witness Dr. Veronique de Rugy, a Senior Research Fellow at the Mercatus Center, identified a number of policy changes that could increase the percentage of men that have jobs.

Dr. de Rugy noted that local zoning regulations increase the cost of housing in many good job markets, thus making it harder for lower-income workers to access those jobs. Federal subsidies designed to increase home ownership, but also drive up the cost of housing, make this access to jobs problem even worse.

Many industries that employ low-skill workers, like manufacturing and energy development, face stringent environmental regulations that decrease employment in these sectors. “A country consistently seen as the second-best location for a new factory will watch as factories get built in other places, and the researchers and suppliers and distributors follow—and soon it won’t even be the fifth best location,” Cass explained.

Immigration, especially from poorer countries, can also make it less likely American men will have jobs, Cass argued. “When policies dramatically expand the supply of workers able to meet existing demand, domestic workers will suffer… Entrepreneurs gain access to a vastly larger and cheaper supply of labor, while imperatives vanish to build businesses that use the existing domestic labor supply or make investments in improving domestic workers’ capabilities. This effect swamps the smaller uptick in demand for less-skilled American labor that those workers might expect to see from the poorer countries’ consumers.”

There is no one silver bullet that can provide a job for every American that wants one. But in the coming months, the Joint Economic Committee will be developing a number of policy reforms that should make it easier for anyone who wants a job to find one.

Angels in Adoption

November 15, 2019

The family is the first and most important institution of our society. It is where we learn the first and deepest lessons that inform our behavior and shape us as adults.

By teaching us what it means to live with duties and obligations toward others, the family prepares us for citizenship and teaches us how to live as members of a community.

But not all of us are lucky enough to be born into a stable family. Some children suffer through traumatic experiences like abusive or neglectful parents, or they may have even been orphaned.

Others may have been born to a mother who knew, for whatever reason, that being a parent was not the best choice for her at that time. And God bless those mothers who choose life and bring such joy and happiness to other families by doing so.

There are few acts that personify God’s love better than adoption. The love and sacrifice present when a family extends itself to include an adopted child is one of the most inspiring things Americans do.

That is why it was such a pleasure to meet with Doug and Janet McLain who were honored as “Angels in Adoption” by the Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute this week. Not only have the McLain’s been foster parents for eight years and adopted six children, but they have provided support and training to other foster families through The Adoption Exchange and Utah Foster Care.

“We love fostering and our children have been a huge blessing in our lives,” Janet told CCAI. “They have changed our hearts for the better and we are very blessed to have them in our family.”

Janet knows first-hand just how much of a blessing adoption is for kids as well. She was in foster care from the ages of 2 to 4 and then again from 14 on.

As rewarding as adoption is for many families, it is often hard to find new families willing to take the leap of faith needed to open their home. That is why the Department of Health and Human Services proposed rule ending President Obama’s ban on many faith-based foster care and adoption agencies is so important.

“We’ve reversed the rule implemented in the closing days of the last administration that jeopardized the ability of faith-based providers to serve those in need by penalizing them for their deeply held religious beliefs,” Vice President Pence said at this year’s National Adoption Month Celebration. “We will stand for the freedom of religion and we will stand with faith-based organizations to support adoption.”

The Obama administration had issued a rule in 2016 banning any faith-based group that held a traditional view of marriage from receiving any federal adoption or foster care support. The new HHS rule would overturn that rule, thus allowing faith-based groups to fully cooperate with federal adoption and foster-care promotion efforts.

As the Joint Economic Committee’s Social Capitol Project has thoroughly documented, so many of the foundational institutions of civil society, the connective tissue that facilitates voluntary cooperation, has eroded. Church attendance is down. Americans are less likely to get married and start families and when they do they are doing so later in life. Much of this is due to the changing nature of work in America, but some of it is also due to federal policies that make it harder for voluntary associations, like faith-based groups, to be active in civil society.

We need to find, recruit, and support more heroes like Doug and Janet McLain. Ending the ban on federal support for faith-based foster care and adoption organizations should make that easier.

Making It Easier to Work Together

November 8, 2019

“Government,” Democrats often say, “is simply the name we give to the things we choose to do together."

And while it is true there are many things we do together through government - national defense, interstate highways, and law enforcement to name a few – there are far more things we do together that do not require government programs: producing food, making cars, building homes, and most importantly – raising a family. These activities are all best accomplished by voluntary interactions between citizens.

As Alexis de Tocqueville wrote, “I often saw Americans make great and genuine sacrifices for the public, and I remarked a hundred times that, when needed, the almost never fail to lend faithful support to one another.”

Our federal government has long recognized the importance of voluntary coordination which is why the charitable deduction has been a part of the tax code for decades. But the nature of how Americans practice charity is changing and there are some policy changes we should consider to make it easier for all Americans to give to causes they believe in.

First the good news, charitable giving has risen from 1.6 percent of gross domestic product in 1978 to 2.1 percent in 2018. Unfortunately, while total giving has increased, the percent of Americans giving has decreased from 66 percent in 2000 to 56 percent in 2014. And the drop has been most pronounced among lower-income Americans. Today, just 38 percent of households making $50,000 or less gave o charity, compared to 87 percent of households making more than $150,000.

There are two big reasons we should be concerned that lower-income Americans are giving less while higher-income giving is making up a higher percentage of overall giving.

First, high-income and low-income Americans give to different charitable causes. High-income Americans are far more likely to give to elite educational institutions (like Harvard and Stanford) that provide no value to most Americans. Low-income Americans are far more likely to give to organizations that actually help the poor like the Salvation Army and the United Way.

Second, charitable giving itself helps bind people into a larger community. As the Joint Economic Committee recently wrote in its “The Wealth of Relations” report, “Individual investment in social capital often creates benefits for the entire community, such as norms of trust and reciprocity.” In other words, when people give to their church or local service organization, they are more emotionally invested in that organization, and are more likely to participate in the public goods that organization provides to the community.

There are some steps we should consider taking to make it easier for more Americans to participate in charitable giving. The Joint Economic Committee released a new report this week, “Reforming the Charitable Deduction,” that identifies two such options.

“One reform option,” the report explains, “is to make the charitable deduction more widely available. Perhaps the most common proposal for reform is moving the deduction “above the line,” making it available to both itemizers and non-itemizers. Other above-the-line deductions already exist, such as those for retirement account contributions and student loan interest payments; this reform would simply give the same treatment to the charitable deduction.”

“A second option for reform,” the report notes, “would be to transform the deduction into a credit worth some percent of the value of a taxpayer’s total giving. For example, with a 25 percent credit, someone’s tax liability would fall by 25 percent of the value of all donations, regardless of tax rates or the size of the donations.”

Each of these options comes at a cost in federal revenues, so there is still much to debate. But, if we are serious about rebuilding our civil society by making federal policy more friendly to voluntary cooperation, these are two policy proposals we should consider.

Reforming the Charitable Deduction

The Wealth of Relations