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2/12/1965: Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s birthday.

The post Today in Supreme Court History: February 12, 1965 appeared first on Reason.com.

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Carl McCain won $800 on a lottery ticket, but when he went to claim his prize, North Carolina officials told him the money was being taken to pay debts he owed to Lenoir County and Wayne County. North Carolina law allows the state to seize winnings to cover state or local debts, but McCain said the debts weren’t his and that he had never been to those counties. He called county officials and found the debt belonged to someone with a similar name, but their records listed McCain’s Social Security number, causing the mix-up. Still, nothing happened for over a month. Finally, after he reached out to a TV reporter, officials corrected the error and McCain received his winnings in the mail.

The post Brickbat: Luck of the Draw appeared first on Reason.com.

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The post Open Thread appeared first on Reason.com.

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Your representatives may finally grab the feared “third rail” of U.S. politics. When the Social Security and Medicare trust funds run out in the early 2030s, the law is clear: Benefits must be slashed. That would mean a roughly 24 percent cut to Social Security checks and an 11 percent cut to Medicare benefits. But Congress almost certainly won’t let that happen.

The easy, though irresponsible, political path may seem obvious: Change the law, keep benefits whole, and pay by borrowing the money. This way legislators won’t have to cast unpopular votes for spending cuts or tax hikes. This makes sense only if the consequences won’t become clear until much later, after voters have forgotten all about it.

What most people are missing is that this time, the consequences may show up quickly. Inflation may not wait for debt to pile up. It can arrive the moment Congress commits to that debt-ridden path.

Unfortunately, this part may not be so obvious to legislators looking at projections.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, borrowing to cover Social Security and Medicare shortfalls would push federal debt to about 156 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) by 2055. These shortfalls account for roughly $116 trillion, including interest, over those 30 years. In spite of all this debt, the projections assume inflation stays low for decades and interest rates only go up very slowly. That calm outlook is misleading.

Think of government debt like shares in a company, which have value based on what investors believe they will earn in the future. Government debt works the same way: Its value depends on whether those who buy it believe future primary surpluses—revenue minus spending, excluding interest—will be sufficient to pay for that government’s promises and obligations.

When the belief weakens, markets don’t just sit around and wait for the reckoning. They adjust immediately. And in the United States, that adjustment usually shows up as inflation.

We saw this happen just a few years ago, between 2020 and 2022, when Congress approved about $5 trillion in debt-financed spending with no clear payment plan. Households received pandemic stimulus checks, spent them quickly, and saw no reason to expect higher taxes or fewer services. They were right. The post-pandemic era didn’t bring austerity.

Inflation followed, and not simply because the Federal Reserve expanded the money supply. People realized the new debt lacked a credible plan behind it. The dollar’s buying power weakened until the real value of government debt fell back in line with the expected future primary surpluses available to back it. By the time inflation peaked at 9 percent in 2022, federal debt equaling about 10 percent of GDP had effectively been erased through higher prices.

Voters hated the inflation, and they made that clear at the ballot box in 2024.

The entitlement deadline could trigger an even stronger reaction. Senators elected this year will be tempted to borrow everything needed to preserve benefits. But without serious reform, new revenue and spending restraint, investors may not wait to see whether some future Congress eventually finds a way to pay.

If they reprice U.S. debt right away, prices could rise much faster than official forecasts suggest—perhaps almost immediately. Not because the debt is huge (that’s already true), but because people no longer trust the plan behind all that future debt.

At that point, the Fed would be in a terrible position. Raising interest rates to fight inflation would also immediately drive up government borrowing costs on debt that must be rolled over quickly. Paying higher-interest bills with even more debt would be like paying off one credit card with another. The Fed would be forced to choose between tolerating inflation or triggering a deeper fiscal crisis.

Either way, the costs would be severe.

Inflation is a silent, unvoted-on tax. It eats away at savings, pensions, and fixed incomes. It hurts retirees who did everything right and relied on safe assets. It squeezes workers whose paychecks don’t keep up with rising prices. It pushes families to spend more on groceries, rent, energy, and health care. And it distorts the entire economy by rewarding speculation over productive investment.

No one escapes. Not the poor. Not the middle class. Not even the wealthy. It’s the most painful way to finance government promises.

Legislators know this, but reform is hard. The temptation is to borrow, avoid conflict, and let others clean up the mess when political prospects are better. But this time, inflation could break out on the same legislature’s watch. The reckoning will not be postponed, and neither will accountability. As in 2021, voters will pay first, and then they will assign blame.

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The post Politicians Want To Avoid Reforming Social Security and Medicare. You Will Pay the Price. appeared first on Reason.com.

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Yesterday, I testified against the proposed “Preserving a Sharia-Free America Act” at a hearing before the US House of Representatives Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government. This proposed legislation would bar or deport virtually all non-citizen Muslims from the United States by  mandating that “”Any alien in the United States found to be an adherent of Sharia law by the Secretary of State, Secretary of Homeland Security, or Attorney General shall have any immigration benefit, immigration relief, or visa revoked, be considered inadmissible or deportable, and shall be removed from the United States.”

My written testimony is available here. In it, I explained why the proposed law violates the Free Exercise and Free Speech clauses of the First Amendment, and why – if enacted and upheld by the courts – it would set a dangerous precedent, cause great harm to many thousands of innocent people, and damage US national security by giving a propaganda victory to radical Islamist terrorists.

I embed the video of the oral testimony and hearing below. The hearing featured lots of political grandstanding, as is perhaps to be expected, so I can well understand if some readers decide watching the whole thing isn’t worth their time. For those interested, my own opening statement runs from about 1:03 to 1:08:

Notably, the GOP members on the Subcommittee and the other three witnesses (all called by the Republicans; the minority party is allowed only one witness, in this case me) mostly didn’t even try to defend proposed bill. Instead, they focused on various issues with Sharia law that – even if valid – would not require mass deportation or exclusion of migrants to address.

At one point, California Republican Rep. Tom McClintock asked all four witnesses if any of us disagreed with the point that it is unconstitutional for the government to penalize people on the basis of religious belief. Everyone indicated they did not. But such discrimination on the basis of religion is exactly what the proposed legislation would do.

I won’t try to go over the testimony of the other three witnesses in detail. Many of the concerns they raised were hyperbolic, often to the point of ridiculousness. No, there is no real threat that Sharia law is somehow going to take over the US legal system or that of the state of Texas (the focus of much of the testimony). And it is no grave threat to American values if some Muslims plan to establish a private compound where they live in accordance with their religious laws, especially since it turns out the compound in question will not actually enforce Sharia law on residents. Other religious groups do similar things all the time.

On the other hand, there may be some merit to Stephen Gelé’s concerns that US courts sometimes enforce judgments issued by Sharia courts in Muslim dictatorships, in cases where they should not, because it would have harmful or illiberal consequences (e.g. – child custody rulings). The solution to such problems, however, is not to deport Muslim immigrants, but to alter the relevant legal rules on comity and conflict of laws. And, in fairness, Gelé’s testimony did not recommend deportation and exclusion as a fix. If Texas courts are giving too much credence to some types of foreign court decisions, the GOP-dominated Texas state legislature can easily fix that problem!

Finally, the opposing witnesses and others who fear the supposed spread of Sharia law and the impact of Muslim immigrants often act as if Islam and Sharia are a single, illiberal monolith, irredeemably hostile to liberal values. In reality, as noted in my own testimony, there is widespread internal disagreement among Muslims about what their religion entails, as is also true of Christians and Jews. Most Muslim immigrants in the US are not trying to impose Sharia on non-Muslims, or establish some kind of Islamic theocracy.  Indeed, many are themselves refugees from the oppression of radical Islamist dictatorships, such as those in Iran and Afghanistan.

My Cato Institute colleague Mustafa Akyol – a prominent expert on Islamic political thought – makes some additional relevant points on the diversity of Muslim thought in a recent article.

Some Muslims do indeed have awful, reprehensible beliefs on various issues. But there are lots of ways to address any danger that poses, without resorting to censorship, discrimination on the basis of religion, mass deportation, and other unconstitutional and repressive policies. The most obvious solution is to simply enforce the First Amendment’s prohibitions on the establishment of religion, and persecution and discrimination on the basis of religious belief.

This was the third time I have testified in Congress. The other two times were at the invitation of Senate Republicans (see here and here). The issues at the three hearings were very different. But in each case, I tried to defend limits on government power that are essential to protecting individual rights to life, liberty, and property. I doubt my testimony had any great impact. But perhaps it made a small difference at the margin.

The post Oral Testimony at the House Judiciary Subcommittee Hearing on the "Preserving a Sharia-Free America Act" appeared first on Reason.com.

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