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The Cato Institute is a large libertarian think tank headquartered in Washington, D.C..

The Institute's stated mission is "to broaden the parameters of public policy debate to allow consideration of the traditional American principles of limited government, individual liberty, free markets, and peace" by seeking greater involvement of the "lay public in questions of public policy and the role of government."

History

The Institute was founded in San Francisco, California in 1977 by Edward H. Crane and initially funded by Charles G. Koch. The Institute is named after Cato's Letters, a series of British essays penned in the early 18th century expounding the political views of philosopher John Locke. The essays were named after Cato the Younger, the defender of republican institutions in Rome.

An important founding member was Murray Rothbard, one of Cato's original three board members and the one who suggested its name. Rothbard later came into sharp disagreement with other members, and left in 1981.

Cato relocated to Washington, D.C., in 1981, settling first in a townhouse on Capitol Hill. The institute moved to its current location on Massachusetts Avenue in 1993.

In November 2002, shortly after Cato's website was named the "Best Advocacy Website" by the Web Marketing Association, the Alexa ratings service issued a report saying that it was "the most popular think tank site over the past three months," receiving a total of 188,901 unique visitors during the previous month of September*.

Publications

The Cato Institute publishes the periodicals Cato Journal, Regulation, Cato Supreme Court Review, and Cato Policy Report; policy studies; and books, such as Social Security: The Inherent Contradiction; In Defense of Global Capitalism; Voucher Wars; You Can't Say That!: The Growing Threat to Civil Liberties from Antidiscrimination Laws; Peace and Freedom: A Foreign Policy for a Constitutional Republic; Restoring the Lost Constitution; and Reclaiming the Mainstream: Individualist Feminism Reconsidered. They published Inquiry magazine from 1977 to 1984.

Ideology

According to its motto, the Cato Institute advocates policies that advance "individual liberty, limited government, free markets, and peace.” Cato scholars are libertarian in their policy positions, typically advocating diminished government intervention in domestic social and economic policies and decreased military and political intervention worldwide. Specific policy proposals advanced by Cato scholars include such measures as abolishing the minimum wage, reforming illegal-drug policies, eliminating corporate welfare and trade barriers, diminishing federal government involvement in the marketplace and in local and state issues, enhanced school choice, and abolishing government-enforced discrimination along with restrictions on discrimination by private parties.

Cato and conservatism

Though officially nonpartisan, Cato is sometimes linked in media reports to the conservative movement. The Goldwater and Reagan movements in the GOP and in U.S. conservatism were in part rooted in libertarian ideals, and some Republican and conservative officeholders have seemed receptive to Cato policy proposals over the past quarter-century.

However, the institute has increasingly distanced itself from Republican standardbearers in recent years and bristles at being lumped in with the conservative movement because "'conservative' smacks of an unwillingness to change, of a desire to preserve the status quo." *

This may be attributed to the growing support among Republican officeholders of government intervention in the economy and society, increased government spending under the George W. Bush administration, and neo-conservative foreign policy. For instance, only a minority of Republican congressmembers supported President George W. Bush’s 2005 proposals to partially privatize Social Security, an idea strongly backed by the Cato Institute and in accordance with Cato’s laissez-faire economic philosophy. Cato scholars have also been strongly critical of the expansion of executive power under the Bush administration and of the Iraq War.

Cato on Social Security

The Cato Institute established its Project on Social Security Privatization in 1995, renaming it the Project on Social Security Choice in 2002. The change followed a shift in the overall conservative critique of Social Security, which gravitated away from policy suggestions of doing away with the program and instead embraced the idea of giving citizens a choice of whether or not to participate in the program. For that philosophical reason and for PR value, the conservative Social Security reform movement repudiated the term "privatization" as a description of its policies *.

Cato's Social Security proposal involves giving workers the option to invest half of their contributions (6.2 per cent) in individual accounts, in return for forgoing the accrual of any future Social Security entitlements. For workers selecting this option, future claims on already-accrued Social Security benefits could be sold as bonds, allowing the workers to have present access to those monies. However, for these workers, past and future "payroll tax" contributions to Social Security, nominally made on behalf of the employer, would go to funding the Social Security benefits of people remaining in the traditional system

Cato's plan rests on the assumption the individual accounts can earn higher returns than Social Security, without an offsetting increase in risk. This controversial assumption reflects the equity premium puzzle, that the rate of return on equity (in which individual accounts would be invested) is higher, relative to bonds (in which Social Security is invested) than appears to be justified by a risk premium. *

Cato on police and military powers

Cato’s social or foreign policy ideas are also generally not popular among Republicans. Cato was opposed to President George W. Bush's 2003 invasion of Iraq, favors the legalization of all drugs, and opposes the USA Patriot Act. Cato also disagreed with President George H. W. Bush's decision to fight the first Gulf War. In 2003 Cato supported the Supreme Court’s decision in Lawrence v. Texas, which struck down the few remaining state laws that made private and noncommercial sexual relations between consenting adults illegal.

Cato on other domestic issues

Cato stongly criticized the 1998 settlement that many U.S. states signed with the tobacco industry. Among other laissez faire policies, they have argued for easier access for immigrants to enter the U.S. work force [http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=2904.

The Cato Institute also proposes, in Policy Analysis #487, amending the United States Constitution to implement a balanced budget veto amendment, which would act, according to the Institute, as a self-enforcing mechanism to reduce deficit spending by the U.S. government.

Cato on environmental policy

The Cato Institute holds regular briefings on global warming with known "climate skeptics" as panelists. In December 2003, panelists included Patrick Michaels, Robert Balling and John Christy, all of whom disagree with the scientific mainstream on the issue of climate change.

No known mechanism can stop global warming in the near term. International agreements, such as the Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, would have no detectable effect on average temperature within any reasonable policy time frame of 50 years or so, even with full compliance. Chapter 47 of the Cato Handbook for Congress, 107 Congress
In response to the World Watch Report in May 2003 that linked climate change and severe weather events: "It's false. There is absolutely no evidence that extreme weather events are on the increase. None. The argument that more and more dollar damages accrue is a reflection of the greater amount of wealth we've created." - Jerry Taylor Source: "Enviro Trends: Poor to Bear Brunt of Climate Change. 3 May 2003"

Funding

The Cato Institute is classified as a 501(c)(3) organization under the federal Internal Revenue Code. The institute performs no contract research and does not accept government funding. For revenue, the institute is largely dependent on contributions.

According to its 2005 annual report, the Cato Institute had 2005 expenses of $17.2 million and revenue of $22.4 million. The report notes that 83% of Cato's income that year came from individual contributions, 11% from foundations, 2% from corporations, and 4% from "programs and other income" (e.g., publication sales, program fees).

According to one critical source , in the 17 years spanning 1985 to 2001, the Institute received $15,633,540 in 108 separate grants from eight different foundations:

Rupert Murdoch has served on the board of directors of Cato, and was at the time also on the board of tobacco company Phillip Morris.

It has been reported by critical sources that Cato has received substantial funding from Phillip Morris and other tobacco companies, though it was never more than 1 or 2 % of the institute's funding.

The Knight Ridder newspapers reported that the Institute had received backing from "the American International Group, an insurance and financial services company whose business includes managing U.S. retirement plans" as Social Security reform has become a more prominent issue. *

Cato, Ayn Rand, and Objectivism

Ayn Rand in her later years condemned the libertarian movement; nonetheless a portrait of Rand is placed outside of Cato's Hayek Auditorium as part of its Pantheon of great libertarian thinkers. The current president of the Objectivist Center is Ed Hudgins, who was long a Cato staffer before taking this position.

Cato has very warm relations with David Kelley and other "renegade" Objectivists, while the Objectivists who support Rand's heir Leonard Peikoff and the Ayn Rand Insitute oppose all libertarian organizations. When Cato Executive Vice-President David Boaz created an anthology of libertarian essays, Peikoff refused to allow any of Rand's works to be included. Boaz still felt he had to include a work of Ayn Rand's in his book, so he printed the famous Playboy Interview of Ayn Rand, whose copyright Rand's heirs did not control.

Notable associates

Policy scholars

Adjunct scholars

Fellows

Associates in the news

Several Cato Institute affilliated scholars have achieved academic distinction, including Nobel laureates F. A. Hayek, James M. Buchanan, and Vernon L. Smith.

Cato senior fellow Randy Barnett argued the Raich v. Gonzales case in front of the Supreme Court in 2004. Mencken Fellow P. J. O'Rourke is the bestselling author of Parliament of Whores, All the Trouble in the World, and other books.

In 1999, David Platt Rall, a prominent environmental scientist, died in a car accident. Steven Milloy, at the time a Cato adjunct scholar, celebrated Rall's tragic death on his site junkscience.com, writing: "Scratch one junk scientist who promoted the bankrupt idea that poisoning rats with a chemical predicts cancer in humans exposed to much lower levels of the chemical -- a notion that, at the very least, has wasted billions and billions of public and private dollars." Cato Institute President Edward Crane called Milloy's attack an "inexcusable lapse in judgement and civility", but Milloy refused to apologize. He retained his position with Cato until the end of 2005. Following renewed controversy over the financial support Milloy received from tobacco companies, while writing editorial pieces favorable to them, Milloy's name was removed from the list of Cato adjunct scholars.

In December 2005, Doug Bandow, a senior scholar at the Cato Institute, admitted taking secret payments from lobbyist Jack Abramoff in exchange for writing columns for the Copley News Service favorable to Abramoff clients (the columns did not, apparently, deviate from Bandow's own views). The news service suspended Bandow's column, and Bandow resigned from Cato on December 15.

Adjunct scholar Robert L. Bradley, Jr was a speechwriter for disgraced Enron CEO Kenneth Lay.

Milton Friedman Prize

Since 2002, the Cato Institute has awarded the Milton Friedman Prize for Advancing Liberty every two years to "an individual who has made a significant contribution to advancing human freedom." The prize comes with a cash award of States dollar|$" target="_blank" >*500,000.

Past recipients

See also

Former staff and faculty

External links

1977 establishments | Bradley Foundation | District of Columbia | Koch family | Libertarianism | New Right (United States) | Non-profit organizations based in the United States | Political and economic think tanks

Cato Institute | Cato Institute | Cato Institute | ケイトー研究所 | Cato-instituutti | Cato Institute

 

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "Cato Institute".

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