Romina Boccia of the Cato Institute argues against earmarks in legislation:
Supporters of earmarks insist that they are central to Congress’s exercising its constitutional power of the purse. But while legislators have jurisdiction to appropriate government funds and the responsibility to oversee how those funds are being used, this doesn’t mean that Congress should override statutory formulae or competitive award processes it passed into law to pay favors to influential local groups.
To the degree that Congress leaves too much discretion to the executive to determine federal funding allocations, it should address that issue directly, instead of bypassing administrative processes on a whim.
Reflecting on the decades of merger challenges brought to that point under the Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914, Justice Potter Stewart observed in 1966 that “the sole consistency I can find” is that “the Government always wins.”
Mercifully, U.S. courts and antitrust-enforcement agencies have largely followed a different path in the years since Justice Stewart’s trenchant observation. Acknowledging that American antitrust jurisprudence had lacked defining principles, beginning in the 1970s, they turned toward economic reasoning to develop a consistent framework for determining antitrust violations. The result has been the elevation of consumer welfare as antitrust regulation’s fundamental concern. Based on this criterion, economic analysis is applied to business conduct alleged to be anticompetitive to determine the likely impact on consumers. Higher prices for goods or services, lower quality, or less output are the characteristic harms to be avoided.
Unfortunately, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) under chairwoman Lina Khan wants to rewind the clock.
David Bahnsen talks to economics professor Alexander Salter about monetary policy and central banking on the latest episode of the Capital Record. Listen here, or wherever you get your podcasts.