WASHINGTON, May 12 (UPI) -- The UPI think tank wrap-up is a daily digest covering opinion pieces, reactions to recent news events and position statements released by various think tanks. This is the first of several wrap-ups for May 12. Contents: EPA and Army Corps try to define "wetland"; battle of how to teach Sept. 11; no good tax bill without Glenn Hubbard.
The Heartland Institute
(HI is a libertarian think tank that aims to promote social movements in support of ideas such as parental choice in education, market-based approaches to environmental protection, privatization of public services, and deregulation following the principle that property rights and markets do a better job than government bureaucracies. Supported by private contributions, HI does not accept government funds or conduct "contract" research for special interest groups.)
EPA and Army Corps of Engineers attempt to define "wetland"
By Gary Baise and Bryan Brendle
CHICAGO -- The Bush administration appears poised to redefine what constitutes a "wetland" for purposes of the Clean Water Act. Doing so may expedite construction projects and agricultural activity in many parts of the country and bring some common sense to EPA's wetland permitting program.
On Jan. 10, EPA and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers announced two actions long anticipated by industry and agricultural stakeholders: the issuance of a guidance document clarifying the federal government's jurisdiction over wetlands; and an Advance Notice of Proposed Rule Making, or ANPRM, that will elicit data to help EPA determine whether formal rulemaking will be necessary to further clarify the extent of the federal government's power over wetlands.
The agencies have taken these actions in response to the U.S. Supreme Court's decision nearly two years ago in the case Solid Waste Agency of Northern Cook County vs. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, known as SWANCC, which limited federal authority under the CWA to regulate isolated or intermittent wetlands.
As a general matter, "the CWA protects wetlands, streams, and other waters from discharges of pollutants by requiring permits with appropriate environmental safeguards before a discharge may be authorized." In the SWANCC decision, the Supreme Court held the corps had exceeded its CWA regulatory authority by using the Migratory Bird Rule to exercise "jurisdiction over isolated intrastate non-navigable ponds."
EPA claims the decision leaves unprotected one-fifth of the nation's hundred million acres of wetlands.
Addressing industry concerns, the undersecretary for the Army and acting assistant secretary of the Army for civil works stated the two-pronged strategy -- the guidance and ANPRM -- is "important because the corps'... regulatory officers and the regulated community now have guidance which more clearly describes the scope of jurisdiction for which permits are required."
According to Army officials, the ANPRM is also intended to solicit data from the regulated community that will further clarify the federal government's role in limiting construction activity and farming near wetlands. The government's action attempts to bolster the administration's policy of attaining "no new net loss of wetlands."
According to a statement from EPA, the new guidance document affirms the following policies:
-- Field staff should continue to assert jurisdiction over traditional navigable waters (and adjacent wetlands) and, generally speaking, their tributary systems (and adjacent wetlands).
-- Field staff should not assert CWA jurisdiction over isolated waters that are both intrastate and non-navigable, where the sole basis available for asserting CWA jurisdiction rests on any of the factors listed in the Migratory Bird Rule.
-- Field staff should seek formal, project-specific headquarters approval prior to asserting jurisdiction over isolated non-navigable intrastate waters based on other types of interstate commerce links listed in current regulatory definitions of "waters of the U.S."
This is where EPA exerts major influence in stopping construction and highway projects.
The government's action follows up on a Dec. 2002 regulatory guidance letter on compensatory mitigation and the launch of a new "National Wetlands Mitigation Action Plan listing 17 action items that federal agencies will undertake to improve the effectiveness of wetlands restoration."
Legislation recently enacted by Congress bolsters the administration's new policy. Under the Conservation Security Program adopted as part of the 2002 agriculture bill, farmers will receive payments for engaging in practices that enhance environmental quality, including wetlands mitigation and protection.
Under the President's budget proposal for fiscal year 2004, unveiled on Feb. 3, approximately $2 billion will be earmarked for the CSP over the next 10 years.
By requiring EPA field staff to acquire project approval from EPA headquarters when adopting different definitions of "waters of the U.S." for wetlands projects, the administration appears to be centralizing decision-making and expediting creation of a uniform standard with which industry may more easily comply.
The administration is also making it clear EPA and Corps staff cannot declare an isolated wetland as a protected water when the sole basis for the determination arises from factors listed under the Migratory Bird Rule. Both efforts are good news for private businesses operating near protected wetlands.
(Gary Baise and Bryan Brendel are attorneys with the Washington, D.C.-based law firm of Baise and Miller PC, specializing in legislative and regulatory affairs focusing on energy, environment, and agricultural issues.)
The Hoover Institution
The social studies wars
By Chester E. Finn Jr.
STANFORD, Calif. -- The fracas over what to teach children about Sept. 11, 2001, revealed a deep fault line within the school subject known as "social studies."
Put simply, one camp believes that social studies classes should help children feel good about themselves, be nice to others, and learn to respect all cultures, with minimal attention to traditional history, geography, and civics. The other camp holds that the schools' job is to transmit information to children about their shared American culture, how it works, and where it came from.
Guess which side is winning?
The overwhelming majority of Sept. 11 curricular guidance that teachers received from the National Council for the Social Studies, the National Association of School Psychologists, the National Education Association, and many others focused on pop psychotherapy. A year after the attacks, the underlying assumption in the renewed flood of instructional advice was still that children needed to be comforted, reassured, and admonished not to cast blame or show bias toward any group, religion, or country.
There was little in the curricular suggestions about who attacked us and why. There was even less about America's core values of freedom and equality and why the world's fanatics and fundamentalists abhor these. There was nothing about the difference between democracy and theocracy.
Although New York's noble firefighters and police came in for some praise, little was made of the many acts of heroism on Sept. 11 and nary a word about the brutal villains who killed thousands of innocents on that bright September morning. Nor were there lessons from history about how America responded on previous occasions when its principles have been challenged, its freedoms attacked, and its sovereignty assaulted.
Not surprisingly, "patriotism" was almost completely absent from these recommended lesson plans. One was more apt to find warnings against jingoism.
Many teachers sensibly ignored all this advice and did what they thought right. The youngsters I spoke to about Sept. 11 reported that on the anniversary they wore something red, white, and blue to school, recited the Pledge of Allegiance, maybe spent a few minutes remembering the events of a year earlier, and (in private schools) said a prayer. That was about it. Then back to multiplication and division, verbs and nouns, whatever.
Perhaps an important "teachable moment" was thus wasted. But at least these teachers did not make matters worse on Sept. 11. Yet the social studies curriculum for which they are responsible all year long, day in and day out, is far more apt to embrace the worldview of the National Council for the Social Studies than the priorities of patriotic Americans, as are the textbooks, the ed-school courses in which tomorrow's teachers are prepared, and their professional journals.
Social studies needs a top-to-bottom overhaul. We will do an important service to the memory of our heroes and those they left behind if, by Sept. 11, 2003, this overhaul is well under way.
(Chester E. Finn Jr. is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution; chairman of Hoover's Koret Task Force on K–12 Education; and president of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation.)
The National Center for Policy Analysis
(The NCPA is a public policy research institute that seeks innovative private sector solutions to public policy problems.)
Where's Glenn Hubbard when you need him?
By Bruce Bartlett
DALLAS -- Back in January, I wrote that the departure of Council of Economic Advisers Chairman Glenn Hubbard from the White House reduced the chances of getting a good tax bill this year. Unfortunately, my prediction is coming true.
Hubbard was the key person who convinced President Bush that elimination of the double taxation of corporate profits should be the centerpiece of his tax proposal. Hubbard is probably the leading expert on the subject in the United States among economists, and author of a definitive study on the subject that was published by the Treasury Department in 1992.
Hubbard's reasoning is impeccable. Double taxation of corporate profits raises the cost of capital, reduces investment, slows growth and costs jobs. That is why almost every other major country offers some provision for redressing double taxation, according to a Cato Institute study.
Interestingly, one reason for Japan's amazing postwar growth is that it adopted much lighter taxes on businesses at the behest of the United States. In a 1949 report to Gen. Douglas MacArthur, a group of American economists led by Carl Shoup recommended that Japan avoid double taxing corporate profits. Their analysis is still valid today:
"The corporation has always exerted a certain fatal fascination for the legislator looking for a source of additional revenue. Corporations are impersonal entities, often without the ability to voice as strong a political protest as other groups of taxpayers. Thus it is that ...heavy taxes are imposed on the corporation with hardly any semblance of economic justification or logic, merely because such taxes are found politically popular, easy to administer, and productive of substantial revenues.
"Fundamentally, however, a corporation is but a particular kind of aggregation of individuals, formed for the purpose of carrying on a given business. Provided that the corporation does not become unduly large, and that it conducts itself with proper attention to the rules laid down by law, there is no reason, in principle, either to encourage individuals to use the corporate form or to deter them from using it.
"Ordinarily, therefore, it is not proper to impose a substantially heavier tax on business done in the corporate form than on business done through an unincorporated enterprise, or vice versa. Any such differential will, in fact, tend to impair the efficiency with which the economy is operated by inducing a movement away from that form or organization which is most efficient in production towards that form of organization that is given the lighter tax burden."
Fortunately for the Japanese, they followed this advice and implemented a tax reform based on the Shoup recommendations. Unfortunately for the United States, we never implemented anything similar. Although previous presidents, including Democrats like Jimmy Carter, talked about reducing double taxation, only George W. Bush actually made a serious effort to do so.
Still, it is important to keep in mind that reducing or eliminating the double taxation of corporate profits is only a means to an end, not an end in itself. The goal is to raise growth and incomes, and Bush's plan is just one way of doing so. House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Bill Thomas, Republican of California, also has a good proposal that would cut the top tax rate on dividends and capital gains to 15 percent.
Economist Kevin Hassett of the American Enterprise Institute has calculated that the Thomas plan would reduce the cost of capital by as much as the Bush plan, and thus have a similar impact on growth. Unfortunately, the Bush administration still seems wedded to full elimination of double taxation, even though it costs more than the congressional budget resolution allows.
To get even a semblance of the Bush plan will require economically unsound compromises such as phasing it in over a period of years, sunsetting the legislation after a short time, or capping the benefits at $500 per taxpayer, as the Senate Finance Committee has proposed. These measures would be far inferior to the Thomas plan, which has a much better chance of passage than the original Bush plan.
If Glenn Hubbard were still in the White House, I have no doubt that President Bush would understand that pride of authorship is unimportant; passing legislation that will boost growth by cutting the cost of capital -- however it is done -- should be the legislative goal.
Unfortunately, his successor, economist Greg Mankiw, is still unconfirmed by the Senate, and thus in a weaker position to exercise influence. In fact, the whole Council of Economics Advisers has been physically banished from the White House.
All presidential initiatives necessarily require compromise to attain congressional passage. At the end of the day, it is important that administrations clearly understand what they are really trying to accomplish. Sometimes the same goal can be attained in different ways than the administration proposed. Presidents should not be afraid to follow a different path if it gets them to the same destination.
(Bruce Bartlett is a senior fellow with the National Center for Policy Analysis.)
