Cato Institute
The Cato Institute is an American libertarian think tank headquartered in Washington, D.C. It was founded in 1977 by Ed Crane, Murray Rothbard, and Charles Koch, chairman of the board and chief executive officer of Koch Industries. Cato was established to focus on public advocacy, media exposure, and societal influence.
Cato advocates for a limited governmental role in domestic and foreign affairs and strong protection of civil liberties, including support for lowering or abolishing most taxes, opposition to the Federal Reserve system and the Affordable Care Act, the privatization of numerous government agencies and programs including Social Security and the United States Postal Service, demilitarization of the police, open borders and adhering to a non-interventionist foreign policy.
According to the 2019 Global Go to Think Tank Index Report, Cato was number 20 in the "Top Think Tanks Worldwide" and number 13 in the "Top Think Tanks in the United States".
History
20th century
The institute was founded in January 1977 in San Francisco, California; named at the suggestion of cofounder Rothbard after Cato's Letters, a series of British essays penned in the early 18th century by John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon.In 1981, Murray Rothbard was removed from the Cato Institute by the board. That same year, Cato relocated to Washington, D.C., settling initially in a historic house on Capitol Hill. The institute moved to its current location on Massachusetts Avenue in 1993.
21st century
In 2009, Cato Institute was the fifth-ranked think tank in the world in a study of think tanks by James G. McGann, at the University of Pennsylvania, based on a criterion of excellence in "producing rigorous and relevant research, publications and programs in one or more substantive areas of research".In 2015, Cato's revenue exceeded $37 million, and the organization had 124 employees on staff. In 2024, its revenue was reported at more than $71 million.
Ideological relationships
Libertarianism and classical liberalism
Many Cato scholars have advocated support for civil liberties, liberal immigration policies, drug liberalization, and the repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell and laws restricting consensual sexual activity. The Cato Institute officially resists being labeled as part of the conservative movement because "'conservative' smacks of an unwillingness to change, of a desire to preserve the status quo".Cato has strong ties to the political philosophy of classical liberalism. According to executive vice president David Boaz, libertarians are classical liberals who strongly emphasize the individual right to liberty. He argues that, as the term "liberalism" became increasingly associated with government intervention in the economy and social welfare programs, some classical liberals abandoned the old term and began to call themselves “libertarians”. Officially, Cato admits that the term “classical liberal” comes close to the mark of labeling its position, but fails to capture the contemporary vibrancy of the ideas of freedom. According to Cato's mission statement, the Jeffersonian philosophy that animates Cato's work has increasingly come to be called 'libertarianism' or 'market liberalism.' It combines an appreciation for entrepreneurship, the market process, and lower taxes with strict respect for civil liberties and skepticism about the benefits of both the welfare state and foreign military adventurism.
In 2006, Markos Moulitsas of the Daily Kos proposed the term "Libertarian Democrat" to describe his particular liberal position, suggesting that libertarians should be allies of the Democratic Party. Replying, Cato's vice president for research Brink Lindsey agreed that libertarians and liberals should view each other as natural ideological allies, and noted continuing differences between mainstream liberal views on economic policy and Cato's "Jeffersonian philosophy".
Objectivism
The relationship between Cato and the Ayn Rand Institute improved with the nomination of Cato's new president John A. Allison IV in 2012. He is a former ARI board member and is reported to be an "ardent devotee" of Rand who has promoted reading her books to colleges nationwide. In March 2015, Allison retired as president, remaining on the board; he was succeeded by Peter Goettler.Positions
The Cato Institute advocates policies that advance "individual liberty, limited government, free markets, and peace". They are libertarian in their policy positions, typically advocating diminished government intervention in domestic, social, and economic policies and decreased military and political intervention worldwide. Cato was cited by columnist Ezra Klein as nonpartisan, saying that it is "the foremost advocate for small-government principles in American life" and it "advocates those principles when Democrats are in power, and when Republicans are in power"; and Eric Lichtblau called Cato "one of the country's most widely cited research organizations." Nina Eastman reported in 1995 that "on any given day, House Majority Whip Tom DeLay of Texas might be visiting for lunch. Or Cato staffers might be plotting strategy with House Majority Leader Dick Armey, another Texan, and his staff."Defense and foreign policy
Cato's non-interventionist foreign policy views, and strong support for civil liberties, have frequently led Cato scholars to criticize those in power, both Republican and Democratic. Cato scholars opposed President George H. W. Bush's 1991 Gulf War operations, President Bill Clinton's interventions in Haiti and Kosovo, President George W. Bush's 2003 invasion of Iraq, and President Barack Obama's 2011 military intervention in Libya. As a response to the September 11 attacks, Cato scholars supported the removal of al Qaeda and the Taliban regime from power, but are against an indefinite and open-ended military occupation of Afghanistan. Cato scholars criticized U.S. involvement in Saudi Arabian-led intervention in Yemen.Ted Galen Carpenter, Cato's vice president for defense and foreign policy studies, criticized many of the arguments offered to justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq. One of the war's earliest critics, Carpenter wrote in January 2002: "Ousting Saddam would make Washington responsible for Iraq's political future and entangle the United States in an endless nation-building mission beset by intractable problems." Carpenter also predicted: "Most notably there is the issue posed by two persistent regional secession movements: the Kurds in the north and the Shiites in the south." But in 2002 Carpenter wrote, "the United States should not shrink from confronting al-Qaeda in its Pakistani lair," a position echoed in the institute's policy recommendations for the 108th Congress. Cato's director of foreign policy studies, Christopher Preble, argues in The Power Problem: How American Military Dominance Makes Us Less Safe, Less Prosperous, and Less Free, that America's position as an unrivaled superpower tempts policymakers to constantly overreach and to redefine ever more broadly the "national interest".
Christopher Preble has said that the "scare campaign" to protect military spending from cuts under the Budget Control Act of 2011 has backfired.
Cato's foreign and defense policies are guided by the view that the United States is relatively secure and so should engage the world, trade freely, and work with other countries on common concerns—but avoid trying to dominate it militarily. As a result, Cato advocates the United States should be an example of democracy and human rights, not their armed vindicator abroad, claiming it has a rich history, from George Washington to Cold War realists like George Kennan. Cato scholars aim to restore this view, with a principled and restrained foreign policy recommendation, to keep the nation out of most foreign conflicts and be cheaper, more ethical, and less destructive of civil liberties.
Domestic policies
Cato scholars have consistently called for the privatization of many government services and institutions, including NASA, Social Security, the United States Postal Service, the Transportation Security Administration, public schooling, public transportation systems, and public broadcasting. The institute opposes minimum wage laws, saying that they violate the freedom of contract and thus private property rights, and increase unemployment.The institute is opposed to expanding overtime regulations, arguing that it will benefit some employees in the short term, while costing jobs or lowering wages of others, and have no meaningful long-term impact. It opposes child labor prohibitions, opposes public sector unions, and supports right-to-work laws. It opposes universal health care, arguing that it is harmful to patients and an intrusion onto individual liberty. It is against affirmative action. It has also called for total abolition of the welfare state, and has argued that it should be replaced with reduced business regulations to create more jobs, and argues that private charities are fully capable of replacing it. Cato has also opposed antitrust laws.
Cato is an opponent of campaign finance reform, arguing that government is the ultimate form of potential corruption and that such laws undermine democracy by undermining competitive elections. Cato also supports the repeal of the Federal Election Campaign Act.
Cato is a fierce foe of the war on drugs, arguing that consenting adults have the right to put any substance they wish to in their bodies and that drug prohibition drives mass incarceration while fueling violent competition between gangs and failing to prevent drug abuse.
Cato has published numerous studies criticizing what it calls "corporate welfare", the practice of public officials funneling taxpayer money, usually via targeted budgetary spending, to politically connected corporate interests.
Cato has published strong criticisms of the 1998 settlement which many U.S. states signed with the tobacco industry.
Cato president Ed Crane and Sierra Club executive director Carl Pope co-wrote a 2002 op-ed piece in The Washington Post calling for the abandonment of the Republican energy bill, arguing that it had become little more than a gravy train for Washington, D.C., lobbyists. Again in 2005, Cato scholar Jerry Taylor teamed up with Daniel Becker of the Sierra Club to attack the Republican Energy Bill as a give-away to corporate interests.
In 2003, Cato filed an amicus brief in support of the Supreme Court's decision in Lawrence v. Texas, which struck down the remaining state laws that made private, non-commercial homosexual relations between consenting adults illegal. Cato cited the 14th Amendment, among other things, as the source of their support for the ruling. The amicus brief was cited in Justice Kennedy's majority opinion for the Court.
In 2004, Cato scholar Daniel Griswold wrote in support of President George W. Bush's failed proposal to grant temporary work visas to otherwise undocumented laborers which would have granted limited residency for the purpose of employment in the U.S.
In 2004, the institute published a paper arguing in favor of "drug reimportation".
In 2006, the Cato Institute published a study proposing a Balanced Budget Veto Amendment to the United States Constitution.
In 2006, Cato published a Policy Analysis criticising the Federal Marriage Amendment as unnecessary, anti-federalist, and anti-democratic. The amendment would have changed the United States Constitution to prohibit same-sex marriage; the amendment failed in both houses of Congress.
A 2006 Cato report by Radley Balko strongly criticized U.S. drug policy and the perceived growing militarization of U.S. law enforcement.
A 2006 study criticized the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
Cato supports same-sex marriage and filed an amicus brief in the case of Obergefell v. Hodges supporting a constitutional right to same-sex marriage.
Cato does not formally oppose capital punishment; however, they have frequently criticized the practice.