When his administration released a plan last week to reduce homelessness 25 percent by 2025, President Joe Biden called it the most ambitious effort yet to get struggling Americans off the streets and to “allow them to thrive.” The plan focuses on providing housing to those who need it most and combatting inequities in housing and health care.

The Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, is calling on Congress to investigate whether the FBI is spying on it and other domestic political groups after public records requests raised the possibility that the Bureau has files on Cato and others.

Patrick Eddington, a research fellow at Cato, has submitted more than 200 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for FBI files on political advocacy groups, civil liberties organizations, think tanks, and publications across the political spectrum.

Free Trade

Cato's economic research examines federal, state, and local spending and tax issues from a limited government perspective. Specifically, Cato's economic research explores the benefits of lower taxes, a significantly reduced federal budget, and less government involvement in market processes.

Social Security is not sustainable without reform. Simply put, it cannot pay promised future benefits with current levels of taxation. Yet raising taxes or cutting benefits will only make a bad deal worse. However, allowing younger workers to privately invest their Social Security taxes through individual accounts will improve Social Security's rate of return; provide better retirement benefits; treat women, minorities, and low-income workers more fairly; and give workers real ownership and control of their retirement funds.

The Jeffersonian philosophy that animates Cato's work has increasingly come to be called "libertarianism" or "market liberalism." Rooted in the traditional American principles of individual liberty and limited government, 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.

Today, there is no greater impediment to American prosperity than the immense body of regulations chronicled in the Federal Register, and academic analysis has documented the economic inefficiencies engendered by the regulatory state. Cato's regulatory studies set forth a market-oriented vision of "regulatory rollback" that relies on the incentive forces of private property rights to create competitive markets and to provide consumer information and protection.

Cato's constitutional scholars address a wide range of constitutional and legal issues — from federalism to economic liberty, property rights, civil rights, criminal law and procedure, asset forfeiture, and term limits, to name just a few. Cato expects the judiciary to be the "bulwark" of our liberties, as James Madison put it, neither making up nor ignoring the law but interpreting and applying it through the natural rights tradition we inherited from the founding generation.

Cato seeks to promote a better understanding around the world of the benefits of market-liberal policy solutions to combat some of the most pressing problems faced by developing nations. In particular, Catos research seeks to advance policies that protect human rights, extend the range of personal choice, and support the central role of economic freedom in ending world poverty. Cato scholars also recognize that open markets mean wider choices and lower prices for businesses and consumers, as well as more vigorous competition that encourages greater productivity.