downsizinggovernment.org is a website of the Cato Institute edited by Chris Edwards, who is described on The Bob Zadek Show as Cato’s Director of Tax Policy Studies and as the author of Downsizing the Federal Government and co-author of Global Tax Revolution. The site is presented across multiple episodes as a collection of Edwards’s writings on federal programs and the case for cutting them. A Libertarian Infrastructure Plan (2017)
Role in the infrastructure episode
Bob Zadek introduced Edwards on the 2017 infrastructure episode as “the editor of downsizinggovernment.org,” promising “more about that as the show progresses.” In the same introduction Zadek described Edwards as Cato’s Director of Tax Policy Studies, an expert on federal and state tax and budget issues, and the author of Downsizing the Federal Government and co-author of Global Tax Revolution. The episode’s framing was Zadek’s: he opened with a quotation attributed to Milton Friedman — that it costs any government at least twice as much to do something as it costs anyone else — and challenged the political narrative that American infrastructure is “decrepit” and declining. Zadek listed roads, bridges, airports, train lines, air traffic control and “the piping, the underground America” as the infrastructure in question, and asked who owns it, who should own it, who should maintain it, who should build it, and how it should be paid for. A Libertarian Infrastructure Plan (2017)
Edwards’s own contributions in the excerpted portion are brief: he thanks Zadek for having him on the show. The substantive case for private ownership and management of infrastructure, and the argument that market forces are more efficient than government spending, are attributed in the excerpt to the episode’s framing rather than to a specific quoted passage from Edwards. The excerpt breaks off at the section heading “Is Our Infrastructure Really Decrepit?” so the discussion that follows is not available here. A Libertarian Infrastructure Plan (2017)
Tax transparency and the site as a resource
On the December 2020 episode, Edwards returned to discuss tax transparency. Zadek argued that because consumers ultimately pay all taxes, he wished every consumer received a single bill from the federal and state governments stating a pro-rata share of the cost of government — he offered the figure of a $58,000 tax bill — rather than buried sales taxes and itemized utility, cell phone and cable charges. Zadek said government “has been very skillful at having others be its tax collector so they get the heat and not the government.” Edwards agreed entirely, calling taxes the price of government and saying the price should be labeled clearly and transparently, comparing it to clearly labeled prices in a grocery store or at Walmart. Is it too late to step back from the edge of fiscal insanity? (2020)
Edwards proposed eliminating what he called excess tax bases at both the federal and state levels. For states with both an income tax and a retail sales tax, he said, one of the taxes should be eliminated. He gave Washington state, with a sales tax and no income tax, and Oregon, with an income tax and no sales tax, as examples of what he called good systems. The goal, he said, was to simplify and make taxes transparent and visible so people can see the burden of government. Is it too late to step back from the edge of fiscal insanity? (2020)
Asked how listeners could follow his writing at Cato, Edwards said he is easy to find at Chris Edwards at Cato, that he can be followed on Twitter, and that the website downsizinggovernment.org has his writings about the federal programs that need to be cut and why. He added that his email is on the Cato site and that he hoped people would go to some of the writings there. Zadek closed the segment by proposing that he and Edwards “light a candle tonight and pray for sequestration again,” calling those “the good old days.” Is it too late to step back from the edge of fiscal insanity? (2020)
Debt, taxes and the site’s stated purpose
On the November 2021 episode, Zadek introduced Edwards as Cato’s Director of Tax Policy and as editor of downsizinggovernment.org, which Zadek said “is available through the auspices of Cato.” Zadek framed the episode around the prevalence of fiscal policy in the news — billionaire taxes, increasing the debt, raising corporate and individual income taxes, a global minimum corporate tax, increasing capital gains rates, changing the minimum tax, and “paying fair share” — and said that as listeners observe and vote on pocketbook issues they ought to understand what is going on. He described Edwards as a top expert on federal and state tax and budget issues. Debt & Taxes (2021)
In the later segment, Edwards argued that wealth from innovation benefits everyone and that innovation does not come from government. He cited startup companies such as Apple Computer, whose founders he said had bold ideas and found private funding, and the breakthrough vaccines from Moderna of Massachusetts and BioNTech of Germany, which he described as privately funded innovations that did not depend on government subsidies. He said that Moderna’s profits on its vaccine would be reinvested into new innovation and development, and that innovation and wealth go hand in hand and are something the private sector can do and always has done and the government cannot do. Debt & Taxes (2021)
On the national debt, Zadek noted the figure of 28, 29 trillion dollars and growing, and asked how one would know when the tipping point had been reached, observing that predictions of a tipping point had recurred throughout his life without the country tipping. Edwards answered that all debt is a cost pushed forward to the future, that the 28 trillion dollars of borrowings would ultimately have to be repaid in interest and principal, and that every dollar of it reduces the standard of living of children in the future. He said that when countries get above around 90% of GDP in debt it really starts reducing economic growth, and that Greece, when it went into its big crisis a decade or so earlier, was at about the same level of debt as the United States now. He said he thinks a giant financial crisis will come but that no one knows when. Debt & Taxes (2021)
Zadek pushed back on the Greece comparison, saying it may be misleading because Greece was not the reserve currency and the United States is, and that the dynamics differ between people stopping buying US debt and stopping buying Greek debt. Edwards responded that because the United States is about a fifth of the entire world economy, a giant financial crisis there would be much more disastrous for the global economy than Greece’s was for Europe, and that in his view it is even worse that a big country like the United States is in debt than a small country like Greece. Debt & Taxes (2021)
Asked again how listeners could follow his work, Edwards said they could Google Chris Edwards and that he also runs Cato’s website downsizinggovernment.org. He said that if listeners want to know what the solution to all this is, it ultimately is cutting government spending programs, and that is what the downsizinggovernment.org website is all about. Zadek closed by identifying Edwards as Cato’s Director of Tax Policy and thanking him for an enjoyable hour on debt and taxes. Debt & Taxes (2021)
Across episodes: the site as a recurring destination
The excerpts show no development in how downsizinggovernment.org is described. In the 2017 infrastructure episode Zadek identifies Edwards as the site’s editor and promises more about it later; in December 2020 Edwards directs listeners to it for his writings on federal programs that need cutting; in November 2021 Zadek again introduces Edwards as its editor and Edwards again points listeners to it as the place explaining that the solution is cutting government spending programs. The constant across the three episodes is Edwards’s role as editor and the site’s stated purpose of collecting his writing on spending cuts; what changes is only the surrounding subject matter — infrastructure, tax transparency, and debt and taxes. A Libertarian Infrastructure Plan (2017) Is it too late to step back from the edge of fiscal insanity? (2020) Debt & Taxes (2021)
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not describe the site’s founding date, organizational structure, funding, or any of its specific articles or publications by name. They do not state when Edwards became its editor or what relationship it has to Cato beyond Zadek’s statement that it is available through Cato’s auspices and Edwards’s references to it as Cato’s website. No excerpt describes the site’s design, readership, or any content beyond Edwards’s characterization of it as collecting his writings on federal programs to cut. The infrastructure excerpt breaks off before the discussion of whether infrastructure is decrepit, so the site’s treatment of that subject is not available here.