Week in Review: President Biden’s Plan is No Match for Goldwater’s Solutions

This week, President Joe Biden delivered his first address to a joint session of Congress, offering up plans to expand the size and scope of the federal government and its role in our lives. But the Goldwater Institute has a plan, too—one that reduces the role of government and empowers Americans to live freer, happier lives.

President Biden called for a massive increase in federal spending on infrastructure (as he loosely defines it) to put Americans back to work. But Goldwater’s Breaking Down Barriers to Work law—on the books in more than a dozen states and counting—is already making it easier for Americans to work by ensuring their professional licenses are universally recognized when they move to a new state. 

President Biden called for a federal program to prevent, detect, and treat diseases like Alzheimer’s, diabetes, and cancer. But it’s government that frequently stands between patients and innovative treatments. The Goldwater Institute’s Right to Try law, passed into federal law in 2019, helps terminally ill Americans access investigational treatments. And this year, we released a blueprint to reform the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, take Right to Try to the next level, and ensure that patients can access cutting-edge treatments today—not in the distant future.

And President Biden called for expanding the federal government’s role in funding preschool and community colleges. What he didn’t call for was giving parents something they desperately need: educational options and true choice in education. At the Goldwater Institute, we understand that having those options can be crucial in helping a student succeed. We have led the charge nationally to expand school choice through education savings accounts, which help give parents—not the government—the power to decide which educational options are right for their children.

The Goldwater Institute is fighting every day to help all Americans live freer, happier lives—not by growing government, but by expanding freedom and turning state-based reforms that put people first, not Washington, D.C. You can read more about those efforts here.

Goldwater Reforms Head to AZ Governor’s Desk

Two Goldwater Institute reforms are headed to Arizona Governor Doug Ducey’s desk—and both of them will help free Arizonans from the heavy hand of government.

On Wednesday, the Arizona Senate voted nearly unanimously in favor of House Bill 2810, which requires the government get a criminal conviction before taking someone’s property. Sponsored by Rep. Travis Grantham, this reform is a bipartisan-backed effort, also passing the Arizona House with near-unanimous support. Right now in Arizona, government can take your car, your cash, even your house and hold it forever—even when you haven’t been charged with any crime. But HB 2810 would change that, putting the onus on government to prove that the property was being used in connection to illegal activity instead of having an innocent owner prove it was not.

Goldwater Institute Director of Government Affairs Jenna Bentley joined “The Conservative Circus with James T. Harris” radio show on Friday to talk about how HB 2810 would be “a huge, huge step forward for Arizona”—and how civil asset forfeiture reform is garnering strong bipartisan support across the country. You can listen to the full interview here.

And then on Thursday, the Arizona Senate also gave strong bipartisan support to a bill that will ensure Arizonans can more easily and flexibly access medical care now and after the pandemic. HB 2454 builds the COVID-era relaxation of telehealth rules and making them permanent, so that patients can talk to medical providers and obtain some types of care via phone, smartphone, or computer. In a new op-ed at the Washington Examiner, Arizona Rep. Regina Cobb and Goldwater Director of Healthcare Policy Naomi Lopez write that with this bill, “Arizona is setting a national example for how to leverage 21st-century medicine and technology for many more people and bring us much closer to realizing the still-unmet promise of easier healthcare access.” You can read their full op-ed here.

TUESDAY: The Socialist Temptation Virtual Book Event

Three decades ago, socialism seems completely discredited. So why is socialism resurging, even on our very own shores?

This Tuesday (May 4) at 11 a.m. Arizona time / 2 p.m. EDT, Iain Murray, Vice President for Strategy and senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, will join Goldwater Institute Vice President for Litigation Timothy Sandefur for a discussion of his book The Socialist Temptation. In the book, Murray examines why people—especially young people—are drawn to socialism and why socialism betrays all of the promises it makes. This webinar promises to be a fascinating discussion of America’s resurging fascination with socialism despite its economic, moral, and political failures—and what we can do about it.

You can learn more about this book event and register here.