Cato Institute

Peter Goettler, President & CEO

Peter Goettler joined the Cato Institute’s board in 2014 and has served as the think tank’s president and CEO since April 2015. Before joining the institute, Goettler was the head of investment bank and debt capital markets for the Americas at Barclays Capital, a position he held until retiring in May 2008. He was also previously a donor to the Institute.

Goettler has contributed to several libertarian and Republican candidates’ campaigns for federal office, including Senator Rand Paul, former Representative Justin Amash, and former Governor of New Mexico Gary Johnson. Goettler also has familial ties to cryptocurrency advocates and Cato has advocated against “regulatory hostility” towards crypto.  

Robert A. Levy, Chairman Emeritus

Robert A. Levy served as the chairman of the Cato Institute from 2008 until 2022. He also served on the boards of other organizations in the Koch Network such as the Institute For Justice, Foundation for Government Accountability, and the George Mason University School of Law. Levy is also enmeshed in the right-wing network of Leonard Leo, a key ally of George Mason’s Scalia Law School. Levy is also a former board member of the Federalist Society. While a bio for Levy in Cato’s online journal describes him as an active board member of the Federalist Society, he was not listed on the group’s most recent tax filings. 

Levy also served as co-counsel in the landmark Supreme Court case District of Columbia v. Heller, in which the Court’s conservatives narrowly overturned the District of Columbia’s ban on handguns and established an individual right to possess a firearm in the home. Cato Institute’s online monthly journal described Levy as the “chief architect” of the Heller case. While serving as a senior fellow at the institute, Levy recruited six District of Columbia residents to challenge the capital’s 32-year-old law, an effort that Levy personally financed. Since 2008, the Supreme Court has relied on the Heller decision to limit the government’s ability to regulate firearms, most recently in the New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen (2022). 

Jay Lapeyre Jr., Chairman

James “Jay” Lapeyre, Jr. was named the chairman of Cato’s board in 2022. Lapeyre was a long-time Cato board member before assuming the chairman role and is the president and CEO of the Laitram Corporation, a manufacturing company. Lapeyre is based in New Orleans and is an active presence in the city.

Lapeyre also serves on the board of the Atlas Society, which promotes the philosophies of right-wing thinker Ayn Rand. Rand’s school of thought, objectivism, claims that property rights trump all others. Rand’s philosophies, which promote unfettered capitalism and claim the rich are virtuous for their success under capitalism, are popular among top corporate executives and at the Cato Institute.

Jeffrey Yass, Vice Chair

Jeffrey Yass was named Cato’s vice chair in 2022. Yass is a billionaire and the founder and managing director of the investment firm Susquehanna International Group. Yass’ business model has pushed legal boundaries to reduce his tax burdens and SIG has repeatedly drawn IRS audits. University of Georgia law professor Gregg Polsky said that Yass’ strategies were “very suspicious and suggestive of potential abuse that should be examined by the IRS.” A ProPublica investigation estimated Yass avoided $1 billion in taxes over 6 years. 

In addition to his role at Cato, Yass is a prominent donor to the conservative political network Club For Growth and Yass also seeded a super PAC called School Freedom Fund which supports school-choice candidates.

Privatization & Cuts To Social Spending

In 2013, Cato re-published a Washington Times piece written by a former CATO fellow titled “Privatize Almost Everything.”  Longtime Cato president Ed Crane once wrote that Republicans’ use of tax cuts and supply-side economics allowed the GOP to avoid directly advocating for spending cuts even while advocating for broad tax cuts. Cato as an organization, on the other hand, does advocate for major cuts to federal spending. 

Cato has advocated for privatizing public transit, social security, public broadcasting, the post office, the TSA, and NASA. Other notable instances of advocacy for privatization by Cato include:

• Welfare state: Cato advocated for the elimination of the welfare state and laments conservative efforts to reform or weaken rather than wholesale cut or privatize social spending programs. In a 2014 opinion piece, former senior Cato fellow Michael Tanner lamented that “the more people there are who depend on government programs, the harder it becomes to cut those programs.” Cato has been accused of creating misleading reports to justify its desire to eliminate welfare programs.
• Public schools: Cato called for the privatization of the majority of elementary and secondary public schools and pushed for a voucher system to act as a bridge to privatization. Vouchers are a form of school choice programs. The core principle behind school choice ideology, “freedom of choice,” was originally a means of defying the Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, which required the desegregation of public schools, but not private ones. Groups interested in privatizing government services and resources later found common cause with those who wanted to perpetuate racial segregation. School voucher programs became popular after Brown and studies demonstrated school vouchers increase segregation in the public school system. A 2022 study found that states that passed school choice legislation saw a degradation in their public school systems.
• Science research: Cato scholar Terence Kealy argued at a Capitol Hill briefing in 2016 that the government should not provide funding for scientific research since it does not grow the economy. Kealy argued that public scientific research drains the private sector, which in turn diminishes potential economic growth.
• Healthcare: In its 2017 policy guide, Cato called for the total repeal of the Affordable Care Act and the effective repeal of Medicaid and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program by converting them into block grants and direct cash payments. Michael Cannon, Cato’s Director of Health Policy Studies, was called “Obamacare’s Single Most Relentless Antagonist” for his tireless efforts to eliminate the Affordable Care Act.
• Emergency Bailouts: Cato opposed fiscal bailouts in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis. The Institute claimed that policymakers needed the “courage” to allow the economy to crash.

Deregulation

Cato lashes out against the regulatory state in nearly all forms. Cato had advocated attacks on the following regulatory apparatuses:

• Child labor laws: Cato commentator Thomas DeGregori claimed that calls for child labor laws in developing countries were a “protectionist” agenda for “anti-technology troops.” 
• Affirmative action: Cato analyst Marie Gryphon argued that affirmative action “produce[d] no concrete benefits to minority groups” but could “worsen racial disparities in academic preparation” and “hurt campus race relationships.”
• Labor unions: Cato claimed that collective bargaining violates the First Amendment rights of workers. The Institute also argued that unions “limit employment opportunities, depress wages in nonunion jobs, lower rates of return on investment in unionized firms, slow the growth of productivity, and distort the political process.”  
• Minimum wage: Cato commentator James Dorn claimed that minimum wage laws undermine “the self‐​esteem that comes from work and responsibility is an important aspect of growing up and taking part in the American dream.” Dorn also argued that minimum wage laws, by barring workers from negotiating lower wages, prevent workers from developing skills — which he claimed could discourage them from working and lead to a life of drug use. 
• Antitrust laws: Former Cato board chair Robert Levy argued broadly against antitrust laws, claiming they are written by lawyers who “do not understand how the market works” that “[debase] the idea of private property.”
• Campaign finance regulations: Cato has repeatedly railed against campaign finance regulations. In its 2017 policy handbook, the Institute called for Congress to repeal limits on coordinated spending, repeal bans on soft money fundraising, repeal all federal contribution limits, prevent the SEC and IRS from regulating election-related spending, and oppose all legislative efforts challenging dark money spending. A 1997 Cato article blamed campaign finance regulations for increasing the influence of special interest groups and harassment of registered voters.
• Tobacco regulations: Cato claimed that cigarette taxes are the product of a cartel formed “with the blessing of state attorneys general and the federal government” to force smokers rather than the industry to pay restitution costs caused by tobacco’s negative public health impacts. More broadly, the Institute argued that regulations on tobacco products violate First Amendment rights to free association that attack lower class and Black communities and disputed the health impacts of secondhand smoke. Cato has received funding from Big Tobacco, including Altria and R.J. Reynolds. 
• Environmental regulations: Cato has called for the repeal of the Endangered Species Act, Clean Air Act, Resource and Conservation Recovery Act, Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act and the Toxic Substances Control Act, Clean Water Act, Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, and the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act. Generally, Cato suggests replacing these regulations with private-sector solutions. The Institute also called for a waiver system that allowed state governments to opt out of EPA regulations.
• In 1999, Cato published a book claiming that environmental regulations did not improve air quality, running counter to the EPA’s claim that the Clean Air Act led to a 50% reduction in key air pollutants since 1990. In Cato’s 2022 policy handbook, the Institute argues that environmental quality regulations should be a market transaction, e.g. that individuals should be allowed to accept payment in lieu of accepting EPA Clean Air Standards to preserve their “right to differing levels of environmental quality.”

With financial backing from the fossil fuel industry, Cato has been a leading purveyor of climate change denial and a leading opponent of climate action. Cato’s anti-climate policy views align with its fossil fuel backers as well as its anti-regulatory, libertarian ideology. 

As concerns over emerging climate change science grew into a political force in the 1980s and 1990s, Cato positioned itself as an opponent of the potential growth in the regulatory state climate action would require. In 1991, Cato organized a conference titled “Global Environmental Crises: Science or Politics.” Cato’s conference claimed that the growing climate consensus was hysterical, a justification for “a new world order of population control, economic planning and ‘sustainable development,’” invoking a long-standing right-wing conspiracy. One of the speakers at the conference was Patrick Michaels, who would later lead Cato’s climate policy center. Michaels did not have a background in climate science but came from his leading role in a media campaign for fossil fuel companies that attempted to convince Americans that climate change was not real. Vice called the conference one of the first instances of organized climate change denial. 

The Cato Institute encouraged anti-climate action forces during the George H. W. Bush Administration and aimed to steer the Republican Party away from climate action as some within the party pushed for it, intrinsically politicizing the issue. Cato’s advocacy for watering down climate science had a profound effect on George W. Bush Administration. For example, in Cato’s 2001 policy handbook, the Institute urged members of Congress to “resist attempts to impose costly reductions in the emissions of greenhouse gases in order to limit global warming.”

Cato ran ads that denied the existence of climate change during the Obama administration, falsely arguing there had been “no net global warming” for over ten years. Cato continued to influence the climate policies of the Trump Administration, which went out of its way to weaken environmental protections and deregulate the fossil fuel industry. Cato also opposed federal subsidies for electric vehicles, arguing that such programs would merely enable crony capitalism. 

In 2012, Cato founded the Center for the Study of Science. The Institute claimed the Center aimed to provide market solutions to the climate change debate. The Center was headed by Patrick Michaels, and he pioneered the “lukewarming” school of thought. Michael’s “lukewarming” did not deny that man-made climate change existed but did greatly downplay how much warming fossil fuel emissions would cause, and how much harm global temperature increases would cause. Even before the creation of the Center, Cato promoted the “lukewarming” hypothesis. Michaels previously drew scrutiny after he misrepresented Cato’s fossil fuel funding while testifying before Congress to downplay the existential threat of climate change. Michaels claimed that fossil fuel funding only amounted to 3% of Cato’s budget, but would later claim that figure was 40%. 

In 2014, a Cato scholar argued that rising carbon dioxide levels were a “cause for celebration” because they represented “the steady drumbeat of human progress” accelerated by the Industrial Revolution. 

The Center for the Study of Science was shuttered in 2019 after Cato severed ties with Michaels. Despite the Center’s closure, Cato continues to advocate against climate policy including nuclear power, electric bike subsidies, and climate risk assessment disclosures for businesses. The Institute also continues to downplay the threat of climate change and calls for policymakers to prioritize the market over climate action.

In 2010, Cato vice president for research Jeffery Miron published an essay in Cato’s online publication, Cato Unbound, that claimed that “libertarians should not only oppose Title II [of the Civil Rights Act]; they should shout that opposition from the highest roof tops.” Miron argued that the Civil Rights Act is a “bald-faced assault” on the libertarian principle that “private property is private” and that it snowballed into an assault of all manner of property rights, such as workplace safety laws and public smoking bans. He also disputed the notion that the Civil Rights Act ended Jim Crow, claiming that the legislation’s impact is “easily overstated.” 

In a 2016 essay, former Cato board chair Roberty Levy wrote an essay claiming that libertarians can believe in, with ideological consistency, both the right to same-sex marriage and of private businesses to discriminate against same-sex marriage. While Levy admitted that discrimination is wrong, he claimed that legally “discrimination should be permitted in any society that honors freedom of association.” Shortly before that claim, Levy admitted that “prior to the Civil Rights Act, free markets might have produced segregated public accommodations.”

Downplaying of White Supremacist Violence

In 2017, Cato analyst Alex Nowrasteh wrote a Forbes opinion piece in the aftermath of the 2017 United The Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia which ended in white supremacist violence and the death of a counter-protester. Nowrasteh’s piece argued that since most people killed in terrorist attacks were killed by Islamic terrorists, “partisan spin” on the violence should be ignored. An April 2017 Government Accountability Office report came to a different conclusion than Nowrasteh, claiming that of the deaths caused by violent extremists since September 11, 73% were committed by far-right extremists, vs 27% from Islamic extremists. Less than a week before Nowrasteh’s piece was published, then-President Donald Trump said there were “very fine people on both sides” of the white supremacist rally.

Essay By Peter Thiel

In 2009, Cato’s online journal Cato Unbound published an essay penned by far-right tech billionaire Peter Thiel. In the essay, Thiel claimed he no longer believed “freedom and democracy are compatible,” specifically citing the “vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women” as reasons for this belief. Thiel called on his fellow libertarians to abandon the world of politics and to instead focus on technological advancement, where “choices of individuals may still be paramount,” to “make the world safe for capitalism.” Thiel became one of Donald Trump’s biggest donors in 2016 and emerged as a key financier of Trump-aligned political campaigns since 2020.

Cato’s ideological opposition to nearly all forms of regulation and public welfare is apparent in its legal track record before the Supreme Court. Cato has filed briefs in cases that undermined the regulatory state, the administrative state, labor, and civil rights. Notable cases in which the Institute filed briefs include:

• Shelby County v. Holder, which gutted the heart of The Voting Rights Act. Cato’s brief claimed that “the VRA, once justified by Jim Crow, is now ‘an eye glazing mess.’” Cato would call John Lewis, the civil rights activist and politician who galvanized support for the Voting Rights Act, a “Libertarian Hero” upon his death in 2020.
• Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, Council 31, which struck a major blow to public sector labor unions. Shortly after the Janus ruling, The Atlantic published an article titled “Is This The End Of Public Sector Unions In America?”
• District Of Columbia v. Heller, which ruled that the right to possess firearms in the home was protected under the Second Amendment, greatly undermining gun control legislation. Former Cato Chairman Robert A. Levy served as co-counsel in Heller, and Cato Institute’s online monthly journal described Levy as the “chief architect” of the Heller case. While serving as a senior fellow at the Institute, Levy recruited six District of Columbia residents to challenge the DC’s 32-year-old gun control law targeted in the case, an effort that Levy personally financed. 
• Citizens United v. FEC, which overturned limits on independent political spending that were previously upheld to fight against political corruption caused by unfettered money in politics.
• McCutcheon v. FEC, which overturned aggregate limits for political contributions. 
• Nestlé USA, Inc. v. Doe I, in which the Supreme Court threw out a lawsuit targeting U.S.-based companies for using child slave labor overseas. 
• West Virginia v. EPA, which significantly restricted the federal government’s ability to enforce environmental laws that protect public health and welfare. 
• Sackett v. EPA, which gutted the Clean Water Act.
• Susan B. Anthony List v. Driehaus, which overturned an Ohio law banning illegal statements in political advertisements.
• New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. Bruen, which weakened the legal standing of gun control regulations.

Cato also filed amicus briefs in significant cases set to be decided by the Supreme Court in its October 2023 term, including multiple briefs in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo. Loper threatens to undermine the administrative state, or the regulatory authority of federal agencies such as the EPA, FDA, and FCC, requiring all regulatory interpretations to pass through courts first. This would greatly empower the judicial branch and weaken federal regulatory authority, a cause of the modern conservative movement.

Other Legal Activism

In 2019, Cato sued the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in an attempt to prevent the agency from including provisions in settlements that prevent defendants from denying the agency’s claims. Cato’s case was blocked by a U.S. Circuit Court in 2021.

For years, Cato co-founder and longtime president Edward Crane’s poor treatment of women  was an open secret among libertarians in Washington. Former employees described Crane as someone who “enjoyed flirting with his attractive, 20-year-old female employees.” In 1999, Cato published a book that recommended “nonadversarial alternatives to reporting [sexual] harassment to corporate or legal authorities” to victims.

In 2012, Crane settled a sexual harassment claim after he allegedly made unwanted sexual comments about then-Director of External Affairs Carey Lafferty. In 2012, “The Edward H. Crane Legal Defense Fund, Inc.,” an LLC, was incorporated in Delaware.

In 2018, three former Cato employees alleged they were sexually harassed by Crane. In addition to the lawsuit, former employees told Politico they remembered instances of sexual harassment while working at the Institute. The former employees said Crane, the “undisputed boss” of Cato, felt “little hesitation” in discussing sexual topics with female employees.

Cato has been repeatedly criticized for accepting money from corporate interests while arguing in favor of policies that benefit their corporate benefactors. Their ties to the Koch brothers have received particular scrutiny. Greenpeace called Cato a “Koch Industries Climate Denial Front Group” and claimed Koch-linked groups such as DonorsTrust gave the Institute nearly $12 million from 1997 to 2017. A Koch Industries spokesperson claimed that the brothers gave Cato over $13 million from 2000 to 2012. Cato has also been criticized for taking donations from Big Tobacco and from the fossil fuel industry lobby including ExxonMobil, Murray Energy, and the industry trade association American Petroleum Institute. Other notable corporate sponsors of Cato include FedEx, Google, CME Group, and Whole Foods.

In 2021, Cato received notable funding from leading right-wing donor groups such as DonorsTrust, Bradley Foundation, Sarah Scaife Foundation, Searle Freedom Trust, and the Thomas W. Smith Foundation.

The Koch Brothers

Charles Koch was a co-founder of the Cato Institute. Koch was radicalized against government regulation and “corporate welfare” by the business disputes of his father, who blamed corrupt capitalism for legal decisions that ruled against what is now known as Koch Industries. Charles Koch turned Koch Industries into a multi-billion dollar company and himself into one of the richest people in the world. However, he still believed that government regulations and the administrative state undermined individual liberty and the free market and sought to radically weaken the American state to reflect his libertarian values. Charles sought to build a cadre of  libertarian institutions to train and organize an ideological vanguard, modeled on the teachings of Vladimir Lenin, that would bring about the libertarian revolution he desired. He renamed his foundation, The Charles Koch Foundation, as one of the first steps toward building that vanguard.

Charles was a main Cato funder, with an Institute spokesperson claiming the Koch family provided 10% of all of the Institute’s funding from its founding until 2012. The Institute noted that Charles provided the entirety of Cato’s funding for its first few years, helping the organization get off the ground. While Charles resigned from Cato’s board in 1991, his brother, David, remained on the board.

Charles Koch was an active member of the far-right John Birch Society. The Society was created by “11 of the nation’s richest businessmen” to fight an international communist conspiracy. The conspiracy had purportedly captured elements of the church, the government, the media, and the education system and wanted to turn America into “a human race of enslaved robots, in which every civilized trait has been destroyed.” The influence of the Birchers is evident in the anti-government extremism of the militia movement, the conspiratorial rhetoric of Alex Jones, and in QAnon’s belief in a secret left-wing cabal that aims to destroy America.

Charles and his brother, David, were notorious for spending “billions” to “advance a radically free-market vision” and pushing the American government to the right through their network of groups including Cato, Americans for Prosperity, the Bill of Rights Institute, and the American Legislative Exchange Council. Charles Koch continues to help finance these organizations through CKF. Through their extensive network, the Kochs’ “family fortune helped mobilize the tea party movement” during the Obama administration, helping to “seed the ground for Donald Trump” with white nationalism, anti-government rhetoric, and conspiracy theories.

Prior to Cato, the Koch family had a storied history of anti-union work. Charles’ father, Fred Koch, was an “early and active member of the Wichita-based DeMille Foundation for Political Freedom, an anti-labor group that was a forerunner of the National Right to Work Defense Foundation.” Through this, Fred Koch succeeded in making Kansas a right-to-work state in 1958. 

In 2012, the Koch brothers attempted to launch a hostile takeover of Cato, revealing to the public that Cato was controlled by shareholders divided among its founders. The Kochs attempted to seize a majority stake in the Institute after the death of Cato executive William Niskanen to wrest control of the Institute away from co-founder Ed Crane. Crane and Charles Koch’s relationship had frayed over the years — Crane saw Koch as impatient and too willing to compromise his values for political results, and Crane alienated Koch, icing him out of Cato’s management. Charles Koch left the organization in the early 1990s but saw an opportunity to regain control following Niskanen’s death. While Koch detractors at Cato claimed the brothers’ political ambitions risked watering down the Institute’s ideological purity. Ultimately the Kochs dropped their legal actions, but Crane was removed from Cato and replaced with a new head who was sympathetic to the Kochs’ vision for the Institute. Cato continues to receive major funding from Koch-linked groups such as DonorsTrust to this day.

State Policy Network

Cato is a member of the State Policy Network. The State Policy Network is an alliance of over one hundred right-wing advocacy organizations, think tanks, and funding groups seeking to influence policy at the state level. SPN has significant financial ties to the Koch Brothers political network as well as prominent right-wing charities and family foundations such as DonorsTrust, Donors Capital Fund, and Searle Freedom Trust — all of which are major Cato funders.