Three Reasons Mike Pence is Bad for Liberty

Following speculation, it has been confirmed that Indiana Governor Mike Pence will join the Donald Trump ticket as the GOP’s Vice-Presidential candidate. Pence is a generally unassuming character, and at face-value provides some normalcy to the Trump campaign. However, liberty enthusiasts should be wary before throwing their support to Pence. Here are the top three reasons why Mike Pence is bad for liberty.

1. Pence chose to expand Medicaid in his state

Most conservatives took principled stances against the expansion of Medicaid through Obamacare. Don’t count Mike Pence in that group. Pence cut a deal with the Obama administration to bring Obamacare to Indiana, and tried to sell it as conservative reform. In reality, as Reason‘s Peter Suderland notes, this was little more than a giveaway to hospital lobbyists.

Salivating at the notion of receiving a mass influx of federal tax dollars, Pence opened the door for other governors across the U.S. to expand Medicaid under the guise of conservative reform. While Indiana’s deal with the White House was peddled as some variation of a Health Savings Account, in reality some able-bodied adults could end up paying as little as nothing to participate. Seems less like conservative reform, and more like entitlement expansion.

2. He tried to create a state-run media outlet

State-run media is a concept usually associated with authoritarian regimes. Mike Pence is the guy who tried to bring it to Indiana. Advertised as an organization to compete with private media source, Just IN would provide taxpayer-funded insight into what the state wanted them to believe. Generally, private institutions can have a difficult time competing with state agencies who face no profit motives. Even when going up against blatant government propaganda machines, it could still be a tough time attracting customers.

This eerily Orwellian concept was widely ridiculed and ultimately abandoned. What cannot be ignored, however, is the authoritarian flavor Pence adds to Trump’s strong-man ticket. One can only imagine what other state-run institutions Pence would want to “compete” with the private market.

3. Pence is bad news for drug reform

Pence has never been a friend of the drug policy reform movement. Toughening up the mandatory minimums for drug dealers, he chose to send more people to prison opposed to addressing the problem. Pence also refused to back a 2013 measure that would’ve decreased penalties for marijuana possession. Respectable laws are the only ones that are respected, and it’s unlikely that Pence’s crusade has inspired confidence in the state’s ability to create solutions.

As states like Colorado and Washington can attest to, legalizing marijuana makes fiscal, not just moral, sense. Marijuana sales in Colorado totaled over $1 billion in 2015. One can only imagine the fiscal boon it would create nationwide. All the people serving time for ingesting a non-lethal drug could become productive economic contributors again. There’s no justification for the federal prohibition of marijuana, and Mike Pence should have to answer for his assault on personal liberty.