The Goldwater Institute is a think tank described in these excerpts as based in Arizona and influential throughout the country. Guests associated with it appear on The Bob Zadek Show in three capacities: as a constitutional theorist, as a health-policy fellow, and as the architect of a state school-choice law. The excerpts identify the Institute’s home state and the roles of its personnel, but they do not describe its founding, its funding, or its internal structure.
Personnel and roles
Bob Zadek introduced Timothy Sandefur as Vice President for Litigation at the Goldwater Institute, noting that he litigates extensively on property rights and individual freedom issues, is the author of many books, is an adjunct scholar with the Cato Institute, and is a professor of law at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia School of Law Timothy Sandefur on The Libertarian Constitution (2021). Sandefur appeared to discuss his work on the National Constitution Center’s Libertarian Constitution Project.
Dr. Jeffrey Singer was introduced as a practicing general surgeon in Phoenix, Arizona, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute working in its Department of Health Policy Studies, president emeritus and founder of the Valley Surgical Clinics in Phoenix, and a visiting fellow at the Goldwater Institute in Phoenix Fresh Approaches to the Overdose Crisis (2022). He appeared to discuss the opioid overdose crisis.
Matt Beienburg was introduced as Director of Education Policy at the Goldwater Institute, which Bob Zadek called a most important and influential think tank based in Arizona whose influence is felt throughout the country Arizona Chooses Students Over Systems - Matt Beienburg (2022). Zadek credited both Beienburg and the Institute itself with persuading the Arizona legislature to adopt school-choice legislation.
The Libertarian Constitution Project
Sandefur’s episode concerned the National Constitution Center’s commissioning of three teams of scholars—libertarian, progressive and conservative—each tasked with rewriting the Constitution in a way more consistent with their respective values Timothy Sandefur on The Libertarian Constitution (2021). Bob Zadek described the Center as the only organization chartered by Congress to further the understanding and appreciation of the Constitution, located in Philadelphia and nonpartisan, and named its president, Jeffrey Rosen. Zadek said the three teams reached very similar conclusions in many ways, which surprised him.
Zadek framed the discussion as an examination of how the libertarian team approached fixing, revising, correcting or rewriting the Constitution, and said Sandefur would supply the proper verb. Sandefur’s own opening characterization was that the team rescued the Constitution. The excerpt’s summary of the episode states that the revisions were intended to restore federalism, protect individual property rights, eliminate the income tax, and constrain the administrative state and executive war powers.
Arizona’s Empowerment Scholarship Accounts
Two episodes from August 2022 cover Arizona’s universal school choice legislation, both featuring Matt Beienburg. Bob Zadek framed the discussion around Milton Friedman’s 1980 book Free to Choose, which he described as the classic inquiry into the relationship between freedom and economics and which later became a PBS broadcast series hosted by Friedman Arizona’s School Choice Reform is a Model for the Nation (2022). Zadek said the show would apply Free to Choose to public education and learn from Arizona how citizens can free their children from the monopoly of government schools, and he described the legislation as probably the most far-reaching of any in the country, allowing citizens to choose the school they wish their children to attend with tuition substantially, if not completely, paid for by the state.
Beienburg argued that the federal government has no authority in the United States Constitution to involve itself in K-12 education and that this was never anything the founders envisioned, while most state constitutions, Arizona among them, contain provisions saying the state will provide a public school system Arizona Chooses Students Over Systems - Matt Beienburg (2022). He said Arizona spends over $11,000 per kid per year from state and local taxes alone, on top of thousands of dollars of federal funds, and that the ESA program offers families an education for $7,000—one the family prefers because it is freely chosen. He described Arizona as having open enrollment for districts, public independently operated charter schools, and now a system of ESAs, all of which he said prioritize making sure families have a choice.
On the question of childless adults paying taxes for education, Beienburg said such adults currently pay far more in taxes for students to attend a public school system than the ESA alternative would require. Bob Zadek separately offered his own framing of education as a public good, arguing that it has long since been decided, going back to Jefferson and the founders, that democracy requires an informed electorate and that education is therefore a collective benefit for which the childless allocate a small portion of their tax dollars.
Teachers’ unions and the political fight
Beienburg said the teachers’ unions during COVID managed to get almost $200 billion of federal COVID stimulus bailout funds for public schools at the same time they were closing schools down over those two years, and that the literature has made clear how devastating this was to students academically, emotionally, in their mental health and physical well-being Arizona Chooses Students Over Systems - Matt Beienburg (2022). He said the unions organized protests in Arizona and elsewhere with fake tombstones, fake coffins and fake obituaries, and that the union-demanded policies derailed the education of a generation of students, putting them back essentially two years. He said a million students across the country, thousands in Arizona alone, dropped out of public schools during the same time public schools gained a windfall.
Bob Zadek offered the economic framing of concentrated benefits and diffuse costs: the cost to one family of inferior education profoundly affects that family, but parents lack the time, organization or motivation to spend hours effecting change, while the benefit per teacher in salary, tenure and lifetime job security irrespective of performance is quite large. He said teachers collectively therefore have more at stake individually than parents do, and that change comes only when parents organize and have a single voice through Goldwater and others. Beienburg agreed.
Asked in the closing moments whether public education as an institution has outlived its usefulness, Beienburg said it would be fair to say public education has been divorced from its original purpose, that the teachers’ unions have taken it from something focused on students and education to a model for pushing a political agenda, and he referenced the NEA and said the focus of teachers needs to be on indoctrination, pushing concepts like CRT and the 1619 Project. He said the problem is less about the form than that a system of monopoly with the force of government behind it is now dominated by one constituency, the unions, which he called the worst of all worlds, with collusion of a sector taking over and the unions exhibiting undue influence and turning education into something short of actual academic enrichment.
Across episodes: the Institute’s two faces
The excerpts show the Goldwater Institute in two distinct modes rather than one developing argument. In the 2021 episode, the Institute’s vice president for litigation appears as a constitutional theorist working on a national project commissioned by the National Constitution Center Timothy Sandefur on The Libertarian Constitution (2021). In the 2022 episodes, its director of education policy appears as a state-level political advocate for a specific enacted law, and its visiting fellow appears on health policy Fresh Approaches to the Overdose Crisis (2022) Arizona’s School Choice Reform is a Model for the Nation (2022). The two August 2022 episodes cover the same Arizona legislation with the same guest and the same Friedman framing; the excerpts show no development between them.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts never state when the Goldwater Institute was founded, who funds it, how it is governed, or how many staff it has. They do not describe any Institute litigation beyond noting that Sandefur litigates on property rights and individual freedom issues, and they name no case the Institute brought or won. The specific provisions of the libertarian constitution beyond the summary list, and the fate of Arizona’s ESA program after enactment, are likewise absent. The excerpts also break off mid-sentence in several places, including at the end of the second Beienburg episode’s introduction.
Guests and episodes
3 appearances by 2 guests, 2021–2022.
- Matt Beienburg (Goldwater Institute Director of Education Policy) — Arizona Chooses Students Over Systems - Matt Beienburg (2022) — Arizona Universal School Choice and Empowerment Scholarship Accounts.; Arizona’s School Choice Reform is a Model for the Nation (2022) — Arizona universal school choice and empowerment scholarship accounts.
- Timothy Sandefur (Goldwater Institute) — Timothy Sandefur on The Libertarian Constitution (2021) — The Libertarian Constitution Project.