Robert F. Sanchez
Key Player

Director of Public Policy, James Madison InstituteRobert F. Sanchez is Director of Public Policy at the James Madison Institute. In the 1960s and early ‘70s, Sanchez taught English and Journalism at Florida State University and Florida A&M University. In 1974 he joined the Miami Herald Editorial Board, where he would work for the next 26 years. Sanchez wrote hundreds of columns and editorials, and gained a reputation for promoting free-market ideas.

Sanchez is an advocate of imposing legally binding caps on state government spending. In an April 2009 Orlando Sentinel op-ed, Sanchez argued that politicians can circumvent tax limits through fees and surcharges. Citing a JMI study, he wrote that if Florida had restrained its spending growth to the inflation rate (plus population growth) between 2001 and 2009, lawmakers could have increased the state’s budget and still had more than $20 billion in reserve.

Contrary to critics’ claims that a spending cap would choke off investments in essential services, Sanchez writes that “it would force our elected officials to prioritize, focusing on government’s core missions of public safety, public works, public education and public health.”