Libertarians are known more for their provocative ideas than their ability to get those ideas enacted into law.

A new Washington-based think tank is trying to change that. The Niskanen Center was launched last year with the aim of influencing policy fights, not just authoring headline-grabbing proposals that go nowhere in Congress.

Our metric for success is that we have indeed been able to move legislation, said Jerry Taylor, president of the Niskanen Center who previously worked at the Cato Institute, another libertarian think tank.

The group comes online at a fascinating time for the libertarian movement. Debates over marijuana legalization, government surveillance and stricter oversight of the Federal Reserve all draw heavily on the libertarian ethos of personal freedom and minimal government intrusion in daily life.

These small-government, free-market absolutists have high hopes for Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, if the Republican launches an expected presidential bid later this year, given his stance on the Fed, surveillance and personal freedoms.

That said, candidates who run as libertarians tend to fair poorly in most high-profile campaigns. Libertarian Senate candidates averagedjust 2.5% of the vote in 2014, according to a study by the University of Minnesotas Humphrey School of Public Affairs. The high-water mark was 4.3%, set by a candidate in the wildly unpredictable Kansas Senate race.

Mr. Taylor, acknowledging those limitations, isnt setting out with the goal of eliminating multiple federal agencies or the Fed. Instead, the group wants to add its voice to the push to ease the countrys immigration laws and push lawmakers to cut weapons systems and other Pentagon programs it judges as outdated.

Down the road, Mr. Taylor said the Niskanen Center will cultivate ideas for reforming the countrys entitlement programs and beefing up civil-liberties protections in the Patriot Act.

One of the groups most provocative proposals centers on an issue rarely viewed as a Republican priority: climate change. The Niskanen Center advocates a tax on carbon emissions that would replace existing environmental regulations.Prominent conservatives have long advocated a carbon tax as a way to let the market determine the cost of burning fossil fuels, but using it as a bargaining chip to limit environmental regulators is relatively new.Mr. Taylor admits this proposal faces little prospect of becoming law in the next Congress, but he said it will help set the stage for the environmental debate in the 2016 presidential race.

The Center was named after the lateBill Niskanen, a former Cato chairman who served in the Reagan administration and once left Ford Motor Co. to protest its support of trade protection. Mr. Taylor said they picked the name because Mr. Niskanen was both principled and pragmatic.

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Libertarian Group Aims to Influence Immigration, Climate-Change Policies