This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Friday, April 5th, 2019.

I'm Caleb Brown.

One great fear of lawmakers is that their constituents will have access to clear, easy to understand information about

their voting records.

On the spending front, Jonathan Bidlack of the Coalition to Reduce Spending says,

lawmakers themselves don't always understand the budgetary

implications of their own votes. We talked about the president's budget and the

hope that springs eternal that a divided Congress could mean less federal spending.

A project that you run, spending tracker.org

follows individual members of Congress

and how much spending they vote for and breaks it up by whether or not that spending was eventually

enacted.

And I've noticed that in looking through the data for my members of Congress in the

House and Senate that if that member is in a party that's out of power they quite

often vote for a lot less spending than they otherwise might.

So in some red states with spots of blue you'll have a Democratic representative or at least recently of than his Republican colleagues in the House.

So just so we're clear, why exactly is that?

Obviously, I think there's this myth that exists that, you know,

one party wants to spend a lot and the other party wants to

wants to spend a little and the reality is that generally speaking both parties

pretty much want to spend a lot and they might have differences in terms of

you know how they prefer to pay for you

...