This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Tuesday, May 30th,

2023.

I'm Caleb Brown.

The debt deal is done, sort of.

If approved, it would freeze spending for a time at our current high baseline impose work

requirements for more people seeking welfare benefits, and it would tee up automatic real spending

cuts if Congress fails to perform one of its most basic functions approving spending bills.

Cato's Chris Edwards evaluates the plan.

For people who appreciate the degree to which the United States is careening

toward some unknown debt disaster sometime down the road, what changes about future spending in this deal?

Well, we have giant deficits and debt at the federal government level and we are careening

toward a major fiscal crisis. This debt deal in front of Congress

right now would be a small incremental step in the right direction to try to

restore some fiscal responsibility to Washington. It only

tackles discretionary spending and not the big entitlement programs like

Social Security, but nonetheless I think that all parts of the budget

need to be cut and this is a small step toward at least putting a cap on the

discretionary part of the budget to make sure it doesn't keep growing.

So based on the terms that I read in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal

in the Washington Post.

The concern that I saw was,

did Biden give up too much here?

...