This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Thursday, May 12, 2011. I'm Caleb Brown.

John Boehner has made a fairly specific requirement for a yes vote on the raising of the federal debt ceiling that spending cuts be

larger than the increase in the debt ceiling. Chris Edwards editor of

downsizing government.org and director of tax policy Studies at the Cato Institute

says it's a step in the right direction.

A hugely important vote is coming up in Congress and that is legislation to

increase the legal debt limit for federal government borrowing.

The Democrats and the White House want just a clean debt increase bill.

Republicans want to use the debt increase bill as leverage. bill. be a really important vote because the Republicans have leverage to make sure the

Democrats put in place some serious spending cuts. House Speaker John Boehner came

out the other day and gave some more specifics about what he wants to see tied to this

debt limit vote. In particular he is saying that he wants spending cuts at least

as large as the increase in the debt limit.

So if the legal debt limit is increased by a trillion dollars,

he wants spending cuts of at least a trillion dollars

measured over a period of time time like five or ten years.

So this is a good promise to tie a specific value of spending cuts to the debt limit increase,

but there are real spending cuts and there are phony spending cuts.

There are really only two types of real spending cut. One, you can change the law for entitlements to reduce the legislated amounts of benefits.

So for example, you could change the law to raise the Social Security Retirement Age, you could change the law to increase

deductibles for Medicare.

If you put those changes into law, they would be tough to reverse because you need 60 votes

...