This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Tuesday, November 16, 2010. I'm Caleb Brown. It was a dramatic

turnaround barely a week after defending earmarks, the Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell

is supporting a ban on earmarks.

So what else might we expect from a House and Senate invigorated with the energy of the

Tea Party movement?

Matt Kibby is president and CEO of Freedom Works. He says fiscal conservatives and libertarians

should expect a lot from the lawmakers who have pledged to pursue smaller government.

There is a trend, and I think a lot of people point to John Boehner as being a exemplar of this trend and that is you come to Washington as a fighter, somebody who's ready to go to war over big important issues, but maybe by the end of your first term,

maybe by the end of your second term, maybe you're not so much

interested in those things, you're more interested in hanging on to your power rather than

to get things done. The Tea Party movement brought a lot of energy to Washington. How do you keep people

from reverting to trend as it were here in Washington?

Well there is in fairness to members of Congress.

I know a lot of guys like John Boehner who probably are more sympathetic to the cause of

limited government and individual liberty than perhaps it gets

credit for but when you work on the hill and when you deal with all the special

interests that are attracted to all the money and power that we dole out here in Washington, D.C.

You get beaten down.

And the whole purpose, the strategic purpose that the Tea Party represents is a possibility of actually providing a counterbalance

to all of those special interests, a constituency for freedom and to actually have the potential to have a constant stream of constituents coming

into your office actually asking you to do less and thanking you when you do less.

And that is the core of this revolution because it is quite difficult to have

...