This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Friday, July 13th, 2012. I'm Caleb Brown.

Members of Congress may not know much, like how to rein in spending, how to assert their own power against an outsized executive branch,

what Americans' tax rates will be in six months.

And they certainly don't know what's in the hundreds of pages of

legislation that they regularly vote to support. But they do know one thing.

American Olympic athletes should be wearing uniforms assembled in the United States.

Dan Eichenson, director of Trade Policy Studies, at the Cato Institute, offers his thoughts.

So it turns out that the uniforms being worn by U.S. Olympiads in the London Olympics

were produced in China and this has caused all sorts of a backlash, particularly among the political class.

Harry Reed suggested that these uniforms should be thrown into a pile and they should be set on fire.

Now I've heard that patriotism is the last bastion of scoundrels, but this is going pretty

darn far for Harry Reed.

It's a delicious thing for politicians to grab hold of, but as you note in a blog post it's as if

members of Congress are blissfully unaware of the problems that they themselves are

responsible for.

Yeah, this is a it serves as a good distraction.

You know Congress can't reign in spending

they can't address the long-term debt problem that we have, they can't tell us what our tax rates are going to be six months from now.

So as a result, they look for scapegoats. China is always a good scapegoat and this issue that coincides with the Olympics makes for great political hay.

The fact is most of our clothes come from China and if not China from another foreign country.

So what's different about this?

I think having the uniforms manufactured, basically cut and seown in China, is quintessentially American.

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