This is the Kator Daily Podcast for Wednesday, November 7th, 2018.

I'm Caleb Brown.

Democrats have taken the U.S. House while Republicans will maintain control of the Senate.

What does that mean for trade, spending,

and other big issues going forward? Cato Senior Fellow Michael Tanner discusses the new landscape

in Congress, but he also says many of the more encouraging results of election day were at the state level.

We spoke this morning.

Democrats didn't quite have the night that they hoped for,

but there is some hope for libertarians and the fact that there is now a divided Congress.

What does that mean or what traditionally has that meant for things like spending taxes and other

changes that the government might like to make? Well I think this was a good night for

checks and balances in the sense that Democrats now control one

house of Congress. We have divided government. Democrats will of course

control now the investigatory powers and subpoena powers which means is a chance to hold the

Trump administration accountable for some of the corruption and

mismanagement that we have seen. You're going to see a lot of

committee hearings, a lot of investigations, sort of full-time employment for the Trump lawyers.

But it's also unlikely to result in anything big in terms of legislation

even before the Republicans expanded their control the Senate, the Senate was the place where the House sent legislation to

die and there's nothing to suggest that there's going to be anything big passing the House that's going to manage to make it through the Senate now.

So are we to expect Republicans, at least House Republicans, to begin caring about things like spending and entitlements?

It's funny how that works, but when your party's not in power you suddenly rediscover that you're concerned about

...