This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Thursday, September 30th, 2010.

I'm Caleb Brown.

State budgets aren't immune to recession and it's often up to governors to insist on fiscal

discipline in tight budgetary times,

so the Cato Institute's Governor's report card

couldn't come at a better time.

Chris Edwards is director of tax policy studies

at the Cato Institute,

we talked about what went into this year's evaluation of state fiscal

policy and the performance of governors. You can download the full report at Cato.org.

Well Cato does the fiscal report card every two years and we give grades of A to F for the good

governors and the bad governors in the country based on their tax and

spending records. This year we gave A's to four governors, Mark Sanford of South Carolina, Bobby Jindall of Louisiana,

Tim Paul Lenty of Minnesota, and Joe Manchin, the Democrat Governor of West Virginia.

Okay, now you made a note of pointing out that he is a Democrat.

Why did these wire that, why are so many of them Republicans versus Democrats?

Well, you know, it's interesting.

We found that in this report, report card as well as the report card from 2008 that Republicans do do a little

bit better than Democrats, particularly on taxes.

So, you know, it is a stereotype that Republicans are a little bit better on fiscal policy and the hard data we use for the report card does show that Republicans particularly do well on taxes, meaning that they

support more tax cuts, they resist tax increases, and they also veto income tax increases.

And at the state level that may matter more because states do have to balance their budgets.

...