This is the Kator Daily Podcast for Tuesday, October 23rd, 2018.

I'm Caleb Brown.

Republicans once claim to stand for free trade, a welcoming posture toward immigrants

and low spending.

The policies of the de facto leader of today's GOP

openly rejects these ideas, and yet a Republican-led Congress has acquiesced.

So do they deserve to get walloped in the

upcoming election? Outgoing South Carolina Republican Congressman Mark

Sanford spoke with me on Friday. I read recently that the president has demanded 5% spending cuts from each of his agencies,

which seems odd when those agencies don't really control the purse strings.

Why is Congress so acquiescent when it comes to massive spending?

Congress is acquiescent on spending because that's the nature of Congress.

A dollar that comes into Washington is going to get spent, period.

It's just a question of where. And so I think that you know you have sort of an

unholy alliance between a Congress that by its very nature has a bias toward spending more, an absence of leadership

at the presidential level.

I admire the fact that the president would say, hey, let's look at our agencies and let's look

at how we trim down by 5%, but those are pennies on the dollars because if you

look at the real spending problem that we have as a country, it's tied to entitlement spending,

Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and the interest.

And so it's the 80-20 rule of life.

And what the administration has said, what the president said is,

...