This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Friday, December 19, 2014.

I'm Caleb Brown. The latest giant spending bill to emerge from Congress revealed a fight not between Democrats and Republicans,

but a fight between party insiders and outsiders.

So says Peter Suderman, a senior editor at Reason magazine, we spoke yesterday.

Two weekends before Christmas, Congress passed the Cromnibus, which is the combination,

as he said of the continuing resolution and

the omnibus appropriations bill so it's 11 appropriation spending bills all rolled

into one plus a continuing resolution.

They did this all at once about two weeks before Christmas.

First, the House passed it, then the Senate passed it over the weekend.

And if you look at the Senate vote, it's kind of interesting

because what you see is that it passed on a bipartisan basis

but it was also opposed on a bipartisan basis and the segments of the

Democratic Party that opposed it in the Senate were basically the most liberal

parts of the Senate and the segments of the Republican Party that opposed it in the Senate

were pretty much the most conservative parts. And so you have this interesting dynamic that's coming up where

you've got basically Senator Ted Cruz and Senator Elizabeth Warren kind of

avatars of the very conservative right and the very liberal left joining together in effect

to oppose leadership from both parties. This was a bill that was fully

supported by the White House, I shouldn't say quite fully supported but very much supported by the White House.

They didn't like a couple of the provisions but they really wanted Democrats to vote for it.

This was a bill that was pushed for by Republican leadership very much in the House.

...