This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Thursday, February 5, 2015.

I'm Caleb Brown.

The President's suggested budget contains an increase of several billion dollars above currently imposed spending caps.

He's also called for a continuation of what's known as overseas contingency operations.

The Cato Institute's Ben Friedman says the OCO spending avoids basic fiscal responsibility and enhances executive

power.

The White House asked for $534 billion for the Pentagon for fiscal year 2016 plus another 50

billion dollars for the Pentagon from the overseas contingency operations funding, the war funding, which is off books.

And it's sort of a ritual in Washington, D.C. to have a budget day where we talk at great

life about the President's budget request as if it's writ. but of course it's only a request.

It's not law, Congress writes laws, and it's especially true this year that it's

only a request because of course the Republicans now control both houses of Congress so everyone

understands that it's going to be a negotiation and that the president is not going to get what

he wants on this budget request.

So it's a little bit confused to sort of treat the budget request

as a sacrosanct document that we should evaluate every aspect of.

Besides that, the budget is $35 billion over sequestration cap, the amount of money that if the

defense department spends more than that in fiscal year 2016 then they get sequestered back to that amount.

So without a real plan that's likely to attract bipartisan support to change that law that sets the cap.

We can't really take this request seriously.

At least we have to say, well, you're not going to get those $35 billion that are over the line.

And it seems unlikely that they'll change the cap.

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