This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Tuesday, February 15th, 2011. I'm Caleb Brown.

The Obama Budget is out and the big news is that there's not much to it.

Flouting the advice of his own fiscal commission, the president has avoided making any of the

cuts that would make real lasting reductions in federal outlays.

Cato Institute Senior Fellow Dan Mitchell comments.

I suppose this is like you have to learn to walk before you can run and as long as

you have big huge deficits every single year, you're obviously nowhere near where you need to be to start reducing government debt.

But the important thing to realize is both of those are merely symptoms of the underlying problem of too much government

spending.

Is there any indication that the president is dealing with any of the fundamental ground level

issues in his budget.

There's good news and bad news in the president's budget.

The good news is that there's no so-called stimulus proposal.

There's no plan for a government-run health care system. There's no big new

initiative to radically expand the burden of government like we've seen in previous years.

On the other hand, the bad news is that we're simply treading water.

He's not proposing to undo any of the damage not only of his first two years, but the damage

of the eight years of George Bush who also was a big

spender so we're in a situation we're like an alcoholic we've just downed you

know a fifth of vodka and we're saying okay well we're not going to

drink until tomorrow that's not exactly a solution for the problem we face

contrast what the president would like to do with one, House and Senate Republicans,

...