This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Tuesday, January 19, 2010. I'm Caleb Brown.

When Gary Johnson was governor of New Mexico, he was a sitting governor fiercely critical of the drug war, advocating for the legalization of marijuana.

Johnson is honorary chairman of the Our America Initiative, he visited the Cato Institute Friday.

What should the federal government do?

The federal government right now should stop spending first and foremost stop the spending the deficits

I think this is insanity

12 trillion dollar deficit due to

Increase at the rate of about a trillion and a half dollars a year, 55 trillion dollars in unfunded federal liability, Medicaid, Medicare Social Security, this is crazy.

This is just absolute insanity.

Bankrupt nation, that's where we're at.

In your experience in New Mexico,

what have you learned about the immigration issue and where are you on that?

With regard to immigration, I am pro-immigration.

I just, I think immigration overall is a good thing. My experience with

immigration in New Mexico is we're getting the absolute cream of the crop when it came

to workers from Mexico. The issue of course is illegal immigration. That's the issue. But as far as individuals

wanting to come to the United States and work, I think that we should

make that as easy as possible. And as Governor of New Mexico, I really understood

issues and the complexity of immigration and those illegal immigrants that may have come

to the United States started families and now because of what's being talked about and laws that have actually passed potentially get deported back to New Mexico, having spent 30 years in New Mexico and raised families, again, not right.

And without exception, I was able to deal with a lot of those exceptions and make them right

rather than wrong. Specifically with regard to a federal versus state role who

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