This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Thursday, December 2nd, 2010.

I'm Caleb Brown.

The START Treaty is generating lots of heat on Capitol Hill, but the rhetoric surrounding it on both sides may well be overheated.

Ben Friedman, research fellow in defense and homeland security studies at the Cato Institute,

says both proponents and opponents are overselling the costs and benefits of the treaty.

In the end, Friedman argues the fight may end up preventing real cuts

to our costly nuclear arsenal.

You can read more in Friedman's co-author report,

budgetary savings from military restraint, available at Cato.org.

The White House is at the moment trying to get the Senate to move the new Strategic Arms

Reduction Treaty, the new Start Treaty.

And they're trying to get the Senate to do that in the lame duck session because they're going

to have trouble getting Republican votes and there's going to be more Republican votes or more

Republicans next year.

And they're putting on a full court press to get it through and they're trying to buy Republican

votes basically.

John Kyle has taken the lead for the Republicans on the issue and is basically saying

you got to put a bunch more money into modernizing our nuclear weapons facilities in exchange

for our votes on the treaty and the White House has come out with a bunch of promises

about spending increases on that.

They're going to spend 15% extra on that, on nuclear infrastructure, modernization, up to

85 billion over the next 10 years they say to get the treaty

...