This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Wednesday, August 4th, 2010.

I'm Caleb Brown.

Newsweek International editor Fareed Zakaria believes that

letting Bush-era tax cuts expire

would help Congress and the President battle the gargantuan federal budget

deficit but as Cato Institute's senior fellow Dan Mitchell argues the source of

the deficit isn't too many tax cuts it it's too little restraint on spending.

Spending, he argues, has increased by amounts that dwarf the size of those tax cuts.

Freed Zakaria argues that, and others argue that letting the Bush tax cuts expire would be an effective

way to reclaim on behalf of the government, I put reclaim in quotes, two to three hundred billion dollars in revenues.

This is a good idea because it would help the United States deal with its large federal

deficit.

The problem with his column is that he assumes

that we're in trouble fiscally because A, deficits are large

and B, it's because of inadequate revenue.

Our real problem isn't that deficits are large,

is that the government is far, far too big.

That's what we should focus on.

So he's looking at a symptom rather than the underlying disease.

And then if we have to look at the issue of federal spending

and federal revenue, even under the Obama budget projections,

federal revenues, while low now because of the economic downturn, are going to climb to above

...