This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Friday, November 2nd, 2012. I'm Caleb Brown.

The mortgage interest deduction, whether intentionally or not, is a giveaway to the middle class, mortgage debt.

Mark Calabria, director of financial regulation studies at the Cato Institute says

there's no time like the present to get rid of it.

A piece in the New York Times writes of Mitt Romney's proposal to cap the mortgage interest

deduction.

They say, while Mr. Romney's tax proposal overall may not be fair or sensible,

or even mathematically logical, Democrats shouldn't be so quick to attack any change to the mortgage interest deduction.

Now a lot of politicians have had a hard time getting rid of what is essentially a big piece of

welfare to families who are able to afford to buy homes.

It is really one of those issues where pretty much policy analysts, economists,

economists across the board agree that this is a

distortionary tax preference, but again you see this agreement on the

policy walks and there's a totally agreement

among the politicians is just a different agreement.

The politicians by and large look at this and say, well, you know,

homeowners vote and they do.

A number of studies have found homeowners are far more likely to vote than

renters. The odd thing I think about the of You add in California, Connecticut, New Jersey, New York and you get something like 80% of the

value of the mortgage introduction.

So the interesting political question of course is why do people in Texas continue to support

the mortgage interest reduction when they get so little? But I think the big part of it is it

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