This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Thursday, November 5th, 2015.

I'm Caleb Brown.

The U.S. House's new speaker, Paul Ryan, has yet to show that he's someone who would or could effectively restrain the

congressional pension for spending ever more money.

Jonathan Bidlack with the coalition to reduce spending discusses the state of Congress

and the trade-offs that Congress critters won't make.

What should fiscal conservatives expect from Speaker Paul Ryan?

Really hard to say. He's definitely, I think, as good as anyone when it comes to the ideology and the need

for reforming entitlement spending. Perhaps not as good as as many when it comes to

reforming Pentagon spending. He's made some comments recently talking about how he's in

favor of a larger Navy and wanting the Pentagon to spend more.

In terms of what the outcomes will be for Speaker Ryan,

you know, that's something that ideology only tells you so much.

You know, he may be better on the issue

than many others, but you have to be willing to go

and twist those arms when you need to,

you need to be a good negotiator

and know when to take the compromise and know when to push harder and

that's something that ideology doesn't tell you and so we haven't really seen Paul

Ryan in that position yet and so it's really tough to say whether or not fiscal conservatives are going to get a better

deal than they did with Speaker Boehner.

Is there any suspicion or hope that Congress may choose to adopt some sort of zero baseline budgeting in the near term?

...