This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Monday, April 18th, 2011.

I'm Caleb Brown.

The budget debate has begun again.

This time there are clear plans on the table aimed at reining in federal spending.

Tennessee Republican Senator Bob Corker's plan is the CAP Act, a statutory effort aimed at bringing

government's share of the economy down to 20%.

He spoke at a Cato Institute conference on federal spending held earlier this month.

I tell folks back home that no matter how irresponsible they believe we are with their money, it's even worse. They ought to see it

up close. They ought to see the way we do what we do. So, you know, I'm one of those folks who likes to know where I'm going. My company, we had

projections. We knew what we're going to spend on capital. We did the same thing with our

city. We did the same thing with our state.

So we developed the CAP Act.

It's a 10-page bill.

It's simple.

It doesn't have a lot of whereas is in it.

It just is like a business plan for the United States.

It is in legislative language, so it's something that is ready to be passed,

but it does four things. Number one, it puts a cap on spending. Dan mentioned that we were at 25% of GDP, maybe we're at 24.5% today.

This is the highest level spending relative to our economy

that we have been since 1945 in this country, the highest level since 1945.

So what is it we need to do?

To me what we need to do is cap spending and then drive it down to what I would call the 40 year historical

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