This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Monday, August 1st, 2011.

I'm Caleb Brown.

The debt deal doesn't cut federal spending.

That much is clear, but it did reveal that the Tea Party movement has

far from dissipated. John Samples, director of the Cato Institute's Center for

Representative Government, and author of the struggle to limit government government evaluates the politics of the deal.

Had the Tea Party not happened, had 2010 not happened, had the Tea Party even won the 2010 election but just dissipated thereafter,

I think what would have happened is the Republican leadership would have gone back to its old ways.

I mean, remember both Mitch McConnell and John Boehner go way back into the 90s and

before.

They would have been very reluctant to go to a high stakes confrontation with the administration,

and you would have seen a deal that was much more favorable to both some kinds of tax increases probably and probably

smaller tax cuts even down the line.

What's the good and the deal?

I mean, what positive points can be taken out of it

just from a sort of public choice perspective?

Well, I think one of the positive things about the deal, the way it has come out and not being

perceived or not being a balanced approach because it doesn't have tax increases in it is in a sense defined or perhaps

redefined what is at stake here. The issue is not that we've increased

spending and now let's you know deal with it

partially by tax increases and partially by spending constraint rather the the

issue of deficits has been defined as a problem of restraining spending.

...