This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Friday, May 7th, 2021. I'm Caleb Brown. There was a time

when the average Republican cared genuinely about good governance and keeping federal

spending under control.

It appears that time is long gone,

as conservatives have steadily turned

toward attempting to use big government for conservative ends.

Democrats have gone one better.

They appear to have stopped pretending to care about deficits and debt.

Eric Bain is a reporter at Reason.

His latest cover story for the magazine is about the fights over spending that aren't happening.

It is 2021. How complete would you say is the abandonment of fiscal

responsibility among Republicans.

It is almost complete with the exception of maybe

some performative antics here and there

as a way to prevent Democratic policy priorities from passing at times, but even during the pandemic,

we haven't really seen that.

Certainly not be an effective strategy, although it's still something that Republicans kind of reflexively grope towards for like rhetorical points.

But yeah, there's really there's there's very little I think right now in in and the

conservative caucus is of course very fractured so it's difficult to draw any like real

conclusions about them but I think generally you don't see conservatives right now

prioritizing fiscal conservatism at all.

You don't see much concern from at least from elected leaders in Congress about debts

...