Welcome. This is Anastasia Yuglova bringing you the Cato Daily Podcast.

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Today the Cato Institute releases its eighth annual fiscal policy report card on the nation's

governors. The report card's grading is based on 23 objective measures of fiscal performance.

Governors who have cut taxes in spending the most receive the highest grades, and those who have

increased spending on taxes the most receive the lowest grades.

Director of Budget Studies Stephen Slavinsky

discusses the report's findings. How are the governor's graded in the report card?

Governor's are graded based on 23 objective measures of fiscal discipline, basically on spending and on taxes.

Governors who get the highest scores of the governors who are able to cut spending and cut taxes

in their states, and the ones that get the lowest grades are those that raise spending and raise taxes in their states.

Now I'm not of the opinion for instance that if you just cut taxes but you don't cut spending

you should get a good grade. You get a mediocre grade frankly because you're not

really reducing the size of government. What the report card tries to capture is how committed

governors are to actually reducing the size and scope of government, not just on taxes, but also on the size of

government and the amount of money that government spends as well in their states.

Another thing we like to point out in the study is that it's often very difficult to isolate specifically all of the influences

that go into passing a budget.

So in a lot of times, governor's grades are handicapped by the fact that they just have

really big spending legislatures.

Other governors who are big spenders just by their own inclination

...