This is a Cato special podcast. I'm Caleb Brown. More than 1800 federal subsidy programs now exist subsidizing businesses, farmers, individuals, and even other governments.

Chris Edwards, director of the Cato Institute's Tax Policy Studies, offers his thoughts.

Federal spending is growing by leaps and bounds. The federal budget hit 3.9 trillion

dollars this year and is growing rapidly under President Obama. The government is also

increasing the scope of its activities. It's intervening in many areas

that used to be left to state and local governments, charities, and private

individuals. Then give us a sense of how many programs we're talking about.

The federal government currently operates 1,804 different subsidy programs

all the way from gigantic health care programs to obscure programs that most Americans have never heard of.

So we've got 1800 different subsidy programs today that is up from just 1400 at the start of this decade.

So there are 27% more federal subsidy programs today than just eight years ago.

This is a remarkable expansion in the size and scope of the federal government.

We know that there are 1800 federal subsidy programs because the federal government publishes something that taxpayers can

find online called the catalog of federal domestic assistance. This is a 2,000 page catalog that lists all federal programs and gives a description about what they do.

Interestingly, Congress first published this catalog back in the 60s because during the great society programs of

Lyndon Johnson, members of Congress wanted to know how to get all these new

subsidies and benefits to their constituents.

So they created this catalog that has grown over time to enormously in size.

It started out in 1970 at just a thousand federal subsidy programs and here we are

30 years later and we have 1,800 federal subsidy programs and new programs are being added every

year.

What does these programs do?

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