Hey everyone, I'm Kimberly Adams. Welcome back to Make Me Smart, where we make today make sense.

I'm Kai Rizdal 28 September Thursday is what it is.

Yes, it is. And what are we three days from the government showdown now?

A little bit less. I saw in the CNN countdown clock a little while ago. I saw two hours and six...

Sorry, two days and six hours. So we're inside three.

Inside three. All right. Well, aside from that today, because it's Thursday,

we are going to be listening back to some of the big stories of the week.

We've got some audio clips. We're going to get into what was said in those clips

and what was left out. So let's get to the first one.

The reason we see so much conflict around funding the federal government

through discretionary appropriations and the potential for a government shutdown

is because Congress has so few avenues remaining to make its voice heard

that the minority party really ceases on these on these must pass bills

in order to signal its political commitments to its constituents.

I think it's also a sign of our growing debt crises and the fact that most of the debt

crises is driven by popular programs such as Social Security and Medicare spending growth,

which politicians have a very tough time tackling for the reason that they would like to be reelected.

So you're getting a lot of fighting over a smaller and declining part of the budget.

So I know that was a lot, but there's so much to impact there.

That was Ramina Bautia. She is the director of budget and entitlement policy at the Cato Institute.

I interviewed her earlier this week on one of the, I'm sure,

what will be many shutdown stories that I've done.

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