What a Long Shutdown It's Been
Cato Podcast
Cato Institute
4.6 • 949 Ratings
🗓️ 5 November 2025
⏱️ 34 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Romina Boccia joins Nicholas Anthony to discuss how the shutdown centers on demands to extend subsidies for earners making well above median household income—all the way up to $500,000 annually. Federal workers and SNAP recipients have been offered up as political collateral for a deal that would cause an unprecedented $1.5 trillion in additional deficit spending—all while we continue trucking toward a fiscal cliff.
Show Notes:
Romina Boccia and Tyler Turman, "Food Stamp Shutdown Reveals the Fragility of Federal Welfare," Cato at Liberty Blog, October 30, 2025
Romina Boccia and Tyler Turman, "End Obamacare’s Welfare for the Wealthy COVID Credits," Cato at Liberty Blog, October 23, 2025
Romina Boccia and Tyler Turman, "Welfare Digest | End the ACA Subsidies for the Well-Off," Debt Dispatch, October 22, 2025
Romina Boccia and Ritvik Thakur, "Debt Digest | Remove Obamacare Regulations Instead of Extending COVID-era Credits," Debt Dispatch, October 14, 2025
Romina Boccia, "Shutdown Theatrics Just Distract Us from the Real Problem: Obscene National Debt," New York Post, October 2, 2025
Romina Boccia and Ritvik Thakur, "Debt Digest | Let Obamacare COVID Credits Expire," Debt Dispatch, October 2, 2025
Romina Boccia, "Thoughts About the Government Shutdown," Cato at Liberty Blog, October 1, 2025
Romina Boccia, Ritvik Thakur, and Ivane Nachkebia, "Debt Digest | Government Shutdown Is Likely," Debt Dispatch, September 8, 2025
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello one, hello all. It's good to have you here. Good to have you tuned in. |
| 0:09.0 | My name is Nicholas Anthony. I'm a policy analyst at the Cato Institute, and I'm joined by a very special guest. |
| 0:17.0 | And before I share who that is, I'll say we're here to figure out there's a sort of fire on the mountain. |
| 0:24.8 | And we need to figure out whether that's something to be worried about or not. |
| 0:28.8 | And so I'm joined here by Romina Bacha, and she is the director of budget and entitlement policy here at Cato, where she writes about a little bit of everything, |
| 0:39.3 | but the government spending, the debt problem, entitlement reform, |
| 0:44.4 | and if you're not subscribed already, she has the debt dispatch on substack. |
| 0:49.6 | So, Romina, it's good to have you here. |
| 0:52.1 | It's a pleasure to have this conversation with you today. |
| 0:55.1 | Getting right into the thick of it. Tell me, is there a fire on the mountain? Should be panicking? Should be running? |
| 1:03.1 | What should folks make of the government shutdown that's been going on? |
| 1:07.5 | Yeah, so we're in week four of the government shutdown that apparently Democrats have |
| 1:12.7 | decided they would like to claim the record of the longest government shutdown in U.S. history. |
| 1:19.0 | The longest government shutdown up until this point will have been 35 days, so they have a few |
| 1:25.4 | more days to go to break the record. And I hope that that's not one of the |
| 1:30.2 | goals that they have in mind for this shutdown, but I don't see a lot of good reasons for this |
| 1:37.4 | government shutdown. And it is going to cause increasing harm and inflict suffering on those Americans who are directly affected by the shutdown, which includes many federal government workers who are currently being asked to work without pay. |
| 1:59.0 | And if you're someone that relies on every paycheck to make |
| 2:04.0 | ends meet, that has severe implications for your ability to pay your rent, pay your mortgage, |
| 2:13.2 | put food on the table. And on this topic of putting food on the table, food banks will become |
| 2:19.3 | increasingly strained over this weekend and into next week as on Saturday, a so-called food stamp |
| 2:27.9 | or SNAP supplemental nutrition assistance program benefits will seize. And while we can argue whether there are too many Americans |
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