This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Wednesday, May 24th, 2023.

I'm Caleb Brown.

The fight over mounting U.S. debt continues between the White House and Congress.

What does the Constitution have to say about the degree

to which debts must be honored and may or may not be repudiated?

I spoke with the Cato Institute's Bob Levy at this weekend's Benefactor Summit.

How do you evaluate this current impasse

over raising or not raising or raising with concessions

the debt ceiling for the federal government.

Well I guess I should start by saying that this is a matter of constitutional

construction so it's it's not really a consensus application of some core libertarian principle.

And I would suppose that there may be others here at the Cato Institute who have a view of this

matter that's different from my view.

But the impasse goes like this.

Secretary Yellen warns us that the federal government may be running no longer able to meet its obligations if the

debt ceiling isn't raised and she's given a date of June the 1st. So the result

if the debt ceiling isn't raised, could be default with, she says, financial

chaos to follow and despite that warning the debate over spending cuts continues.

The Democrats say they want to stand alone clean vote on raising the ceiling. The Republicans want to use the

debt ceiling as it has been used in the past as leverage to force spending

reductions and as we know the compromise seems to be elusive and negotiations are in process.

Bob this year marks 10 years of me being married and I was married in the first weekend in

...