This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Tuesday, October 15th,

2024. I'm Caleb Brown. How does your governor

perform when it comes to fiscal policy. Today the Cato Institute

releases its fiscal policy report card on America's governors, a biennial

rating for governors on their tax and spending choices, the policies they propose, advance, oppose, and veto.

Cato's Chris Edwards hands out the grades.

He details the governor's scores. I always look forward to this time of year, Chris.

The leaves are changing colors, and Chris Edwards has his governor's report card.

Before we get into the ups and downs, the people who did well, people who did poorly, let's talk about methodology just a little bit.

What goes into rating a governor on fiscal policy?

Cato has been doing the governor's report card since the 1990s.

This is a 17th edition.

We do it every two years.

We rate the governors on their taxing and spending.

Very simple, the governors who cut taxes

and spending the most get the best grades, they get the A's.

The governors who increase taxes

and spending the most, they fail, they get the Fs. So this year we had six A's and six F's and there's a really

a large difference between the policies. They'll tell you between the A governors and the F governors.

We don't give governors credit or blame for things that lawmakers do, right? We use various metrics to score the governors on their taxing and spending

and I try to use metric that identifies the contribution of the governor as separate from the legislature.

So for example, I look at the percentage increase that the governor has proposed

...