This week on Uncommon Knowledge, US senator Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) discusses his first two months in office and his vision for the Republican Party. (36:13)
“I think the biggest divide is not even a divide between Republicans and Democrats; it's a divide between the people. And [between] the entrenched elites in Washington that are growing their own power. And I think there is an incredible desire to get back to commonsense conservative principles.”

Kori Schake, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and an associate professor of international security studies at the United States Military Academy, notes that Defense Secretary Leon Panetta made no budget plans showing how the Department of Defense (DOD) would comply with the law if sequestration came into effect and that he forbade the military services from conducting any planning associated with compliance. As a result, DOD has no long-term plan. Moreover, sequestration will produce a budget that has not been stress tested to ensure that risks incurred by one part of the force are balanced by capabilities elsewhere.

Condoleezza Rice, the Thomas and Barbara Stephenson Senior Fellow on Public Policy at the Hoover Institution and a professor of political science at Stanford University, weighs in on the Republican Party's future; although noting that the popular vote of the election was close, she admits that a “bigger tent for the Republican Party” is needed. She also shared some foreign policy advice concerning the Middle East.

In this podcast Russell Roberts, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and EconTalk host, discusses, with Tammy Frisby, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, the likelihood of US tax reform in the near future. Frisby reviews the changes in tax policy during the past thirty years, focusing on the changes of the 1980s by looking at both the economics and the politics of those changes.