Joining us now is adam andrzejewski, the founder and ceo of notarization known as openthebooks. Com. Mr. Andrzejewski welcome. Guest its great to be here. Thanks have me back. Host when my people about your organization what it does and how are you funded and able to do the things that you do . Guest so at openthebooks. Com wiggly transparency revolutionizes United StatesPublic Policy and politics. So to that end of last year e filed 47,000 freedom of information act request which was a most in american history. We successfully captured 12 trillion worth of federal, state and local spending and we do this we put on our website at openthebooks. Com for free so people can follow the money. So people can hold the Political Class the countable republicans and democrats further tax and spend decisions. Host as far as if you do it for free who support you in what youre doing . Guest 100 privately funded do we accept no government funding. For example, during covid we could have taken paycheck protectioned for give up alone r up to 300,000, and we dont take any government money so that was a nobrainer. We refused that. Host you put out a report, look at issues and wasteful Government Spending baseded on what you done in your research. What do you find from this latest report of us . Guest we cannot a report, approximately every other year. Its called where is the pork . We filed federal Government Spending. One of the examples were highlighted this year was we simply asked the question, what federal program is running well. It cant be the 20 largest federal agencies because the Government Accountability office came out with a report on their mistaken and improper payments, and outside of the waste and covid eight and the fraud in covid a there was nearly 300 billion they admitted to an the 20 the 20 largest federal programs that was mistakenly paid or just when out the door under the wrong set of rules in the wrong about or to the wrong entity. Host can you give me an example . Guest the irs administered the earned Income Tax Credit Program and they admit to one out of every four dollars in that program goes out the door on a mistaken or improper basis. That total number every single year is 18 billion. Host and so then would you say and proper basis how was it done, just into the wrong address, for someone who is not living anymore, how does it work . Guest most of those payments go toos people are unqualified for the broker. Over the years we reached out to the irs into a spokesman at said you can tell us the number, 18 billion is a big number. Why dont you put controls in place, basic accounting controls in place to prevent the mistaken and improper payments . They said we would need a bigger budget to do that. They can tell us theres 18 billion goinge out the door mistakenly and improperly paid but they cant stop it. Theres no club act, patron our guest with us taking a look at spin it would ask him questions it is . Guest 2027488000 for democrats. 2027488001 republicans. Translator and independents and you can text is a 2027488003. One of the other figures you report highlights is what happens when a government extends the state of emergency particularly in covid . Kenya highlight that . Guest every single quarter in the entire system on the nations response to covid is built on the National Emergency. If you take away the National Emergency a lot of your therapeutics, your vaccines, a lot of what encompasses the entire National Healthcare response would go away. Its only off the rights of healthth emergency. Joe Biden Campaign on inking covid but we found and unearthed a member that it is first 30 tacy about the governors and they said look into first year of my administration were going to be in a National Emergency for the entire first year. So we found that interesting. We quantified what that means on an annual basis and it is 18 billion. Because it triggers also taxpayer payments on medicaid payments, increasing levels of those payments. Host does this happen every time the government decides to extend a deadline or a state of emergency or is this a yearlyrl amount we are talkin . Guest that specific number i dont have it in my notes if that is annual amount or every quarter. I think it iss annual amount. I n think its a little over 4 billion every single quarter. Host can you break down where that cost is . Is that my visa goes out to the states, for programs to support that states come how to set break down . Guest i dont have on that. Host one of the other things you did talk about when it comesyo to money that receivd covid funds was taking a look at area codes and places in the United States where it is deemed as rich i suppose, 100 million is a break that down to the top 50 richest places. Can you talk about that . Guest so atherton california is a richest place, the average Household Income exceeds half Million Dollars a year. Think tech titans and silicon valley. A lot of them live in atherton california. The American Rescue act passed last year in march provided 350 billion of bailout to states and localities. Atherton was quoteunquote bailed out for 1. 4 million. I reached out for comment to the bigwigs in atherton and they refuse to even comment on where the spin to 1. 4 billion or if they sent it back. They can make the case that they needed taxpayer help. Host they are in a wealthy place why should they receive money that is deemed to help others released everybody. Guest this goes across the country. Like in Beverly Hills california zip code 9021 oh. 8 million we bailed out berlioz with the American Rescue act. Greenwich, connecticut, 20 million of taxpayer bailout and thats where all the wealthy new yorkers fled. They fled to greenwich and a pandemic. You have key west florida vacation destination and they received 10 million of taxpayer mayy bailout. This goes on the cross 36,002 bridges across the country. Many of these communities dont know how to spend the money. Host does a Biden Administration or anybody else justify why they should get this money in the first place . Guest nancy pelosi i think said it best. All the democrats in congress voted for the American Rescue act including this big bailout. All the republicans are against it. Pelosis said and she was right about this, the republicans in congress would vote no but the republican governors would take the dough. Thats exactly what happened. Lets walk through the red state of texas. At the time of the American Rescue act texass was running a 1 billion surplus and they were bailed out through the bill for another 17 billion. Lets take utah. Utah was running 1. 5 billion Budget Surplus. They surplus. They were bailed out for an additional 1. 5 billion. Then you have also blue states likeke governor nuisance california. At the time of the building were running a 75 billiondollar, 35 billion Budget Surplus and they were bailed out you and i bailed out the golden state for an additional 26 billion. This year theyre running i think it is 100 billion surplus. So look california did need the money either but they didnt send it back also. Host we have calls lined. This is adamut andrzejewski of openthebooks. Com. In Georgia Republican line you are on with i guess go ahead. Caller good morning. I wanted to ask you the question is, what wouldve happened ifd our government instead w of spending 30 trillion they wouldve bought 30 trillion worth of gold . Wouldnt have been a better deal for us . Guest can you clarify the question, please . Caller well, im saying why didnt we buy gold . Why did wet spend 30 30 n when we got hardly nothing to show for it . Guest its a good argument. I could knew thehe question that let me answer a it. Starting with george w. Bush there was a National Debt that was slightly under 6 trillion. So, so you of that bush, obama, trump, biden, and over the course of the last 20 years it is actually staggering the growth of our National Debt. It is gone from less than 6 trillion the 30 trillion, a fivetime increase. So both republicans and democrats they just spent too much. Host from sherry in virginia, independent line. Caller thank you for s cspan. Thank you for taking my call. It is interesting how the billions of dollars that are being allocated to these programs dont end up in the hands of the people who they are intended for. Rather thanho talking about smaller government, perhaps we should be talking about more Efficient Government because there are many, many reasons why there are people who need to be provided with funding so they can get the services they are guaranteed supposedly that need to have happen. The only way to make that happen is with the federal government stepping up and doing the work that we need to do in terms of that, in terms of the work host caller, are you there . Caller virginia, and we do this work of helping people understand how the government is working, supposed to work for you as opposed to saying the government is not doing anything. The government is doing too much. Guest in these hyper partisan times theres a principle we should all be able to agree on, that when government taxes us, the tax dollars should help people who have real needs. So the point is a very, very valid one. An hour where is the pork report we actually show that twice the federal government on covid eight, for example, were going to leave this program to honor our 40 year commitment to covering congress. You can watch the rest of this cspan. Org. The Senate Working today on several judicial nominations including continue work on the nomination of a u. S. District judge for illinois. We take you live to the floor of the senate here on cspan2. Under the previous order, all postcloture time has expired. The question is on the nomination. Is there a sufficient second . There appears to be. The clerk will call the roll. Vote