Brian Thomas Schatz citizens against government waste. You are president of it and you have been around the organization for 30 years. What does it do . Thomas it was created following the release of the Grace Commission report. Peter grace and jack anderson, syndicated columnist, took president reagans advice which was to not let the report gather dust on the shelf and they put together citizens against government waste and the lobbying arm of that called the council for citizens against government waste. The job of the organization is to uncover, expose, publicize, and a limited government waste and fraud and mismanagement. Brian what is the pig book . Thomas it started in the early 1990s. Following the release of a list of unauthorized programs which was done under president reagan in 1988, we got the idea of taking that list and figuring out how those expenditures were getting into the bills if they were not supposed to be there. We worked with a Bipartisan Coalition of members of congress which was then called the congressional pork busters coalition and they came up with us, a definition. It was called porkbarrel spending. And then called earmarks. Then we started the pig book. The first was 3 billion and it went up to 29 billion in 2006. Every year and that we can find earmarks in the appropriations will, we release a congressional pig look in april or may. Brian we have some video of past news conferences. [video clip] thomas senator ted stevens funneled monies to his home state of alaska. 70 million for construction at two National Guard bases and an air force base. Senator Charles Grassley has the biggest project. The soaking the taxpayers award goes to senator grassley for this money. That is the down payment on a 225 million project that we are all going to pay for because iowa is contributing nothing so far. The longest running earmarks which this year received 5. 9 million is the East West Center in hawaii. It has received 10 earmarks since 2001. Since 1997, i am sorry. The Senate Appropriations commission. Brian does that remind you of anything . Thomas it is still there. The indoor rain forest was always one of my favorites and it turned out that they chose not to spend the money. They never built it. North carolina, was supposed to get a halfMillion Dollars for a teapot museum. That never happened because some of these required matching funds and the locals said wait a minute, we will have to spend some of our own money to do this. Earmarks over the years have been some of the most ridiculous projects that one could possibly imagine. All of it is true. We dont make it up. Unlike the old days where we could figure out exactly which member of congress within the earmarked, things have changed. It is a lot more difficult. Brian the mention of the Eastwest Center in hawaii, 5. 9 million or whatever how does that kind of thing happen . And what does it do . Thomas there used to be a northsouth center and that is now funded fully by the private sector. The Eastwest Center should be funded the same way. It duplicates a lot of other programs. Even president obama said it should not be funded by the federal government and he likes to fund pretty much everything. The senator who was chairman or Ranking Member of the appropriations committee, senator stevens in alaska. They split a huge pot of money, per capita, alaska and hawaii and West Virginia were the top three. They write the bills, they have the last chance to put in their particular projects and that is how it gets in. It is not an open process. It is behind the scenes. The Eastwest Center is still there because the new senator keeps putting it in there. Brian you have done this for almost 30 years, why did you start with this center . Thomas we started out following the report of the Grace Commission, i joined the organization after working for six years for congressman Hamilton Fish of new york. We started looking at how we could best get people to Pay Attention to wasteful spending. We tend to find things that are interesting, different or easy to understand because the government is so large an organization like citizens against government waste has to cut through the noise, members of Congress Talking about the wonderful things they are doing and try to get people to be more involved. And make it more personal so they understand the impact on them, their families, and their children and grandchildren. It was a big thing for peter grace to talk about, the impact of the National Debt on our children and grandchildren, because they will be the ones if we do not get our fiscal house in order, who will suffer and have a lesser standard of living. The first time one generation would pass on to another a lower standard of living. Brian you went to school in new york. Thomas i went to suny binghamton. One of the four state universities in new york. Brian you went to the George Washington law school. Why did you want to do law . Thomas i thought it would be a good thing to do and my brother went to georgetown. Neither of us practiced law for very long. I had a lot of friends that worked on capitol hill and heard about the job opportunity for a legislative assistant. I then heard about the opportunity with congressman fish. After six euros on his personal staff, a friend of mine had worked on the House Wednesday group. Steve hoffman told me that he had heard about a position at citizens against government waste. I knew about the Grace Commission which was only about two years previously it had issued its report. Brian we will get down into the weeds, maybe too much before this is over but before we get to that, i want to show you some video done by william from 19751988, every month he issued the Golden Fleece award. Let us watch him. [video clip] this was a fleece we gave to an agency that spent 103,000 to try to find out if sunfish that drink tequila would be more aggressive than those that drink gin. How did this happen . Because people are hired to spend this money and in order to spend a trillion dollars, you have to have thousands of people spending money as fast as they can. They come in and spend 50,000 60,000 before coffee in the morning. And it goes on and on, day after day. Soon, money loses all significance. Thomas the senator was right. It is so big it is very difficult to get things under control. People may recall that when senator dole ran for president he wanted to get rid of three departments. Those kinds of things are so difficult to do these days because money is spread out all over the place. The Government Accountability office every year issues a report on duplication and overlap. Interestingly, that was something that then senator barack obama pushed for. He also pushed for more transparency in terms of how the money was spent. The report from gao describe the duplication. One report described that there were 209 stem programs throughout the federal government. In 13 agencies. If someone could get rid of the department of education, there would be 12 other agencies including the department of defense that has a program for stem. One would think that in any other organization, you would have one place where education would be done. Just a department or an agency. But everything is spread out all over so you you can eliminate entire departments, you dont eliminate all of the associated programs that permeate throughout the federal government. Our thought is to take all of these gao recommendations and bring them to the house in the senate and get rid of duplication. Find something that works well. Brian when the senator left in 1988, it was trillions of dollars in debt, a lot less than it is now. I want to show a website. Anyone in the country can look this up. It is much larger than you see on your screen now. All of these numbers are moving. According to the debt clock, we are 19 trillion in debt. You can even find out how many automobiles were sold in the last month by the different companies. What do you think of this . Not of the clock so much but what do you think of this kind of money that is moving around . Thomas when are the things we look at is gross debt to gdp ratio. The debt is higher than the total output of the United States. Not a good position to be in particularly when we depend on other countries given the Global Economy to help support that debt. They buy our treasury securities and so they are buying our debt. Everything is intertwined. It is not good to be dependent on others for how the country is being indebted. Brian the first Golden Fleece award was in 1975 . For the National Science foundation for squandering 84,000 to try to find out why people all in love. Thomas im sure Something Like that is still going on. The National Science foundation has been on many lists. Some of these studies may have merit but a lot of them are duplicative, a lot of them dont help everyone around the country. Brian second one, back in 1975, to the National Science foundation for spending over 500,000 to determine under what conditions wrath, monkeys, and humans bites and clinch their jaws. Thomas given the rat population on capitol hill i dont want to know the results. Brian the study of the all volunteer army concept in foreign countries. Thomas not a surprise. This is the way things work. Washington tends to be reactive, not proactive. No one thinks ahead. They dont solve problems. That is part of the process also. U. S. To earlier how these things happen. It is not planned like any other organization. In another organization, you are setting goals first and looking for solutions to the problem. Then you are determining how you can get there and then the budget. The budget is not first in most organizations. They have to figure out how they are going to get money to support what they are trying to do. One of the recommendations of the Grace Commission was to change the omb, the executive branch that does the budget and change it to the office of federal management so that management would be the title, not budget. It is not an exciting thing. Most people dont think it all that interesting but it is extremely important to the thought process in washington. If they did Management First and then budgeting next they would be setting goals, looking for results. They wouldnt pay for something until they had proven that it works. The solution tends to be we spent 100 million, it did not work so now let us spend 100 billion. It is not just democrats, republicans as well. I mentioned the stem programs, one third of them came in to being after the republicans took over the house and senate. Everyone likes to spend money on things they like. People tend to think the republicans want more defense, and the democrats want more nondefense. Brian here is more from you and news conferences. There is a person standing next to you in a pig suit. [video clip] thomas demonstrating that chairmanship has its opportunities. Mark hatfield has directed more than 405 million to oregon since 1991. That includes a 2. 6 million grant for a marine i is center named after mark hatfield. 1. 7 billion to improve the shelf life of vegetables which was served up by senator murray of washington who bragged about bringing home 55 million in pork in a 2007 defense bill. There is also a Million Dollars that nancy pelosi got to fund the military intelligence historic center. Senator cochran, the Ranking Member of the Senate Appropriations committee who received the vlad the impaler award. His total exceeds 2 billion during that three year time period. Brian the point i want to ask about is how embarrassing is that for these members to stand next to you are blasting one of their colleagues . Thomas they dont have the long list of pork. Senator mccain has been to these events longer than anyone else. He has been the leader on the elimination of earmarks and court barrel spending for 20 plus years. The senator got involved right away. He puts out his own reports. Members that care about it have had an impact. A moratorium, there would not be won on earmarks without people like john mccain and others who stood up at these events. Brian let me show the cover of the report that jeff put out. He did it in december 2015. It is called waste book the farce awakens. Did he followed this on purpose . Thomas senator lang ford of oklahoma spoke with us a year ago about what he was planning as well. There is a book from senator langford. When hundred billion dollars in davies. Senator mccain has looked at waste inside the pentagon. It is wonderful that the idea that senator coburn had is proliferating among senators and even congressman, for example Steve Russell is getting this information out to the public. The more that this is publicized, the easier it is to keep making the case that something needs to be done against wasteful spending. Members of the Transportation Committee love to spend money. They need to be reminded that there is still waste. Brian a u. S. Air force contract with nascar totaling nearly 1. 6 million including autograph sessions with a driver at an air force recruiting booth, meet and greets and other appearances by Richard Petty and Richard Petty drive along experience right along. Thomas this is an example of john mccain and jeff bringing up this kind of expenditure and the pentagon is now not spending this money. This is one where they really looked at it and said why is the pentagon sponsoring events . It turned out they were paying to have the pentagon come to these events. If the military wants to volunteer and spend some time at these events, fine but it should not be transactional. They should not be doing this. A good case of why i should say this is a good example of why these things need to continue to be done. Brian here is another one. Hipster parties. Will you be there to help a hipster in need . That is a question posed by help a Hipster Movement that has received nearly 5 million in taxpayer funds from the National Institute of health in the last five years. The project organizes parties at bars and nightclubs featuring local artists as well as other activities aimed at enticing hipsters to take a stand against tobacco corporations. Thomas tobacco corporations including settlement. That is a ridiculous waste of money. Who will go to such an event to convince people not to smoke . A lot of those efforts have been a big waste of money. Brian one of the quotes that was in there was that hipsters are hard to define because that is part of their culture. They initiate trends, for the moment that seems to bring a focus on flannel, facial hair, skinny jeans and offkilter hats. To identify hipsters, they asked young people to describe them. If a look screen hipster over and over the researchers used that as a guide. Thomas it speaks for itself. It is absurd to spend that kind of money on something that they do not know what the impact will be. Brian here is a bit of senator jeff flake. Nasa can no longer even launch astronauts into orbit. Yet, nasa is spending 1. 2 million to study the impact of microgravity on cheap. Nasa is also spending 280,000 to develop plans to build a cloud city on venus. The pentagon is spending to lee and dollars to teach robots how to play jazz and 2. 5 million to create a robot lobby greeter. The National Institute of health spent about 1 million on the monkey study. The purpose of the research is to determine if other studies can be conducted of monkeys on treadmills. I think everyone would have to agree that this is totally bananas. Brian how much you work with people like senator flake . Thomas we are in constant touch with them. The monkey in the treadmill. They have also funded shrimp on a treadmill and Mountain Lion on a treadmill. The researcher had to shop around to find a treadmill big enough for the mountain line. It was determined how long and how fast they could run. Brian who decides on these projects . Thomas the federal government gives money to the National Institute of health and others and they have peerreviewed studies. Having this kind of money means they are getting too much. The nih budget which has expanded in the last 10 years we want to to heal diseases like cancer and alzheimers. But this takes away from more serious and needed efforts at these agencies. It puts them in a bad light when you do this kind of thing. Brian you mentioned the detriment that took senator coburns face. Senator James Lankford from oklahoma. He has a book out called federal fumbles. Is there one example in this report are particularly irks you . There are many. Let me give you a couple of them. The earned income tax credit peace has the largest rate in the federal government. That one program has about a 25 fraud rate. 18 billion a year in fraud and loss in that one program alone year after year. A lot of people catch me at home and say they want to take care of the irs and what is happening with Identity Theft with the irs. They have methods they could put in place to protect the identity of individuals. If we do not deal with that, we will continue to have more and more money into the billions of dollars go out the door and a lot