I have just ordered the meaning of human existence which is the capstone book and dont we all want to know the meaning of human existence so im looking or were too reading the continuation of the social conquests book. We will see where the rest of the summer leagues. Im sure there will be other topics that will pop up that will keep me reading. This week on q a Thomas Schatz president s of citizens against waste talk about his organization including several members of congress to bring attention to government waste over the years. Cspan Thomas Schatz citizens against government waste you you are the person in europe and around that organization promised 30 years. What is it to . Guest is an organization created following the release of the Grace Commission report under president reagan and teeter grazed head of the Grace Commission and peter and Jack Anderson the syndicated columnist took president reagans advice which was to not that they purport gather dust on the shelf and they put together citizens against government waste in the lobbying arm called the counsel for citizens against government waste so the job of the organization is to uncover expose to publicize and eliminate affirmative waste, fraud and abuse. Cspan what is the book . Guest the book was started in the early 90s in 1991 was the first book and following the release of a list of unauthorized programs which was done under president reagan and i believe 1988 we got the idea of taking out list and figuring out how those expenditures were getting to the bill because they really werent supposed to be there under the rules. We worked with a Bipartisan Coalition of members of congress which then was called the congressional pork busters porkbarrel spending and really still lives and eventually became the term term earmarks in the winter all the Appropriations Bills and started the pig book. I believe the first year was 3 billion went all the way up to 29 billion in 2006 and every year that we can find earmarks in the preparations bill we released a congressional pig book around april or may. Cspan we have video of past conferences you have held and you are in the middle of all of this. Talk about some of this. Senator ted stevens bundled nearly 30 million his home state of alaska in this fiscal fiscal fiscal year. There is 70 million for construction at two National Guard bases and an air force base. Senator Charles Grassley of the biggest project the 50 million for an indoor rainforest in coralville iowa. The award goes to senator grassley for this money. Thats only the down payment on a 225 milliondollar project that we are all going to pay for because iowa is contributing absolutely nothing. The longestrunning earmarks this year 5. 9 million at the Eastwest Center in hawaii. The center has received 10 earmarks worth 103. 8 million since 2001, im sorry since 1997 all by appropriations senator daniel at inouye. My view of anything . Guest its still there. The indoor rainforest was always one of my favorites and it turned out that coralville decided not to spend the money that they shopped around the rest of the state and they never built it. North carolina, spartan North Carolina was supposed to get a halfMillion Dollars for teapot museum. That never happened because somebodys required matching funds and a lot of the local said wait a second we will have to spend some of our own money to do this so earmarks earmarks over the years have been some of the most ridiculous projects that one could possibly imagine. All of that was true, we dont make make it happen in make it happen in my field days days and we could figure out exactly which member of congress put in the air remarks, the changes more difficult to determine who has inserted an earmark into the Appropriations Bills. Cspan you mentioned the Eastwest Center in hawaii, 5. 9 million or whatever and 100 some million over the years, how does that kind of thing happened and what does it do . This is something we need . Guest the center is fully funded by the private sector. The Eastwest Center should be funded the sum same way. Duplicates a lot of other programs and even president obama said it should be funded via the federal government. Senator inouye who was either chairman or Ranking Member of the Appropriations Committee at the same time senator stevens of alaska was either chairman or Ranking Member depending on which party was in charge of course and they split a huge pot of money. Percapita hawaii West Virginia were the top three. They write the bill, they have the last chance to put in their particular project and thats how it gets in. Not an open process. Its behindthescenes and the Eastwest Center is still there because the new senator who replace replaced senator inouye, senator schatz no relation keeps putting in there. Right you have done is from a 30 years. Why did you start with this and the first place that you created citizens against government waste . Guest i joined the organization after working for six years for congressman hamilton fish, came in a 1986 in overtime we started looking at how can we best get people to Pay Attention to wasteful spending so we can to find things that are just doing and easy to understand. The government is so large an organization has to cut through a lot of the noise and the other things going on. Members of Congress Talking about all the wonderful things that they are doing in trying to get people to be more involved and more personal so that they understand the impact on them and their families and their children and grandchildren. The 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 dont get our fiscal house in order that will suffer and have a lesser standard of living which will be the first time that one generation would pass on to the next at a higher not a higher standard but a lower standard of more debt. Cspan you went to school in new york, which branch . Guest i went to the university of new new york now binghamton university. Cspan you went to George Washington law school paid what was your reason to want to do a lot of . Guest at that would need good thing to do and my brother gone to georgetown so neither was practiced law for very long. I did for a couple of years and had a lot of friends who worked on capitol hill but a job opportunity to be legislative assistant and legislative director with congressman fish. Fish was my philosophical interest and after six years on his personal staff a friend of mine who worked for something called the House Wednesday group , he said to me i heard about a position as citizens against government waste and of course i knew about the Grace Commission which was only two years previously had issued its report and i went there and have been ever since. Cspan we are going to get down the weeds may be too much in his hour before its over but before we start that i want to show you some video of an interview done with William Fox Meyer former senator from wisconsin from 1975 to 1988 for 13 years. Every month you should something called at Golden Fleece award. Lets watch senator fox meyer. This was an agency that spent 100. [inaudible] there were all kinds of places you could go to get volunteers for that program. Cspan how does this thing happen . Guest they happen because people are hired to spend this money and in order to spend a trillion dollars in the present budget you have to have thousands of people spending money as fast as the possibly can and they come in and they spend 50 or 60,000 for coffee in the morning and another 100,000 he goes on and on day after day and. Soon money loses all significance. Cspan im asking you how does it happen . Guest its so big that its very difficult to get things under control. People may recall when senator dole ran for president he wanted to get rid of the three departments but those kinds of things are so difficult to do these days because money is spread out all over the place. The Government AccountabilityOffice Issues a report on duplication and overlap which interestingly was something that then senator barack obama and senator tom coburn pushed for together they also push for more transparency in terms of how money is being spent at the reports in gao described the duplication. For example one of the report said there are 209 Science Technology and generic math programs or s. T. E. M. Programs that the federal government and 13 agencies so someone could get rid of the department of education and congress could eliminate the department of education. They there would be 12 agencies including the department of defense that has a program for Science Technology education. You have one place where education would be done so its a department or agency or whatever it might be that everything is spread out all over said could eliminate entire departments and you dont eliminate all of the associated programs that just permeate throughout the federal government so our thought is take all these gao recommendations bring them to the Florida House and the senate and get rid of the duplication. Find something that works well. Cspan when senator left it was trillions of dollars in debt. A lot less than it is now but i want to show a web site called the u. S. Debt clock. Org and anybody in the country can look this up and its much larger than you see on our screen right now. With all these numbers moving and according to the debt clock where 19 trillion in debt and there are lots of other figures on you. Matter fact he would point out how many automobiles were sold in the last month at the different companies. What do you think about this, not the clock so much but would he think of this money thats moving around this town . Guest one thing looking at the debt is higher than the total output of the United States, not a good position to be in a particularly when we depend on other countries given the Global Economy that help support that debt. They buy our Treasury Security and therefore they are buying our debt. Everything is intertwined out its not good to be dependent on others for how the country is indebted. Cspan by the way the first Golden Fleece award was in 1975 for the National Science foundation for squandering 84,000 to try to find out why people fall in love. Guest im sure Something Like that is still going on over there. The National Science foundation has been in the list and senator coburn announced senator langford and many others were some of the studies may have merit but a lot of them are duplicative, a lot of them really dont help anybody around the country. It just has to make sense. Cspan the second one back in 75 to the National Science foundation for spending over 500,000 to determine under what condition rats, monkeys and humans bite and clinch their jobs. Guest given a rat population around capitol hill these days i dont think you want to know the result of that one. Cspan select service, for 98,000dollar contract the allvolunteer army concept in Foreign Countries two years after an allvolunteer army was adopted by the United States. Guest again not a surprise. Thats the way things work Great Washington tends to be reactive, not proactive. Nobody thinks ahead. No one is thinking about what it would be done before and how can we keep funding that and they dont solve romes. You asked earlier how do these things happen . Its not planned like any other organization. Another organization is setting goals first and looking for solutions to the problem and then determining how can we get there within the budget cuts the budget is not first and most organizations because they have to figure out how they are going to get money to support what theyre going to do. One of the recommendations of the Grace Commission was to change the name of the office of 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. Not an exciting thing. Most people dont think of it as being all that interesting but its extremely important to the thought process in washington. They did managing first and did budgeting next. They would be setting goals and looking for results. They wouldnt pay for something if somebody had proven that it works. We spend 100 million, didnt work with spend a billion. Its not that much but i wouldnt be surprised if thats a solution. Its not just democrats, love if republicans as well. Those s. T. E. M. Programs the third of those came into being after theyd took over the house and senate. People tend to think republicans want more defense and democrats nondefense and eight it together and they just spend more. 405 million to his state of oregon. That includes a 2. 6 million grant for Marine Science Center named after you guessed it mark hatfield. 1. 7 million to improve the shelf life of vegetables which was served up by senator patty murray of washington. 55 million in pork in 2007 defense bill. Also Million Dollars as speaker of the house nancy pelosi ran through the Learning Center which will preserve the site of the u. S. Armys first Language School established in 1941. Senator thad cochran the Ranking Member of the senate Appropriations Committee who received the for his 490 million. He has been number one for three years in a row and his total exceeds 2 billion during that threeyear period of time. Cspan standing next to you senator jeff flake and im not sure whether he was a congressman at that time but the point i want to ask about is how im piercing is that for these members to stand next to you is your blasting one of her colleagues . In most cases they have no pork at all. Senator mccain has been to these events longer than anyone else and he has been the leader on the elimination of your remarks and pork spending for 20 plus years. Senator flake came into the house and right away he got involved in the senate. He puts out his own report. Members i care about it have had an impact. Moratorium which i want to talk about further further but they were caught up in a on earmarks without people like jeff flake and john mccain and others who stood up to them. Cspan let me show the cover of the reports that jeff flake puts out in december of 2015. It called the. [speaking in farsi] wakens and it looks a little bit like tom coburn but he put out a waste book like this. Did he follow this on purpose . Guest yes and in fact James Langford of oklahoma who was elected when senator coburn retired spoke with us almost a year ago or a year ago in fact about what he was planning as well so there was a book from senator langford, 100 billion in savings and senator flake, senator mccain inside the pentagon. So its wonderful that the idea that senator coburn had proliferating among senators and congressman Steve Russell from oklahoma getting this out to the public because the more this gets publicized the easier just to keep making the case that something needs to be done about wasteful spending. The appropriators and the Transportation Committee loves to spend money and they need to be reminded there still ways. Cspan we will show you senator flake and moment that hears from his book. I will read one paragraph. U. S. Air force contract with nascar totaling 1. 6 million that included autograph sessions with Aric Almirola at an air force recruit in booth meet and greets and other appearances by Richard Petty and 20 Richard Petty driving experience right alongside. What is the government doing spending money on this . Guest thats an example of jeff flake and john mccain bringing up this kind of expenditure and not spending that money. This is one where they really looked at it and said why is the pentagon sponsoring events and it turned out senator mccain sometimes to have the pentagon come to these events so they said look the military wants to volunteer and spend some time at sporting events, find but it shouldnt be transactional. They shouldnt be doing this and thats a good case, good example i should say of why these things the two continued to be done. Eventually some of this goes away. Cspan heres another one here called hipster parties. Quote will you be there to help a hipster in need . Thats the question posed by help the Hipster Movement and has received nearly 5 million of taxpayer funds from the National Institutes of health over the past five years the project organizes parties and bars at night clubs featuring indie rock bands,