nomination of a u.s. district judge for illinois. earlier they voted to confirm nina want to be a u.s. district judge for colorado. when the senate returns watch live coverage here on c-span2. >> c-span that was a free mobile app featuring to unfiltered view of what's happening in washington live and on-demand. keep up with today's biggest events with live streams of floor proceedings and hearings from the u.s. congress, white house event, the courts, campaigns and more from the world of politics all at your fingertips. you can also stay current with the latest episodes of "washington journal" and find scheduling information for c-span's tv networks and c-span radio plus a variety of compelling podcasts. c-span now is available at the apple store in google plate. download it for free today. c-span now, your front row seat anytime anywhere.

>> joining us now is adam andrzejewski, the founder and ceo of notarization known as openthebooks.com. mr. andrzejewski welcome. >> guest: it's 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 states public 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 you're 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 don't take any government money so that was a no-brainer. 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. it's 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 can't 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 don't 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 there's 18 billion goinge out the door mistakenly and improperly paid but they can't stop it.

there's no club act, patron our guest with us taking a look at spin it would ask him questions it is? >> guest: -- 202-748-8000 for democrats. 202-748-8001 republicans. >> translator: and independents and you can text is a 202-748-8003. 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 nation's 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. it's 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 we're 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 don't have it in my notes if that is annual amount or every quarter. i think it iss annual amount. i n think it's 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 don't 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 quote-unquote 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 that's 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 don't 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. pelosi's said and she was right about this, the republicans in congress would vote no but the

republican governors would take the dough. that's exactly what happened. let's 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. let's 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 billion-dollar, $35 billion budget surplus and they were bailed out you and i bailed out the golden state for an additional $26 billion. this year they're running i think it is $100 billion surplus. so look california did need the money either but they didn't 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 would've happened ifd our government instead w of spending $30 trillion they would've bought $30 trillion worth of gold? wouldn't have been a better deal for us? >> guest: can you clarify the question, please? >> caller: well, i'm saying why didn't we buy gold? why did wet spend $30 $30 n when we got hardly nothing to show for it? >> guest: it's 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 five-time increase. so both republicans and democrats they just spent too much. >> host: from sherry in virginia, independent line. >> caller: thank you for s c-span. thank you for taking my call. it is interesting how the billions of dollars that are being allocated to these programs don't 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 there's 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, -- >> we're going to leave this program to honor our 40+ year commitment to covering congress. you can watch the rest of this@c-span.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 c-span2. 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: