website at studentcam.org. >> weekend on c-span2 on intellectual feast. every saturday american history tv document america's stories, and on sundays booktvrings you the latest in nonfiction books and authors. funding for c-span2 comes on these television companies and more including sparklight. >> the greatest town on earth is the place you call home. at sparklight it's our home, too, and right now we are all facing our greatest challenge. that's why sparklight is working around the clock to keep you connected. we are doing or our parts wih little easier to do yours. >> sparklight, along with these television companies, supports c-span2 as a public service. >> host: at the start of a new congress is a good time to check in with adam andrzejewski, founder and ceo of

openthebooks.com for folks who are not familiar remind them what to do there, what your mission is a native traitor so it openthebooks.com believe that transparency revolutionizes the united states public policy and politics. to that the end last year we filed 50,000 freedom of information requested is the most american history. we captured trillions of dollars worth of federal, state and local spending. forg victory last year was the first time in history we open up thet line by line spending in california in the golden state. we filed a lawsuit in california superior court here we lost that suits are we didn't get a a se transaction and so we filed 442 sunshine request on every single california state agency. they produce the line by line spending and we compiled a a california checkbook like a jigsaw puzzle opening of $87 billion in one fiscal year, 2021, a distant vendor string want from california to d think

that when when the 18 congress is going to be any more transparent than previous congresses? >> guest: what a true with the rules package passed last but by house republicans it was a partyline vote. one republican jumped ship whatever republican other than that voted for every democrat voted against it. there's some great bipartisan reforms in that package. we can summarize it in three areas. one was transparency of legislation. number two, spending reforms. and number three is widening and expanding the scope of future investigations. suggest on the transparency of legislation, the first thing is legislative members of congress are simply going to have to show up to cast a vote now. they got rid of proxy voting which is basal devoting from home. onon spending reforms somethinge have advocated for the last two years, , we've run a petition at openthebooks.com to simply read the bill. i think people across the country on a bipartisan basis

are absolutely sick of these omnibus, these massive spending bills thousands of pages drafted at midnight on a middle of the night and then vote on it immediately. for this creates m a 72 hour timeout to sell to read the bill. our petition at openthebooks.com over the course of the last two years have tens of thousands of petition signatures on that and so i am really excited and proud of our team that now the republican house rules package has adopted this transparency measure. >> host: i want to focus on that on the idea of no more omnibus bills, that the spending bills have to be voted on separately. it's one of the key reforms and will put some of his reforms up on the screen for abuse to see that in this rules package. what does that it mean if e on separately versus an omnibus? why is it better to reign in government spending, or to create transparency? >> guest: it creates the conversation and the debate where eache single subject has n up or down vote.

and then to the committee's in congress the different lines within a single subject legislation can also be debated. it gives the public, the press, abundance, all, all of us a lot more time to be able to digest and actually make decisions on what's in the congressional legislation. it's high time that we did this. >> host: why have we be doing that?g why did we get when what wo omnibus spending bills and i concern congress is going to be able to do all this work in the yearly budgeting timeframeff tht they have? >> guest: congress hasn't done the hard work for asi couple of decades now. they are going to have to build it up to the table and get to work. it is a lot more work to be able to do this process than on the business spending process. the omnibus with these massive housing page of bills drafted in the middle of the night, as we have these things basically written by lobbyists, it's a top-down control of the house

speaker in the appropriations process, the establishment that holds parties, they brought back earmarks to grease the skids and i think that is led to corruptions for the small c in federal spending. , viewers are probably familiar with the term pay-as-you-go, they go. what is cut as you go? that's a term within hearing hearing with this rules package. >> guest: so these are the packages of spending reform. so now they are willing to be on a spending bill. they will be able to talk a specific federal programs for cuts. ng to target able individuals to be fired or to diminish their pay, and in terms of increasing the debt limit on a go forward bases that's going to have to be accompanied by spending cuts. let's put this in contrast over the course of the last 20 years. when george w. bush took office the national debt was actually

$5.8 trillion. by the time two terms under bush, two terms under obama the national debt was $19.9 trillion. all trump left office, the national debt was nearly $28 trillion. today we are over $31 trillion. so we're up five times on the national debt in 20 years and it's been republican, democrat, republican, democrat. and congress has led the way on the overspending. we are just spending too much. it's about time that a rules package was put in place to be able to curb this largess of spending. our tax money for political power. >> host:li the u.s. debt clock.org has it at 31 trying 136 million, $200,000 and counting. c-span viewers very familiar with that but second were talk about adam andrzejewski of openthebooks.com, and taking your phone calls.

he's with us until the house comes in at 10 a.m. eastern. we are talking about efforts to rein in government spending, the debt ceiling as well on the agenda. it's 202-748-8000 for democrats to call in. republicans 202-748-8001. independence,. >> translator: . as folks are calling and, the debt, how concerned are you about breaching the debt ceiling, about whether that will be raised ahead of any sort of financial cliff? >> guest: certainly it's always the fear. you know, this goes back over many budget battles. that tension has been necessary over the years to put spending curbs in place, whether it was during the obama years or the after, that proper tension between spending and debt, that needs to be on the table. >> host: do you think will be able to raise the debt ceiling in the debates, but they could succumb, the rules package we been going overr includes an effort to require spending

reforms and cuts for raising the debt ceiling. >> guest: right. that's going to be the great public debate that goes o the table. eventually obvious if the debt ceiling gets raise. however, the spending cuts have to be in place on a long-term basis. this is not going to be easy. back in 201717 the united states senate rand paul had a payment plan. just got 1% of t federal spendig and he, and the budget would have been balanced in five years. today, rand paul's plan is not the one penny plan. it's the sixth penny plan and your psychic attraction on it. so any spending cuts, even if these inflated levels of spending, it's going to be a tough battle but itn needs to e a public debate. >> host: do you think we can at the balanced budget in this day and age in congress? >> guest: haven't had one for 20 years, that's for sure. i think it goes back to the newt gingrich years as house speaker, the last balanced budget in her lifetime. this is a heavy lift.

but look, there's one thing in this house republican rules package thatla they missed. and it's this concept of earmarking. and we believe that earmarks are the currency of corruption in congress and republican leadership refused to continue the ban on emirates. it was in place for ten. nancyba pelosi recently two yeas ago as house speaker coupled that with one of two republicans two years ago that took a secret vote to bring back this practice of earmarking. local projects, dole out the members to get their votes in spending bills. our former honorary chairman of openthebooks.com was a legendary u.s. senator dr. tom coburn from oklahoma and he called earmarks of a gateway drug runaway spending bills. in the last omnibus spending bill earmarks were a a big paf it, $16 billion. 7500 of these pet projects in that bill and increased the

skids, and republicans unfortunately when the biggest earmarkers on the omnibus bill that just passed, seven out of the top ten earmarkers were republicans, did it make the process work any better? >> guest: look, it was $1.7 trillion, it was 4100 pages -- this was the omnibus spending bill that the earmarks to grease the skids began on of the spending bill was 4100 pages, it was stopped at 1:30 a.m. on a tuesday. the senate voted on thursday. the houseboat on fighter no one really knows what's in it. biden signed and that's, that's earmarks as a gateway drug for the runaway spending of term a perfect example. plenty of calls for he already about 45 is left with adam andrzejewski if you want to join the conversation as max did out of boulder, colorado. democrat, good morning. >> caller:he good morning. so i realize that the current

congress wants to keep the focus on spending and spending cuts, but i think it's important also to say a special right off the bat on this conversation that your guest mentioned bush and obama and then trump, how all the deficit occurred. well, if we could remember, bush started the war that we didn't need, and at while at the same time spending all that extra money cutting taxes on the wealthy and big businesses. obama ended up having to clean up the mess, and that caused more deficit. but that was more something we had to do. the next president, trump, when we were coming out of the recession, cut taxes for the businesses and wealthy. businesses that were still, there were making record profits off their excess of your i understand that spending cuts are important and it's true, but

having this conversation with a keeping in mind of the revenue that we have given away is irresponsible, and are just turned us into what it was going to cut now, what are were to cut now, just doesn't seem fair. >> host: adam andrzejewski, want to let you jump in. >> guest: it's a very good perspective. i think where to go back to when we were ahead of the pandemic, trump was in the white house. republicans were in control and the united states senate and united states congress. i came on c-span, "washington journal" for two years and a real about the fact that during boom times republicans in charge of government were running trillion dollar budget deficits adding to the national debt. in the pandemic came along, so he did take a look at the four years of trump, they added so much debt, about $7.7 trillion $7 trillion, it was $24,000, $2, equivalent debt of $24,000 per

man, woman and child in the country. it was absolute extraordinary. >> host: and the debt or citizen in the country if you divide up that 31 trillion, $94,000 per citizen in this country to make up that national debt. again use debt. businesses and fairfax, virginia, republican. good7 morning. >> caller: good morning. two points. number one, it's going to be a messy couple of years, and speaker was messy but i love seeing it t because people who want to doid hard things were pushing to do the hard things. it's so easy to spend other people's money, and you are not accountable for the results. i have decades of experience in financial services, cpa and financial specials. i've seen over and over.

it's so easy to spend other people's money. what'spl hard is to say no. we can't afford it. it's hard for individuals to do that and it's next to impossible for the government to do that. second point is, i hear a lot of talk about a divided country but i am beginning to think it's really not a division between liberals and conservatives, republicans and democrats. i think it's a division between the professional politician class and american citizens. thanks for letting me on today. >> guest: tread i agrr perspective. look, democrats and republicans, they are addicted to spending your taxpayer money. and so look we need a war on waste in this country and to think we can start with the covid aid programs. for example, congress when 49

people have lost their job at the peak of the pandemic in march and april of 2020 when politicians for the first time in history of the world shutdown and economy, they threw $800 billion of unemployment aid at people who had real needs. and now we know up to 50% of that, $400 billion hundred billion dollars, was stolen by criminals, crying artists and crime syndicates from around the world. it is an open question as to whether chinese and russian hackers funded an entire year with other military spending on our stolen unemployment aid. the chinese military budget is $200 billion per year for the russian military budget is $80 billion a year. it is an open question as to whether elements within the chinese and russian militaries stole enough unemployment aid to find their entire apparatus for the next year. this needs to be part of the congressional bipartisan

investigation. >> host: you are an independent organization outside of government of course. how have you try to track those things down? how do you do that at open the books. >> guest: we look at the disclose data. so when the federal government disclose a date we download the data, we reorganize it and we audit it. we do it on a forensic basis. so we follow the money. let me give you an example of this. on the paycheck protection program, this is a covid a broken though supposed to help mom and pop businesses on main street, those men and women whose businesses were shut down during the economic lockdowns. it's about an $800 billion program. when we downloaded the four given paycheck protection program loans, so these were loans taken out but they were forgiven, so there like a grant, like a subsidy. what we dido i is we took a loot the biggest law firms and the biggest accounting firms in the country that have a forgiving ppp loan. here's what we found. 126 of the largest 300 law firms

in the country took a ppp loan and it l was forgiven. the top ten of these law firms each cut over $10 million forgiven. f they had hundreds of millions of dollars worth of revenue. their partners on equity payments made millions of dollars. they didn't have an identifiable financial need for the money but because congress rushed the bill, they qualified for the money. they got it forgiven, and the top ten law firms each receiving $10 million or more on forgiving ppp, that amounts to $100 million right there. congressman bishop investigate the . same thing with accountingon firms. on the accounting firms, , the p 300 largest accounting firms, one of the top three firms in the country, ernst & young, for their guam location they got a three-quarters of $1 million forgiven ppp loan. i think executives need to go in front of congress, all of these, they need to explain themselves

for the american people, if you go to openthebooks.com retina of the top of the page there is a search bar to search for unit of government, 120 million public employee salary and pension records across the unitedco states. what do you foresee people using the four? >> guest: right in your own school district in your own municipality of your township and 50,000 public bodies across the country we've got the entire payroll of public employees, and available is also the retirement annuities.io there's ao quick search we did that last about 90 seconds and you be the disputed how to search website. for 25 million publicc employees salary and pension records every year, you can search a right in your own locale so you can see who byon name and what positions making how much money. for example, in loso angeles county you can look up the lifeguards. the top paid lifeguards in l.a. county last year all been made

$510,000. there's actually 98. there's actually 98 l.a. county lifeguards that t made over $200,000 last year. so those are the types of things that you can see when you speak, search sellers of public applause at openthebooks.com. >> host: allen in chicago democrat good morning. you are on with adamby andrzejewski. >> caller:r: good morning and thank you for taking my call. i'm a huge fan of "washington journal," especially you and all insights on what brought out. i know you smirk when someone says something stupid zombie watching yourar face. this young man is to you and remember, i had to get my age of away but i always thought the biggest longest economic boom in history of the world was during the '50s and the '60s. and that was when 91% tax, income tax on millionaires, billionaires and about 70% only made 108,000 to a million.

someone asked eisner why the tax rates why? he said it's better for the money to be circulating in the economy than to be hoarded. during that time we built the interstate highways, 8 million people went to college for free under the g.i. bill, and we actually put a man on the moon. it is a government spending or is a lack of revenue? we have now about 735 billionaires and 20 million millionaires that have a net worth according to forbes and bloomberg about $163 trillion back in 2020. yet, they only paid for 40% of the taxes and they had 95% of the wealth. i think because of reaganomics that really destroyed a budget because -- >> host: adam andrzejewski, on tax increases. >> guest: i was born in 69, you're right i didn't see the '50s and most of the '60s.

however, when the tax rates were cut it's interesting, revenue actually rose. that's intended to be the example on every single tax cut. including the latest one from the trump administration. let's take a look at the other side of the spending ledger. the other side shows on a study from the national taxpayers union that from the founding of the country to the year 2000 on an inflation-adjusted basis, when the dollars are equal, the united states government spent in total about $200 trillion since the year 2000, the united states government has spent about $100 trillion just in the last 20 years. that shows just the rapid expansion of the s size scope, power and spending of the federal government. asfr we just discussed that is pushed out our national debt five times over the past 20 years here is spending problem,

the spending addiction is bipartisan. as we discussed his republicans and democrats draining the u.s. treasury from the left and from the right. >> host: you have since of what kind of federal budget you think the federal government would operate on? is it $3 trillion? is there a target you want to gete you? >> guest: i defer to the u.s. senator rand paul on this peer to balance the budget in five years, right nowim it's going to take a six any cut the spinning. if you get a sixpenny cut off these inflated numbers coming out of the pandemic, come out of covid, then you get to about us budget over five years. you can getet to balance budget sooner or do less cut if you grow the economy. and so i think that any public policy that spurs economic growth, that invest in the private sector, that unleashes the power of entrepreneurs, those are policies that certainly must be on the table. >> host: federal tax revenue

about $4.6 trillion a year. federal spending about $6.1 trillion a year. more than $1.3 trillion budget deficit by year. u.s. debt clock.org breaks all those numbers down how to understand the federal budget. this is calling out of iowa, republican. good morning. [inaudible] are you with us? [inaudible] are you still there? will goo to john in texas. good morning. you are on with adam andrzejewski. >> caller: good morning. >> host: go ahead, john. >> caller: well, i see the debate going on about the spending and the debt limit. the one thing that concerns me is if we don't increase the debt limit. and we default, that's going to really hurt us, our skin all over the world. i understand there's too much

government spending. and i don't know for sure how to control it. there's been talk about a balanced budget amendment, which might help and i just want to make one side comment. during the election of the speaker of the house, c-span cameras were allowed to go anywhere and see the interaction of how the congress actually think that was a great idea and should continue for transparency to the american people on how the american government operates. >> host: i'll tell you what, john, are some numbers of crooks who agree with you, including marke polk and of wisconsin whs introducing legislation to that effect. so we will see what happens with that but i want to come back to john's comments about the debt limit is a talked about this yesterday on the "washington

journal." it was mark zandi of moody's analytics, the chief economist who's on with this yesterday talking about the impact of not raising the debt ceiling. here's a little bit of what he had to say. >> the debt limit obviously is no limit on the amount of treasury debt that can be outstanding, and we are now bumping up against that limit. if we hit the limit and the treasure runs out of all the cash it has in its bank accounts, it can't issue more bonds, or treasury bonds to help finance the government spending and tax policy. someone is not going to get paid. the treasury can't cut a check to somebody. it could be a social security recipient. it could be someone in the military. it could be, could be bondholders, people who own the treasury bonds from you, , you y have in your pension plan to foreign investors, middle eastern investors, japanese or

chinese investors. so someone doesn't get paid, then that's going to send a bomb throughout the global financial system. because one of the bedrock principles of a well functioning global finance system isen that the u.s. pays its a debt. it pays its a debt on time so it is a risk free. so if you buy a bond from u.s. treasury, you're going to get your money back in interest, no questions asked. if someone doesn't get paid because of the debt limit breach, that blows that out of the water, that confidence out of the water. interest rates would go skyward because investable say hey, now on the shuttle going to get paid, this is at risk free. you have to pay me more, mr. treasury, to compensate for that risk. and that means every thing will be worth a lot less. stocks will be worth less, bonds will be worth a lot less housing will be worth a lot less, commercial real estate, everything will be worth a lot

less necklace right to your retirement savings would be catastrophic. so catastrophic it's hard to imagine that even with the dysfunction we're observing in washington that lawmakers would allow that to happen to go down that path. obviously that's a significant and rising risk of the context of the difficulties that we're observing in congress today. >> host: that was mark zandi on the program yesterday on the debt limit, and those comments. adam andrzejewski. >> guest: he articulates a lot of the reasons why about a decade ago admiral michael mullins who was the joint, chairman of the joint chiefs of stafflo underneath barack obama called the national debt the number one national security threat to our future. and so look, we are happy at openthebooks.com that the emphasis is going to be on the spending side of the accounting ledger rather than tax cut side. tax cuts are basically at historic lows with her about.

>> we needt to focus on cutting ways fraud corruption and tax the abuse. we need a lot more transparency to do that. for example, the biden administration on production of the federal executive agency payrolls when we file our freedom of information act request last year they redacted the names of 365,000 federal executive agency employees. we estimate there's over $30 billion of payroll that we can't see who is receiving how much. let's put that in terms of -- turn , like national security staff, men's they don'tin want out thrt the right. always the cia and other intelligence agencies, all that payroll has always beenst off te books, some have access to bet but there's about 1.4 million federal executive agency public employees that we've always been able to see who's receiving how much, and with a bucket for the bonuses. during the obama years there was

2300 names redacted from the federal payrolls and we thought that was a lot. today it's 365,000 names redacted from the federal payroll and so we have a hard time even on federal payroll following the money. you got your supposed office. they refused to turn over the checkbook. they call it a trade secret. over the course of the last 11 years of the government accountable office has said the post office has lost $70 billion. we want o to review their line y line spending. open the checkbook at the post office, for example. >> host: when you say loss, they did lose a great fear in. >> guest: yes. >> host: so when it comes opening the book so it is a good you want wants to see you e impossible pentagon audit. your thoughts on auditing the pentagon. >> guest: the pentagon, so finally underneath president trump he made sure the pentagon was subject to an audit at the department of defense. i think they've been through four audits now and they keep

flunking their audit. on jews are losing spending within very hard on the department of defense. use it or lose it spending looks at the contracting in the last 30 days of the fiscal year. and incredibly one out of every ten contracts at the pentagon is come one out of every six contracts is let in the final 30 days of the fiscal year over at the department of defense. that is no way to run the finest military in theen world and it just opens it up for bad actors abusing the system. >> host: about 20 minutes left before the house comes in.n. adam andrzejewski of open the books with us. openthebooks.com is a website. a lot of interactive features there for viewers who may want to go. this isct dawn in las cruces, nw mexico, independent good morning. >> caller: good morning. can you hear me? >> host: go ahead. , thank you very much. adam, the first man who called in i this morning asked about te

trumpp funds, if the trump and the bush tax cuts, and what you cleverly did is you played a trump move and deflected it and talked about covid spending. so want to know directly, did bush and trump tax cuts pay for themselves? the second question i have, political debt an article on the tax cuts -- and the united states. and they discovered that jeff bezos was making billions of dollars and under their tax code he was paying zero taxes and is getting a child tax credit. do you believe that top taxpayers should pay a minimum tax? >> host: adam andrzejewski do tax cuts pay for themselves credit under the george w. bush identity donald trump the tax revenue to the united states treasury after the tax cuts actually increased.

but where we have the problem is on the spending side of the accounting ledger. the spending increased even more adding to the national debt. we need spending to support. >> host: and on the wealthiest americans pay little to nothing in taxes. >> guest: yeah, i mean look to the needs toet be on the table. that doesn't pass the smell test. you know, the tax code is very complicated and certainly there needs to be reformed within the tax code term of our second or third caller from virginia this morning, william, republican, good morning. >> caller: yes, good morning. i think they could balance the book if we stop giving these countries money. i mean, i would never borrow money if i wasn't able to give it to somebody, you know, get some lisabl monaco i would borrw money to get somebody someday. i think, and i was in the military and he went to hundreds

of countries. i was in there 20 years and i see all this money that we give those foreign countries. the people that billy needed never get it. and i think,we i say you just can't giving off a couple years and let's balance the books because it don't make no sense for us to give money to borrow money to get somebody. >> host:ou that's what you in euphoria, , population about 55. your thoughts traffic on glad he asked the question if there's one spot in the federal budget that has bipartisan consent to be looked at, it's typically for it. we have a lot of problems are domestically. last summer@openthebooks.com we issued an oversight report on u.s. foreign aid trying to quantify just how much every single year it is. and we identified $50 billion a year in in u.s. foreign aid. for example, if u.s. foreign aid were payments from congress to

estate before