save a significant amount of money on health care by making sure that you have health care that best meets your needs. >> she is from the aarp public policy institute. it's aarp.org/tpi. thanks so much for your time. >> thank you. >> a live picture from the government reform committee is about to start on readiness and resilience for natural disasters and other, ven events caused bym at change and fema and climate scientists and local affiliates. committee members right now in the house chamber. they're attending the last few votes in a series over there and when those votes wrap up we expect the hearing here to get under way. it should be another ten minutes or so. we'll have live coverage on c-span3. right now a discussion from washington journal. >> we're back with thomas shep from the citizens against govern

am waste. he's the president. we will talk about this year's congressional pig book. tell us what citizen against government waste is. >> citizen against government waste was developed in 1994 and under president reagan and we've been on for quite a long time and we've been investigating and exposing and eliminating govern am waste, fraud, abuse and mismanagement. the congressional pig book has been around since 1991. we have identified 111,000 and 114 earmarks worth $359.8 billion so when people say oh, it's just a few million here or a few thousand there it adds up over time and they're corrupting and they're costly and inequitable and we can certainly talk a lot more about them and it's one of the many publications that we put out each year and certainly something that we have been working on for a long time. >> since we're going to be talking about money, our viewers

always have this question. so how is citizens against government waste funded? >> we are funded by individuals and by associations and foundations and so the vast majority of our money comes from individual taxpayers and always has. >> so since we're going to be talking about federal earmarks so let's set the stage. what is an earmark? >> an earmark at least in our definition fits one of our seven criteria which we developed in 1991 with the pork busters coalition and it was only added by the house or senate and not specifically authorized and not the subject of hearings and serves only a local or special interest, greatly exceeds the president's budget or the last few as funding. so this has again been the same criteria since 1991 and this is again, something that we've been doing and exposing for a long time. so what did you find in in

year's government waste and what are the things we should look for in this year's congressional pig book. in the numbers themselves were higher than the $15.4 billion and fiscal year 2018 and more than double the 16.8 billion in fiscal year 2017 and it's going in the wrong direction and that member, by the way is more than half of the record $29 billion in 2006. the number of earmarks is 282 and so 22% from the 232 last year. so the numbers are not, unfortunately, going in the right direction. there is some good news. the chair of the house appropriations committee anita said that they will not have earmarks in the fiscal year 2020 and the upcoming appropriations bills that they're working on right now and the senate republicans, this is the first time ever that any group of members of congress has agreed to a permanent ban on earmarks

and right now they're subject to a moratorium and we're still finding earmarks and they agreed to a permanent ban and that's just a rule. that's not a law. that's a good step in the right direction and part of it is that they've seen under our definition and the number keeps growing. >> so when you say that the senate republican has to rule and not a law. what's the difference there? does that mean it's not in existence and tell me what you mean? >> it is in existence and it means we will not add earmarks to any of the bills while we're considering them. >> just senate republicans? >> just senate republicans, but again, they are the majority so that basically means they're, again, by their definition they will not be getting into their appropriations bills and that was one of the reasons that the house appropriations chair said we don't have a bipartisan bicameral appropriation so the house is supposedly not going do them, as well. so it's a little complicated

because it's easier it is a the house passed a law or a bill, i should say and the senate passed a bill and they do a lot of things based on their rules which they can change every congress and sometimes they go over to the next congress, and it's a really important step and it's something that really, hopefully should set an example for the rest of congress. >> what were some of the big things you found in earmarks this year. what were some of the things that you found that looked sort of weird. >> weird is fruit fly quarantine. $9 million. the last time they added any of this money for fruit flies was ten years ago. so a lot of these things go in and out and there was $13.8 for wild horse and burrow management and 7.9 million for fish screens and their 863,000 to control ground tree snakes in guam. >> wow! so where do these earmarks come from?

who is putting these into these bills? >> that's the great question. who is putting them? in the 111th congress there were rules that required congress toa ad names and in the back of the bill there was a list where it was going and how much it would cost and drurg that time to show the inequity of earmarks the 81 members constituted 15% of the entire congress. they got 51% of the number of earmarks and 61% of the money. so this is incredibly inequitable process where the majority of the earmarks and the money goes to a very small group of members. this year the only one we know for sure, senator brian shatz, no relation, had the east-west center in hawaii with the entire budget. they had a north-south center and federal funding was cut off

and it still exists. so the east-west center should go out on its own as well and because of one member of congress that this money went in there. >> there are some people who defend earmarks. in accoufact, former virginia republican tom davis was on this program on monday and offered his defense of earmarks. here's what he had to say. >> earmarks are project desing nations and it's an article 1 house of representative and if you look at the 150 years of the republic and almost every project that went through was earmarked and there was an earmark and congress would decide and it's the house of representatives and earmarks do two other things. they allow members to personalize their districts to show that there's a reason to keep them around because they can bring back certain r jects if they have to go through the bureaucratic model otherwise and third, it makes the default vote

yes. and it makes it easier to pass it, and it was kind of the glue that held legislation together because they both have something. and i'll give you an example. in my district, and my presidential candidate never carried my district and the district was designed to be more or less and the democratic district and i was mr. woodrow wilson bridge, and the dallas quarter and he got 3,000 acres of land given to the county. people may not like my party, but he had some redeeming qualities in keeping me around. it allowed me to ken me independent in my voting record because i had earmarks and other things to fall back on and voting with the party on certain issues. these members don't have that, and they're judged by their party and as a result of that people are voting the party and not the person and this

continued to advance to a more parliamentary model in terms of how we're electing people and it's been bad for government. i would bring them back. i would bring them back with more transparency and the like. >> so respond to former representative davis' earmarks there. >> at least he didn't go to jail in the 2000s like some of his colleagues because this is a corrupting process. as former senator john mccain said when the members who have the power use the power to corrupt a system, it's not an exact quote, but he talked about the fact that as i said a few minutes ago, the members of the appropriations committees get the majority of those projects so it is not equitable and it goes to people in power and so it always amazes me that otherwise the liberal or conservative people look at this and say, oh, wait. i agree that we should spread the money around the country where it's needed which, by the

way, is where 99.9% of the money goes. so what former congressman davis is describing and it was a very, very small part of the budget. so their article 1 power, he mentioned that is to appropriate money and it's not to sick it in the district. >> we want you to join the conversation about earmarks and whether it's a good or bad things. we'll open up the line for this conversation. republicans you can actual 202-748-8001. independents 202-748-8002 and we are on facebook cwj and facebook.com/c-span and let's let harold calling from east alton, illinois. good morning. >> good morning. i think these earmarks are just another way to bribe congressmen

or somebody to vote their way on a bill that they normally wouldn't vote on. i think the money and the politics is the main problem with all of this and maybe we should have some term limits. i think the congressman will do whatever they can to stay in there and they only make $175,000 a year and most of them are harvard-educated lawyers that could be six-figure employees and they choose to keep that job for some reason, and i think the lobbyists that go in there -- the lobbying used to be where you get a number of people to sign a piece of paper saying they all agree with that and you take it to your congressman. you don't take an envelope full of money from a big bank any say i need this bill passed and can you get it phoned through with one of them earmarks in it. >> go ahead and respond, tom. >> we call earmarks legalized

robbery, and former congressman duke congressman went to jail and the lobbyists and staff. so it can certainly become corruptive. no doubt about it and but it's not really again a big piece of what they do and not all of them have done it. so we don't think it should be coming back at all. that's why we're happy to see the republicans in the senate agree to a permanent ban. >> one of the earmarks you found in this year's book goes for the f-35 fighter jet. we actually had a flyover of one of those jets in d.c. earlier this week. we were all in washington and we could hear that flyover that happened earlier this week from that fighter. what did you find out about the

f-35 fighter? >> the f-35 is behind schedule. it's eight years behind schedule. it's far over budget. it's almost twice the amount per plane than they thought it would be. the lifetime maintenance costs and operations costs will be $1.2 trillion up 20% from a few years ago. most expensive weapons system in history. there are more reported problems this week. they had $1.8 billion in additional joint strike fighters, 16 planes spread across the services. it was certainly ironic. i happened to be on another network talking about earmarks at the time the f-35 flew over and there it was. yes, we should be creating new weapons systems, but we shouldn't be wasting money like that. >> what do you think of the thought that earmarks are tools

used to establish consensus in congress? >> if that were true, they've had a moratorium for the past eight years. the record was $29 billion in 2006. we're now about halfway back there. before they agreed to this bipartisan budget agreement at the beginning of 2017, the earmarks were 3-4 beiillion a yr which is historically low back to where we started in 1991. it helps pass more expensive sha legislation because members get a few millions dollars and they vote for these very expensive bills. those other projects don't benefit them. most of the money spent is based on the formulas. it's divided up based on population, need. if your bridge is falling apart, you get on a list, you apply for the money.

former congressman davis talked about the wood row wilsson bridge. even in his district it wouldn't have been more than 1% of all funding. >> lynn from bountiful, utah. >> caller: good morning. thank you. i would say that nothing has improved since we did away with earmarks. our budget's exploding worse than it ever did. as far as the list of examples your guest gave for, i guess, what he would call ridiculous or unjustified earmarks, the 13 billion he listed for the horse and burro program is just enough to keep it inefficient.

if we had manufacture, it would ultimately bring taxpayer cost of warehousing horses down. the 13 billion that is being offered is just enough to give them very inhumane sterilization rather than pcp, the birth control, and kill tens of thousands of them. that's just the cost of rounding up and killing these environmentally beneficial animals. >> respond. >> this is about the process by which these projects are added, not necessarily judging whether they're wasteful although a lot of them are. we look through the appropriations bills. we see whether the project matched the criteria developed back in 1991. these projects may have merit on their own but they should go through the same process that every other project goes through

in washington. 99% of the money being spent in washington is divided through formulas, not because some congressman decided to add it in. >> what's president trump had to say about earmarks? >> president trump has said once that he thought earmarks might help get legislation passed. he hasn't said that since. with the republicans in the senate saying no earmarks, it really doesn't make sense to say it's going on right now. without objection the chair is authorized to declare a recess of the committee at any time. this subcommittee is convening our third in a series of climate change hearings focusing on readiness to contending with natural disasters. as i mentioned this hearing is the third in the series of hearings on cli