with walter mosley. his most recent book is "down the river into the sea." plus over 40 critically acclaimed books and mystery series. during the program will be taking your phone calls tweets and facebook messages. our special series, in-depth fiction edition with walter mosley, sunday live from noon to 3:00 eastern on book tv on c-span2. coming up in just over 20 minutes, a discussion with u.s. justice department officials on privacy, the law, and government surveillance. internationalthe association of privacy professionals 2018 global privacy summit. one coverage beginning c-span. in the meantime, a portion from today's washington journal where we look at the recent $1.3 trillion government spending

bill. stephen ellis is back at the desk. vice president of taxpayers for common sense, joining us five days after a $1.3 trillion dollar omnibus spending deal was signed into law. a 2300 page bill. stephen ellis, we'll break down the legislation. first remind people who taxpayers are. guest: sure. taxpayers for common sense, people can see us at taxpayer.net. we are a national nonpartisan , budget watchdog. we read the legislation and figure out where the money is being spent. deal? you lobby on this guest: we lobbied issues around it came together quickly at the very i understand. we certainly watched as the appropriations process slowly grinded through over the course of a year.

minutes we the 30 are going to spend talking about this package is more than most lawmakers spent reading it. 1.3 trillion dollars, how does that compare with other bills in the post-budget control (202) 748-8001 this bill actually is a huge jump in spending. they basically when they did the bipartisan budget act of 2018 last month, they agreed for fiscal year 2018, -- they would increase spending over the caps by $300 billion in total those two years. more than the increases we have seen over the last five years in that one package. in had a dramatic increase spending and you are seeing a dramatic increase in spending over last year's level. more than what is going to be spent in 2017. that is a level of spending they

have been doing under the continuing resolution. year they have spent 2017 levels. they're going to have to spend all of that in the last six months of the fiscal year. >> they have to spend that? money isppropriated one your money. it is use it or lose it. for the most part you are talking about, they have to get that money out. that is the reason you see a dramatic boost in spending the last weeks and months of the fiscal year. do you think this spending bill results in at the end of this fiscal year? where are you most concerned about spending? guest: the area they got the biggest boost is the department of defense. the one thing they do have the ability to do is, they know how to spend money. when you get hundreds of billions of dollars a year you learn how to spend money. timesthe washington

breaks down some of the money that went to the department of defense. ,his is just for procurement saying some of the big winners in the defense department, the navy and marine corps for the biggest winners, securing $49.1 billion to revamp the aging fleet of warships, helicopters, and jets. the heirs force received -- the air force received 36 billion. just over $10 billion were earmarked for the navy's high profile ohio and virginia class marine programs. the navy and air force received $38.4 billion for advanced air fighters and the majority of those funds will be funneled into the f-35 program. guest: the joint strike fighter, the f-35. -- itite house requested was not a bashful budget request

-- they asked for 70 aircraft. congress said, we see or 70 and we will give you 20 more. was like thet appropriators turning to the -- turning into opera. you get a plan, you get a plane. -- plane, you get a plane. we saw what we call from zeros to heroes. there were $6.8 billion in new weapon systems that the pentagon did not ask a dime for. they did not ask for a single penny and congress found $6.8 billion to throw at these programs. host: how are they prepared to spend that? guest: they are going to be letting contracts. normally there is what they call the 8020 rule where you can't spend more than 20% of the appropriated funds in the last two months of the fiscal year. oto -- to 75 t

25. we are going to see if lockheed martin has the capacity to turn out 90 planes instead of 70 planes. for: stephen ellis is taxpayer.net. joining us for this half hour of the washington journal. democrats, (202) 748-8000 republicans (202) 748-8001 independence ts (202) 748-8002 let's talk about domestic spending. who are the big winners in this omnibus spending bill? guest: we certainly saw certain areas, the president requested zero funding for the community development block grant program which normally gets $3 billion. it ended up getting a boost of more than a billion dollars on

top of that. it went from a zero request to about 5 billion. host: can you trace that back to who put that in? guest: it is hard to figure that out. you know who was on those subcommittees. billion onded $143 top of what the budget control act is giving, you have to find places to stop it -- stuff it. congress is used to spending billions of dollars. other agencies that were set for cuts got big boost. basically you went in with the house and the senate asking for a little over $6 billion for the army corps of engineers and they got 6.8 billion. this whole school house rock sort of version, we will hash out the differences, they came together and put in more than the house or senate had originally. host: marcia is up in florida.

democrat, go ahead. >> thanks for c-span and for stephen ellis talking about this important subject. i am curious about the on the billbill that -- omnibus that was pushed through with of individual bills. how many of those bills were actually covered during the year but neither paul ryan nor mitch mcconnell would allow them to come to the floor for debate so they would not have had to be included in this bill? guest: thanks for your question. she is right. -- it was 20000 pages with another 1500 pages of explanatory text. like thiso an omnibus

there are 12 budget bills that fund the government. this jams all of them together. the house actually voted and passed every single one of their spending bills, but they did not resemble what came out of the final product. the senate did not pass any of their spending bills. they had the ball drafted, but they did not -- they had them all drafted, but they did not pass. the final product was different than what the house or senate came up with. host: the caller brings up republican leadership. i want to read rick moran's piece from the american thinker. he wrote last week that the republican party, once a party that suffer for lower deficits debteducing the national has become the party of big spenders. the so-called budget hawks were used to have some influence on policy have become irrelevant. would you agree? guest: since i would consider

myself a budget hawk i would hope i'm still relevant. you went from the tax package over the summer from mcconnell promising it would be neutral to adding $1.3 trillion to the national debt. that is $20 trillion greater than gdp. you have this spending package which basically adds $800 billion to what was -- drunken sailors are run for their money on spending. host: wayne is in illinois. democrat, good morning. caller: the reason i am calling is, it seems to me that whenever they have these omnibus budgets and whenever they do this, they come out and say we are going to spend this much money and here is the program we are going to give the money to.

i don't see the american people being represented. it seems as if what is being represented is all of the donors and the lobbyists that lobby to congressman. , would like to know exactly what is the common american citizen -- as the common american citizen, what are we supposed to do to be represented? we are being told we are being represented, we vote for --resentation, and then people just a vote in whatever they want to vote in. it seems like it does not really meet the demands of the people, but the demands of lockheed martin and whatnot. guest: thanks, wayne. i have a hard time disagreeing with the collar. -- caller. this is one of the issues.

these people in their gucci loafers in the corridors of congress and they are speaking to power. i also challenge my fellow citizens, it is to engage their lawmakers to better understand what is going on in the legislation and to demand accountability from their elected officials. ist is the only way, it going to be engaged citizenry that is going to affect the process. it is going to take time. don't get me wrong. and localere all week citizens are not. at town halls or in calls to lawmakers, they can demand greater accountability. can also learn about the budget and other issues there. call andyou want to become an informed citizen all lines are open. democrats (202) 748-8000, republicans (202) 748-8001 (202) 748-8002.

does yours, how organization feel about the tax law that gave breaks to the wealthy and now taxpayers are left holding the empty bag with this omnibus bill. republicans controlling both houses and white house holding a racket and scam against the people. as i was saying earlier, we were for tax reform. we clearly need tax reform. it has been more than 30 years since we had comprehensive tax reform. we did not get tax reform. cutot a hugely costly tax even though we were promised and what we wanted to have was a deficit neutral tax reform are you eliminate breaks and expenditures and you lower the rates. it pays for itself in that respect. then you had this other, $300 bipartisan, i will point

out bipartisan, budget act that added $300 billion to the debt . we were not supportive of that either. , not thatpportive of we want to the government shutdown, but that president trump was within his rights to veto this package. we would have wanted to see a continuing resolution on government. a twoof congress going on week recess, we could see them spend more than the 16 seconds at the house had to read the bill and the 26 seconds the senate had to read the bill. host: how you feeling on friday when you saw the president was going to have an announcement on the spending bill? did you think he would veto it? host: -- guest: i have given up trying to figure out where the president will end up on certain things. i will also point out that the president cannot come in at the , they need to be

engaged in the whole process and be realistic in budgeting. when you ask for zero dollars in cdbg and congress has been giving it 3 billion a year, you have to deal with the reality of how to have that approach and a realistic budget. host: tim in arkansas, independent. caller: good morning. thanks for taking my call. i am extremely disappointed that the president did not veto it. i'm not surprised that the democrats want to spend us into debt slavery and destroy the constitution. people that call themselves republicans and have not got a conservative bone in , it started when president trump was elected. the first thing the leaders, paul ryan and mitch mcconnell, they did not put the same bill to that was voted every time when obama was in office to repeal the health care.

we have to spend on that. now mitch mcconnell signs this stuff until the last second. it is more than just drunken slavery. i think it is treasonous. i think you should be out of there and i think -- the senate has not been responsible to the states they are supposed to represent four years. they have placed themselves in forever and they won't leave. they do not answer to anybody want they are elected. we need to come to the convention of states and set the rules that the budget goes down 5% every year and the budget has to be ready six months in advance, not at the last second. guest: thank you for your call. small good things coming out of the bipartisan budget act is this committee to figure out budget reforms.

since the budget process was established in 1974, the spending bills that fund government have been done on time precisely four times various the last time was 1997. clearly we have a budget process that is broken. we need to see reforms to certain things like by annual ,udgeting, sunset conditions things that can actually have some teeth, maybe making the budget instead of a resolution where a guide spending, make it a law. there are a few things we're looking forward to seeing coming out of that. clearly we have a broken budgeting process. i don't think we need a constitutional convention. i think we can deal with this in congress. host: some figures to show our viewers. one is a figure of the outstanding public debt.

.his is from taxpayer.net showing the public debt from the 1940's until today. to give you the exact number up to the second we will take you over to the u.s. debt clock. $21 trillion is the current national debt. remind us where we are on the debt ceiling. guest: what they did on the debt ceiling is they basically said, ignore it. ignore it until next march. at that time, whatever the debt is at that moment will become the new debt ceiling. they have done this a few times. instead of increasing it which is what they used to do, they essentially said we are going to andd it until march of 2019 whatever it is then will become the new debt ceiling. basically they got themselves past the election and into the

next congress. ,ost: from mississippi, al republican. caller: thank you for taking my call. this is my question. i am disabled and so i don't consider myself a taxpayer. when you take the total debt owed and divided by the number of taxpayers, what do you do voodoo math do you do? people that get back an unearned income check are not taxpayers. where do you come up with a number that you divide by two figure out how much each taxpayer would go on this tremendous debt -- owe on this tremendous debt? guest: it is a difficult question and i don't have the numbers in front of me.

in the end it is all of our debt , it is the national debt. it is a challenge that we are all going to have to deal with. host: here is how the folks at usdebtclock figured it out. i don't have their exact breakdown on how they come up with those numbers. that is how they do it. walt is in pittsburgh, pennsylvania. good morning. all, a pox onof both offices. lobbying is in the constitution but it should be done in front of the full body of the congress and senate and there should be no money given. -- other thing is we need to hire people who are

independent to study this before it happens. the other thing is chuck schumer has a $300 million title from new jersey to new york. build one in pittsburgh was supposed to be $300 million. nobody's going to watch this. there's going to be more kickbacks from schumer. just like republicans. i'm not going to say it's all democrats. it's worse when you hear them talk. that's the real problem in this country. we've got to get rid of these lobbyists and there got to do it in front of the full house. constitution founders didn't plan on people getting money for being in office like this. that's basically my point. say moneytainly they is the mother's milk of politics. there is a lot of campaign cash going on and it's one of the issues that we have tried to follow theey