in recess until approximately 4:00 p.m. today. been jailed fo. that is from reuters this morning. host: here in our studio is adam andrzejewski of the organization openthebooks.com founder and ceo here to talk about federal money that goes to fortune 100 companies. a little bit about your organization and its purpose? guest: the purpose is to post every dime online and in real time. we have built the world's largest private database of

expenditures. we have captured virtually all federal spending in the year 2000 in 49 out of 50 states. on the california is the holdout in the state's checkbook side. and 60,000 local units of government all across america, the municipal level units of government, we have captured 22 million public employee salaries. virtually every single public employee at every level of government, federal, state and local. host: how are you financed? caller: we are funded by people. are funded by people. not only do we open the books, we audit the books. we don't take government money, it would be a conflict of interest. we are headquartered in illinois. we understand conflicts of interest and they to play and we're not going there. host: the latest report by your organization looks that is money that goes to fortune 100 companies. what was the goal? guest: the goal was to follow

money. all the way back to 1961, president eisenhower warned of a military-industrial complex. and warned that the solution to that in a free society was that citizenry needed to be alert and educated. from the outset with this program, it was to quantify simply the federal flow of funds into fortune 100 companies, our most wealthy and well-connected companies. this is the second report in a series that we have done on this. five years ago, we looked at the federal flow of funds from 2000-2012 and we found $1.2 trillion over that 13 year did flow into these companies and now we have quantify the last four years. host: the top line issue, $399 billion is federal funding going to those companies. when it comes in the form of $290 billion.

$3.2 billion going in grants, lobbying expenses, $2 billion. break those figures down, why these organizations are getting the money. guest: because it is a favor factory at the federal level for the fortune 100 companies. our auditors found $2 billion of fortune 100 companies that spent on lobbying capitol hill. than they received, those companies received $3.2 billion worth of federal grants. grants are subsidies, they are giveaways. they are funded by uni, the american taxpayer. so again, our most elite corporations. on top of that, our auditors found nearly $400 billion worth of federal contracts. in a nutshell, what we found is that the more you pay, the is your it is to play. for every dollar -- the easier it is to play. for every dollar these companies

and on lobbying, it returned $200 worth of federal contracts in grants. host: so you are drawing a direct comparison between the money used in lobbying to what they get back in grants. but contracts are a way of life here in washington, d.c.. why is that a surprise? guest: i do think it is a surprise, but i think people will be surprised at the sheer amount of grantmaking to fortune 100 companies. the latest polling shows that 80% of the american people think that federal contracts and -- go 02 the most to the most well-connected corporations rather than the most qualified. our data backs that up. his fortune 100 companies have upwards of 100 lobbyists. and lobbying works. it brings home the bacon to the corporation. host: when it comes to corporations that get federal list, on top of the least

located -- on top of the list, lockheed martin, followed by boeing, mckesson. five.down those top guest: in the fortune 100 companies receiving the most money, there are six defense contractors and health care providers. if you take a look at those top 10 companies, their return on investment was large. for every single dollar the spent, it returned $1000 worth of federal contracts in grants. host: and then this is the boeing company's case, 181 -- 81.4 billion dollars between 2014 and 2017 in funding. lobbying, $2.75 billion. what does boeing do for the federal government? guest: boeing produces a number of things, many of them with

legitimate purpose. the $72 million they spent on huge.ng, the return was they received three quarters of a billion dollars in terms of federal grants, subsidies for boeing products. boeing.d into they also take a tremendous amount of taxpayer-backed financing through government banks like the export-import bank. during an eight year period that we studied, boeing received one dollar out of three dollars of total lending by export-import -- export-import bank. host: what role does the department of defense life? guest: they play a large role in this. six out of the top 10 companies are defense contractors. for instance, like lockheed martin, 84% of their entire revenue, than it has a wall street market cap of $90

billion, 84% of what they say on annual -- what they sell on an annual basis comes from federal agencies, specifically the department of defense. host:. host: our guest is with us until 10:00. if you would like to learn more about these companies that andive lobbying grants their efforts as well, adam andrzejewski. you can call us at 202-748-8000 for democrats, 202-748-8001 for republicans, independents 202-748-8002. you can also make your views known on twitter at c-span wj. had did you get involved in these efforts. guest: back in 2008, is senator coburn partnered with an illinois senator, barack obama on the left, to open the federal checkbook to transparency for the first time ever -- that was in 2006. that was the data set that we used to compile this report.

host: you listed one of the health-care companies involved, mckesson, what do they do. guest: they are a pharmaceutical company and a large portion of their contracts are designed for veterans affairs, providing drugs and pharmaceuticals to veterans affairs. -- the health-care companies did not spend as much on lobbying as the defense contractors spent. as a matter of fact, their spending on lobbying was significantly less in the .our-year period host: $30.2 billion in federal funding and when it comes to lobbying, $6.1 million from 2014-2017. we have some calls lined up for you. mike in houston texas, the republican line. go ahead. caller: good morning. great topic. great scenario a for us to have a transparent tax

code? wouldn't it be nice if the 74,000 page tax code was reduced to something where your next door neighbor and you was understood it to be the same thing? we have cpas all over the place would do taxes for average americans, not just the , because the president doesn't know the tax code, who does? the reason we have so much money going to corporations is because they know how involved the government is in our lives -- for production, health-care, education, is there anything government doesn't have their fingers in? the government causes this to happen. host: might, thank you. to the caller's point, are these companies in a unique position to provide services to the government and get that money in return? guest: at talk to the complexity of the tax code. i want to cover that. right now there was no database at the federal level where if

you corporation and you get the tax credit, there is not a tax credit database. that needs to be created. it is the next step in the transparency revolution at the federal level, than ever believe that legislation is being drafted right now. to his point about the size of government, that used to be not long ago, even into the early 2000's where major corporations hired lobbyists to keep government out of their business. now what we find is that hundreds of thousands of lobbyists are being hired by the most successful companies to bring government into their companies, to partner with government. these corporations feel that government now is a giant customer of giant customer of theirs, and they cheerlead the effort on spending. host: from our republican line, ron is next. pressed the wrong button. let's go to ron in illinois, republik in line.

-- republican line. caller: good morning. you have my blood boiling. just to get this right, because i can hardly believe what i am hearing -- the government is companiesr profit through grants and endowments? is that correct? guest: yes, through grants. direct payments, providing insurance subsidies as well. so lower-cost financing back the american taxpayer. caller: so, in addition to companies that pay almost nothing, some that pay nothing, the government is, in addition, giving billions of dollars on top of that? am i correct so far? caller: -- guest: yes. so you have companies like google spending eight minus amount of money on lobbying. they received a 42's million $46ar low interest loan --

million low interest loan through one of the banks of the united states, the overseas investment bank, to do an overseas project in nigeria. that is one example of how a large corporation has gamed the regular manikins are providing financing. host: the top lobbying corporations as we can find online. it includes lockheed martin, alphabet -- which is google -- fedex, and exxon mobil. look at theok a lobbying, broken down by industry for defense contractors spent the most, about $300 million over this four-year period. we looked at the tech companies. the five largest tech companies, amazon, apple, facebook, google, and microsoft, and a spent about $200 million on lobbying over this period.

we did not find federal conscience and grants flow to those companies, but we found they were interested in a number of different issues key to their businesses. for instance, on privacy issues. apple was interested in tax issues. they had a lot of money overseas that they wanted to bring back to the country, and they wanted a lower tax rate to be able to do that. they spent about 38 million dollars lobbying the federal government for that tax rate when they repatriated the money. data security breaches was another big issue of the tech companies. host: from the democrats line, jim in oregon. hello. caller: hello. theyestion is how is it apply or get the grants? i do not understand that part of it, if he could go into a little detail, i would appreciate it. and i appreciate this program that he is presenting for you. thank you. guest: across the entire federal

continuum, at openthebooks.com, we have given oversight to federal grantmaking. it is a tremendous amount of money. in rough numbers, the federal government doles out as many grants as the entire military defense budget spent, almost a 1:! basis. 1:1 basis. cornell university took nearly $1 million for a study on where it hurts the most to be stung by a bee. light nasa tech $1 million to repair the world's meeting after terrestrial is in -- extra terrestrial beings. -- boeing was the leader. of $1ot three quarters

billion worth of grants out of federal agencies. those are subsidies. the process is supposed to be you apply for a grant -- and obviously, the big corporations have the human resources and the ability to navigate federal grantmaking and take a tremendous amount of dollars. 2017, $3992014 to .illion for funding in total from those, $3.2 billion. contracts made up the bulk of that. where can people go online to read this? guest: we have a report at openthebooks.com, right on the home pages. it is the first report up on the right side in the middle, under the report section. host: from west virginia, richard, republican line. caller: good morning. the bottom line on all of this is the government is too big, to powerful, so people have

get it singing their way. my question is if i run a company and send salesman to the customer try to convince him to buy what i have to sell, and when you mentioned boeing, they have to sell their product, and the government is their customer. and some of the other things you mentioned -- guest: that is a great perspective. not all of this is waste. there are a lot of these defense contracts, we get a ship, a nuclear warhead, that has a ablic purpose -- it has public purpose. take solaceight can in the fact that 90% of the companiesent into the , working on our most in figure problems in our nation, and you

do not want to grow the federal bureaucracy. so the center-right can take solace in that. on a bipartisan basis, what gets people most upset is the federal grantmaking. those are subsidies we are paying for. and if it was really a good idea to be funded by taxpayers, these fortune 100 companies, they have the network, their stocks are traded on wall street, they have the most innovative financial products in world history, they can get these good ideas funded on their own and lighten the load on the american taxpayer. host: what is the ability of smaller companies to get access to this money? guest: that begs the question -- this is one of the russians we bring up from our report. --ger is not always better this is one of the questions we bring up in our report. here is not always better. bigger is not always better. host: we hear from ohio next,

ron on our republican line. caller: why do they take all of this money and give it away to where -- who cares about a bee stings you? it is going to hurt. we need someone to watch where this money is going, and the money we can save instead of wasting $1 million finding out where a bee gets stung, but that back into our debt. guest: exactly. , across the entire continuum, a target rich environment of wasteful government spending. he is right. congress, the solutions -- we think it is a three-part solution. congress needs to crackdown. they need to get back to doing their job and doing oversight. it is a little more work than what they're used to doing, but

this is important. the second thing is the administrative state, the federal bureaucracy, they need to start auditing these grants, these contracts, and holding these companies accountable. to metrics and performance. they can start with forensic audits. follow the money. are sure these companies actually providing value for what the hard-working american taxpayer is providing in terms of the money. the third thing we have advocated is that the president, as commander-in-chief, should declare war on waste. we outlined a three-pronged strategy for president trump, timerong 1 is put any real-time as much as possible. for these reports, we have to wait six months for the spending to come in. it is statutory that it should go online virtually in real time here the second prong is cut 5% of the waste, fraud, corruption,

and abuse. we think welfare reform should start with the fortune 100 companies. where is the republican on capitol hill armed with the legislation to kick war bucks off the dole? that the should be president should engage the bureaucracy, reward federal bureaucrats who actually cut their budgets. host: looking at boeing's case, when it comes to grants, the top number of grants coming in during that time period from the department of defense. talk about the underclothes -- undisclosed. happensndisclosed frequently. often, federal disclosure of the data -- it is government, they make stakes, they do not fill in all the fields. far too often, the funding department has not been filled in on the grant transactions. host: