suddenly focus on law & order. that's like the arsonist of blaming the firefighter. >> coming up presidential candidate joe biden campaigning in pittsburgh, pennsylvania. live coverage here on c-span. >> we are joined ki joining us tk about their recent report. good morning, how are you? guest: great to be on the program. host: tell us about your organization. a nationalaunched on basis about five years ago. our mission is to post every dime online in real time. rs followedour audito up with 41,500 freedom of accusation -- acquisition requests.

host: you got involved in this how? what is your background and interest in federal spending? guest: i am a business guy. ick in 1997, my brother and founded a publishing company. fundd yellow page directors for small communities. i had the blessings and good fortunes 10 years later, one year before steve jobs invented the iphone, to sell my shares at a multiple never to return. i got involved in public policy and politics. my father, as a conservative democrat had run against one of the most popular illinois republicans in history. george ryan was eventually governor and was one of those illinois government that served time in federal prison.

1978, i was in the second and fourth grade and father instilled in me public service when he ran against george ryan. after i sold shares of my company, i looked around and i see a silver bullet to end the corruption. time, i metrse of formerl people like senator tom coburn from oklahoma and we took our illinois lessons on transparency across the country. host: an part of that is the report your organization just issued titled "the federal government's use or lose it findings pre--- spending spree. how the federal government spent $91 million in september 2019." why is it a spree? guest: about one out of every six dollars in contracts at the

department of defense goes out the door in the final 30 days of the fiscal years. federal agencies, 67 of them, spend on their presents this year so they get the same or more money out of congress next year. this --big problem when when the federal agencies can't even spend all of the money congress is throwing at them. host: your report says 91 billion dollars in september 2019. to be clear, september is the last federal month of the fiscal year. is that an unusual figure? guest: it is up significantly from 2015. we have been looking at this since 2015. out $61en, it was ab

billion. $97 was the peak of billion. last year, it ended up going a little bit backward to $91 billion. i think that is because of the political pressure all of us have put on this. in the president's budget to congress in february this year in a new chapter on how to eliminate wasteful spending, he highlighted our oversight report and said it was a priority of the ministration to stop this practice. joni ernst a year ago wrote the legislation to stop this year and spending spree. 1, adam smithuly out of california, powerful jammin -- chairman of the armed services committee and reauthorization act said we need to stop the use or lose it spending at the pentagon that goes on every single year.

there is bipartisan support for this measure now. host: let's open up our phone lines because we are starting to get lots of calls on this. one call for democrats, one for republicans and one for independence. just to talk about the numbers in your report, this federal spending numbers september of 2019, nearly $24 billion was spent in the final two business days of september last year. september 30 broke all records at $12.2 billion. september 27 recorded $11.6 billion on federal contracts, there were $91 billion spent on 642,000 transactions an average 21,418illion on transactions each day during a two-year period september 2018

and 2019. the spending totaled $28 billion. it is worthwhile noting that you talked about the defense, the biggest about -- amount of money spent in september of last year. for guns,n dollars ammunition and other weaponry. did any of that surprise you in terms of the amount they spent? the numbers are dizzying. it is a tremendous amount of money. here's what everyone needs to understand. a lot of it was wasteful spending just to spend on these budgets at the end of the year. a wall of it was borrowed against our national debt. now, our national debt is rivalry $27 trillion. host: let's hear from rob in hometown, illinois. republican line, go ahead. caller: good morning.

love cruising your website. my question is about a controversial state rep from the state of

>> that would be a great thing. here is what we found this year at the department of defense. last year it made national news on your program when we discovered millions of dollars was spent on lobster and snow crab in the final month of the fiscal year and then the pentagon admitted they spent millions of dollars on lobster over the course of 18 months. this year the numbers are actually the same. it is 4.6 million. the distribution of what was spent on lobster versus crab are much different. this year we are choosing to highlight the $88 million spent by the pentagon on public relations. last year they spent $1 million on the professional bull riders association and this year they are spending a lot of money overall on general advertising for the military including money

to promote contracts their air and water shows. we have the democrats line, dee from florida. r: the gentleman is totally correct. i used to work for an elementary school back in the early 90's, and at the end of the year, i am talking about schools. he never mentions schools when he was talking to you but i used to go to all of the schools in the endtry, but during of the year i happen to be there. they had thrown out thousands of books and desks. we had to go and clean everything out because they had to spend the extra money they had left over. we are talking about a lot of

things they got rid of. ify threw everything out so you spend all of your money for that year, you get more the following year. every year they keep adding more to their budgets because, this is what is happening in the schools. this is the early 90's. host: all right. guest: we hear about that at every level of government across the country. --we took a lot of colors complaining about what is going on on the end of your spending in their local municipalities. people that work in the state government had called in. we heard last year from somebody that had worked in california for special forces for 23 years and he said it was criminal what was going on at the department of defense and the end of your spending. this is a common refrain.

unfortunately for many units of government, public executives need to crack down this. agencies,all federal they have to spend that money at the end of the year or does some of it carry over? guest: there are certain agencies like the department of justice or transportation that get some flexibility. they get to carry over 50%, not all of it, but they get to carry half of it over, 50 percent of what they do not spend. for example, across all federal agencies, end of your spending on infrastructure is about 12% on the year. however at the doj it is only 3% on the year in part because they had this carryover provision. there are interesting public fixes that can be brought to bear.

republicant the ranking member on the armed to gets committee wanted this amendment and for the department of defense of they could carry over 50%. very reasonable and it did not go into that bill this year. host: let's hear from sabrina from north carolina. caller: i was wondering if you could give me advice. i am concerned about how much money is taken by the child support system and is unaccounted for. i feel like they are robbing the american people because they are taking the federal income tax returns from the lower income levels. basically they are taking all of the money and putting it directly into the government system. i was wondering if you had advice for me on how i can

possibly get them to stop doing that. guest: i am unfamiliar with the details on that, but generally what i would like to say, all of these examples of waste, whether it is the end of your spending spree, every dollar that is wasted on public relations, unnecessary and and needed vehicles to the tunes of hundreds of millions of

dollars, every year every single one of those dollars is a dollar that cannot be spent on somebody . that is why i think it is incumbent -- to raise our voices and say enough is enough. stop christmas in september for the federal contractors. didn't thewer asks grace commission address the same problem? do think you would game -- gain some more traction if you focused on the state level? guest: the grace commission probably did address this. this spending spree has been going on for decades. we are proud to say we have made this front and center and now there is bipartisan agreement to stop this thing. important toat is bring this to congress because they write the rules and they can crackdown. point thatu have a the vendors are also culpable. we took a look at the top three last year, it is boeing, united technologies --the top three one hundredspent $75 million on lobbying last year.

i am sorry, over the course of , and they took about $12 billion on use it or lose it spending. so that was about one out of every five dollars that went out the door in the last 30 days that went to these three contractors who had spent a tremendous amount of money lobbying over the course of the past five years. host: they top the list of the top 10 contractors as of september 2019, $22 billion goes to just 10 contractors. you mentioned boeing and united technologies, we will show you the rest on the screen as we go to the next call. this is paul from indianapolis. caller: i was an auditor with the department of defense for 25 years, and this problem continued. one of the biggest reasons for

that is that the money goes from congress down to a department like the department of the army and it splits it out, but the army does not spend all of the money down to the subordinates. it gives back a percentage. each level keeps a little bit set back. when it comes the end of the year they have all of these reserves for emergencies that have to be spent. wishowest level has their list and they have not been able to fund those lists. they are ranked by priority. they are justn raining money down the tree, and picking offart their wish list. the best way to solve this is to list so review the wish there's nothing on there that you do not really need.

times, i a lot of think the third number was furniture. that has and office not been replaced for 50 years, that is way down on the list. come time at the end of the year when the reserves are being held or disbursed --obligated, rather, they need to buy those. that is their chance to buy that. you always see furniture jump up because it is always low priority until they have too much money. that is probably one good way to control --you will always have this problem because they are required to keep the reserves. your input.reciate adam. that wehat is a refrain do here. in the armed services hearing on july 1 a republican conference

-- congressman from california, a retired marine said it is criminal and he said he participated in it as an officer. he said, quote, i will probably burn in hell for this. he said nobody stopped it and it has to be stopped. in the day that we reviewed about one out of every six contracts that the pentagon let's on the year goes out the door in the last 30 days. biden: good afternoon. for this say thank you space. have had a lotwe of talk about who is going where and how i have decided to come to pittsburgh to talk about what is going on right now.