rule in mainland china and 2049. the way they will surpass the in. is by being a leader future technology, ai, quantum, 5g -- -- that's why they have been stealing intellectual property and bullying other countries it and trying to be a -- and trying to be a leader. announcer: tonight, on the communicators come on c-span2. announcer: on tuesday, treasury secretary, steven mnuchin, testifies on the urgent need for additional coronavirus economic relief for children, workers, and families and the administration's implementation of key stimulus programs approved earlier this year. watch live coverage beginning at 1:00 a.m. eastern on c-span, on demand at c-span.org, or listen live wherever you are on the

free c-span radio app. as the federal government approaches the end of the fiscal year, we are joined by openthebooks.com founder adam andrzejewski joining us to talk 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 minnesota, it seems like a lot of stories are swirling around her financing. i was wondering if she was doing

anything fishy with her campaign contributions or whatnot? . basin --at our investigation didn't cross was individual members of congress. there is a bill to stop using or lose it spending in the house and the senate. the white house guys committed to it and the powerful democratic chairman in the armed services committee said he will back it as well. host: if they adopt it, it might put you out of business in terms of this annual report you do. host: that would be a great thing. here's what we found this year at the department of defense. last year, it made national news on your program when we discovered $4.6 million was spent on lobster palen sno

wcrab in the fiscal year. year, the numbers on the lobster tail and snow crab are million.the same, $4.6 the distribution on what was spent on lobster versus the 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 the million dollars on professional bull riders association. this year, they are just spending a lot of money overall on general advertising for the includingtes military on specific contracts on social media to promote their air and water shows eerie -- shows. host: democrats line. caller: about the fiscal year spending, this gentleman is

totally correct. there is nothing wrong in what he said. i used to work for the elementary school back in the early 1990's. , end-of-the-year, i'm talking about schools now. he never mention the schools when he was talking to you, but your teachers are all the time out there wanting more money because they are on strike or whatever. during the end of that year, i happen to be there. they have thrown out thousands and thousands of books, desks, you name it. we had to go and clean and pull everything out because they had to spend the extra money they had. we are talking multitude of things they got rid of, desks, you name it. they threw everything out. you spend all of your money for that here, you get more the following year. every year, they keep adding more to their budgets because this is what is happening in the schools. and this is the early 1990's.

host: adam? experience we an hear about at every level of government across the entire country. last year, coming onto c-span, we took 17 calls. there were a lot of callers that complained about what was going on in their local me miscible governments and school districts. people that work in state government have called in. we heard last year from somebody that had worked in coronado, california for special forces for 23 years and said it was criminal what was going on at the department of defense in the end of your spending. this is a common refrain. unfortunately, public executives at all country and public executives at all levels need to crack down it. host: are all federal agencies, they have to spend that money at the end of the fiscal year or do some of it carryover?

there are certain agencies like the department of justice, like transportation. they get some flexibility. 50%.get to carry over 50% of what they don't spend. across allple federal agencies, end of year infrastructure. is about 12% on the year. however at the department of justice, it's only 3% on the year in part because they have this carryover provision. so there are interesting public policy fixes that can be brought to bear. the is what mac thornberry, republican ranking member wanted to get this amendment in for the department of defense so they could carryover 50%. very reasonable and

unfortunately it did not go into that bill this year. host: let's hear from sabrina in asheville, north carolina. caller: i was wondering if you could give me some advice. i am concerned about how much money is being taken by the child support system and is unaccounted for. i kinda feel like they are robbing the american people because they are taking the federal income tax return from the lower income levels and basically they are taking all of moneyres money -- poor's and putting it into the government system. i was wondering if you had any advice to me on how i can possibly get them to stop doing that. guest: i'm unfamiliar with the details on that. generally what i would like to say is all of these examples of

the end ofer it's your spending spree, every single dollar that's wasted on standup desks, lobster tail and snow crab, public relations, the purchase of unnecessary vehicles to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars at the end of the year every year, every single one of those dollars is a dollar that can't be spent on somebody that has true needs. and that's why i think it's incumbent on all of us to raise our voices on a bipartisan basis and they and of is enough. stop christmas in september for federal contractors. host: of you are in provincetown saying, didn't the grace commission address this same problem years ago? guest: that's a great question and the grace commission probably did address this. the end of year spending spree

has been going on for decades. our organization has made this front and center and now there is some bipartisan agreement to stop this thing. important that it's to bring the heat to congress because they write the rules, they can crack down. the caller has a point that vendors are also culpable. we took a look at the top three vendors last year. they are all defense contractors. it is boeing, united technologies. the top three contractors spent $175 million on lobbying last year. five years,rse of they spent $175 million lobbying congress and they took about $12 billion on use it or lose it spending at the end of the year. so that was about one out of every five dollars that went out the door in the last 30 days

went to these three defense contractors who had spent a tremendous amount of money lobbying congress over the course of the last five years. host: they top the list of the top 10 federal contractors as of september 2019. one in every $40 goes to just 10 contractors. mentioned boeing, united technologies, lockheed martin. we will hear from paul in indianapolis. caller: good morning. i was an auditor with the department of defense for 25 years. this problem continued. one of the biggest reasons for that is the money goes from ofgress to the department the army. the army splits it out, but the army doesn't send all of its money to its subordinates. downach level as you go

also keeps a little bit set back. at the end of the year they've got all these reserves that have to be spent so they all get crammed down to the lowest level and the lowest level has their wish list. they haven't been able to fund those wish lists because they are ranked by priority. all of a sudden their buses are just raining money down the tree picking offy start their wish list. probably the best way to solve this is to have somebody review the wish list so there's nothing on the wish list that you don't really need. because a lot of times, the third number was furniture. a lot of times furniture and office that hasn't been replaced for 50 years is way down on the priority list. come time at the end of the year when all the reserves are being

dispersed or obligated, they need to buy those. that's their chance to buy that furniture. see furniture jump up because it's always low priority until they have too much money. that's probably one good way to control. you're always going to have this problem because they are required to keep reserves at each level and those reserves have to be liquid catered by the end of the year. host: adam andrzejewski, your thoughts. in the armed services committee hearing on july first, republican congressman from california paul cook. he's a retired marine officer. he said that it's criminal. he said he participated in it when he was in the marine corps as an officer. he said i will probably burn in hell for this. nobody stopped it and it has to

be stopped. in the data we reviewed, one out of every seven contracts that the pentagon let's on the year goes out the door in the last 30 days. that's no way to run the finest military in the world. and i would feel a lot better about their spending if the pentagon could simply pass their audit. they've only had two audits. the trump administration mandated the pentagon have an audit. they were supposed to have an audit since 1990. so for the past two years they have flunked their audit. 1400 auditors spend 12 months. the audit costs a billion dollars in the pentagon flunks it. host: you have mentioned this bill by senator joni ernst a couple of times. the end of year fiscal responsibility act would limit agency spending to know more

than what usually spends every month on average. the limit only applies to discretionary spending and exempts entitlement payments like social security and medicare and national security related expenditures. where does this stand? you mentioned there is a version by dan crenshaw of texas. where is that mission? -- measure? guest: the bills haven't been moved or called for markups in the committee and things like a 99%his is probably issue with the american people. you can't spend more in the last two months of the year than an average of the last 10 months. i can't come up with a more reasonable bill that in the early years of this would stop this at blow off excess spending spree. it should be picked up and considered.

host: carolyn in mount vernon new york. caller: i would like to say that when president obama was in debt clock on the c-span every day. this president that is in office now, the debt is three times when president obama was there. we never see the debt clock. and i would also like to say please have dr. joy degroot on who can speak to race relations. thank you. andrzejewski, do you want to address the mounting debt? last three presidents have not performed well on spending. george w. bush took over the national debt was about $4.6 trillion. by the time he left office and turned it over to barack obama,

it was over $9 trillion. when president obama left office it was about $19 trillion. after four years of the trump administration, we are approaching $27 trillion. numberidents in the last of years have not performed well on spending and debt issues. host: our that adam andrzejewski -- our guest adam andrzejewski is with openthebooks.com. we welcome your calls and comments at (202) 748-8001 republicans. (202) 748-8000 democrats. others (202)and 748-8002. because of the significant spending in response to the pandemic, a report says the gao more than half of covid-19 government contract are not competitively awarded.

they say the ongoing pandemic has led to a surge in spending among federal agencies, particularly those with health and emergency response missions. your thoughts. guest: it's a great study. happens at we feel the end of your spending spree. think about this. 21,000, there's over contract transactions being executed in the federal agencies. those can't be done on a frugal basis. those terms can't be type. this can't be getting a fair shake for the united states taxpayer. it's too much money going out the door too quickly. there's a lot of things the federal agencies can do. one of the largest offenders this year amongst the federal agencies was the general services administration.

purchasesnk-and-file that can be used by bureaucrats across the board in many federal agencies. they could use the latest in technology. i'm talking about a dutch auction, a reverse auction. where among qualified bidders, the terms of the contract go up and qualified aiders on an online auction are able to bid down the cost of rank-and-file goods and services. the $300 billion spent on clothing, that can be dutch auction. you have a lot of vehicles and transportation. there was a quarter billion dollars worth of vehicles that were purchased last year. that can be put up for dutch auction. you have food items. there was a half billion dollars worth of food items. those things can be put up for dutch auction. savings out of that technology can rival 40%.

let's go to george in jacksonville, florida. on the thanks for being local show. i'm an engineer. i've had some medical training. power companyur and other power companies have changed our smart meters three times. these are radio meters and they cause health problems. complain about it and they put another one of the same crime on it -- same kind on it. we could cut our health care costs in half if we got rid of the radio type which hurt people plus there is a complementary thing for doctors and it's been approved by the fda. it uses the same technology with good frequencies. at howt really upset congress didn't seem to have the ability to work through these things and find out what the best choice is.

guest: that's for sure. congress needs to get back to its auditing function. like healther area care costs. medicaid and medicare last year admitted that they improperly and mistakenly paid out 85 billion dollars. $67 billion of that was overpayments. the 20 largest federal agencies last year admit that they mistakenly and improperly paid out a billion dollars to dead people. $10 billion mistakenly paid on social security. incredibly in the social security database, there are 6 million active social security numbers of people aged 112 and over. there's only 40 of those people alive in the entire world. so there's a lot of waste in the federal government. what federal agency is running well? i cannot point to one.

host: brian in pennsylvania. independent line. , tony in tampa. go ahead. caller: i just want to say to andrzejewski, in your opinion, has nancy pelosi destroyed trump on every budget that has been signed including the shutdown? trump is collecting all this money from tariffs and selling our oil over the world and nato paying their fair share to europeans. that debt hasy grown under this president. it's almost impossible to believe and then printing money to boot. i just don't think he's done a good job at all with this spending and when you look at it

, we hired him to do two things. build a wall and get rid of obama care. and with the house and senate for two years and the amount of money he spent to be bragging about 300 miles of wall which 197 of it was rebuilt, i just -- i voted for the guy and i'm just saying i don't see him as the smashing success all my friends and a lot of trump supporters see him as. guest: i think your characterization of the first two years of the administration was spot on. it was paul ryan in the house and mitch mcconnell in the senate. we are running a trillion dollars national debt ahead of a pandemic during boom times and i was on c-span and i was issuing the debt and spending morning on c-span back last fall.

we see at the same way on debt and spending issues. specific to nancy pelosi, she always wants to spend more than what the republican senate wants to spend so i think that's where you have the tension. on her coronavirus bailout bills, she came in with $3 trillion and it was a 3000 page bill. mcconnell came in with a lot less, 900 page bill. they settled in the middle for and billion worth of a loud a lot of those bailouts on what they decided unanimously, no one voted against it. the president signed it and a lot of those bailouts went to pete that had business getting a coronavirus bailout including the wealthiest colleges and universities. andargest colleges universities with the biggest and down mentz, a third of a trillion dollars in endowments. a billion to read dollars in coronavirus bailouts and they didn't need it.

host: here is brian in pennsylvania. caller: i would like to give you guys an information not -- an observation i had. in the 70's i was charged with buying a oscilloscope because we had a piece of equipment that needed service. i tried to buy it in late august. the salesman said unless i really was in an emergency situation, he'd rather put off until october because he had a deal with all the government units that were buying their equipment in september. and that was many years ago. guest: your experience rings true. we have found that veterans affairs, and they were audited by the federal auditing agencies like the gao. in 2017, there was a facility in a rush to get the dollars out

the door, they violated all the rules. there was no review, there was no approval. they bought a duplicate surgery robot. robot ate 84th surgery this v.a. medical facility and the total cost on that was $2.3 million. host: about 10 more minutes with our guest, adam andrzejewski. we are talking about the new report on the federal government's use it or lose that spending spree. how the government spent $91 billion in 2019. democrats, (202) 748-8001 republicans. (202) 748-8002 independents. $74 billion of that is just five departments.

57 .5 billion, hhs five .75, veterans affairs 3.8 billion. security 3.5. rob is in new york city. democrat line. good morning. go ahead. you are on the air. caller: good morning. thank you for c-span. we hired this so called businessmen. the virus didn't hit until his fourth year. in office. to straightenears out the debt and the deficit and nothing happened with building infrastructure, roads and bridges. it was all lipservice. and as far as i'm concerned, the virus didn't hit for the fourth year.

more on secret service. i remember they wanted to crucify clinton for a haircut where air force one had to land in los angeles and the republicans were saying how much gasoline that it used. he's a fraudulent businessman. he leased out his name on buildings in new york city. the businessman that he's pretending to being. and by the way, he could not legitimately manage a giant health-care crisis. but what he could do was to pretend that he could manage a giant health-care crisis. and by pretending to manage the government and handled the coronavirus, the virus became much worse. and he is still pretending that he is managing.

he rehearses how he's going to pretend to be managing. host: rob in new york city. adam andrzejewski, any thoughts. guest: that will all be worked out at the ballot box. here's our review at openthebooks.com. we are a public charity. there is an iron wall between public policy with us. we don't engage in the campaign. ,ut both sides on this issue republicans and democrats should be able to get together on this. health, their largest expenditure was $120 billion on public relations. i think that's wrong. that drives people crazy. that's using our tax dollars taxpayers to convince taxpayers to spend even more taxpayer money on larger budgets next year. at hhs, here is an expenditure

we are trying to get to the bottom of. and they have been unresponsive. we noticed in september of last year towards the end of the year, they spent $32 million on an all hazard ventilator stock pile. we want to know whether those ventilators were ever delivered for $32 million and so far, we have heard crickets. host: bobby asks this. is all end-of-the-year spending considered wasteful? no.t: the military spends money on missiles and ships and vessels and it's not wasteful. here's another thing they spend money on. they spent a million dollars on lack coffee and it was general patton who said he could not fight the world war without black coffee and so that's probably a million dollars at the pentagon in the war agencies spent on coffee.

host: pat is on the republican line. caller: you are faulting president trump for a trillion dollar deficit when he came into office. spending even flatline , and agency spent a billion dollars this year. you say we are going to give you a billion dollars next year, they will say that's a cut because you are not keeping up with inflation. how do we control spending that way? guest: with the republican congress and paul ryan in the house where the appropriations bill comes from, they took all of the obama administration's discretionary spending and put it on steroids. they added $320 billion to obama era spending. peoplerevenues, castigate the president for the tax cut. if taking a look at the revenues.

revenues actually rose after the of cut but spending went out control on a bipartisan basis. we't have a tax problem, actually have a massive spending problem. after the pandemic it should be obvious to everybody that we are spending a tremendous amount of money that we don't have. borrowing and bonding our future generations to pay for this spending and it's not right. host: what's the solution? pay down the debt after that kind of spending? guest: this is a big problem. during boom times when they were adding a trillion dollars a year, we said what happens when we had a crisis. now we've hit the crisis. the first thing is you need to take a look after $3.6 trillion thrown at the problem, let the

money work through the system. a lot of this money has been allocated and hasn't even been spent yet. let this money work its way through the system. doesn't need to bailout should give the money back. word expose of nonprofits that were receiving coronavirus bailouts that had massive endowments. of a trillion dollars in endowments were allocated for coronavirus bailouts and they didn't need it. institutions like the met in new york city with a massive endowment. they don't need a bailout. you've got the paycheck protection program. we mapped all of that by zip and we called out for

instance kanye west. he says he's worth $1.4 billion and his sneaker company received between two and 5 million of coronavirus bailout money. if you don't need the money, send it to the treasury because we are borrowing and bonding future generations on the national debt. host: let's hear from roger in hawaii. caller: i was calling to see if we could as taxpayers since it's our money being spent ridiculously, can we hire mr. makehere to go in and necessary cuts and changes and be a worker for us, the people who are paying all this money that's being spent? guest: i appreciate that. i think we need a forensic audit

in every single federal agency. what's a forensic audit? it's deep. it's evidentiary. whether it's misspending, improper payments, we need to claw them back on behalf of the hard-working american taxpayer. host: in fort lauderdale, florida. caller: thanks for c-span. ok. funny that thery guy before me called and said how can we hire your speaker to work for the government and yet it was the perfect opportunity, that was his chance to say i ran for governor and you guys didn't want me to work for you. where he got beat very badly back when he was a tea party

rush limbaugh guy. saying the government spends too much money and pointing out all these programs, which is true. there is always lots of money lost in there. but then -- guest: i just want to cover that. i did run for governor in illinois, the super bowl of and 2010., in 2009 i have since sworn off politics. we actually did pretty well. i was endorsed by one of the greatest champions of freedom and liberty in this when he first century. he was the nobel laureate in 1984 and he helped found solidarity in poland. and theainst the best brightest, we came within 5% of beating them, i lost but i ran onto things. every time online in real time, aggressive transparency followed by forensic auditing.

we have taken those ideas writ basis.n a national we believe that transparency will revolutionize united states public policy and politics and you are hearing a little bit of that today on the program. andrzejewski >> tonight, three-time governor at 8:00 p.m.week eastern on c-span. tonight on "the

communicators." texas republican congressman will heard talk about cyber issues facing the u.s. and why he thinks china wants to surpass the u.s. as a superpower. 2049, they want to surpass the united states of america as the sole superpower in the world. wide 2049? that's 100 years of communist rule in mainland china. they will surpass is by being a leader in future technology, ai, quantum, 5g. that's why they have been stealing intellectual property, that is why they have been bullying other countries in order to buy their product and that's why they are trying to be a leader in these technologies. >> congressman will heard tonight at 8:00 eastern on c-span two. tuesday, treasury

secretary steven mnuchin testifies before the house on the urgent need for additional coronavirus economic relief for children, workers, and families and the administration's implementation of key stimulus programs approved this year. watch live coverage beginning at 1:00 p.m. eastern on c-span, on at c-span.org, or listen live wherever you are on the c-span radio app. next, today's white house briefing with press secretary kayleigh mcenany. this is 20 minutes. >> good afternoon, everyone. the president shows up. when the trump administration shows up in a democrat run city engulfed in chaos, peace is restored. washington, d.c., new york,