they should be reformed. >> we have these antitrust statutes were passed, the sherman act passed way back in 189 o. the clayton act in 1914. the sherman act makes it illegal to monopolize. the clayton act says any merger that may substantially lessen competition or tend to create a monopoly is illegal. but meanwhile we have watched while hundreds of these mergers that would be illegal under that standard have been approved. >> there is this argument that i think underline a lot of criticism of today's antitrust is really a feeling that big is bad. that necessarily large companies are abusing competition or consumers. i don't think that's true. and most any forces don't believe that's truce. large companies abusing the process and they are large because they are efficient. bringing great service, popular services to consumers.

>> sally and brent tonight at 8:00 eastern on the communicators on c-span2. journ" continues. host: our guest now is going to help us take a look into covid ending, policy, all things related to the pandemic and he is going to talk about some of the numbers. he is founder and ceo of openthebooks.com. tell us what it does. guest: our mission is summarized as every dime online in real time. last year, our auditors refiled freedom of information requests and nearly every public body in the couplet -- on nearly every

public body in the country and we display it all on our website. that is so regular people can hold your officials accountable for tax and spend decisions. we have a petition that fits with this segment. it is at the federal level. you can hit the. it is called read the bill. our legislators do not have time to read the bill. we have a representative republic. if our representatives do not have time to read these bill, we have to petition on that basis. host: let's read the numbers on the covid bill. it should get past tomorrow. let's break some of this down.

individual payments, 430 $7 billion as part of this bill. money to state and local governments. 300 $50 billion. unemployment benefits, $230 billion. more money for the paycheck protection program, $7 billion. what do you see in these numbers? guest: these are big numbers. if you count the dollars related to funding the coronavirus pandemic, it is about eight to $900 million. that leaves an x or -- that leaves an extra $1 trillion not related to the payment. if you need more testing or dollars for vaccinations, more payments to small businesses

which are hurting, deliver a bill on that basis, a targeted skinny bill that directs money to people who have need. some of these other things that are being funded, to the tune of $1 trillion, save those for another day. host: we will take your calls in a couple of minutes. we are reviewing the covid bill that is about to get past in the house -- get passed in the h ouse. chris murphy, the senator from connecticut, took issue with criticism that non-covid priorities are in this plan. here is what he had to say. [video clip] let's look at what was broadly part of the cares act that was

supported by every republican and what is part of the american rescue plan. my republican colleagues thought everything in the cares act was covid relief, whether it was designed to attack the health-care crisis or the economic crisis. their work stimulus checks. not as big as the one in the american rescue plan, but they were covid relief. now, according to republicans, they are not covid relief. there was an unemployment extension. that was covid relief in march of last year, but now, it is not covid relief. there was money for vaccines and testing in the cares act. in the american rescue plan, money for vaccines, testing. small business relief was conceived in the cares act. now, it is not covid relief,

according to my republican colleagues. there wasn't state and local funding in the cares act. there was rent and mortgage relief. there is rent and mortgage relief in the american rescue plan. since democrats took control of the white house and the senate, all of these things, which were categorized as covid relief by republicans in march are no longer covid relief. you are supposed to think of these as extras, as democratic priorities. host: what you make of those comments. guest: i am a senior contributor at forbes. i wrote a view on the waste in the cares act. it was extreme. on the paycheck protection

program, everybody voted for it. nobody had time to read the bill. we found loans and grants flowing to hollywood. kanye west got over $2 million. the sneaker company has a value of over $3 billion. robert redford's sundance institute. over $3 million worth of ppp money. the producer of the godfather, he got -- he has got two companies. they got $8.5 million. when these bills are rushed, there is a lot of waste. host: is their wasteful spending

in this bill? point to a couple of things you think should not be there. guest: there are billion dollars pieces of waste and million dollars. let's take $1 million piece of waste. we identify a new part for federal workers. there are cash payments for individuals. if you are a federal worker and if your child costs school is not -- your child's school is not open, the perk says you can stay home and take care of your child and you get the equivalent of $1400 a week for 15 weeks, up to $21,000 paid to stay home. we know the average federal worker makes over $100,000 a

year on cash compensation. you already get 12 weeks of unpaid time off for family leave. if you are on the job for three years, you have 43 days of paid time off. that is holidays, sick days, vacation days. almost every week, if you are a federal bureaucrat, your work week is a four-day work week already. host: republican, illinois, you are on. good morning. caller: good morning. i enjoy your website. very informative and entertaining. one thing i heard at the beginning of this was money to count tuna in the gulf of

mexico. is that true? are they spending money to count fish in the gulf of mexico? guest: we have not heard that. when they dropped the bill, we read the entire bill. senate read did the bill. -- senate read did -- redid the bill. some of the changes, we found a new section, $75 million. a one million-dollar piece of wage going to national public radio, big bird. on their balance sheet, nonprofit organizations, they have hundreds of millions of dollars. host: marion, hello.

caller: i have to smile at your guest. you just talk the talking points. you talk about hollywood getting ppp, you don't talk about churches, who do not get taxed. many churches have gotten money. let's not be so partisan. host: let me get a response. go ahead, adam. guest: we map every single loan. many have turned into grants, between $1 million and $10 million. there were many churches on that list. we segmented for national journalists.

we sliced it, sent it to journalists. they wrote articles, made national news. for everybody out there, if you believe government money comes with strings and influence, it is troubling america's churches were getting big payments out of that ppp fund. we are a nonprofit. we are a public charity. we could qualify for 300,000 dollars through that program. we would never expect -- we would never accept government money. that would harm our mission. we are funded by people, individuals, foundations, we accept no government funding. caller: thank you.

i am sorry, but it is blah blah blah, what you talk about. you are funded by wealthy people who have an agenda. the $1.9 trillion is for vaccines, but everything else, because of the covid crisis, the states and local counties need money. the revenue is down. everything related to covid, it is a covid relief. it is going to help us. the $3000 for the children who are poor, all of us are suffering. i don't think you get this. it is depressing to hear people like you talk like this. guest: there is real pain out

there. this is a pandemic. we need targeted relief. america is rich enough to provide for a robust safety net. where there can be debate is when that safety net turns into a hammock and impinges the future. in terms of local and state funding, we have done oversight on where this bill would send the money. california, the government would get $26 billion. the second is tribal governments. they would get $20 billion. we looked up the population of native americans. there are about 3 million.

on a population, there are $6,700 per native american flowing to tribal governments. that exceeds any other allocation. puerto rico has 3 million people. they are getting $4 billion out of the program. host: keith, good morning to you. caller: we are spending so much money it is like it is not real money. the people in the country are wondering how long is this going to go on? we are paying about $400 billion in interest. on our debt right now, can that 400 billion, if we do not incur any more interest, cannot go up when things come due? if that grows too big, we are

not paying down the debt. when will it, to a point where people say we spend more money on interest than the military that people complain about? guest: we have the same view on the national debt as mike mullen said back in 2011, 2012. long-term, our national debt is our greatest national security threat. our national rollout with arm in arm with dr. tom coburn. he wrote the book called the debt bomb. this works until the moment it does not.

let's walk through a brief history on the national debt. when barack obama took office, it was about $10 trillion. when trump came into office, it was $20 trillion. after four years, when he leaves, it is 28 trillion dollars. if we pass this, we are going to go north of $30 trillion. host: u.s. debt set to double over the next 30 years. explain what a higher debt means to the functioning of government in washington and the country. guest: in relation to the economy, it is a huge part of the economy. we have not seen the level of debt to the growth domestic

product since world war ii and we have not fought a world war. it starts to crowd out government services because you have to spend. when the government spends money, it crowds out private investment. government investment is prioritized. i want to give you examples. on the bailout of states and localities, we took a look at your hometowns receiving dollars and beverly hills is getting billed out to the tune of $6.2 million. i don't think 90210 needs a coronavirus bailout.

the hamptons are getting billed out north of $8 million. key west, $10.1 million bailout. greenwich, connecticut. they are getting $20 million out of this bill. some of the wealthiest towns in the country, like atherton, california. they are getting $1.4 million out of this bill. you can look up your hometown on our website. my hometown is the 36th richest place in the country and we are getting 2.1 million dollars of bailout out of this bill. we do not need it.

host: conrad, philadelphia. caller: have you ever looked in the books to see how much money we sent overseas to all of those foreign countries? maybe if they stop sending our money overseas, we could fund anything that goes on in the united states. host: what is your perspective on how much this country spends on foreign aid? guest: ice caller: -- caller: the money they sent overseas to all of the rich oil states, we send more money overseas then we taken from overseas. let's stop spending money overseas and we would not have a problem. host: thank you for calling.

caller: when -- guest: when trump looked at removing the united states from the world health organization, we looked at how much money funded the who. it was smaller than what people realized. host: let's hear from david. caller: on foreign aid, boy is he off. it is the tiniest fraction of what this bill is about. it is not close. the thing that is bothering me, the u.s. has gone through cycles and crashes.

1907, a horrible crash. we are living in a time where most of the people cannot remember what the last bear market was like. go back to 2008, 2000, we had bad downturns. the average interest rate on our loans has averaged 5.5% going back to 1913. we are living on borrowed time when it comes to interest on the national debt. as we start to creep up, at some

point, reality is going to sneak in. there is no free lunch. you cannot print money. i do not know what they are thinking. listening to them talk the other day, they said the forward pe is 22.5. in recent years, it has been 17.5. at some point, it has to go down. host: thank you for calling. guest: it is a good perspective. let's talk about the total toolbox of administrative, legislative, and federal reserve response to the coronavirus over the past year. these amounts are stunning, large, it is hard to get perspective. there is about a $10 trillion to

$11 trillion toolbox. let's break it down. administrative response to an emergency, coming out of the executive office of the president, about three quarters of $1 trillion. already allocated is 4.1 trillion dollars. what is not talked about is the enteral reserve. they committed to $5.9 trillion. they disclosed they have only used about $2.8 trillion of that money in response to the coronavirus. congress has left $1 trillion on the table. it is unspent, working through the system. there is another one point $9

trillion congress is putting on the table. after all of this spending, let the dollars work through the system. if there are people at the end of the day who have needs, target a bill to serve those people. host: as we look at the state recipients, california on top, florida, $17 billion. mitt romney mentioned florida. if a state is doing ok or well right now, can they refuse this money? guest: every state should analyze, every local government should analyze whether they need the money and if they do not, send it back. all of this is borrowed. there was an allocation formula on the $350 billion sent to

states and localities. rather than population, it went to unemployment rate. in west virginia, with joe mansion, a swing senator, we were interested to see how he would vote on this bill. west virginia, they lose $1.5 billion. california and new york, they are the winners in this bill. california, they reap an extra $6.7 billion. new york reaps a little over $6 billion. florida is a big loser. ron desantis cap the state open -- kept the state open for business, so they lose over $2 billion in this bill.

host: here are figures before this current bill. paycheck protection program, $796 billion. this is since march of 2020, prior to this current bill. individual payments, $730 billion. unemployment, $630 billion. state and local, $340 billion. k-12, 102 billion dollars. talk about the larger figures and what they mean in the future. guest: unemployment, with 40 million people unemployed at the height of the pandemic, congress flooded the system with unemployment benefits. this was pushed to the states.

they had to fill these claims, california has steadied this. there was a tsunami of fraud. california believes 27% >> find "washington journal" june line at c an.org. we take you live to the house meeting to start legislative work for the week. 13 bills on the schedule today. including awarding congressional gold medals to capitol police and others for protecting the u.s. capitol. and members of congress during riots on january 6. say we have.

until you start taxing the rich, let's say they get $5 million, let's tax 90%, not 30%. host: let's hear from our guest. guest: we have one party in washington, d.c. it is the party of let's get rich together. we have been hard on congressional republicans.

far too often, republicans join democrats to drain the u.s. treasury from the right. republicans were in control for the first two years of the trump administration. we were running trillion dollar deficit during boom times. republicans have not stood on fiscal conservative principles for a long time. host: washington post speaks to that. on the right, congressional republicans may fret about higher deficits, but the most popular politician among their voters does not. donald trump blew past concerns about the deficit while running on protested -- unprecedented

peace time debt levels. on the left, lawmakers have learned to ignore fears about spending too much. here is a quote. it has been a major shift. people have gone from being antigovernment to beyond being a neutral, to thinking, we need the government. it has to help us. guest: ronald reagan's quote, when somebody knocks on your door and they say i am from the government and here to help, you -- that was not a situation you wanted.

far too often we are too willing to embrace that. the current bill, the one point -- the $1.9 trillion bill, saying it is not related to the pandemic and the virus, i want to give you an example of this. that is k-12 education. during the pandemic during 2020, congress allocated 60 $7 billion to k-12 schools. many are not open. in this new bill, overnight, $120 billion is allocated to the k-12 schools. the white house spokesman admits the budget office did the study, 95% of the money is going to be spent from 2022 to 2028. one third of that money is going to be spent after the 2024

election. why allocate the money now if you needed in the future? make legislation, convince taxpayers and constituents, and deliver funding at that point. there is no need to obligate the american taxpayer right now for that funding. host: isn't this money poured into the economy? money that will be spent immediately? unlike the trillion plus tax cut that poured into the stock market. when you say waste, you mean money that will be rapidly spent guest:. since these are government programs, what government program is running well cut -- is running well? we look at the 20 largest federal agencies going back to 2004, admit when they improperly pay. it is a payment to the wrong

person, the wrong amount, the wrong set of rules. in 2019, we had $175 billion worth of improper and mistaken payments. in 2020, we got the latest numbers through the door, it spikes north of $220 billion. that is $17 billion a month. half billion dollars a day. $1 million a minute. the largest culprit are the two large federal programs, medicare and medicaid. 126 billion dollars was admitted by health and human services that was mistakenly paid out of those programs. the irs administers the earned income tax credit. in this act, that gets a boost. the irs admits last year, one

out of every four dollars, it was improperly and mistakenly paid. we reached out to the irs for comment. they said it will continue and they do not have the resources to stop it. caller: thank you for letting me speak. president biden is doing a great job, pouring that money into the economy so people can get back to work, and get a vaccine and get back to work and start paying taxes. he is doing good. they need that money so people can get back to work. host: thank you for calling. guest: thank you for that comment. people need gainful employment. the jobs report came out friday. it was massive, 400 thousand jobs added to the economy in

february. january numbers were revised to about another 100,000 increase. in the first two months of this year, the economy is coming back. about half a million jobs have been added to the economy. do we need a massive stimulus at this point when you have the vaccination? vaccinations are up to 90 million doses that have been delivered. hospital asians are down, deaths are down. we are coming back. the greatest story is the comeback story. we are going to do it again. we do not need to do it with trillions of dollars of cash. host: one of the other threads of this conversation is about unspent money from previous bills. here is a clip from the

republican from louisiana talking about this. [video clip] >> i am disappointed the president took the position that we need to spend $2 trillion now , even though there is $1 trillion in previously appropriated funds that we have not spent yet. a reasonable approach would have been to say, do we need to spend $2 trillion? maybe we ought to spend the other $1 trillion and see if that will do it. another approach would have been to say, maybe we ought to reprogram some of the $1 trillion that has not been spanked. we appropriated $70 billion to our elementary and secondary schools. they have only spent $4 billion.

why are we giving them another $160 billion in president biden's bill? maybe the schools did not need the full $70 billion we gave them. maybe we can reprogram some of that money. host: this idea of reprogramming. can you give us a budget lesson explaining what the senator is trying to say? how does that come together? guest: it is hard to spend these psalms. specific to education, $67 billion allocated to k-12 schools. all of that has been spent except for $10 billion. i want to give you an example of how the money has been spent. about $100 million was spent in chicago on infrastructure,

upgrading all facets of the schools to make for a safe and comfortable learning environment. high schools still are not open. finally, the union has agreed to come into the classroom. we took out a look at how much a teacher makes. on pay and benefits, they average $108,000 per year. put that in contrast to parochial schools in chicago. catholic schools, they have been back in the classroom since september. teachers make half. you can be a phd in the catholic schools and your pay tops out at 60 thousand dollars. host: lewis, waycross, georgia. good morning. caller: how much money the

lawyers and doctors got from ppp -- i would like to know how much money the lawyers and doctors got from ppp. guest: they got hundreds of millions of dollars. there is a purpose to some payments, certainly. it might go down as the worst decision in the last 100 years, to do something that was never tried from a public policy standpoint before. that was a lockdown, when you shut an economy down, when you throw 40 million people out of work, there is an argument it is akin to eminent domain. specific to health care, there were multiple programs, not only from medicine, but from dentists , to keep the health care infrastructure of the country

strong while the country focused on this pandemic. host: there is procurement fraud in the military. does your website cover that? guest: we want to do an oversight report on the military . we covered this a bit. we did a report on use it or lose it contract spending. -- we hired millions of dollars spent on lobster and snow crab at the pentagon. this led to hearings in the house with generals addressing the armed services committee, asking them to tie the appropriation to the united states military to rules on

eliminating wasteful use it or lose it end of year spending and we are proud of that work. host: brenda, jonesville, virginia. thank you for waiting. caller: thank you for taking my call. i want to ask adam, what did he think about the republicans not voting with the democrats to try to help people and then, all of these people trying to feed their families and cannot feed their families, they are getting in lines to get food to feed their families. everybody in congress is not going without a check. they are getting their check, regardless. guest: thank you for your comment, your question. from the republican standpoint, they look at where we are at now

and it looks like the comeback story is unfolding. furthermore, our auditors took a look at household income in 2020. because of the aid, the 4.1 trillion dollars congress through at the economy, the virus, individuals, household income rose in 2020. that gets back to the point with $1 trillion unspent of the fortune dollars. let the dollars work through the economy. if there are areas, testing, vaccinations, restaurants have taken a particular hit. airlines, or other industries, small businesses, individuals come in with a targeted relief bill. host: tell us more about open

thebooks.com. guest: we are up against a national think tanks. some of them have $100 million a year budgets. last year, we grew our budget to $2.8 million. we have about 30 full-time equivalents. we have about 23 full-time employees that filed and followed up with and mapped to our website, the production from those freedom of information act requests, and captured $6 trillion. the remaining folks are auditors. we open the books and we audit those books. our audits make national news, like what we are talking about today. host: how long have you been around? guest: we launched in 2013.

we did something historic and unique. we took the federal checkbook, pushed it to your cell phone with a mobile app, which localized federal spending into your zip code. i wrote the editorial in 2013. we launched, on a state-side basis in illinois, the super bowl of corruption, where we are based. we started posting all pay and pensions and checkbooks as early as 2011. we took that out on a national basis. host: this piece you wrote in forbes, anthony fouts she, the highest paid employee in the federal government. why did you write this? how much does he make? guest: we got the federal payroll through the door.

the most highly compensated federal employee was anthony fauci. he has been at the health and service -- the health and human services since 1968. we are holding the last 10 years worth of federal payroll. in the past four years, his salary increased up to $417,000 in 2019. in 2020, a spokesman confirmed he got another increase, up to $434,000. out of 4 million federal employees, the number one, most highly compensated is dr. anthony fauci. host: he is 80 years old.

would he make that kind of money for being around that long? guest: some make the argument he is the most uncompensated. host: let's hear from sue, kentucky, independent color. -- independent caller. caller: i love him opening the book. i would like to know how the government is spending our money. nancy, all of them. open the book on them, where our tax money is going. they have their big homes, new cars. we are the ones out. we are the ones struggling. i have been a democrat, i have been a republican. i am an independent. the american people are sick of it.

we own nothing. we have to pay them. we are fed up with it. they need to cut them people down. they need a cap on their pay. they do not need to -- in there. guest: this system has been gamed by the elites. i want to take you to a couple of examples. the ivy league colleges, it is the 25 colleges with the largest endowments. 25 schools have an endowment north of $320 billion. that is one third of $1 trillion. they do not need taxpayer help. on the cares act, $13 billion

was allocated to universities and colleges. we took a look at those 25 wealthy schools. in the cares act, they were allocated $1 billion of our tax money. they cannot make the argument they need the money, but they want the money. host: anthony, west bloomfield, michigan. caller: we send them to congress , the bills get so inflated. we expect our representatives to do what is best for us. can you explain about the process? they have been talking about adding earmarks to the policy. it sounds like that is already in there. guest: earmarks are the gateway

drug of corruption. dr. tom coburn, he was instrumental in delivering the earmark man when congress banned them through a rule change. that has been reversed by democrats. both parties are responsible for this. i want to tell you how hard it was for our auditors to get detail on the $350 billion in this bill flowing to state and local governments. we tried for a week to get specifics. a line by line accounting on the 30,000 counties and municipalities that would receive $120 billion out of this bill. it took us a week. we were asking republicans and democrats. within 12 hours, we had

oversight on where the money was going. i detailed some of these wealthy communities getting money. you have large cities that are mismanaged. new york, they are going to get more than $4 billion out of this bill. we compared that versus the state government and new york city will get more money than 25 state governments out of this bill. chicago, they are right up the road from us, we are in the suburbs. chicago, the bonds are junk status. they are going to get to billion dollars out of this bill. that outranks 12 states. host: founder and ceo of opent hebooks.com. thank

>> u.s. house was scheduled to be in debating 13 bills and gaveled out heedly and now in recess subject to the call of the chair. waiting for members to return. when they do, we will bring you live coverage including congressional gold medals for capitol police who fought the attack of the capitol on january 6. a look at congress now. christina marcos, thank you for joining us. guest: thanks for having me. host: take us back to the senate final action on saturday. what did it change about the $1.9 trillion bill that the house will have to wrestle with this week? guest: there are two major changes that were made in the senate. the first one being the restrictions on the direct stimulus payments, that is a central part of the previous pandemic relief bills.

rather than the maximum amount that one can qualify for to get a check is still incomes of $75,000 for individual. they used to be people up to 100,000. now that will beat cap to $80,000. a number of moderates were concerned there were some higher income people who were getting these payments when they didn't really need them. so that's one major change we will see. this does mean there are some people who got stimulus checks last year who won't get them. the weekly insurance -- unemployment insurance supplement. additionally in-house bill that passed a couple weeks ago, that

would've been $400 per week. but now it's going to remain at the status quo of $300 which was another change pursued by moderates in the senate. >> how much work will the democratic leadership, does the speaker have to do and perhaps the white house to get this finally passed we think tomorrow in the house. ? >> guest: we've been seeing some progressives expressing displeasure at the two main changes, the on a plumbing insurance payments and the restrictions checks. i will no longer support this bill. the congressional progressive caucus said they weren't -- they weren't pleased terribly.