his latest book is called "how the best dated: leadership lessons from our best presidents." he chose the first four off the face of mount rushmore. in addition, mr. boston chose 24 distinct leadership traits he says were exhibited by these presidents. the other four presidents included in his best leadership category are svr, dwight eisenhower, jfk, and ronald reagan. 71 year old, the boston lives in dallas, texas. announcer: lawyer and historian talmage boston with his book eadership lessons from our top presidents,"is episode of booknotes+ with our host. booknotes+ is available on the c-span now video app or wherever you get your podcasts. ♪

announcer: a discussion taking a look at the incoming trump administration in an effort to make government more efficient with john hardin, ceo of "open the books themselves joining us now. the books. thank you for giving us your time. before we go into our discussion, for those that are not familiar with open the book, what would you say? guest: we are a transparency organization, came out about 13 years ago. i was in the senate working for senator tom coburn. there was a bill we passed in 2000 six with barack obama. coburn and obama met in 2004. it put all federal spending online. the hope that coburn and obama had would it would create an ecosystem of organizations that would take that data and make sense of it. open the books is the organization that did that. the co-founder, good friend of the program, passed away unexpectedly. host: sorry to hear about that. guest: thank you. i recently took over just three weeks ago. i helped create the bill that opened up open the books, but

transparency is a building block of a free society. if you remember from science class, carbon is the building block of life. transparency, when you connected to things like freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, it brings those things to life. we are really trying to reinvigorate what we think is a free society through transparency. host: how easy is it to get information about what the government spends, what the government does, etc.? guest: it has become a lot easier because be forced the government to put all federal spending online but all organizations try to put all dollars online at all levels of government. it can be easy but it can be very difficult. a lot of localities will spend do hide the ball. we have a very good day the team that make sense of that information. at the federal level, when you go down the contractor and subcontractor level, it gets more difficult.

the james webb space telescope, we zoom in on various spending and bring all of those things to life, help the american people understand what government is doing with their money. host: we will talk about the specifics in a little bit but to this idea of making government efficient, what do you think about the names that have emerged at the head of this, elon musk, vivek ramaswamy c, what they've been tasked to do? guest: i'm ecstatic that they are doing this. coburn was on the simpson bowles commission which came after the financial crisis of 2007. there was a quest to do a long-term bargain for entitlement problems. our debt to gdp ratio was around 90, now about 120 percent. we are spending more on interest on the national debt that we are on defense. there is a real national security threat to the spending we have. 40 years ago, president reagan found that one out of every three attacks on ours was not being spent efficiently. congress has not a good job bringing that down.

coburn brought it down for it to have year period with his colleagues in the senate. that was the first real spending cuts since the end of the korean war. a lot of that work has been undone. we need to tackle that looming fiscal problem we have. host: what do you think about the specific approach as they plan for, taking a look at the minutia, workforce size itself, and what ultimately ends up for the taxpayer, what services will be impacted, other things impacted because of the shrieking of government so to speak? guest: services i think will get better. one of the key findings we were able to pull out of gao, we force them to do an annual report on duplication. one of their key statements was if you downsize and streamline government and the right way, you improve the quality of services because you make it easier for government to communicate with itself. i am very optimistic that we can fairly dramatic downsizing of government and improve the quality of services.

this is not a demolition project, this is a restoration project. i think we are in a 1989 moment in the united states. that was the year the berlin wall came down. this could be the year the bureaucratic wall comes down that separate the people from the government. we have been on a 100-your path of increased spending since woodrow wilson really so this can be the end of an era, move back to restoring our founder's of limited government. host: you send out a demolition project but a lot of people have the idea that mr. musk and vivek ramaswamy may do just that. guest: i disagree with that. congress has really outsourced a lot of the decision-making to what is called the administrative state. republican described as the deep state. the deep state israel, there are people within the federal agencies that will obstruct and don't want to support the president's agenda even though that is their job to do that. but we also have what i call the default state.

we've been doing things a certain way for decades and will be very helpful to have people on the outside. elon musk is an historically significant figure. to have him apply his expertise, i wish we had that when i was working with coburn. would have been helpful to have his outside counsel. of course there will be people that will be upset, and that is why our organization is so important. our job is to bring the spending to light and let the public have a free and open fight about what is in their interest. host: an op-ed this week about what they hope to do. we are assisting the truck transition t identify a an team of small government crusaders including some of the sharpest technical and legal lines to work with the new stration, white house office of management and budget. d.o.g.e. pursues three major kinds of reform. regulatory decisions, administrative reductions, and cost savings. we will focus on the driving

change of executive actions based on existing legislation rather than passing new laws. those three approaches, you look a lot into that world. what are they facing as they hope to do that? host: if you look at the duplication of the federal government, there are different buckets where you can find significant savings pretty quickly. duplications, one hundred billion dollars. improper payments of medicare and medicaid. then there is a lot of questionable, silly spending. the bridges to nowhere, shrimps on a treadmill, cats in drag shows in ecuador. you can get other significant block of savings in that category. everything we are seeing, they have been very forthright and public about what they want to do, but president trump has not even taken office yet. d.o.g.e. work in progress. we don't fully know what they will do other than their charges to come up with a report in 2026.

also keep in mind we have a standing that commission in this country, the u.s. congress. congress will have a say on what they want to do. my feeling is musk and vivek will put pressure on congress to act, and it is in their interest to act now and not wait on the report. that is what the founders intended, that there would be a competition, separation of powers, to have a discussion about what is the optimal size of government. host: john hart joining us, open the books, serves as the ceo. if you have questions about their work, (202) 748-8000 for democrats. republicans, (202) 748-8001. independent, (202) 748-8002. federal workers, if you want to give your thoughts, (202) 748-8003. you can always text us at that same number, (202) 748-8003. you talked a little bit about your work with senator coburn on this. from what your experience was,

what challenges might these two face? i know it's a different situation but you probably clearly have lessons learned. guest: every dollar in the federal government is protected by a special interest or constituency. every dollar savings will be a fight for them. serving in the arena is like swimming in the ocean. you can study swimming in the ocean, read about it, but until you are there and doing it, you don't understand the currents. there are two currents here, the surface level and the undertow. there are two trends on the surface and below that will really help you lawn and vivek. we have had a political realignment in this country. the gop is now the working class party. one of the hurdles we faced is the left would argue that anything we would do to reduce spending would be harmful to low income americans. now the base for the working class has flipped to the gop, so people advocating for those

savings are now on that side. that will be a helpful dynamic. secondly, we have seen over the past in the digital age, we are living through the biggest disruption and change in information technology since the printing press. power is moving away from centralized institutions, whether it is the media, political parties, and this administrative state, this fourth branch of government, power is flowing away from that. those are two big trends that bode well for the chances of d.o.g.e. to make significant savings. host: let's hear from armors on our independent line in michigan for john hart of open the books. go ahead. caller: good morning, pedro. good morning, america. sir, is there anything in the writings of the laws of this country that allow one man to come to office and remake the way america works by establishing sanctuary cities

for people who are coming here and just move all over the place ? i cannot believe what i saw when i first saw that list of sanctuary cities. it was like the whole country was a sanctuary. is that legal? is that what they call constitutional? could you please tell us? i would appreciate it. guest: the thought of sanctuary cities, one of the key priorities of the administration is getting our immigration system under control. they are going to prioritize removing people who, illegal immigrants who have broken the law. there is a big question of how much deportation can they do it effectively in a short period of time. that will be the priority and that is how they will go after these immigrants, sanctuary cities. host: republican line.

michael in florida, clearwater beach. caller: good morning. thank you for taking my call. glycol is about the unionization of government employees which i guess makes it harder to get some of these people out of these jobs. it also flies in the face of the taxpayer who is paying for these employees. washington, d.c. boats about 90% democrat. it happens in a lot of big cities. so the unions and the government become in bed together. the taxpayer is paying the bills. we vote. they are more or less leaning in a fashion that helps the democrats and it is kind of a payoff, pay for play scheme. i want to see the unions eliminated. what is your perspective on this problem, dealing with the budget? guest: there is going to be a

significant debate on something called schedule f, a new classification of federal employees that the trump administration wants to put in. any bureaucrat that has a policymaking role should be subject to firing from the administration. if they go through with that, they could eliminate a significant part of the workforce. we have done deep dives on all the agencies. if you think about epa, for example, there are 14,000 staff at the epa. we found since 2018, we spend $100 million on two and a 23 public affairs officers. why is that? in coburn's office, we had two pr staffers, me and one other assistant. i think the caller is getting at, there are these protections that keep these people in place that are probably inappropriate. the administration will absolutely go after that. host: you use the words

bureaucrats, does everybody fall under that category working for the federal government? guest: what has happened with the administered estate, congress has not wanted to take a ability for decision-making authority. when they outsource that, it is a heads i win, tails you lose game.