some of this overspending and where we could maybe be saving a little bit more money i'm joined by tom schatz president of citizens against government waste tom thanks for joining me thank you mary so the question at hand isn't just what is being purchased but the price the government is paying why is medicare paying more than the retail value here there's no reason that they should be they knew about this disparity in one thousand nine hundred eighteen and medicare is capable of setting a special payments. limit for something that is grossly excessive compared to other costs for other devices veteran's department pays about half of what medicare pays for these devices and the private sector pays even less so how do we ensure a more competitive bidding process here and then a carrot has had trouble with competitive bidding for durable medical equipment which is where this falls into in terms of the category that there was a change in the law a few years ago they're having trouble of course getting this off the ground this particular item is not covered but they don't need congressional author

large and there are so many things that people need it's constantly being reviewed and that was tom schatz president of citizens against government waste. and left the n.s.a. revelations role we're just learning that the national security agency has collected almost two hundred million text messages a day from across the globe using them to record specifics like the date time and location of messages sent this is all a result of a joint investigation conducted between the guardian and the u.k. channel four news and it's based off of material provided by former government contractor edward snowden also in the documents are revelations that the u.k. spy agency the g.c. h.q. has been using the n.s.a. database to search the private communications of people in the u.k. the n.s.a. programs code name was dish fire and according to see g c h q documents the goal was to collect quote pretty much everything it can and that means it was used to extract all kinds of information including people's travel plans contact books and even financial transactions this revelation comes just a day before preside

out how much needs to be spending to get rid of a lot of these duplicated programs all said well tom schatz president of citizens against government waste thank you thank you and this morning the senate finance committee how the hearing about the so-called fast track authority which would allow trade deals to pass through congress with a simple yes or no vote rather than letting legislators add or take away from the deal this fast track authority would then apply to the trans-pacific partnership a pact under negotiation between the twelve countries on the pacific rim including the u.s. three of the witnesses at the hearing represented business interests and spoke favorably about the tepee and other free trade deals. ultimately free trade is best for every economy economic growth and job creation at home depend on our ability to sell american goods and services to the ninety five percent of the world's customers living outside of the u.s. only one witness raise concerns about negotiations like. what has the net effect been of twenty years of these trade deals what has happened to our jobs ou