HS 281 - Citizens Against Government Waste and the Congressional Pig Book with Tom Schatz

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My pleasure to welcome Tom Schatz. He is president of Citizens Against Government we and its lobbying affiliate, Council for Citizens Against Government Waste, and publisher of none Other than the Congressional Pig Book. I love the title and I love the theme. Tom, welcome. How are you?

I'm doing fine, thank you very much.

It's good to have you on the show. We've got so much pork in our government, you know, no line item veto, pork barrel legislation, ridiculousness from Congress on all sides. What's the latest and greatest?

Citizens Against Government Waste has been publishing the pig book since 1991. And in the 2016 congressional pig book, we have identified 123 earmarks worth $5.1 billion. That's an increase of 21.4% over the $4.2 billion in fiscal year 2015, but far from the 29 billion, which was the record amount 10 years ago in 2006.

That is a lot of pork. Give us some examples, if you would.

There is $5.9 million for the East west center in Hawaii, which is one of the few items where we can track it directly to a member of Congress. Unlike prior years, particularly 2008-2010, members do not include their names on the earmarks because they're saying there aren't any. We believe there are, but in this case, the $5.9 million for the East west center was requested by Senator Brian Schatz. No. Unfortunately, yeah. Yeah. That one's been around for quite some time and has been added by senators and the lone representative from Hawaii for many, many years.

Wow. So tell me about this issue of they used to put their names on the earmarks and did a law change to where they don't have to. I mean, it's unbelievable how these politicians are just exempted from everything. You know, they truly are an elite.

Class, there's no doubt about that. Before 2008, members were not required to add their names to the earmarks. So the only way that we could find and put our pig books together, at least with the names of members, was to look for press releases, other comments, and public acknowledgement of the names of the members. From 2008 through 2010, the rules were changed so that the members were required to include their names in the appropriations bills. And so there was a list at the back of all of these bills that identified the members that really, the transparency part came about due to the outrageous amount of earmarks in 2006, as I mentioned a couple of minutes ago, $29 billion. That closely followed the 2005 highway bill that had about $24 billion in earmarks, including the infamous Bridge to Nowhere in Alaska. So there was such an outcry, at least for more transparency, that Congress agreed they would put their names on these earmarks and put them in writing. But. But in 2011, there was an agreement that there should be a moratorium on earmarks. So the necessity to add names disappeared. Congress since then has declared all of these bills earmark free, even though we know for a fact that a lot of the earmarks that appeared in the prior years before the moratorium are still in these bills. They just say that there were no earmarks.

Unbelievable.

It's like magic. Yeah, yeah, it's a magic declaration.

Is it any wonder that most of these politicians are lawyers? Because they sure know how to change the truth, don't they?

Well, and again, that's part the reason, among many others, that people distrust politicians generally. They certainly distrust members of Congress, but they still do reelect their individual members at a pretty high rate. There's an argument, an ongoing argument, about whether earmarks help get bills passed or not. I think they helped increase the cost of these various bills. I don't think they helped get them passed. And now this would be the fourth election where earmarks are essentially not an issue. The class 2010 demanded the end of earmarks or the moratorium. I should say. Now you've got 2010, 12, 14, 16. I think a larger group of fiscal conservatives, for the most part, in the House and Senate. So nobody is running on a platform to say, oh, I'll bring home the bacon, elect me, because taxpayers don't want to do that anymore.

What can be done? How do we fix the system? Everybody knows there's all this pork barrel legislation. I mean, is it about a line item veto? Is it about just smaller government in general? It's amazing. You know, even the left wing folks that I'll debate with sometimes I'll say, you know, don't you agree that government is inefficient? It's wasteful and corrupt? And they'll say, yeah, they agree with it. You know, it seems to me that a really sure solution is if you just make it smaller, the proportion of waste, inefficiency and corruption will decline with the overall size of government. But it never goes in that direction. You know, everything always expands. And that seems to be, you know, we just keep building these iron triangles of various groups that are getting paid and benefiting from the system the way it is. And so it just gets bigger. You know, what do we do?

Well, it's really about mismanagement because if you think about how somebody handles an individual's money, your money, your listener's money, nobody likes it when their money is mismanaged. Whether they invested in something that doesn't work out or the stock market isn't going well, or their investment advisor told them something they didn't like, they can change that advisor. They can make different investments. You buy something that doesn't work, you bring it back, you return it, you exchange it. Harder to do with your investment in the government. But for most people, it's one of the larger investments that they make. Paying taxes, whether it's local taxes, everybody pays Social Security. Nobody says, oh, what am I getting for the money I'm sending to my city, town, state, Washington, D.C. and if people thought of it more like an investment, they would demand better results and they would certainly get more upset about the mismanagement of their money, because that's really what we're talking about. And there are tons of examples. The Government Accountability Office has six reports, annual reports now, on duplication and overlap. Congress doesn't do enough about that. The overlap itself makes it harder to achieve the goals of certain programs. Even if one thinks the government shouldn't even be doing it at all, they're doing a lot and they should be doing it better and more effectively. And that's difficult when there's so much duplication and overlap and inefficiency. And that's mismanaging money.

You know, it's very rare. There's only been a few times in history, really, I guess, that we've had a business person in the White House and we've got a rather odd one running now, I'll be the first to admit, but at least he's a business person. You know, I don't know I've said.

Publicly I'm not sure that Donald Trump would be the one that everybody had in mind. But nonetheless, it is a different perspective. It's certainly one of the reasons why he's doing so well. Whatever else people thought of the FBI decision in terms of Hillary Clinton, to them it was just another example of getting away with something in Washington, you know, corruption, mismanagement, you know, not doing what you're supposed to do. So whatever happens, there's already been a big comment about bring somebody in who is going to shake things up, who's going to make a difference, who's going to try to get something done more effectively and efficiently. And I think that's a very, very important piece of what they're learning this year. And look, I think that goes, you know, trickles down to the hate, to use that word. It will affect, yeah, it will affect Senate and House races as well. That's just a big anti incumbent feeling. I think people who say I've done this or I can do that or I can give you a better result or I can help more people by eliminating inefficiency would do well.

Well, with the Brexit, with Bernie Sanders, with Donald Trump. And I've mentioned things on both sides of the aisle, obviously diametrically. I think there is an anti establishment fervor out there and I think it's a wonderful thing. I mean, I just absolutely love that. Even if it were Sanders, who I think lives in fantasy land, it'd be interesting at least. But what about term limits? I mean, that seems like a real solution to me. At least something worth a try.

I know you've been around a while. The term limits movement had some impact at the local and state level. Congress would never vote on it for itself. So the term limits really are every two years, every six years. If you don't like the overall direction of Congress, look what happened to Eric Cantor. That was a big message. He was supposed to be the next speaker and obviously he's not. Look, a lot of that was individual to him and his district and what he didn't do to the basics involved in being a member of Congress. But if somebody wants to do this and do it well, then they should come back. If they're not doing it well, they should be kicked out.

It's amazing to me that we haven't had some form of technology that will help us figure this out and make it easy for the citizenry to hold their representatives accountable. In every other area of life, technology has made us much closer to Things in many ways, much more empowered. Yet in this area, it's a big mess.

Oh, there's a lot of information. Congress is not as transparent as it could be, but there is certainly a lot more information about what's going on than there used to be. And I think that's an excellent point about getting more information, learning more about what's going on. Physically, Washington is far away from pretty much the whole country. People know more and hear more and read more about local activities, local government decisions. They know when the school board is meeting. They know when there's a bond hearing. They know what's going on with local roads and local politics far more than they do what's going on in Washington. And honestly, they get a lot of information from unreliable or sources that, you know, haven't been verified, like Twitter and Facebook. Not anything against social media sources, but a lot of things happen where people see something or hear something, and it's not necessarily all true, but there is, on the other hand, a lot more information. Generally, people just have to sort it out. If you want to know what's going on, you can find out.

Yeah, right, right. Well, the other problem is that people aren't really taught how to do that in school anymore. And I would argue that who's really paying much attention to the local school board and this and that? You know, there's always a few people in every community, but by and large, on a per capita basis, you know, nobody's paying attention. I mean, I don't know. Am I too cynical in saying that?

Well, look, when things get personal, people get involved. So the question is, how much do people really care? And rather than kind of whining about it or complaining about it, there is something that people can do about it. And so that is get involved. Go to a local meeting of any kind whatsoever. And then, you know, if you want to complain, fine, but don't complain and just do nothing.

Yeah, right.

Complain and get involved.

Yeah, sure, sure. Absolutely. Any questions? I didn't ask you or anything. You'd just like the listeners to know in general about getting involved, about the problem, about the solution, about what you're doing.

Well, Citizens Against Government Waste has been around since 1984. We published the Congressional Tig Book. We have a publication called Prime Cuts that lists examples of wasteful spending. And we also have, through our lobbying arm, the Council for Citizens Against Government Waste, ratings of the votes of members of Congress. So a lot of information. On our website, we cover a wide variety of issues from pork barrel spending or earmarks to technology, telecommunications. You know, of course we have to limit it because we can't do every single thing. But there's, I think, an opportunity for people to find out what's going on with their money and what they can do about it as well. And whether it's joining CAGW or a similar group or getting involved locally, it's your money out there. And if you would like to do more about making sure it's being spent wisely than get involved.

Yeah. How are you funded and how big is your organization? What kind of resources do you have?

The Organization is about 80 to 85% funded by individuals. The rest, associations, corporations, foundations. We have a staff of 16 and we are headquartered in downtown Washington DC.

Fantastic. When someone makes a donation to your group, is that a tax deductible donation or is it considered political?

So it's not to Citizens Against Government Waste, which is a 501. It is a tax deductible contribution to the extent permitted by law, which you always have to say because there is an upper limit to what somebody can donate to charitable organizations, to the Council for Citizens Against Government Waste. It is not tax deductible because it would be used for lobbying purposes. So that's really the difference. And that's obviously what we let people know when they would like to contribute. But I believe there's something on the website about contributing and getting a copy of the pig book. If somebody would like to do that. That is a possible way to join as well.

Absolutely. So when someone goes to cagw.org and clicks the donate button, that would be the tax deductible part probably, right?

Yes, that is exactly right. It goes right to Citizens Against Government Waste. You know, if you'd like to get our communications, you can opt in or opt out. You can do whatever you'd like.

Fantastic. Well, I personally am going to go and make a donation right now as soon as we end this recording. And I'd encourage our listeners to check out the group too. Thank you for doing what you do. This is just a huge issue and we've got to get control of these politicians. It's just mind boggling the kind of waste that is going on. So keep up the good work.

Well, thank you very much. Appreciate the opportunity to be on the show.

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