October 17, 2025 • 32 mins
On this episode of The Federalist Radio Hour, John Hart, chief executive officer of nonprofit transparency organization OpentheBooks, joins Federalist Senior Elections Correspondent Matt Kittle to discuss wasteful government spending, implications of the ongoing shutdown, and the need for increased government transparency.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:19):
And we are back with another edition of the Federalist
Radio Hour, and I'm Matt Kittle, Senior Elections correspondent at
the Federalist and your experience shirpa on today's quest for knowledge.
As always, you can email the show at radio at
the Federalist dot com, follow us on x at FDR LST,
make sure to subscribe wherever you download your podcast, and
(00:42):
of course the premium version of our website as well.
Our guest today is Open the Book CEO. John Hart,
the Government Spending Tracker, has been monitoring the shutdown mess,
the healthcare spending bill Dems are dying on, and the
worst waste is safety net spending. It's a lot to unpack. John,
(01:03):
thank you so much for joining us in this edition
of the Federalist Radio Hour.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
You bet Matt's it. It's a pleasure to be on.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
This is directly from the good folks to open the books.
Picture this. You walk into a bank and ask for
thirty seven point five trillion dollars and they hand it over,
no questions asked. You come back again and again for more,
and no one ever asks for receipts. Sounds absurd, yet
that's exactly how Washington operates. Every year, the federal government
(01:32):
burns through trillions and taxpayer dollars with virtually zero accountability,
from bird watching programs to DEI themed musicals overseas. We
kid you not. Now that the government's fiscal year has
ended and we are into our sixteenth day of the
government shut down. As we record this, Open the Books
(01:55):
dot Com, the nation's largest database of federal spending, is
calling for real transparency. And what have you heard so
far on that front? John Folks, responsible for that transparency?
Speaker 2 (02:08):
Yeah, Look, we're a fan of transparency that you know.
Speaker 3 (02:11):
The metaphor I use is that, you know, transparency cuts
through government like water cuts through stone. So that flow
can seem unremarkable and just a steady stream, but it
has tremendous power to it. And when water finds a crack,
it can wipe away mighty walls of opposition. So what
we do at Open the Books is identify the crack.
(02:32):
Sometimes we create them, but they usually create themselves. There
are cracks in the system, and that flow of information
and the will of we the people moving through our
system of government is a very very powerful tool of reform.
So I'm I'm quite I tend to be a glass
half hole person. I believe that our system is the
most magnificent ever created in political systems.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
It's far from perfect, but.
Speaker 3 (02:58):
Transparency is a very, very powerful and effective tool. And
I want to give a shout out to to one
of your colleagues at the Federal of Sean Davis, who
was a part of our team in Coburn's office, who
knows this history quite well and intimately. And so when
we worked for I was with Coburn in the House
and then the Senate. We worked with an ambitious young
(03:19):
senator from Illinois when he came in named Barack Obama,
and we were trying to Barack Obama clearly was you know,
after his convention speech he wanted to run for president,
and we thought, well, what is the most conservative thing
we can get Barack Obama to agree to.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
How can we leverage his ambition to advance.
Speaker 3 (03:37):
The cause of freedom, And he of course wanted to
leverage you know, Coburn's credibility with conservatives to be bipartisan,
and we tried on some healthcare issues, which we can
get back into. What Obama agreed to is, you know,
transparency is that is that there is no, there is
no argument against taxpayers having the right to see what
(03:58):
government is doing with their money. And there are thoughtful
progressives who think if only taxpayers understood how little we
spend in particular areas, whether it's foreign aid or other
you know, other support programs, then they'll surely be against
the you know, the dismantling of those programs. And our
wager is, well, the more people understand I've ever been spending,
(04:20):
usually the less they want of it, the more they
want to control their own destiny. And you know, we
believe that every every dollar saved in Washington is a
dream realized somewhere else in America. And we're we're a
first principles organization. You know, transparency was written into the Constitution.
It precedes the Bill of Rights and the and the
free speech itself, and so transparency is like the oxygen
(04:42):
in the public square. We can't speak and debate if
we can't breathe. So that's why, that's why transparency is
so vital. And our entire system of government is based
on a very deep understanding of the.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
Relationship between the individual and the state.
Speaker 3 (04:57):
You know, Hence, you know, I'm a fan of what
I call twenty first century federalism of how do we
take these timeless principles and reapply them to today's.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
Environment in a lot of technology.
Speaker 3 (05:08):
So we believe in real time transparency that if the
founders you know, had access to today's technology, they wouldn't be
satisfied with you know, you know, thirty sixty ninety day delays.
They would expect that money to be visible immediately. Just
just as you and I can go and log onto
our own personal checking account, we ought to be able
to access America's checkbook and see what.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
Government is doing with our money.
Speaker 3 (05:31):
What right do they have to not let us see
transactions being done in our name?
Speaker 1 (05:36):
Indeed, can you imagine Jefferson on TikTok.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
Oh? He would be he would be quite good.
Speaker 3 (05:43):
I mean, the founders were brilliant communicator obviously, you know,
a very different, different.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
Mode of communicating them.
Speaker 3 (05:49):
But they they also had the capacity of crystallizing their
views in Twitter one hundred and forty characters or to
eighty whatever whatever the limit is now.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
But I can definitely see Andrew Jackson.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
He would cleally quite adapted.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
Excellent, Yeah, thank you, I think he would. Now let
me ask you this, you worked with then Senator Barack
Obama uh in in Cobran's office, and he was all
excited about transparency and government, at least what it could
do for him politically. How did he fare as a
president when it became time to lead that transparency?
Speaker 3 (06:27):
Yeah, well, I mean he you know, he did a
decent job overseeing USA spending. I mean that that was
that that's it was and isn't a critically important website.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (06:37):
In fact, when you when you look at the debate
we've had over the past year, you.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
Know, do DOGE has been a mixed bag.
Speaker 3 (06:45):
They you know, I would call it some minor successes,
but lots of unfinished business.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
Yeah, but their success was a large.
Speaker 3 (06:52):
Part enabled by an army and ecosystem of organizations and
individuals who are all the progeny of USA spending.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
In other words, we intentionally put all.
Speaker 3 (07:03):
Federal spending online, not not to pat ourselves on the
back and say look what we did, but but to
create the ecosystem, to create permanent pressure so that when
Cobra was gone, there would be people who were more
adept at transparency than we were.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
And that's and that happened.
Speaker 3 (07:18):
They Cobram believed there were people who would use the
data in ways that he couldn't think of and we
couldn't imagine, and that has come to be Mike Binns
when he was on Joe Rogan, he was talking about
you know, USAID corruption and said, look, without what makes
us different from communists China is a site called USA spending.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
We can go to look at it.
Speaker 3 (07:39):
So I give I give Obama. Obama deserves credit for
doing that. He in good faith. He was true to
our first principles to say, look, let's let's open the
books together and find out whose side is right and
then and then let's litigate that and debate it. You
can't you can't have accountability without visibility. So I give
him a major, you know, hat tip for that. But
(08:00):
obviously with within the I R S there was the
weaponization of of the tax code against tea party groups
and and that that has you know, was extremely anti
democratic to say the least in the authoritarian and you know,
there there's there's a you know, there's an authoritarian double standard.
I think for all the you know, the progressives that
(08:21):
that howl and scream about Trump's authoritarian tendencies, is anything
that they don't like they they did in a more
egregious form in almost sever respect. And so I'm I'm
very concerned about what I would call an authoritarian arms race,
where one side tries to one up the other and
weaponizes the tools of the federal government. So I think
(08:42):
I think in the in the Lord of the Ring story,
we all know what we all know, we all know
what Palante is right.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
The big, big company. But what I think the public
really wants is hobbits.
Speaker 3 (08:53):
You know, they want the Fellowship to grab the ring,
throw it in the ring of fire and and and
burn it. That's really what what politics is about, is
controlling and limiting, corrupting centralized power.
Speaker 2 (09:10):
You know.
Speaker 3 (09:10):
Thomas Jefferson, going back to our TikTok friend, he said,
you know, the natural order of things is for liberty
to yield and government to gain ground. Right, And that's
an observation based not just on his life, but you know,
twenty six twenty three hundred years of political history at
the time of that writing. So that's that's what we're about,
(09:30):
is we're trying to take the ring of power and
throw it into the fire and melt it down and
give it back to we the people, and that is
what experience is about.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
Yeah. No, absolutely, and that's why what you are doing
is so critical to point these things out. You know,
I wrote a piece today at the Federalist about this battle,
this present shut down, you know show that is going on. Yeah,
(09:58):
that's really what it is. It's political theater. But it
exposes something that I think the late great Milton Friedman
warned us about, interestingly enough, in nineteen eighty four when
his Tyrants book came out, that nothing is so permanent
as a temporary government program. And here we are today.
(10:21):
This is the political hill that the Democrats are dying on.
They passed trillions of dollars in stimulus, so called stimulus
spending during the pandemic, and they use the notion of
a national health emergency, which there was for a time.
(10:41):
There's still They still want the health insurance expansions, the
subsidy expansions in Obamacare, costing hundreds of billions of dollars,
to go on, long after what that was supposed to
be intended for an emergency of an emergency has long passed.
(11:02):
How do they make this argument today and how do
they present it as you know, we're not shutting down
the government simply because we don't want this credit, these
credits to end, right right.
Speaker 3 (11:17):
Well, you mentioned the word theater. I want to dwell
I answer the question by dwellion on that.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
Concept for a minute.
Speaker 3 (11:22):
So I think one of the best examples that describe
the shutdown dynamic is the film Blazing Saddles.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
I don't.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
It multiple times, we can't.
Speaker 3 (11:33):
We can't even begin to quote that in anything discussion.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
Because we would both be we would be canceled, we.
Speaker 3 (11:39):
Would be canceled a meeting. Yes, but you know, if
only we could make films like that today, I think
it would make a Which is the film, I would
just say it's one of the most Syrian indictments of racism.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
Ever produced, by the way, no doubt.
Speaker 3 (11:53):
But in the in the conclusion, the protagonist famously he
takes himself stage and begs and begs everyone not to shoot.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
So shutdowns in many ways, it's kind of a repeat
of that.
Speaker 3 (12:07):
You take yourself hostage and then beg the other side
to not shoot, and Republicans.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
Have made that. So that's what Democrats are doing now,
is they've.
Speaker 3 (12:15):
Taken themselves hostage. They're begging the president to not shoot. Now,
Republicans have made that same mistake in all fairness back
in twenty in twenty thirteen, I'm sure you remember Ted
Ted Cruz, you know, orchestrated the famous Obamacare shutdown where
he said, unless Barack Obama defunds Obamacare, we're going to
keep the government shut down. And there was a titanic
(12:38):
battle on the right about that tactic, because you had
Cruise on one side and some other activists and then
Coburn and other activists on the other side say no,
if we want to win the long term battle on
healthcare reform, we need.
Speaker 2 (12:51):
To put forward a better alternative.
Speaker 3 (12:53):
We need to have a plan, and we want to
we want to choose the hill you die on, right,
But politics, politicians find.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
Themselves by the hills they die on, as we know.
We know.
Speaker 3 (13:05):
Well, so that didn't it wasn't catastrophic for Republicans. I
think it you know, it didn't have a big near
term uh you know, harm, But I think longer term,
what it did is it made it difficult for Republicans
to really coalesce around what their alternative was. Excuse me,
so we we had an alternative, but that shutdown discussion
(13:28):
made it difficult to call us around it.
Speaker 2 (13:32):
And then so what's happening now with the Democrats.
Speaker 3 (13:36):
Is you have you have a party that is determined
to quote fight to make it, to make it clear
that they're going to just oppose Trump at any any
cost imaginable, because their base is demanding a fight. So
it's the it's a TDS problem, it's a you know,
Trump derangement syndrome.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
That's their platform, their platform.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
And and if you it's it's you know, I encourage.
Speaker 3 (13:59):
Anyone listeners to podcasts like yours and follows, open the books,
spend time really understanding what the psychology of Democrats right now.
So asra Client had John Fabrea on you know the
Obama the Obama speech writer and the discussion, you know,
for two people who are who are who are quite
intelligent and thoughtful, it was a retread of what we've
(14:21):
seen for the past hundred years from the from the
progressive left.
Speaker 2 (14:24):
It was pure it's pure demagoguery. Democrats.
Speaker 3 (14:28):
Their psychology is they are betting, they're going they're going
to quote make the shutdown about healthcare.
Speaker 2 (14:35):
Now.
Speaker 3 (14:35):
The problem is when you when you start a shooting war,
which is what they've done, with the shutdown, they don't
get to control what it is quote unquote about. It
becomes about a lot of things. It becomes about your
your friend who's a federal employee who isn't getting their paycheck.
It becomes about you know, I'm getting ready to fly
in a few days and my famili's flying different places.
(14:55):
So I'm nervous because air traffic controllers they're still but
they're not being.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
Paid, so they're calling in sick and in sick right.
Speaker 3 (15:04):
So there's anxiety that is the consequence of a shutdown.
Speaker 4 (15:15):
Should property taxes just come to an end?
Speaker 5 (15:18):
The Watchdot on Wall Street podcast with Chris Markowski. Every day,
Chris helps unpack the connection between politics and the economy
and how it affects your wallet.
Speaker 4 (15:26):
Truly, owning your own home shouldn't be a piggybank for
government to extract revenue. Property taxes will forever make you
not an owner, just nothing more than a surf on
the lord's manner. Whether it's happening in DC or down
on Wall Street, it's affecting you financially.
Speaker 2 (15:40):
Be informed.
Speaker 5 (15:41):
Check out the Watchdot on Wall Street podcast with Chris
Markowski on Apples, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast.
Speaker 3 (15:52):
And again I would say I think generally speaking, shutdowns
or not, it's a mistake when people slip into the
tribalism of the moment, they go, we're gonna we're going
to own the Democrats because of the shutdown. Well, it's
it tends to hurt both parties. It's an indictment of
our system. When you have a government shutdown, it shows
that things are not working and blame.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
You know, everyone looks bad in a shutdown.
Speaker 3 (16:14):
So so the quote winner is the one that looks
less bad. And so if that's the it's if that's
the measure of success, and that's the reality of how
shutdowns are judged by the electorate. I do think Democrats
are not going to quote win the shutdown fight. And
what we've seen is that again, events determine what it's about.
We've in Thune, to his credit, has forced nine votes
(16:38):
to keep the government open.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
So that's a fact. That's a fact. Pattern.
Speaker 3 (16:42):
So Democrats really are the ones holding themselves hostage. They're
the ones with the loaded gun. It's not Republicans. And uh,
and so the public is watching this this you know,
this faux drama unfold and they're gonna they're going to
increasingly blame Democrats. And that's what the polling is showing
is there's been a shift. You know, a week or
(17:04):
two ago, Democrats had an eleven point edge about who
do you blame?
Speaker 2 (17:09):
That lead has shrunk to six.
Speaker 3 (17:11):
And I think as more and more things happen, you know,
there's a lot of unpredictable unpredictability because we don't know
what's going to happen, you know, in the real world
with the economy. You know, it's not a winning strategy
for Democrats, but more fundamentally, it's they're doubling down on
on what I would just describe as an intellectually vacant
argument and really a smug argument that we're the party
(17:33):
that cares, we care because we're we're for bigger subsidies.
And I've always described that as counterfeit compassion. You know,
the best way to make something expensive is for government
to make it affordable, and we see that repeatedly, whether
it's a education or healthcare, and particularly with Obamacare. Is
we you know, we diagnose this back in twenty two
(17:54):
thousand and six, we were putting forward our alternative when
it seemed inevitable that Hillary Clinton.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
Would be the nominee.
Speaker 3 (18:01):
We were already trying to encourage conservatives to get their
head wrapped around what would a free market truly look
like in healthcare? And then, of course, you know, Obama
got the nomination, and we know what happened, and we
never coalesced around that alternative. And I think to their
credit House House Republicans in particular, you know, Chip Roy
(18:22):
and others really did a great job of insisting that
we not continue the failed policies of the past. And
as you appropriately noted, this is a the particular issue
that they, the Democrats, want this to be about. It
was a temporary subsidy and surge and spending that they
(18:44):
designed to be temporary. So we're simply asking them to
agree with themselves on the right standoff in the blazing
saddles hostage standoff. Right, why are they why are they
debating them.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
Else on this?
Speaker 3 (19:01):
Now?
Speaker 1 (19:01):
It seems that is exactly what is happening with the
the Democrat Party that is controlled now more and more
by the radical left. But both sides have, as you've noted,
have had problems with the shutdown. I think what we've learned,
particularly over the last quarter century is that shutdowns are
(19:22):
like leisure suits. Nobody looks good in them. That's just
I mean, that's really what it boils down to. Because
people can't even remember the last shutdown. They just constantly
remember how their government is failing them. So yes, let's
get into that. Actually, our guest today is opened the
book CEO John Hart, the Government Spending Tracker, has been
(19:45):
monitoring the shutdown messes. We've talked about healthcare spending bill
Dems are dying on, and the worst waste in safety
net spending. John, I'm thinking about how this fiscal year
just ended a couple few weeks ago. That was a
disaster for the thirty seven point five trillion dollar debt,
(20:06):
and it doesn't look promising moving ahead. What have you
found in tracking some of the more egregious spending over
the last year and what we could be on the
hook for coming up?
Speaker 2 (20:19):
Yeah, well, and firstly, we're we're on the hook for
a lot.
Speaker 3 (20:21):
I think I think there's the way I always describe
the federal government is there's it's a mix of just
systemic gross spending dysfunctional, but then there's a lot of
just outrageous examples of things like twenty thousand dollars on
drag brunches in Ecuador, you know, three million dollars in
ih to inject beagles with cocaine. You know, here's a
(20:45):
good one three hundred and twelve million for SBA loans
for businesses owned by kids eleven years old and younger.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
So really lemonade exactly, that's a very lucrative.
Speaker 3 (20:56):
Yeah, my kids are now well too. Unfortunately they're older
than a lot, and.
Speaker 2 (21:00):
So I can't do that.
Speaker 3 (21:00):
But so and I think, I think what we do
and open the books, and what we really perfected in
the in the Coburn years is is finding these specific
examples that illustrate the systemic problem.
Speaker 2 (21:14):
And we looked at the Bridge to Nowhere back in the.
Speaker 3 (21:16):
Earmark battle, because it was a two hundred and twenty
you know, million dollar bridge that was going to connect
an island with sixty people to mainland Alaska, and we
forced an amendment to shift that funding to repair a
bridge that was damaged by Hurricane Katrina. And the Senate
voted against that shift of funding eighty two to fifteen.
(21:38):
So we lost that by sixty seven votes in the Senate,
but we want it overwhelmingly with public, and those those
are the smart fights that we always are trying to pick,
is to say, why are we spending you know, ten
billion dollars on a thousand different medicare prescription d but
medicare that's the part prescription drug providers. Uh, when we
(22:03):
have a you know, a thirty seven trillion dollar debt,
we're spending more on interest payments on the national debt
than we are a national defense.
Speaker 2 (22:11):
Those are not sustainable.
Speaker 3 (22:13):
And I think what I think, I think Republicans in
particularly have an opportunity to make to make the shut
we talked about the word about you know, Democrats think
they can make it about healthcare, Well, they don't get
to they don't get to decide that.
Speaker 2 (22:27):
Republicans and the public have a voice. And I think
we ought to make it about the.
Speaker 3 (22:32):
Overall size of the scope of government, the relationship between
the government and the individual, and in particular, are unsustainable
safety net spending.
Speaker 2 (22:40):
So so an analogy I used.
Speaker 3 (22:42):
Too is when you if whenever you fly and you
you look down and you see the Mississippi River, you know,
from the airplane it's you can tell it's enormous even
from that high but then all the little all the
little tiny things.
Speaker 2 (22:55):
We spend a lot of our time focusing on whether
it's DEI, whether it's you know.
Speaker 3 (22:58):
These examples that I listed, their tiny little examples. So
the money, again, it's all connected, it's all related. And
DEI has a disproportionate.
Speaker 2 (23:08):
Cultural influence I think is really important.
Speaker 3 (23:11):
But we really need to be focusing on how do
we get our head wrapped around our overall unsustainable federal government.
And it's a question of again, we can design programs
and design a safety net where preferably at the state level,
there are ways that government can meet me needs of
(23:31):
people who were truly unable to help themselves. There's overwhelming
public support for that. But we can design those programs
without destroying ourselves economically in the process. And I think
the more Republicans lean into that, the better off they're
going to be, because you don't want to be half
pregnant on this issue of reforming the safety net. And
(23:51):
they've done a good job on Medicaid, but they need
to broaden the aperture. And so the shutdown again is
an opportunity to make a quote unquote about the bigger challenge.
And you mentioned Milton Friedman too. A big priority to
in our current moment is this debate about what is
the administrative state? Why do we have all of these
(24:12):
federal agencies, and why is the president required to keep
people in place that don't represent the agenda that the
American people voted for. And this is really one hundred
I described the administrative state as like one hundred year
constitutional crisis where the progressive left very intentionally created this
(24:33):
bureau of experts to take power out of the political
process and to make these programs permanent. As Friedman you
quoted Freedman, all of these temporary programs then become permanent.
So we did some reporting earlier this year and we
looked at four hundred and forty one agencies in the
federal government, and seventy five of them are defunct but
(24:55):
still listed as open, which is a problem the government
doesn't even know. The point is the government is so
big and then yielded, they don't even know how many
agencies they're in charge of. And if you look at
the Constitution, you know there is an argument for four
and maybe five federal agencies Departments of State, Justice, Defense,
(25:19):
and then maybe arguably interstate Commerce.
Speaker 1 (25:21):
If you want to be generous and throw I know
Alexander Hamilton really lobbied for that EPA.
Speaker 2 (25:27):
Yeah exactly, yeah, yeah, yeah, and in a great exam Yeah.
Speaker 3 (25:31):
So it would be defense, state, Treasury, Justice, maybe interstate Commerce.
But then everything else doesn't belong. And look at the
Department of Education, for example. So that department didn't exist
until nineteen eighty and somehow we managed to win two
World wars, put a man on the moon, become a
(25:53):
global superpower without the Department of Education. Amazing, and we've
done tremendous oversight work. We are one of the strengths
of Open the Books, and I give you the late
co founder Adam Ajievski, who I took over four about
a year ago. He very very wisely built on what
we did with the Cobra and Obama Bill and Opened
(26:15):
the Books captures not just federal but stayed and local spending.
So we have the biggest database of government spending ever created.
Speaker 2 (26:21):
In human history.
Speaker 3 (26:22):
We've got, you know, billions of lines of data and
it's an extremely powerful tool. So we looked at all
education districts school districts in the country and found that
there's a negative correlation between twelve thousand school districts and
overall student achievement and payroll. So in other words, as
(26:44):
we increase payroll, student achievement goes down again. It shows
why do we.
Speaker 2 (26:52):
Keep doing it the way we've been doing it?
Speaker 1 (26:53):
It doesn't insanity, since yeah, it's just absolute insanity. Why
do we keep doing all of that?
Speaker 2 (27:00):
Because there's not there's not enough accountability.
Speaker 3 (27:03):
So I so, you know, one of the phrases that's
popular these days is the deep state. The deep state
is is a is a real thing. It's not a
conspiracy theory. However, what is more dominant is what I
call the default state, is that we just spend trillions
and trillions of dollars every year without much debate or thought,
and it just goes on and on and we never
(27:23):
stop to think about it. And so again that's why
shut downs are. You know, it sounds crass to say
that it's an opportunity because it's I don't think it's
every smart opportunity to take. But when one side picks
a fight about it, it is it does become about
this discussion of why do we have all these things
on autopilot? You know, when there's when there's talk about
(27:46):
deeming some government employees essential versus non essential. That begs
the question, if they're non essential, why are they.
Speaker 2 (27:52):
There, why are we wondering them?
Speaker 3 (27:55):
And again not to overstate is the the problem is
really one of spending more than personnel. So government personnel
has been relatively stable actually the past twenty years, but
what is skyrocketed is spending. We've had about a three
hundred percent increase in administrative state spending. While payroll has
(28:16):
been relatively the number of employees has been relatively flat. Now,
granted some of that has been outsourced through the weaponization
of NGOs. That's a separate problem. But again it's a
chance to make the argument about the real issue, which
is the unyield, the SISO scope of government, the fact
that our debt and deficits are having a drag effect
(28:36):
on the economy. They're hurting innovation, hurting job creation, making
things less affordable, and that's what we ought to be
focusing on. And that's what that's what we're trying to
do through transparency, is to help elevate the conversation.
Speaker 1 (28:50):
Well, that is the key, That is the key, transparency.
So the final question for you is where do we
go from here, because eventually these people that we all
elected will have to do their jobs, and their number
one priority, of course is to set a budget, which
they have done in a very long time. Where does
where do you see all of this going from here?
Speaker 3 (29:13):
Well, I think, you know, I don't think the shutdown
is I think somebody is going to blink relatively soon,
I hope. So again, it's just it's not it's not
it's it is it's a dangerous dynamic. It's not a
good signal to send to global markets economically from a
national security perspective.
Speaker 2 (29:31):
So I think I think what we need to do
is have.
Speaker 3 (29:37):
Is build on some of the things that doge identified,
but go much much farther and have a more Milton
Freedment approach and say why do we why do we
have four hundred and forty one agencies when the Constitution
really only authorizes four And we need to have a
much more robust, serious look at reorganizing and downsizing the
(29:57):
administrative state. We need to have a much more serious
conversation about about safety net programs. So one of the
fundamental questions of our time is are we going to
support quote universal entitlements or are we going to help
poor people, and you can't really do both. We can't
(30:19):
this whole ideological concept that we must have a universal
entitlement that may have made sense one hundred years ago,
it does not make sense anymore. That was the whole
argument for social security, is to say that a program
for poor people will be a poor program, and therefore
we must have a universal, one size fits all kind
(30:39):
of approach to government, when in reality, if you have,
if you give states much more flexibility and a twenty
first century federalism model to take care of people in
their local communities and to make sure that anyone that
needs help can get help, and if government has a
role to play, then the states can figure out how
to do that. Maybe the federal government can block rant something.
(31:02):
I mean, there are ways to reorganize in the restructure
what we think of as universal entitlements that will be
much much more beneficial for poor people than they are today.
Not so this whole idea that we're going to save
social security by not touching it, but by not reforming
social security, you're condemning future generations to bankruptcy. And social
security payments themselves have decreased substantially because of inflation. So
(31:28):
there is a de facto cut that happens every year
because we haven't modernized these programs.
Speaker 2 (31:34):
Those are the things we need. That's where we need
to go from here.
Speaker 1 (31:38):
Well, knowledge is power, and you don't get that knowledge
without transparency by opening the books. That's what you have
to do, and that's what John Hart and his organization do,
and do very well. I might add, he may be
the last guy in America who looks all right in
a leisure suit. You're saying, platform shoes. You're going to
(31:59):
have to give up though, my friend, I'm sorry. Yeah,
that's all right. I'm sorry. You were doing the hustle.
We all were thanks to my guest today, Open the book, CEO,
John Hart. You've been listening to another edition of the
Federalist Radio Hour. I'm Matt Kittle, Senior Elections correspondent at
the Federalist. We'll be back soon with more. Until then,
stay lovers of freedom and anxious for the frame.
And we are back with another edition of the Federalist
Radio Hour, and I'm Matt Kittle, Senior Elections correspondent at
the Federalist and your experience shirpa on today's quest for knowledge.
As always, you can email the show at radio at
the Federalist dot com, follow us on x at FDR LST,
make sure to subscribe wherever you download your podcast, and
(00:42):
of course the premium version of our website as well.
Our guest today is Open the Book CEO. John Hart,
the Government Spending Tracker, has been monitoring the shutdown mess,
the healthcare spending bill Dems are dying on, and the
worst waste is safety net spending. It's a lot to unpack. John,
(01:03):
thank you so much for joining us in this edition
of the Federalist Radio Hour.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
You bet Matt's it. It's a pleasure to be on.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
This is directly from the good folks to open the books.
Picture this. You walk into a bank and ask for
thirty seven point five trillion dollars and they hand it over,
no questions asked. You come back again and again for more,
and no one ever asks for receipts. Sounds absurd, yet
that's exactly how Washington operates. Every year, the federal government
(01:32):
burns through trillions and taxpayer dollars with virtually zero accountability,
from bird watching programs to DEI themed musicals overseas. We
kid you not. Now that the government's fiscal year has
ended and we are into our sixteenth day of the
government shut down. As we record this, Open the Books
(01:55):
dot Com, the nation's largest database of federal spending, is
calling for real transparency. And what have you heard so
far on that front? John Folks, responsible for that transparency?
Speaker 2 (02:08):
Yeah, Look, we're a fan of transparency that you know.
Speaker 3 (02:11):
The metaphor I use is that, you know, transparency cuts
through government like water cuts through stone. So that flow
can seem unremarkable and just a steady stream, but it
has tremendous power to it. And when water finds a crack,
it can wipe away mighty walls of opposition. So what
we do at Open the Books is identify the crack.
(02:32):
Sometimes we create them, but they usually create themselves. There
are cracks in the system, and that flow of information
and the will of we the people moving through our
system of government is a very very powerful tool of reform.
So I'm I'm quite I tend to be a glass
half hole person. I believe that our system is the
most magnificent ever created in political systems.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
It's far from perfect, but.
Speaker 3 (02:58):
Transparency is a very, very powerful and effective tool. And
I want to give a shout out to to one
of your colleagues at the Federal of Sean Davis, who
was a part of our team in Coburn's office, who
knows this history quite well and intimately. And so when
we worked for I was with Coburn in the House
and then the Senate. We worked with an ambitious young
(03:19):
senator from Illinois when he came in named Barack Obama,
and we were trying to Barack Obama clearly was you know,
after his convention speech he wanted to run for president,
and we thought, well, what is the most conservative thing
we can get Barack Obama to agree to.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
How can we leverage his ambition to advance.
Speaker 3 (03:37):
The cause of freedom, And he of course wanted to
leverage you know, Coburn's credibility with conservatives to be bipartisan,
and we tried on some healthcare issues, which we can
get back into. What Obama agreed to is, you know,
transparency is that is that there is no, there is
no argument against taxpayers having the right to see what
(03:58):
government is doing with their money. And there are thoughtful
progressives who think if only taxpayers understood how little we
spend in particular areas, whether it's foreign aid or other
you know, other support programs, then they'll surely be against
the you know, the dismantling of those programs. And our
wager is, well, the more people understand I've ever been spending,
(04:20):
usually the less they want of it, the more they
want to control their own destiny. And you know, we
believe that every every dollar saved in Washington is a
dream realized somewhere else in America. And we're we're a
first principles organization. You know, transparency was written into the Constitution.
It precedes the Bill of Rights and the and the
free speech itself, and so transparency is like the oxygen
(04:42):
in the public square. We can't speak and debate if
we can't breathe. So that's why, that's why transparency is
so vital. And our entire system of government is based
on a very deep understanding of the.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
Relationship between the individual and the state.
Speaker 3 (04:57):
You know, Hence, you know, I'm a fan of what
I call twenty first century federalism of how do we
take these timeless principles and reapply them to today's.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
Environment in a lot of technology.
Speaker 3 (05:08):
So we believe in real time transparency that if the
founders you know, had access to today's technology, they wouldn't be
satisfied with you know, you know, thirty sixty ninety day delays.
They would expect that money to be visible immediately. Just
just as you and I can go and log onto
our own personal checking account, we ought to be able
to access America's checkbook and see what.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
Government is doing with our money.
Speaker 3 (05:31):
What right do they have to not let us see
transactions being done in our name?
Speaker 1 (05:36):
Indeed, can you imagine Jefferson on TikTok.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
Oh? He would be he would be quite good.
Speaker 3 (05:43):
I mean, the founders were brilliant communicator obviously, you know,
a very different, different.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
Mode of communicating them.
Speaker 3 (05:49):
But they they also had the capacity of crystallizing their
views in Twitter one hundred and forty characters or to
eighty whatever whatever the limit is now.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
But I can definitely see Andrew Jackson.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
He would cleally quite adapted.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
Excellent, Yeah, thank you, I think he would. Now let
me ask you this, you worked with then Senator Barack
Obama uh in in Cobran's office, and he was all
excited about transparency and government, at least what it could
do for him politically. How did he fare as a
president when it became time to lead that transparency?
Speaker 3 (06:27):
Yeah, well, I mean he you know, he did a
decent job overseeing USA spending. I mean that that was
that that's it was and isn't a critically important website.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (06:37):
In fact, when you when you look at the debate
we've had over the past year, you.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
Know, do DOGE has been a mixed bag.
Speaker 3 (06:45):
They you know, I would call it some minor successes,
but lots of unfinished business.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
Yeah, but their success was a large.
Speaker 3 (06:52):
Part enabled by an army and ecosystem of organizations and
individuals who are all the progeny of USA spending.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
In other words, we intentionally put all.
Speaker 3 (07:03):
Federal spending online, not not to pat ourselves on the
back and say look what we did, but but to
create the ecosystem, to create permanent pressure so that when
Cobra was gone, there would be people who were more
adept at transparency than we were.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
And that's and that happened.
Speaker 3 (07:18):
They Cobram believed there were people who would use the
data in ways that he couldn't think of and we
couldn't imagine, and that has come to be Mike Binns
when he was on Joe Rogan, he was talking about
you know, USAID corruption and said, look, without what makes
us different from communists China is a site called USA spending.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
We can go to look at it.
Speaker 3 (07:39):
So I give I give Obama. Obama deserves credit for
doing that. He in good faith. He was true to
our first principles to say, look, let's let's open the
books together and find out whose side is right and
then and then let's litigate that and debate it. You
can't you can't have accountability without visibility. So I give
him a major, you know, hat tip for that. But
(08:00):
obviously with within the I R S there was the
weaponization of of the tax code against tea party groups
and and that that has you know, was extremely anti
democratic to say the least in the authoritarian and you know,
there there's there's a you know, there's an authoritarian double standard.
I think for all the you know, the progressives that
(08:21):
that howl and scream about Trump's authoritarian tendencies, is anything
that they don't like they they did in a more
egregious form in almost sever respect. And so I'm I'm
very concerned about what I would call an authoritarian arms race,
where one side tries to one up the other and
weaponizes the tools of the federal government. So I think
(08:42):
I think in the in the Lord of the Ring story,
we all know what we all know, we all know
what Palante is right.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
The big, big company. But what I think the public
really wants is hobbits.
Speaker 3 (08:53):
You know, they want the Fellowship to grab the ring,
throw it in the ring of fire and and and
burn it. That's really what what politics is about, is
controlling and limiting, corrupting centralized power.
Speaker 2 (09:10):
You know.
Speaker 3 (09:10):
Thomas Jefferson, going back to our TikTok friend, he said,
you know, the natural order of things is for liberty
to yield and government to gain ground. Right, And that's
an observation based not just on his life, but you know,
twenty six twenty three hundred years of political history at
the time of that writing. So that's that's what we're about,
(09:30):
is we're trying to take the ring of power and
throw it into the fire and melt it down and
give it back to we the people, and that is
what experience is about.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
Yeah. No, absolutely, and that's why what you are doing
is so critical to point these things out. You know,
I wrote a piece today at the Federalist about this battle,
this present shut down, you know show that is going on. Yeah,
(09:58):
that's really what it is. It's political theater. But it
exposes something that I think the late great Milton Friedman
warned us about, interestingly enough, in nineteen eighty four when
his Tyrants book came out, that nothing is so permanent
as a temporary government program. And here we are today.
(10:21):
This is the political hill that the Democrats are dying on.
They passed trillions of dollars in stimulus, so called stimulus
spending during the pandemic, and they use the notion of
a national health emergency, which there was for a time.
(10:41):
There's still They still want the health insurance expansions, the
subsidy expansions in Obamacare, costing hundreds of billions of dollars,
to go on, long after what that was supposed to
be intended for an emergency of an emergency has long passed.
(11:02):
How do they make this argument today and how do
they present it as you know, we're not shutting down
the government simply because we don't want this credit, these
credits to end, right right.
Speaker 3 (11:17):
Well, you mentioned the word theater. I want to dwell
I answer the question by dwellion on that.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
Concept for a minute.
Speaker 3 (11:22):
So I think one of the best examples that describe
the shutdown dynamic is the film Blazing Saddles.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
I don't.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
It multiple times, we can't.
Speaker 3 (11:33):
We can't even begin to quote that in anything discussion.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
Because we would both be we would be canceled, we.
Speaker 3 (11:39):
Would be canceled a meeting. Yes, but you know, if
only we could make films like that today, I think
it would make a Which is the film, I would
just say it's one of the most Syrian indictments of racism.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
Ever produced, by the way, no doubt.
Speaker 3 (11:53):
But in the in the conclusion, the protagonist famously he
takes himself stage and begs and begs everyone not to shoot.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
So shutdowns in many ways, it's kind of a repeat
of that.
Speaker 3 (12:07):
You take yourself hostage and then beg the other side
to not shoot, and Republicans.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
Have made that. So that's what Democrats are doing now,
is they've.
Speaker 3 (12:15):
Taken themselves hostage. They're begging the president to not shoot. Now,
Republicans have made that same mistake in all fairness back
in twenty in twenty thirteen, I'm sure you remember Ted
Ted Cruz, you know, orchestrated the famous Obamacare shutdown where
he said, unless Barack Obama defunds Obamacare, we're going to
keep the government shut down. And there was a titanic
(12:38):
battle on the right about that tactic, because you had
Cruise on one side and some other activists and then
Coburn and other activists on the other side say no,
if we want to win the long term battle on
healthcare reform, we need.
Speaker 2 (12:51):
To put forward a better alternative.
Speaker 3 (12:53):
We need to have a plan, and we want to
we want to choose the hill you die on, right,
But politics, politicians find.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
Themselves by the hills they die on, as we know.
We know.
Speaker 3 (13:05):
Well, so that didn't it wasn't catastrophic for Republicans. I
think it you know, it didn't have a big near
term uh you know, harm, But I think longer term,
what it did is it made it difficult for Republicans
to really coalesce around what their alternative was. Excuse me,
so we we had an alternative, but that shutdown discussion
(13:28):
made it difficult to call us around it.
Speaker 2 (13:32):
And then so what's happening now with the Democrats.
Speaker 3 (13:36):
Is you have you have a party that is determined
to quote fight to make it, to make it clear
that they're going to just oppose Trump at any any
cost imaginable, because their base is demanding a fight. So
it's the it's a TDS problem, it's a you know,
Trump derangement syndrome.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
That's their platform, their platform.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
And and if you it's it's you know, I encourage.
Speaker 3 (13:59):
Anyone listeners to podcasts like yours and follows, open the books,
spend time really understanding what the psychology of Democrats right now.
So asra Client had John Fabrea on you know the
Obama the Obama speech writer and the discussion, you know,
for two people who are who are who are quite
intelligent and thoughtful, it was a retread of what we've
(14:21):
seen for the past hundred years from the from the
progressive left.
Speaker 2 (14:24):
It was pure it's pure demagoguery. Democrats.
Speaker 3 (14:28):
Their psychology is they are betting, they're going they're going
to quote make the shutdown about healthcare.
Speaker 2 (14:35):
Now.
Speaker 3 (14:35):
The problem is when you when you start a shooting war,
which is what they've done, with the shutdown, they don't
get to control what it is quote unquote about. It
becomes about a lot of things. It becomes about your
your friend who's a federal employee who isn't getting their paycheck.
It becomes about you know, I'm getting ready to fly
in a few days and my famili's flying different places.
(14:55):
So I'm nervous because air traffic controllers they're still but
they're not being.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
Paid, so they're calling in sick and in sick right.
Speaker 3 (15:04):
So there's anxiety that is the consequence of a shutdown.
Speaker 4 (15:15):
Should property taxes just come to an end?
Speaker 5 (15:18):
The Watchdot on Wall Street podcast with Chris Markowski. Every day,
Chris helps unpack the connection between politics and the economy
and how it affects your wallet.
Speaker 4 (15:26):
Truly, owning your own home shouldn't be a piggybank for
government to extract revenue. Property taxes will forever make you
not an owner, just nothing more than a surf on
the lord's manner. Whether it's happening in DC or down
on Wall Street, it's affecting you financially.
Speaker 2 (15:40):
Be informed.
Speaker 5 (15:41):
Check out the Watchdot on Wall Street podcast with Chris
Markowski on Apples, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast.
Speaker 3 (15:52):
And again I would say I think generally speaking, shutdowns
or not, it's a mistake when people slip into the
tribalism of the moment, they go, we're gonna we're going
to own the Democrats because of the shutdown. Well, it's
it tends to hurt both parties. It's an indictment of
our system. When you have a government shutdown, it shows
that things are not working and blame.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
You know, everyone looks bad in a shutdown.
Speaker 3 (16:14):
So so the quote winner is the one that looks
less bad. And so if that's the it's if that's
the measure of success, and that's the reality of how
shutdowns are judged by the electorate. I do think Democrats
are not going to quote win the shutdown fight. And
what we've seen is that again, events determine what it's about.
We've in Thune, to his credit, has forced nine votes
(16:38):
to keep the government open.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
So that's a fact. That's a fact. Pattern.
Speaker 3 (16:42):
So Democrats really are the ones holding themselves hostage. They're
the ones with the loaded gun. It's not Republicans. And uh,
and so the public is watching this this you know,
this faux drama unfold and they're gonna they're going to
increasingly blame Democrats. And that's what the polling is showing
is there's been a shift. You know, a week or
(17:04):
two ago, Democrats had an eleven point edge about who
do you blame?
Speaker 2 (17:09):
That lead has shrunk to six.
Speaker 3 (17:11):
And I think as more and more things happen, you know,
there's a lot of unpredictable unpredictability because we don't know
what's going to happen, you know, in the real world
with the economy. You know, it's not a winning strategy
for Democrats, but more fundamentally, it's they're doubling down on
on what I would just describe as an intellectually vacant
argument and really a smug argument that we're the party
(17:33):
that cares, we care because we're we're for bigger subsidies.
And I've always described that as counterfeit compassion. You know,
the best way to make something expensive is for government
to make it affordable, and we see that repeatedly, whether
it's a education or healthcare, and particularly with Obamacare. Is
we you know, we diagnose this back in twenty two
(17:54):
thousand and six, we were putting forward our alternative when
it seemed inevitable that Hillary Clinton.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
Would be the nominee.
Speaker 3 (18:01):
We were already trying to encourage conservatives to get their
head wrapped around what would a free market truly look
like in healthcare? And then, of course, you know, Obama
got the nomination, and we know what happened, and we
never coalesced around that alternative. And I think to their
credit House House Republicans in particular, you know, Chip Roy
(18:22):
and others really did a great job of insisting that
we not continue the failed policies of the past. And
as you appropriately noted, this is a the particular issue
that they, the Democrats, want this to be about. It
was a temporary subsidy and surge and spending that they
(18:44):
designed to be temporary. So we're simply asking them to
agree with themselves on the right standoff in the blazing
saddles hostage standoff. Right, why are they why are they
debating them.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
Else on this?
Speaker 3 (19:01):
Now?
Speaker 1 (19:01):
It seems that is exactly what is happening with the
the Democrat Party that is controlled now more and more
by the radical left. But both sides have, as you've noted,
have had problems with the shutdown. I think what we've learned,
particularly over the last quarter century is that shutdowns are
(19:22):
like leisure suits. Nobody looks good in them. That's just
I mean, that's really what it boils down to. Because
people can't even remember the last shutdown. They just constantly
remember how their government is failing them. So yes, let's
get into that. Actually, our guest today is opened the
book CEO John Hart, the Government Spending Tracker, has been
(19:45):
monitoring the shutdown messes. We've talked about healthcare spending bill
Dems are dying on, and the worst waste in safety
net spending. John, I'm thinking about how this fiscal year
just ended a couple few weeks ago. That was a
disaster for the thirty seven point five trillion dollar debt,
(20:06):
and it doesn't look promising moving ahead. What have you
found in tracking some of the more egregious spending over
the last year and what we could be on the
hook for coming up?
Speaker 2 (20:19):
Yeah, well, and firstly, we're we're on the hook for
a lot.
Speaker 3 (20:21):
I think I think there's the way I always describe
the federal government is there's it's a mix of just
systemic gross spending dysfunctional, but then there's a lot of
just outrageous examples of things like twenty thousand dollars on
drag brunches in Ecuador, you know, three million dollars in
ih to inject beagles with cocaine. You know, here's a
(20:45):
good one three hundred and twelve million for SBA loans
for businesses owned by kids eleven years old and younger.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
So really lemonade exactly, that's a very lucrative.
Speaker 3 (20:56):
Yeah, my kids are now well too. Unfortunately they're older
than a lot, and.
Speaker 2 (21:00):
So I can't do that.
Speaker 3 (21:00):
But so and I think, I think what we do
and open the books, and what we really perfected in
the in the Coburn years is is finding these specific
examples that illustrate the systemic problem.
Speaker 2 (21:14):
And we looked at the Bridge to Nowhere back in the.
Speaker 3 (21:16):
Earmark battle, because it was a two hundred and twenty
you know, million dollar bridge that was going to connect
an island with sixty people to mainland Alaska, and we
forced an amendment to shift that funding to repair a
bridge that was damaged by Hurricane Katrina. And the Senate
voted against that shift of funding eighty two to fifteen.
(21:38):
So we lost that by sixty seven votes in the Senate,
but we want it overwhelmingly with public, and those those
are the smart fights that we always are trying to pick,
is to say, why are we spending you know, ten
billion dollars on a thousand different medicare prescription d but
medicare that's the part prescription drug providers. Uh, when we
(22:03):
have a you know, a thirty seven trillion dollar debt,
we're spending more on interest payments on the national debt
than we are a national defense.
Speaker 2 (22:11):
Those are not sustainable.
Speaker 3 (22:13):
And I think what I think, I think Republicans in
particularly have an opportunity to make to make the shut
we talked about the word about you know, Democrats think
they can make it about healthcare, Well, they don't get
to they don't get to decide that.
Speaker 2 (22:27):
Republicans and the public have a voice. And I think
we ought to make it about the.
Speaker 3 (22:32):
Overall size of the scope of government, the relationship between
the government and the individual, and in particular, are unsustainable
safety net spending.
Speaker 2 (22:40):
So so an analogy I used.
Speaker 3 (22:42):
Too is when you if whenever you fly and you
you look down and you see the Mississippi River, you know,
from the airplane it's you can tell it's enormous even
from that high but then all the little all the
little tiny things.
Speaker 2 (22:55):
We spend a lot of our time focusing on whether
it's DEI, whether it's you know.
Speaker 3 (22:58):
These examples that I listed, their tiny little examples. So
the money, again, it's all connected, it's all related. And
DEI has a disproportionate.
Speaker 2 (23:08):
Cultural influence I think is really important.
Speaker 3 (23:11):
But we really need to be focusing on how do
we get our head wrapped around our overall unsustainable federal government.
And it's a question of again, we can design programs
and design a safety net where preferably at the state level,
there are ways that government can meet me needs of
(23:31):
people who were truly unable to help themselves. There's overwhelming
public support for that. But we can design those programs
without destroying ourselves economically in the process. And I think
the more Republicans lean into that, the better off they're
going to be, because you don't want to be half
pregnant on this issue of reforming the safety net. And
(23:51):
they've done a good job on Medicaid, but they need
to broaden the aperture. And so the shutdown again is
an opportunity to make a quote unquote about the bigger challenge.
And you mentioned Milton Friedman too. A big priority to
in our current moment is this debate about what is
the administrative state? Why do we have all of these
(24:12):
federal agencies, and why is the president required to keep
people in place that don't represent the agenda that the
American people voted for. And this is really one hundred
I described the administrative state as like one hundred year
constitutional crisis where the progressive left very intentionally created this
(24:33):
bureau of experts to take power out of the political
process and to make these programs permanent. As Friedman you
quoted Freedman, all of these temporary programs then become permanent.
So we did some reporting earlier this year and we
looked at four hundred and forty one agencies in the
federal government, and seventy five of them are defunct but
(24:55):
still listed as open, which is a problem the government
doesn't even know. The point is the government is so
big and then yielded, they don't even know how many
agencies they're in charge of. And if you look at
the Constitution, you know there is an argument for four
and maybe five federal agencies Departments of State, Justice, Defense,
(25:19):
and then maybe arguably interstate Commerce.
Speaker 1 (25:21):
If you want to be generous and throw I know
Alexander Hamilton really lobbied for that EPA.
Speaker 2 (25:27):
Yeah exactly, yeah, yeah, yeah, and in a great exam Yeah.
Speaker 3 (25:31):
So it would be defense, state, Treasury, Justice, maybe interstate Commerce.
But then everything else doesn't belong. And look at the
Department of Education, for example. So that department didn't exist
until nineteen eighty and somehow we managed to win two
World wars, put a man on the moon, become a
(25:53):
global superpower without the Department of Education. Amazing, and we've
done tremendous oversight work. We are one of the strengths
of Open the Books, and I give you the late
co founder Adam Ajievski, who I took over four about
a year ago. He very very wisely built on what
we did with the Cobra and Obama Bill and Opened
(26:15):
the Books captures not just federal but stayed and local spending.
So we have the biggest database of government spending ever created.
Speaker 2 (26:21):
In human history.
Speaker 3 (26:22):
We've got, you know, billions of lines of data and
it's an extremely powerful tool. So we looked at all
education districts school districts in the country and found that
there's a negative correlation between twelve thousand school districts and
overall student achievement and payroll. So in other words, as
(26:44):
we increase payroll, student achievement goes down again. It shows
why do we.
Speaker 2 (26:52):
Keep doing it the way we've been doing it?
Speaker 1 (26:53):
It doesn't insanity, since yeah, it's just absolute insanity. Why
do we keep doing all of that?
Speaker 2 (27:00):
Because there's not there's not enough accountability.
Speaker 3 (27:03):
So I so, you know, one of the phrases that's
popular these days is the deep state. The deep state
is is a is a real thing. It's not a
conspiracy theory. However, what is more dominant is what I
call the default state, is that we just spend trillions
and trillions of dollars every year without much debate or thought,
and it just goes on and on and we never
(27:23):
stop to think about it. And so again that's why
shut downs are. You know, it sounds crass to say
that it's an opportunity because it's I don't think it's
every smart opportunity to take. But when one side picks
a fight about it, it is it does become about
this discussion of why do we have all these things
on autopilot? You know, when there's when there's talk about
(27:46):
deeming some government employees essential versus non essential. That begs
the question, if they're non essential, why are they.
Speaker 2 (27:52):
There, why are we wondering them?
Speaker 3 (27:55):
And again not to overstate is the the problem is
really one of spending more than personnel. So government personnel
has been relatively stable actually the past twenty years, but
what is skyrocketed is spending. We've had about a three
hundred percent increase in administrative state spending. While payroll has
(28:16):
been relatively the number of employees has been relatively flat. Now,
granted some of that has been outsourced through the weaponization
of NGOs. That's a separate problem. But again it's a
chance to make the argument about the real issue, which
is the unyield, the SISO scope of government, the fact
that our debt and deficits are having a drag effect
(28:36):
on the economy. They're hurting innovation, hurting job creation, making
things less affordable, and that's what we ought to be
focusing on. And that's what that's what we're trying to
do through transparency, is to help elevate the conversation.
Speaker 1 (28:50):
Well, that is the key, That is the key, transparency.
So the final question for you is where do we
go from here, because eventually these people that we all
elected will have to do their jobs, and their number
one priority, of course is to set a budget, which
they have done in a very long time. Where does
where do you see all of this going from here?
Speaker 3 (29:13):
Well, I think, you know, I don't think the shutdown
is I think somebody is going to blink relatively soon,
I hope. So again, it's just it's not it's not
it's it is it's a dangerous dynamic. It's not a
good signal to send to global markets economically from a
national security perspective.
Speaker 2 (29:31):
So I think I think what we need to do
is have.
Speaker 3 (29:37):
Is build on some of the things that doge identified,
but go much much farther and have a more Milton
Freedment approach and say why do we why do we
have four hundred and forty one agencies when the Constitution
really only authorizes four And we need to have a
much more robust, serious look at reorganizing and downsizing the
(29:57):
administrative state. We need to have a much more serious
conversation about about safety net programs. So one of the
fundamental questions of our time is are we going to
support quote universal entitlements or are we going to help
poor people, and you can't really do both. We can't
(30:19):
this whole ideological concept that we must have a universal
entitlement that may have made sense one hundred years ago,
it does not make sense anymore. That was the whole
argument for social security, is to say that a program
for poor people will be a poor program, and therefore
we must have a universal, one size fits all kind
(30:39):
of approach to government, when in reality, if you have,
if you give states much more flexibility and a twenty
first century federalism model to take care of people in
their local communities and to make sure that anyone that
needs help can get help, and if government has a
role to play, then the states can figure out how
to do that. Maybe the federal government can block rant something.
(31:02):
I mean, there are ways to reorganize in the restructure
what we think of as universal entitlements that will be
much much more beneficial for poor people than they are today.
Not so this whole idea that we're going to save
social security by not touching it, but by not reforming
social security, you're condemning future generations to bankruptcy. And social
security payments themselves have decreased substantially because of inflation. So
(31:28):
there is a de facto cut that happens every year
because we haven't modernized these programs.
Speaker 2 (31:34):
Those are the things we need. That's where we need
to go from here.
Speaker 1 (31:38):
Well, knowledge is power, and you don't get that knowledge
without transparency by opening the books. That's what you have
to do, and that's what John Hart and his organization do,
and do very well. I might add, he may be
the last guy in America who looks all right in
a leisure suit. You're saying, platform shoes. You're going to
(31:59):
have to give up though, my friend, I'm sorry. Yeah,
that's all right. I'm sorry. You were doing the hustle.
We all were thanks to my guest today, Open the book, CEO,
John Hart. You've been listening to another edition of the
Federalist Radio Hour. I'm Matt Kittle, Senior Elections correspondent at
the Federalist. We'll be back soon with more. Until then,
stay lovers of freedom and anxious for the frame.
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