1
00:00:16,600 --> 00:00:19,039
Speaker 1: And we are back with another edition of the Federalist

2
00:00:19,160 --> 00:00:23,160
Radio Hour. I'm Matt Kittle, Senior Elections correspondent at the Federalist,

3
00:00:23,359 --> 00:00:27,120
and your experienced sure put on today's quest for Knowledge.

4
00:00:27,440 --> 00:00:30,320
As always, you can email the show at radio at

5
00:00:30,359 --> 00:00:34,359
the Federalist dot com, follow us on x at FDR LST,

6
00:00:35,000 --> 00:00:38,079
make sure to subscribe wherever you download your podcast, and

7
00:00:38,200 --> 00:00:41,439
of course to the premium version of our website as well.

8
00:00:42,079 --> 00:00:45,880
Our guest today is Sean Davis, the Sean Davis CEO

9
00:00:46,000 --> 00:00:49,679
and co founder of The Federalist. On the Making of

10
00:00:49,759 --> 00:00:52,960
the Doge, There are some things you may not know

11
00:00:53,039 --> 00:00:58,000
about Sean Davis. First, he rocks literally first rate guitarist.

12
00:00:58,000 --> 00:01:02,320
Sean is the American Jeff Beck of the American Conservative movement,

13
00:01:03,920 --> 00:01:07,120
and I mean that sincerely. He also, many years ago

14
00:01:07,799 --> 00:01:11,680
wrote the law that you could say created the first

15
00:01:11,920 --> 00:01:16,760
department of government efficiency, or at least it provided the

16
00:01:16,799 --> 00:01:21,200
Doge the tools and the tools that the taxpayers were

17
00:01:21,200 --> 00:01:25,359
able to use for many years now to audit their

18
00:01:25,400 --> 00:01:27,959
own government. Sean, thank you so much for joining us

19
00:01:28,000 --> 00:01:29,719
on this edition to the Federalist Radio Hour.

20
00:01:30,159 --> 00:01:32,799
Speaker 2: Well, that was a very generous introduction. Thank you.

21
00:01:33,760 --> 00:01:35,840
Speaker 3: I don't know if Jeff Beck is going to appreciate it,

22
00:01:35,879 --> 00:01:36,760
but I certainly did.

23
00:01:37,239 --> 00:01:42,879
Speaker 1: Well, what's he going to say about it now? Huh yeah, yeah, absolutely,

24
00:01:42,920 --> 00:01:44,920
we'd have to have a seance to get his opinion

25
00:01:44,959 --> 00:01:50,239
on this on that front. But to the point of generosity,

26
00:01:50,519 --> 00:01:54,560
the American taxpayer, we find out in recent weeks, thanks

27
00:01:54,599 --> 00:01:59,159
to the DOGE, has been extremely generous with all kinds

28
00:01:59,280 --> 00:02:04,560
of insane programs and initiatives paid out to all kinds

29
00:02:04,599 --> 00:02:09,199
of countries. And it's just so head scratching. Take us

30
00:02:09,240 --> 00:02:12,800
back because many years ago you were working in a

31
00:02:12,840 --> 00:02:16,879
senator's office and a conversation came up about how do

32
00:02:16,960 --> 00:02:20,479
we let America know just how much waste, fraud, and

33
00:02:20,599 --> 00:02:21,919
abuse is in their government?

34
00:02:23,120 --> 00:02:24,080
Speaker 2: Yeah, the great question.

35
00:02:24,240 --> 00:02:26,960
Speaker 3: So years ago I worked for Tom Coburn, who is

36
00:02:27,000 --> 00:02:31,439
a great senator from Oklahoma, who's an obstetrician, delivered babies

37
00:02:31,639 --> 00:02:33,960
as a living felt called to go try and save

38
00:02:34,000 --> 00:02:36,639
the country in Washington, and what he cared about more

39
00:02:36,639 --> 00:02:42,400
than anything else was rooting out unconstitutional and indefensible spending.

40
00:02:42,439 --> 00:02:45,479
So that was our entire mission in his office. I

41
00:02:45,560 --> 00:02:49,759
was his chief investigator, and we were going we were

42
00:02:49,759 --> 00:02:54,560
doing oversight and investigation on a particular USAID grant or

43
00:02:54,560 --> 00:02:56,240
contract and I want to say this was an.

44
00:02:56,439 --> 00:02:58,879
Speaker 2: Four, would have been five or six.

45
00:02:59,719 --> 00:03:04,879
Speaker 3: And I think at the time USAID was funding literal

46
00:03:04,960 --> 00:03:09,439
sex trafficking through a particular contractor grant. It's been almost

47
00:03:09,439 --> 00:03:12,879
twenty years sot the exact details are I don't have

48
00:03:13,960 --> 00:03:17,400
at the tip of my tongue. And as happened a

49
00:03:17,439 --> 00:03:20,599
lot back then and still now, we would send lots

50
00:03:20,599 --> 00:03:23,479
and lots of letters to every agency asking them for

51
00:03:23,560 --> 00:03:26,319
information on this grant or that grand what they were doing,

52
00:03:26,360 --> 00:03:28,919
who approved it, where the money was going, and they

53
00:03:29,080 --> 00:03:32,400
just ignored us. They lied to us, they misled us,

54
00:03:33,080 --> 00:03:36,520
and we were sitting around and at one point I said, well,

55
00:03:36,599 --> 00:03:38,280
you know, why don't we just make them put it

56
00:03:38,319 --> 00:03:41,039
all online. If they're just gonna lie to us and

57
00:03:41,080 --> 00:03:45,319
ignore us and non answer letters from Senator, we should

58
00:03:45,400 --> 00:03:46,879
just make them put it all online and then we

59
00:03:46,919 --> 00:03:48,840
won't even have to deal with them anymore. We can

60
00:03:48,919 --> 00:03:51,360
just go to a website and find it. And that

61
00:03:51,520 --> 00:03:55,599
was the genesis of USA Spending dot gov. So in

62
00:03:55,719 --> 00:04:01,199
early two thousand and six I wrote the legislation for that,

63
00:04:01,319 --> 00:04:04,400
we introduced it, and I think April of six. It

64
00:04:04,439 --> 00:04:07,479
was called the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of

65
00:04:07,479 --> 00:04:10,599
two thousand and six. I think it was S. Twenty

66
00:04:10,639 --> 00:04:14,840
five ninety in the one hundred and ninth Congress, is

67
00:04:14,879 --> 00:04:17,319
my guest, but again I might be one or two

68
00:04:17,399 --> 00:04:20,199
off there. So we introduced it in April of two

69
00:04:20,240 --> 00:04:24,439
thousand and six. Barack Obama was the chief original co

70
00:04:24,519 --> 00:04:27,800
sponsor of it, as was John McCain. We had a

71
00:04:27,839 --> 00:04:33,120
great bipartisan coalition of people who just knew that the

72
00:04:33,199 --> 00:04:36,199
games that had been the government was playing with spending

73
00:04:36,199 --> 00:04:39,199
couldn't go on forever, and had a lot of momentum

74
00:04:39,199 --> 00:04:39,399
for it.

75
00:04:39,439 --> 00:04:40,560
Speaker 2: I think we had forty five.

76
00:04:40,480 --> 00:04:42,920
Speaker 3: Or fifty co sponsors, nearly the majority of the Senate.

77
00:04:43,519 --> 00:04:48,839
We got it through committee and then to it came

78
00:04:48,879 --> 00:04:52,519
to a standstill. And this is I think a fascinating

79
00:04:53,240 --> 00:04:56,040
story of the power of the people and the power

80
00:04:56,079 --> 00:04:59,959
of a media when it's doing its job. Two senators

81
00:05:00,160 --> 00:05:02,759
put what are known as called secret holds on the bill.

82
00:05:03,720 --> 00:05:07,600
Any senator has the ability by right as a senator

83
00:05:07,680 --> 00:05:10,519
to object to any one thing or any one person

84
00:05:11,040 --> 00:05:14,839
passing by unanimous consent. And then once you put a

85
00:05:14,879 --> 00:05:20,079
hold or announce your intent to do to block unanimous consenter.

86
00:05:20,160 --> 00:05:23,319
You see that it creates all kinds of issues in

87
00:05:23,360 --> 00:05:25,480
the Senate. You have to go through all sorts of

88
00:05:25,560 --> 00:05:27,480
hurdles and through all sorts of obstacles that just make

89
00:05:27,519 --> 00:05:29,920
it really difficult to find floor time to pass things.

90
00:05:30,439 --> 00:05:34,480
And so we started a pr campaign at that time

91
00:05:35,000 --> 00:05:38,279
involving the public the media to find out who these

92
00:05:38,519 --> 00:05:43,279
senators were blocking such a common sense bipartisan spending transparency bill,

93
00:05:43,800 --> 00:05:46,600
and lo and behold, people were calling their senator's office

94
00:05:46,639 --> 00:05:49,199
every day demanding to know who it was, and eventually

95
00:05:49,279 --> 00:05:53,800
Ted Stevens and Robert Burr fest up secret holds which

96
00:05:53,920 --> 00:05:58,920
had never People don't understand how crazy that was. That

97
00:05:59,000 --> 00:06:04,160
had never happened. And for us to have rolled both

98
00:06:04,160 --> 00:06:08,600
Ted Stevens and Robert Byrd, the granddaddy's of federal overspending

99
00:06:08,639 --> 00:06:11,160
and federal appropriations in the Senate, I mean, no one

100
00:06:11,240 --> 00:06:13,759
came close to the power that they had on spending.

101
00:06:14,160 --> 00:06:16,879
So the fact that we were able, with the help

102
00:06:16,920 --> 00:06:20,120
of the public to roll them, it still astounds me

103
00:06:20,199 --> 00:06:22,680
to this day. It never should have happened, and it

104
00:06:22,759 --> 00:06:25,639
eventually passes. We had a companion bill in the House

105
00:06:25,680 --> 00:06:28,680
that passed and then I think on September twenty six

106
00:06:29,079 --> 00:06:34,399
six it was passed by both houses and signed into law.

107
00:06:34,480 --> 00:06:37,000
And I actually have a copy of the bill in

108
00:06:37,079 --> 00:06:39,399
my office behind me on the wall. They call them

109
00:06:39,439 --> 00:06:45,720
red lines, their kind of fancy ceremonial treatments of past bills.

110
00:06:46,120 --> 00:06:49,040
And because Ted Stevens was the President pro tim at

111
00:06:49,040 --> 00:06:51,560
the time, he had to sign the bill. So every

112
00:06:51,639 --> 00:06:54,639
day when I come into work and get ready to

113
00:06:54,639 --> 00:06:56,519
sit down at my desk, I look at that and

114
00:06:56,600 --> 00:06:58,839
it makes me laugh that not only did we beat

115
00:06:58,879 --> 00:07:00,879
Ted Stevens, we forced him to sign the law he

116
00:07:00,920 --> 00:07:04,000
tried to block, and that's what ended up creating USA

117
00:07:04,040 --> 00:07:04,800
spending dot gov.

118
00:07:05,680 --> 00:07:06,519
Speaker 2: The thing in that that.

119
00:07:06,480 --> 00:07:09,399
Speaker 3: I'm actually most proud of is we were able to

120
00:07:09,519 --> 00:07:12,680
enact that and get it created and implemented and put

121
00:07:12,680 --> 00:07:15,839
online without appropriating a single new dollar for it. We

122
00:07:16,000 --> 00:07:19,279
forced them to find money within the budget I think

123
00:07:19,519 --> 00:07:21,680
O andb ended up taking money out of like an

124
00:07:21,720 --> 00:07:24,879
interagency budget line item to fund it. So yeah, we

125
00:07:24,879 --> 00:07:27,879
were able to build that without spending a new dime

126
00:07:28,160 --> 00:07:31,199
of spending. And so if you've ever used USA spending

127
00:07:31,199 --> 00:07:34,560
dot gov, you've got Tom Coburn in his courage for

128
00:07:34,680 --> 00:07:35,439
making that happen.

129
00:07:37,800 --> 00:07:42,720
Speaker 1: Our sponsor today addresses a major concern, identity theft. If

130
00:07:42,759 --> 00:07:46,920
you're worried about keeping your personal information secure, We've got

131
00:07:47,120 --> 00:07:51,680
just the solution, introducing in Cognate, your digital shield that

132
00:07:51,839 --> 00:07:57,240
stands guard against even the most sophisticated online threats. Whenever

133
00:07:57,279 --> 00:08:01,040
you shop online, start a digital subscription, or download an app,

134
00:08:01,519 --> 00:08:04,399
you end up releasing personal information which can be sold

135
00:08:05,000 --> 00:08:09,319
or worse yet stolen. Thankfully, in Cogny is your digital

136
00:08:09,360 --> 00:08:13,600
shield against even the most sophisticated online threats. And Cogne

137
00:08:13,720 --> 00:08:17,240
reaches out to data brokers on your behalf and request

138
00:08:17,240 --> 00:08:21,639
your personal data removal with a firm, professional hand tackling

139
00:08:21,680 --> 00:08:25,040
any pushback they might try to throw your way. And

140
00:08:25,160 --> 00:08:30,079
Cognate provides unmatched identity protection, guarding your sensitive information such

141
00:08:30,120 --> 00:08:34,159
as social security numbers and login details like a high

142
00:08:34,200 --> 00:08:39,200
security vault, protecting you from potential identity theft and ensuring

143
00:08:39,279 --> 00:08:44,360
your personal information remains confidential. Why delay act now? With

144
00:08:44,480 --> 00:08:48,360
Incognate your go to solution for keeping data brokers at bay,

145
00:08:48,799 --> 00:08:51,960
got a network of friends or family, Visit in cogni

146
00:08:52,080 --> 00:08:56,159
dot com to start safeguarding your digital life today. And

147
00:08:56,240 --> 00:08:59,279
here's the bonus. You can try it in Cognate risk

148
00:08:59,360 --> 00:09:02,120
free for thirty days with a full refund. If it

149
00:09:02,159 --> 00:09:06,480
doesn't meet your expectations, take your personal data back within

150
00:09:06,559 --> 00:09:10,759
COGNI use code Federalist at the link below and get

151
00:09:10,840 --> 00:09:17,759
sixty percent off an annual plan that is fabulous. You

152
00:09:17,759 --> 00:09:21,360
know the inside stuff that went into this, I don't

153
00:09:21,399 --> 00:09:24,759
think most people know about. You said a couple of

154
00:09:24,799 --> 00:09:28,559
things that surprised me along the way. You said, a

155
00:09:28,600 --> 00:09:33,679
Barack Obama then senator, was involved in this very very

156
00:09:33,759 --> 00:09:38,320
important piece of legislation, and you said that corporate media

157
00:09:38,399 --> 00:09:42,519
at the time was doing its job. Man, some things

158
00:09:42,600 --> 00:09:45,720
have changed over the years. Av Me Sean. I mean,

159
00:09:45,720 --> 00:09:50,960
it's remarkable to me, first and foremost that maybe Senator

160
00:09:51,000 --> 00:09:53,799
Barack Obama didn't have the kind of sway with the

161
00:09:53,879 --> 00:09:57,519
left that he certainly has had since. But you would

162
00:09:57,559 --> 00:10:01,080
think that Democrat senators would be any reflecting at the

163
00:10:01,120 --> 00:10:03,799
altar of Barack Obama on anything that he did at

164
00:10:03,799 --> 00:10:06,720
the time. But that simply was not the case, was it.

165
00:10:07,559 --> 00:10:09,879
Speaker 3: No, And he was different as a senator than he

166
00:10:09,919 --> 00:10:14,559
became as president. He was always liberal. He was a

167
00:10:14,639 --> 00:10:17,480
tried and true Democrat. He was pretty easy to work with,

168
00:10:17,559 --> 00:10:20,960
and oddly enough, my experience as a budget staffer in

169
00:10:21,000 --> 00:10:26,159
the Senate for for kind of a firebrand anti spending republican,

170
00:10:26,679 --> 00:10:32,480
we generally found a better cooperation from Democrats at that

171
00:10:32,559 --> 00:10:35,519
time than we did from Republican leadership. Republican leadership in

172
00:10:35,559 --> 00:10:38,919
the Senate had to be dragged, kicking and screaming to

173
00:10:39,080 --> 00:10:43,440
even do the most basic of oversight or spending cuts.

174
00:10:44,080 --> 00:10:46,519
So we had a we had a good working relationship

175
00:10:46,559 --> 00:10:49,559
with Obama and his staff, and it helped that.

176
00:10:51,279 --> 00:10:53,559
Speaker 2: It was good for him. So it was he.

177
00:10:53,480 --> 00:10:55,200
Speaker 3: Wasn't just doing that out of the goodness of his

178
00:10:55,279 --> 00:10:57,960
heart and the purest of fiscal intentions.

179
00:10:58,799 --> 00:11:00,279
Speaker 2: He knew he was going to run for pre isn't it.

180
00:11:00,360 --> 00:11:03,120
Speaker 3: He wanted to build up an image of himself as

181
00:11:03,559 --> 00:11:07,639
a bipartisan coalition builder. So at the time everyone won.

182
00:11:07,720 --> 00:11:11,159
You know, we were able to get some Democrat support

183
00:11:11,200 --> 00:11:13,360
and bipartisan help on that, and then he was able

184
00:11:13,480 --> 00:11:17,200
to at least at the time, establish himself as a

185
00:11:17,279 --> 00:11:22,320
bipartisan coalition builder. Unfortunately, that didn't end up extending to

186
00:11:22,360 --> 00:11:24,240
his tenure in the White House, But you know.

187
00:11:24,200 --> 00:11:24,840
Speaker 2: What can you do?

188
00:11:25,200 --> 00:11:27,600
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, it must have broken the heart of Robert

189
00:11:27,639 --> 00:11:32,080
Byrd though having to eventually sign on to a bill

190
00:11:32,320 --> 00:11:34,399
that a black senator supported.

191
00:11:35,759 --> 00:11:38,000
Speaker 3: I actually don't know what it would have offended him

192
00:11:38,039 --> 00:11:40,759
more having to go along with a black senator or

193
00:11:40,799 --> 00:11:43,360
having to do anything that might lead to spending reductions.

194
00:11:44,200 --> 00:11:45,279
Speaker 2: I think it's a coin flip.

195
00:11:47,000 --> 00:11:50,440
Speaker 1: Well, you know this, it's so important, it really is.

196
00:11:50,600 --> 00:11:53,279
I mean, you want to talk about transparency and government

197
00:11:53,360 --> 00:11:59,679
and out flash fast forward low these twenty years, and

198
00:12:00,320 --> 00:12:04,440
this was something that was you know this website. It

199
00:12:04,480 --> 00:12:09,200
was so essential for a lot of organizations across this

200
00:12:09,320 --> 00:12:14,840
country to be able to track where taxpayer dollars were going.

201
00:12:15,559 --> 00:12:20,799
And now we have Doge basically using these fundamentals doing

202
00:12:20,840 --> 00:12:26,879
an audit on criminal I've said this many times, criminally

203
00:12:27,080 --> 00:12:32,039
wasteful spending. And you have the left absolutely up in

204
00:12:32,240 --> 00:12:36,120
arms on an issue that Americans, the vast majority of

205
00:12:36,159 --> 00:12:39,480
American support. How did we get here in America today?

206
00:12:40,559 --> 00:12:43,120
Speaker 3: Yeah, So it's interesting you asked about the media back then.

207
00:12:43,440 --> 00:12:45,879
I actually think one of the reasons we were able

208
00:12:46,120 --> 00:12:50,240
to use the media to be helpful is that So

209
00:12:50,360 --> 00:12:53,200
this was twenty six, this was before the election, This

210
00:12:53,279 --> 00:12:57,320
is before the total bloodbath against congressional Republicans due to

211
00:12:57,399 --> 00:13:00,279
a lot of congressional corruption, but mostly what was going

212
00:13:00,320 --> 00:13:02,720
on with the war in Iraq. It had become just

213
00:13:02,759 --> 00:13:06,639
a total disaster. So because we had all Republican government

214
00:13:06,679 --> 00:13:09,200
at the time, the media saw it is a useful

215
00:13:09,200 --> 00:13:13,399
way to go after Republicans and especially the Bush administration,

216
00:13:14,120 --> 00:13:17,919
and and so that gave us a lot of wind

217
00:13:17,919 --> 00:13:20,799
in the sales that had we been arguing for those

218
00:13:20,840 --> 00:13:25,559
tools against the Democrat administration, I don't think the media

219
00:13:25,639 --> 00:13:28,639
or Democrats would have would have ever gone along with it.

220
00:13:29,759 --> 00:13:34,320
And even as partisan as things were back then, it's

221
00:13:34,399 --> 00:13:37,440
nothing compared to now. You know, if Trump says, you know,

222
00:13:38,360 --> 00:13:40,440
the sun rises in the east, there will be fact

223
00:13:40,519 --> 00:13:44,519
checks out saying, actually, idiot, the sun doesn't rise at all.

224
00:13:44,799 --> 00:13:48,159
And Trump doesn't understand physics and he, you know, he

225
00:13:48,200 --> 00:13:51,440
should probably read up on some Galileo. They would do

226
00:13:51,519 --> 00:13:53,759
that whole thing, all that nonsense. If he says good

227
00:13:53,759 --> 00:13:56,679
morning and it just hit noon, they would call him,

228
00:13:56,799 --> 00:13:59,399
you know, a dementia adult liar who can't even tell time.

229
00:13:59,799 --> 00:14:04,120
That's just the environment where in now, unfortunately, the left

230
00:14:04,240 --> 00:14:10,559
is reflexively against anything Republicans or Trump do, not just

231
00:14:10,559 --> 00:14:12,200
to the detriment of the country, but to their own

232
00:14:12,200 --> 00:14:15,360
detriment as a party. But I want to talk about

233
00:14:15,360 --> 00:14:19,000
the Doge thing for a minute, because it illustrates to

234
00:14:19,039 --> 00:14:25,759
me the power of using new technology and young new

235
00:14:25,879 --> 00:14:29,279
energy to go do things to save America. So when

236
00:14:29,320 --> 00:14:31,759
I was on the hill and we did oversight an

237
00:14:31,759 --> 00:14:34,960
investigation of waste, we would open appropriations bills, or we

238
00:14:35,000 --> 00:14:37,159
would open up a bunch of documents, and we would

239
00:14:37,159 --> 00:14:40,279
personally read through every single page, in every single line.

240
00:14:40,399 --> 00:14:44,039
I mean, I spent probably years of my life doing

241
00:14:44,080 --> 00:14:47,840
nothing but reading approach bills line by line and categorizing

242
00:14:47,840 --> 00:14:51,279
them and putting them into Excel and all that. The

243
00:14:51,360 --> 00:14:53,759
new generation doesn't have to do that, Like these whiz

244
00:14:53,840 --> 00:14:58,159
kid engineers who know how to do database engineering and

245
00:14:58,200 --> 00:15:04,360
software engineering, excuse me. Elon has unleashed them and they're

246
00:15:04,399 --> 00:15:08,399
doing stuff that's just beyond my comprehension and how they're

247
00:15:08,440 --> 00:15:12,000
finding the waste and organizing it. And it's totally inspiring

248
00:15:12,039 --> 00:15:14,000
to me to see it because they're using tools I

249
00:15:14,000 --> 00:15:15,559
don't know how to use. They have skills that I

250
00:15:15,600 --> 00:15:18,559
don't have. And to see them using all this new

251
00:15:18,639 --> 00:15:21,039
stuff and to see all the energy they have, I mean,

252
00:15:21,080 --> 00:15:23,960
these are like nineteen twenty twenty year old kids. To

253
00:15:24,080 --> 00:15:28,320
see them accomplish what they're accomplishing, I just think it's

254
00:15:28,360 --> 00:15:32,200
pretty cool. If you had told two thousand and five

255
00:15:32,399 --> 00:15:35,480
me that the richest man on earth would be deploying

256
00:15:35,519 --> 00:15:39,120
an army of engineers to go and root out all

257
00:15:39,159 --> 00:15:41,360
the waste that we were desperately trying to stop twenty

258
00:15:41,440 --> 00:15:42,039
years ago.

259
00:15:42,039 --> 00:15:43,240
Speaker 2: I would have said you were nuts.

260
00:15:43,399 --> 00:15:45,440
Speaker 3: So it's kind of surreal to watch it happen.

261
00:15:45,759 --> 00:15:46,519
Speaker 1: It's pretty cool.

262
00:15:51,000 --> 00:15:54,159
Speaker 4: There's a specific reason why some of these politicians hate

263
00:15:54,159 --> 00:15:58,080
Elon Musk. Elizabeth Warren claims she doesn't accept donations from

264
00:15:58,080 --> 00:16:01,320
big Pharma. Not only does she collect money, she collects

265
00:16:01,360 --> 00:16:04,159
more than anyone else does. And the person next in line,

266
00:16:04,360 --> 00:16:07,519
Bernie Sanders. Check out the Watchdog on Wall Street podcast

267
00:16:07,639 --> 00:16:10,240
on Apple, Spotify, wherever you get your podcasts.

268
00:16:15,279 --> 00:16:17,240
Speaker 1: I think it's cool. I think it's fascinating to look

269
00:16:17,279 --> 00:16:19,639
at what the left is doing and how their heads

270
00:16:19,639 --> 00:16:23,080
are exploding over this group of young bucks out there

271
00:16:23,080 --> 00:16:27,519
doing exactly what you're talking about, when they have been

272
00:16:27,519 --> 00:16:30,879
so conflicted over the last several years in this country.

273
00:16:31,399 --> 00:16:35,000
You know, we're supposed to follow the Greta Thunberg's of

274
00:16:35,039 --> 00:16:38,240
the World, the youth movement when it comes to climate change.

275
00:16:38,279 --> 00:16:40,919
At the same time, they had a doddering, old, demented

276
00:16:41,039 --> 00:16:44,759
fool as the President of the United States their standard bearer.

277
00:16:45,240 --> 00:16:48,000
This is a party that is absolutely in the wilderness.

278
00:16:48,000 --> 00:16:50,720
They don't know what to attack, they don't know what

279
00:16:50,879 --> 00:16:55,000
to do, they don't know really what they ultimately stand for.

280
00:16:55,600 --> 00:17:00,720
But back to your point, seeing what the young engineers

281
00:17:01,639 --> 00:17:05,680
for Elon Muskin Doze you're doing. They've got all these

282
00:17:05,680 --> 00:17:09,319
new tools, but what is really interesting to me is

283
00:17:09,440 --> 00:17:12,960
they're using the stuff, the pioneering stuff that you and

284
00:17:13,000 --> 00:17:18,039
your team put together to find and root out this waste.

285
00:17:18,079 --> 00:17:20,599
And I think corruption in our government.

286
00:17:21,319 --> 00:17:24,039
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's at least made it a lot easier because

287
00:17:24,039 --> 00:17:26,880
when we started doing this, there was a whole hodgepodge

288
00:17:27,039 --> 00:17:32,000
of different databases and ways of storing information. I think

289
00:17:32,000 --> 00:17:38,839
there was FPDSDOD which was a nightmare fads fads and

290
00:17:39,079 --> 00:17:42,440
I'm blanking on what what.

291
00:17:42,359 --> 00:17:42,920
Speaker 2: That stood for.

292
00:17:43,039 --> 00:17:46,559
Speaker 3: But there were just these databases spread around everywhere. Each

293
00:17:46,599 --> 00:17:49,400
agency had its own. They were not the kind of

294
00:17:49,440 --> 00:17:54,920
things that were like searchable through an API. Some agencies

295
00:17:54,920 --> 00:17:57,319
and departments would just have spreadsheets that they were manually

296
00:17:57,440 --> 00:18:02,039
entering stuff into, and that was what passed for high

297
00:18:02,119 --> 00:18:05,960
quality data. I will say that that despite everything we

298
00:18:06,039 --> 00:18:08,680
tried to do and enacted that, the government still is

299
00:18:08,720 --> 00:18:12,519
not properly implementing that law. One of the main reasons

300
00:18:12,680 --> 00:18:15,519
we did it wasn't just to get top line grant

301
00:18:15,599 --> 00:18:18,920
and contract data. It was to figure out what was

302
00:18:18,960 --> 00:18:23,880
happening after the C three or organization that got the money,

303
00:18:24,079 --> 00:18:26,960
what happened to the money after that, because in the

304
00:18:27,000 --> 00:18:28,880
early two thousands, what they would do is you'd have

305
00:18:28,920 --> 00:18:32,720
the government give the money to grantee a say, give

306
00:18:32,759 --> 00:18:35,359
them a million dollars, and then they go spend it.

307
00:18:35,880 --> 00:18:38,440
The government only knew what they were doing based on

308
00:18:38,839 --> 00:18:40,799
what they said, like, oh yeah, well, you know, we

309
00:18:40,880 --> 00:18:43,319
spent it on good stuff, don't worry. And what we

310
00:18:43,440 --> 00:18:45,480
forced them to do in that law was to track

311
00:18:45,559 --> 00:18:49,400
subgrants and subcontracts so that they couldn't play this little

312
00:18:49,400 --> 00:18:51,680
shell game where the government sends it to one group

313
00:18:51,759 --> 00:18:53,799
they can do whatever they want because there's no tracking

314
00:18:53,839 --> 00:18:58,720
after that. The sub awards and subgrants and subcontracts. That

315
00:18:58,839 --> 00:19:01,359
was the holy grail that we had wanted to capture,

316
00:19:01,839 --> 00:19:05,559
and to this day, the government is still playing games

317
00:19:05,599 --> 00:19:09,960
with it. The particular linguistic game they're playing now is, oh, well,

318
00:19:10,000 --> 00:19:13,319
if we give the grant to grantee A and they

319
00:19:13,359 --> 00:19:16,519
sub grant it, and then that entity subgrants it, well,

320
00:19:16,519 --> 00:19:18,920
that's two levels, and you only said we needed to

321
00:19:18,960 --> 00:19:23,279
do one, so sorry, which is you know that's actually

322
00:19:23,319 --> 00:19:27,519
not in the law. They are interpreting what I consider

323
00:19:27,599 --> 00:19:30,039
to be pretty clear language about how you're supposed to

324
00:19:30,119 --> 00:19:32,839
track the flow in ways that make it easy for

325
00:19:32,960 --> 00:19:36,839
them to send out money and not be accountable for it.

326
00:19:37,480 --> 00:19:41,559
Data quality is still a huge issue. They're exempting all

327
00:19:41,640 --> 00:19:45,720
kinds of transactions from showing up in USA spending dot gov,

328
00:19:45,720 --> 00:19:49,000
which they have no authority to do. So it's awesome

329
00:19:49,200 --> 00:19:51,960
that that has been the foundation for what they're doing.

330
00:19:52,000 --> 00:19:55,480
There's still so much work to be done, and hopefully

331
00:19:55,480 --> 00:19:58,039
in this Congress we'll see some people go in and

332
00:19:58,079 --> 00:20:02,119
actually force the federal government to do what it's required

333
00:20:02,160 --> 00:20:04,839
to do by law, and that means tracking every single dime,

334
00:20:05,200 --> 00:20:06,880
not just the stuff they feel like tracking.

335
00:20:07,400 --> 00:20:11,000
Speaker 1: Indeed, our guest today is Sean Davis, CEO and co

336
00:20:11,079 --> 00:20:15,000
founder of the Federalist and Grabs you didn't know this,

337
00:20:15,160 --> 00:20:18,920
but he was there with Sandra Coburn years and years ago,

338
00:20:19,319 --> 00:20:24,960
back almost twenty years ago, putting together what became WW

339
00:20:25,200 --> 00:20:28,359
That's what we used to say back in the day. Www.

340
00:20:28,480 --> 00:20:33,359
Dot USA spending, dot GUV, a Google like search engine

341
00:20:33,359 --> 00:20:36,160
that allows every citizen to see how their tax dollars

342
00:20:36,599 --> 00:20:39,519
are being spent and where, and Sean, you know what

343
00:20:39,559 --> 00:20:42,960
it did for me. I'm old enough. This is how

344
00:20:43,000 --> 00:20:46,640
old I am. I remember a time when journalists used

345
00:20:46,680 --> 00:20:50,559
to love going into these kinds of files and catching

346
00:20:50,839 --> 00:20:57,839
government bad actors abusing taxpayer dollars for whatever their motivations

347
00:20:57,960 --> 00:21:02,559
might be. This really helped journalists, journalists who really wanted

348
00:21:02,599 --> 00:21:05,759
to do the work of watchdog, I think as much

349
00:21:05,799 --> 00:21:06,559
as anybody.

350
00:21:07,079 --> 00:21:11,920
Speaker 3: Oh, it absolutely did. And I've always had kind of

351
00:21:11,960 --> 00:21:15,839
the mind and itch of an investigator. I've never trusted

352
00:21:15,960 --> 00:21:18,920
stuff that I only hear from sources. You know, journalists

353
00:21:18,960 --> 00:21:21,319
love to just hear something from sources and that's it

354
00:21:21,400 --> 00:21:24,599
and they go with it. I have always loved source documents,

355
00:21:24,799 --> 00:21:27,640
like going back to my days as an intern, going

356
00:21:27,680 --> 00:21:31,160
back to being a chief investigator or for doctor Coburn,

357
00:21:31,559 --> 00:21:35,400
because documents generally don't lie. Now, you have to interpret

358
00:21:35,400 --> 00:21:38,839
them correctly. You have to understand the context. But what

359
00:21:38,880 --> 00:21:42,680
the document says it says, and what the numbers say

360
00:21:42,759 --> 00:21:45,400
or what they say, you can't really mess with them.

361
00:21:46,039 --> 00:21:50,400
And to see journalists now have no curiosity. You know,

362
00:21:50,480 --> 00:21:53,920
we gave them a gold mine of information to go into,

363
00:21:54,279 --> 00:21:56,319
and if a Republican's president, they can use it to

364
00:21:56,319 --> 00:21:58,880
smack Republicans, and if a Democrats president, they can use

365
00:21:58,880 --> 00:22:02,079
it to smack Democrats. It's a wonderfully bipartisan tool. It

366
00:22:02,119 --> 00:22:05,200
has no ideology. And yeah, there used to be a

367
00:22:05,240 --> 00:22:08,599
time where really good journalists all they wanted to do

368
00:22:08,799 --> 00:22:11,319
was go sit down with you stack of documents they

369
00:22:11,319 --> 00:22:14,839
got from sources, go through spending receipts, look at billing

370
00:22:14,880 --> 00:22:17,880
invoices and all that stuff that there's just so much

371
00:22:18,039 --> 00:22:21,759
amazing information you can get in there. They're their own

372
00:22:21,839 --> 00:22:25,640
treasure maps, essentially. And it's just so interesting to see

373
00:22:25,680 --> 00:22:30,440
now how incurious so many corporate journalists are. All they

374
00:22:30,440 --> 00:22:34,519
want to do is repeat whatever deep state goon tells

375
00:22:34,559 --> 00:22:37,359
them that they know is probably not true, but it

376
00:22:37,400 --> 00:22:39,200
helps them create a narrative. And that's all they care

377
00:22:39,200 --> 00:22:41,319
about anymore. All they care about is the narrative. They

378
00:22:41,319 --> 00:22:43,960
don't care about the facts or the data, even though

379
00:22:43,960 --> 00:22:46,519
we gave them a tool that didn't cost them a

380
00:22:46,559 --> 00:22:49,920
dime to do what journalists should do, and so many

381
00:22:50,000 --> 00:22:50,880
of them just ignore it.

382
00:22:51,359 --> 00:22:56,559
Speaker 1: Mendy. It's painfully obvious, particularly with this story and the

383
00:22:56,599 --> 00:23:00,599
corporate accomplished media's. You know, the way they handled the

384
00:23:00,640 --> 00:23:04,720
first opening weeks of the Trump administration not surprising to anyone.

385
00:23:04,880 --> 00:23:09,720
I'll close with this briefly. We were talking about surprises

386
00:23:10,359 --> 00:23:13,400
at the outset of our conversation. One thing that did

387
00:23:13,480 --> 00:23:17,160
surprise me when you said there were two senators who

388
00:23:18,759 --> 00:23:23,519
would not go along with this transparency bill, and when

389
00:23:23,559 --> 00:23:26,440
you said their names, that didn't surprise me. Robert Bird,

390
00:23:26,920 --> 00:23:32,000
Ted Stevens again, as you noted, notorious for big government,

391
00:23:32,119 --> 00:23:35,400
big time spending. I almost thought you were going to

392
00:23:35,440 --> 00:23:39,480
say Joe Biden was one of the holdouts, not the case.

393
00:23:39,559 --> 00:23:44,039
Speaker 3: Huh No, No, it definitely wasn't him. It was the

394
00:23:44,079 --> 00:23:46,960
two big appropriators, because what we were doing was a

395
00:23:47,000 --> 00:23:51,039
gigantic threat to appropriations, because once people could see how

396
00:23:51,079 --> 00:23:53,759
they were spending their money, they were going to call shenanigans.

397
00:23:54,079 --> 00:23:58,359
I'm trying to remember if Biden was even a co sponsor.

398
00:23:58,400 --> 00:24:02,359
I know Tom Carper was his colleague from Delaware because

399
00:24:02,400 --> 00:24:05,000
he was on the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee

400
00:24:05,599 --> 00:24:07,079
with Coburn, and they generally had.

401
00:24:06,960 --> 00:24:08,039
Speaker 2: A pretty good relationship.

402
00:24:08,279 --> 00:24:10,759
Speaker 3: We had a decent relationship at the staff level with

403
00:24:10,799 --> 00:24:12,640
their people, and I think Carper was one of the

404
00:24:12,640 --> 00:24:15,920
first ones on. I genuinely don't remember if Biden was

405
00:24:15,960 --> 00:24:17,799
a co sponsor, but he certainly didn't get in the

406
00:24:17,799 --> 00:24:21,559
way at the time. He was busy being obsessed with

407
00:24:21,599 --> 00:24:26,000
all his I'm sure not corrupt at all Horn Relations

408
00:24:26,000 --> 00:24:27,160
Committee projects.

409
00:24:27,400 --> 00:24:29,799
Speaker 1: Yeah, the big guy needed to get paid. We know that.

410
00:24:30,200 --> 00:24:32,680
At the end of the day, I really appreciate it.

411
00:24:32,720 --> 00:24:35,839
I think this is tremendously important to look back at

412
00:24:35,880 --> 00:24:38,880
the roots of what's going on today Without this, and

413
00:24:39,119 --> 00:24:41,640
I think so many ways, I don't know if we

414
00:24:41,720 --> 00:24:44,319
have the kind of audits that we're seeing today. It's

415
00:24:44,359 --> 00:24:46,119
just it's a remarkable time in America.

416
00:24:47,920 --> 00:24:49,359
Speaker 2: It is God bless America.

417
00:24:49,680 --> 00:24:52,279
Speaker 3: And it's also awesome to see a bunch of whiz

418
00:24:52,400 --> 00:24:56,000
kids going at it. You have the Democrats get mad. Oh,

419
00:24:56,119 --> 00:24:58,319
these are just kids. They're twenty twenty two years old.

420
00:24:59,119 --> 00:25:04,119
Those people at that age do impossible things because they

421
00:25:04,119 --> 00:25:07,079
don't think they're impossible. They haven't yet been told by

422
00:25:07,119 --> 00:25:08,920
the world that they can't do that, or you're not

423
00:25:08,960 --> 00:25:10,960
allowed to do that, or that's not how things work.

424
00:25:11,519 --> 00:25:14,480
And you know, it's that age group of people that

425
00:25:14,519 --> 00:25:16,640
helped found this country. A lot of the founders were

426
00:25:16,680 --> 00:25:20,599
in their twenties when they came over and started agitating

427
00:25:20,920 --> 00:25:24,279
to give us our independence. So I think it's really

428
00:25:24,319 --> 00:25:29,319
inspiring seeing people of that generation going in and doing

429
00:25:29,359 --> 00:25:31,720
things people are trying to tell them is impossible, and

430
00:25:31,759 --> 00:25:34,440
being led by a guy who decided he was going

431
00:25:34,480 --> 00:25:36,799
to relaunch rockets and then catch them with chopsticks. So

432
00:25:36,839 --> 00:25:40,279
it's just amazing things happening in America right now.

433
00:25:40,759 --> 00:25:44,240
Speaker 1: Absolutely, look what the cruel is the cruel tables doing

434
00:25:44,319 --> 00:25:48,720
New York Magazine crop this right What Sean Davis was

435
00:25:48,720 --> 00:25:52,279
talking about was absolutely so critical. What is so important

436
00:25:52,319 --> 00:25:57,160
about the DOGE, the Department of Government efficiency, What the

437
00:25:57,480 --> 00:26:01,880
accomplice media and the leftist screen about it constantly miss

438
00:26:02,759 --> 00:26:06,279
is the fact that this is your money. This is

439
00:26:06,400 --> 00:26:11,680
the American taxpayer's money, and we are talking about hundreds

440
00:26:11,759 --> 00:26:15,359
upon hundreds of billions of dollars being wasted in your

441
00:26:15,480 --> 00:26:20,079
name on all kinds of strange programs. I wrote about

442
00:26:20,119 --> 00:26:25,799
this in a piece for the Federalists called Doge is

443
00:26:25,920 --> 00:26:29,720
Deadly to the Swamp and a ray of light for

444
00:26:29,839 --> 00:26:34,559
the American taxpayer. And I firmly believe that we are

445
00:26:34,599 --> 00:26:38,680
getting a much better look at the cancer that is

446
00:26:38,799 --> 00:26:44,559
killing this republic, this criminally wasteful and abusive spending of

447
00:26:44,599 --> 00:26:48,839
our money. The Doge is proving to be a pretty

448
00:26:48,920 --> 00:26:52,440
powerful MRI. I say that because think about it this way.

449
00:26:52,480 --> 00:26:55,559
A doctor tells her sick patient, I've got good news

450
00:26:55,640 --> 00:26:58,799
and bad news. You have an aggressive form of cancer,

451
00:26:58,839 --> 00:27:02,880
but I think we can make you better. Stunning news,

452
00:27:02,880 --> 00:27:05,880
but thank god, there's hope, right, there's a way forward.

453
00:27:07,279 --> 00:27:12,400
Instead of being relieved, though, imagine the patient furiously denying

454
00:27:12,440 --> 00:27:16,000
the diagnosis and screaming at the doctor, how dare you,

455
00:27:16,640 --> 00:27:21,240
in the parlance Gretathundberg, how dare you tell me I

456
00:27:21,319 --> 00:27:24,880
have cancer? I don't have cancer. You're the one who's sick.

457
00:27:26,680 --> 00:27:29,480
It's basically what we're hearing from the left, the prof

458
00:27:29,599 --> 00:27:35,039
depress and a Democrat party doubling down on insanity. As

459
00:27:35,200 --> 00:27:40,279
the Department of Government Efficiency begins detailing the diseases sickening

460
00:27:40,279 --> 00:27:46,559
the body politic and devouring taxpayer dollars. I mean, it

461
00:27:46,640 --> 00:27:52,759
is absolutely stunning to me to see the Left and

462
00:27:52,839 --> 00:27:57,759
its army of accomplish media reporters talk about and rail

463
00:27:57,960 --> 00:28:02,279
against how awful it is that the American people see

464
00:28:02,319 --> 00:28:06,920
the abusive spending that is going on on all kinds

465
00:28:06,960 --> 00:28:13,759
of insane programs and initiatives. I mean, we are talking

466
00:28:13,880 --> 00:28:23,000
about programs that just defy absolute logic. And just think

467
00:28:23,039 --> 00:28:31,279
about what the average American earns, particularly in very difficult

468
00:28:31,359 --> 00:28:35,799
inflationary times over the last few years in this country,

469
00:28:37,000 --> 00:28:44,759
and how those earnings by inflation have been basically siphoned out.

470
00:28:46,279 --> 00:28:50,519
And yet we have the spending on the sorts of programs,

471
00:28:50,599 --> 00:28:56,720
the DEI programs, the programs, the funding in Guatemala for

472
00:28:57,359 --> 00:29:03,480
sex changes. My colleague Tristan Justice did a great job

473
00:29:03,559 --> 00:29:08,799
at looking into these kinds of programs where you're seeing

474
00:29:09,079 --> 00:29:12,440
money spent all over the world and as we note,

475
00:29:13,400 --> 00:29:20,039
millions upon millions of dollars paying for corporate media outlets

476
00:29:21,200 --> 00:29:28,039
to favorably cover the government that is so badly spending

477
00:29:28,079 --> 00:29:33,880
your money. These are remarkable times. These are critical times,

478
00:29:34,599 --> 00:29:37,440
and you're going to hear a lot more of the

479
00:29:37,559 --> 00:29:42,279
gnashing of teeth from the left and their partners in

480
00:29:42,319 --> 00:29:46,000
the public relations firm known as corporate media. It is

481
00:29:46,079 --> 00:29:51,240
absolutely critical that news organizations like The Federalist and others

482
00:29:51,960 --> 00:29:56,160
keep shining a light on the light that the Doge

483
00:29:56,559 --> 00:30:00,079
is shining again. I want to thank my guest today,

484
00:30:00,359 --> 00:30:05,559
Davis CEO and co founder of The Federalist. You have

485
00:30:05,720 --> 00:30:08,440
been listening to another edition of the Federalist Radio Hour.

486
00:30:08,960 --> 00:30:12,839
I'm Matt Kittle, senior elections correspondent at The Federalist. We'll

487
00:30:12,880 --> 00:30:16,119
be back soon with more. Until then, stay lovers of

488
00:30:16,160 --> 00:30:18,279
freedom and anxious for the frame