Episode 948: ‘Moneyball’ for Politics
Newt's World
Gingrich 360
4.6 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 22 February 2026
⏱️ 31 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Newt talks with John Hart, CEO of Open the Books. Open the Books is a non-profit that operates the largest private database of public spending, encompassing 10 billion data points, including federal salaries, state checkbooks, and municipal spending. Their mission is to make this information accessible to journalists, researchers, activists, public officials, and taxpayers in near real-time. They have partnered with Citizen Portal to integrate artificial intelligence, allowing taxpayers to compare political statements with actual spending. This collaboration aims to prevent fraud by using AI for pattern recognition and prediction, similar to how Galileo's telescope revolutionized astronomy. The initiative, called Aqueduct, seeks to enhance citizen engagement by providing clear insights into government spending. The collaboration is expected to have a significant impact on government transparency both in the U.S. and globally.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is an I-Heart podcast. |
| 0:02.3 | Guaranteed Human. |
| 0:08.7 | On this episode of NUTS World, |
| 0:11.3 | hope in the books operates the largest private database of public spending ever in history. |
| 0:18.0 | 10 billion points of data that includes all federal salaries, line-by-line spending by |
| 0:25.1 | the feds, all 50 state checkbooks, including their own line-by-line spending each year, plus |
| 0:32.3 | millions of state-level salaries and pension funds and spending across more than 17,000 municipalities. |
| 0:42.3 | Their goal is to capture every dime and put it online, and as close to real-time as possible. |
| 0:49.3 | Their database is open to journalists, researchers, activists, public officials, and most importantly, every American taxpayer. |
| 1:00.0 | Now, open the books as joining forces with Citizen Portal to create a first-of-its-kind tool combining the largest private database of government spending with artificial intelligence. |
| 1:15.0 | The new database has indexed over a million hours of public official remarks and meetings. |
| 1:22.6 | For the first time, taxpayers can compare what politicians say with what they do and spend all in one place. |
| 1:31.7 | This is an amazing achievement, and that's why I'm really pleased to welcome my guest, John Hart, the CEO of Open the Books. |
| 1:55.6 | Thank you. of open the books. John, welcome me, and thank you for joining me on Newt's World. |
| 1:59.6 | Well, Mr. Speaker, it is an honor and a privilege. |
| 2:01.8 | Thank you for taking the time to have this conversation. |
| 2:04.6 | Well, you know, this seems to be a remarkable period for talking about fraud and misspending and corruption. |
| 2:12.5 | You know, recent federal investigations uncovered over a billion dollars in fraud across several |
| 2:19.1 | Minnesota schemes with nearly 100 people already charged. From your perspective, how does something |
| 2:26.1 | of that scale actually happen? How do you get to a point where state government manages to |
| 2:31.9 | spend a billion dollars on fraud? I think it happens because we've |
| 2:36.6 | lost touch of our founding principles and our first principles. And our founders were obsessively |
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