All right, let's talk about some waste, baby. We hate waste. We don't mind spending money in this house, but we just hate wasting it. I'm sure you feel the same way about your country, although I don't want to spend any more money or wasting it. So let's talk about it. How much this is all really cost us? And for that, let's go to the expert. Jeremy Portnoy, investigative journalist and author of Open the Books. Waste of the Day column on Real Clear. He's at Jeremy Portnoy, and we're happy to have him right now on Talk Creator 1210,

W PhD. Jeremy, thanks for making the time for us today. We talk about waste. We hear that word a lot,

the W word. I guess the first thing I'd say is, to the people who get the money, it probably

doesn't feel like waste to them. They're probably loving this.

Yeah, I mean, there's plenty of money to go around, unfortunately, in the government.

You're seeing that everywhere.

What we've been doing is actually tracking spending at every federal agency listed in the federal register,

trying to see how that's increased over time.

So we started back in 2000, traced it to 2025, and we're seeing

almost every agency, unsurprisingly, just soaring and spending up to 500%, 1,000% in some instances

almost all across the board. You know what really drives me crazy from your report from Open

the Books is EPA spending, up 569%. Let's just round up and say 570%.

That's insane to me. The EPA is the single most annoying federal agency because you know that

that spending went towards busting the chops of small businesses and private landowners too.

It's crazy. And not everyone realizes those numbers because the employee headcount has actually

gone down since 2000. So that's the argument a lot of people use to say, oh, the government

isn't getting much bigger. We don't need to cut this waste. But then when you track the spending,

like you said, it's up 570%. Most of that increase came under Biden. And a lot of it's going to

these nonprofits that are now exerting a lot of it's going to these nonprofits

that are now exerting a lot of influence over government and in some cases affecting

congressional law through sue and settle arrangements and other deals where they really get

a lot of control over how things are doled out. Yeah, the sue and settle arrangements are

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