Citizens Against Government Waste

History

Located in Washington, DC, CAGW was founded in 1984 by industrialist J. Peter Grace and syndicated columnist Jack Anderson, former members of President Reagan's Grace Commission or President's Private Sector Survey on Cost Control. Thomas A. Schatz has been president since 1992.

In 2010, CAGW received a US$2 million grant from the Donors Capital Fund, a donor-advised fund.

Publications

CAGW produces a number of publications critical of what it calls "pork-barrel" projects. The Congressional Pig Book Summary (Pig Book) is an annual list of such projects and their sponsors.

The 2008 Pig Book identified 10,610 projects in the 11 appropriations bills that constitute the discretionary portion of the federal budget for fiscal 2008, costing taxpayers $17.2 billion. Related publications include Prime Cuts, a list of recommendations for eliminating waste in the federal government and Porker of the Month, a monthly press release.

Also, since 1989, the Council for Citizens Against Government Waste (CCAGW) has examined Congressional roll-call votes to determine which members of Congress are voting in what they view as the interest of taxpayers. CAGW makes public what legislators are engaging in "pork-barrel" spending based on 'key' votes for each congressional session.

Activity

CAGW and CCAGW seek to influence public policy through public education, lobbying, and mobilization for email- and letter-writing campaigns. CAGW claims to have helped save taxpayers $944 billion through the implementation of Grace Commission findings and other recommendations.

CAGW was one of the critics of the 2001 $23.5 billion Air Force plan to lease and then buy 100 refueling tankers from Boeing Co. Congress squashed the plan after it was revealed that an Air Force official inflated the price in exchange for an executive job at Boeing.

CAGW was a prominent critic of Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) and his efforts to secure a record $2.3 billion federal loan for a railroad company that once employed him as a lobbyist. The Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) cited an "unacceptably high risk to taxpayers" in denying the loan to the Dakota, Minnesota, and Eastern Railroad (DM&E) in 2007.

CAGW named Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.) its June 2008 Porker of the Month for accepting a preferential mortgage deal from Countrywide Financial which stood to benefit from a mortgage bailout bill he was pushing through Congress.

Microsoft's Antitrust Case (Litigation)

In 2001, the Los Angeles Times reported that at least two dead people sent a form letter by CAGW opposing the antitrust case against Microsoft to Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff. According to the Times, family members crossed out the names on the form letters and signed for them. This brought about the "Microsoft Supported by Dead People" controversy from Microsoft's and CAGW's opponents and the CAGW's response that they were not tied to Microsoft or to ATL despite Microsoft having donated money to CAGW.

Freeware Initiative

In 2003, CAGW put out a press release opposed to what it called the "Freeware Initiative", which it claimed would have required "that all IT expenditures in 2004 and 2005 be made on an open-source/Linux format."

Responding to the press release, the state's secretary for administration and finance, Eric Kriss, denied the existence of a 'Freeware Initiative' and said the state was simply considering ways to integrate disparate systems using open standards such as HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol), XML (Extensible Markup Language) and Java. "I never heard that term. I never said it. We're not pursuing any kind of 'Freeware Initiative' and anyone who is saying that is making inaccurate statements," he said.

CAGW and tobacco

The St. Petersburg Times reported that CAGW "got at least $245,000 from the tobacco industry", and subsequently lobbied on its behalf. Internal tobacco industry documents made available by the 1998 Master Settlement Agreement indicate that CAGW and its affiliates supported the tobacco industry in several instances. Specifically, in 2001 when an industry-sponsored bill entitled the "Youth Smoking Reduction Act" was introduced in Congress, CAGW provided a letter of support, despite the opposition of most public health organizations. CAGW was also contacted to by Phillip Morris to include ASSIST, a federal tobacco control program, in their Pig Book. ASSIST was considered an imminent threat to industry activities at the time.

Asked about his group's tobacco work, CAGW president Tom Schatz said, "We have always welcomed contributions to support the issues we support. Many of them have to do with fighting higher taxes and more regulations."

Other controversies

Throughout its history, CAGW has been accused of fronting lobbying efforts of corporations to give them the appearance of "grassroots" support. In part, this is because CAGW has obtained donations from Phillip Morris, the Olin Foundation, the Bradley Foundation, Microsoft, Merrill Lynch, and Exxon-Mobil.

According to the St. Petersburg Times in 2006, the Pig Book has been used to benefit corporate donors, specifically health clubs who donated to CAGW. The Pig Book listed federal grants to YMCAs who compete with those health clubs as waste. CAGW's president countered that "The Ys are there because they qualify as pork. Period."

A Senate Finance Committee investigating ties between CAGW and other non-profits and Jack Abramoff in 2006 stated in a report that the non-profits: 'probably violated their tax-exempt status "by laundering payments and then disbursing funds at Mr. Abramoff's direction; taking payments in exchange for writing newspaper columns or press releases that put Mr. Abramoff's clients in a favorable light; introducing Mr. Abramoff's clients to government officials in exchange for payment; and agreeing to act as a front organization for congressional trips paid for by Mr. Abramoff's clients."'

In 2007, CAGW supported a bill that would limit damages resulting from malpractice lawsuits. Many consumer watchdog groups opposed the bill.

"Chinese Professor" ad

The CAGW launched an ad, now commonly referred to as "Chinese Professor", which portrays a 2030 conquest of the West by China, using local Asian American extras to play Chinese, although the actors were not informed of the nature of the shoot. Columnist Jeff Yang said that in the campaign there was a "blurry line between Chinese and Chinese-Americans". Larry McCarthy, the producer of "Chinese Professor," defended his work by saying that "this ad is about America, it's not about China." Other editorials commenting on the video have called the video not anti-Chinese.

One of the extra actors who took part in the ad reported that he was lied to by the producers who told him they were filming a scene for Transformers 3. The same actor said "I saw the commercial and it’s pretty intense and one thing I did not know that the commercial would do, is put this almost red-scare type of fear in the eyes of Americans (effectiveness wise, the political ad works, not saying I agree with the tactics)." Chinese were baffled by the ad, especially by its exaggeration of Chinese economic power, given the fact that the average Chinese citizen still earns less than one-fifth of that is earned by an American citizen.