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WLW Radio’s Dan Carroll interviews TCC President Jim Pfaff on government spending.

Published: February 27, 2025
Network: The Conservative Caucus
Analysis: Conservative Caucus President Jim Pfaff

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The Conservative Caucus President Jim Pfaff joined WLW Radio’s Dan Carroll to discuss the staggering scale of government spending waste being uncovered by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), including nearly $5 trillion in unaccounted federal expenditures. The conversation revealed how decades of bureaucratic entrenchment have created a system designed to hide fraud and waste from congressional oversight, with Washington DC’s power structure now threatened as the Trump administration works to expose and eliminate wasteful programs that have enriched political operatives and created a bloated federal workforce.

Topics Covered

• The Crisis Facing Washington’s Political Class
• Unprecedented Government Spending Waste Revealed
• The Wealth of Washington DC and Federal Salaries
• Decades of Hidden Books and No Transparency
• The Reality of Federal Workplace Culture
• From Clinton Surpluses to Today’s Crisis
• The Stacy Abrams Example: $2 Billion in Political Payoffs
• Key Takeaways

The Crisis Facing Washington’s Political Class

According to Pfaff, the current political environment in Washington represents an existential threat to those who have built careers on managing the flow of taxpayer dollars. “In Washington DC, money equals power,” Pfaff explained. “If you no longer have access to ladle out that government largess, what does that do to your power? That diminishes your power.”

The capital is filled with individuals who, in Pfaff’s assessment, “couldn’t make anywhere near the kind of living that they make here except for government paying them on the salary schedule.” These high-earning bureaucrats, many making six-figure salaries in what Pfaff notes is a region containing “six of the 10 wealthiest counties in the United States of America,” lack the private sector skills to justify their compensation levels.

“Washington DC is filled with people who probably couldn’t make anywhere near the kind of living that they make here except for government paying them on the salary schedule that is provided.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus

Unprecedented Government Spending Waste Revealed

The scale of government spending waste being uncovered by DOGE has shocked even seasoned Washington insiders. Pfaff discussed several jaw-dropping findings, including reports of $2.7 trillion in Medicaid funding allegedly spent overseas and a “black hole in the treasury” accounting for $4.7 trillion in unaccounted spending.

“Almost $5 trillion in spending and just, you know, we really didn’t keep too close a watch on that money. Are you kidding me?” Carroll exclaimed during the interview, expressing the disbelief many Americans feel upon learning these figures.

Pfaff noted that even members of Congress had no idea the problem was this severe. Former Congressman Brad Wenstrup told him directly: “I had no idea it was this bad.” The bureaucracy had developed “multiple ways of keeping the prying eyes of the elected officials who had proper oversight of these agencies from really looking at the bottom line.”

The Wealth of Washington DC and Federal Salaries

The concentration of wealth in the Washington DC metropolitan area serves as evidence of how government spending waste has enriched the region. Pfaff emphasized that the area contains six of the nation’s ten wealthiest counties, with federal employees making “high six-figure incomes all around Washington DC.”

This wealth accumulation stands in stark contrast to the skill sets of many federal workers. “The vast majority of them have no skill set to make the kind of money that they’re making,” Pfaff stated bluntly. The implication is clear: these salaries are sustained not by market value or productivity, but by the continuous flow of taxpayer dollars through an opaque bureaucratic system.

Decades of Hidden Books and No Transparency

Perhaps the most alarming revelation in the interview was Pfaff’s disclosure that Congress has not had open access to executive branch financial records since 1947—nearly 80 years of operating in the dark.

“It has been since 1947 since Congress has had open access to the books in the executive branch. To try to get the information that you want to get to figure out what’s going on in the executive branch is insanely impossible.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus

Drawing on his experience as Chief of Staff to two members of Congress—Tim Huelskamp of Kansas and Brad Wenstrup of Ohio—Pfaff described the frustration of trying to obtain basic financial information. “This system is designed to allow the kind of fraud to take place that is taking place,” he explained.

While Congress technically holds “the absolute power of the purse,” the practical reality is that they’ve allowed a system to develop where they cannot effectively track or control spending. The lack of transparency has enabled government spending waste to flourish unchecked for generations.

The Reality of Federal Workplace Culture

Carroll shared a revealing anecdote from social media that illustrates the workplace culture problems within federal agencies. A woman who worked for the Army Corps of Engineers described a workplace where employees were “asleep at their desk” when she arrived, where people working from home ran other businesses on government time, and where one individual “ran a farm” while supposedly working his federal job.

This led to a discussion of what Pfaff confirmed as the “80-20 rule”—the reality that approximately 20% of federal employees do 80% of the work, while the remaining 80% contribute minimally. “Everything you described is absolutely true and then more,” Pfaff confirmed from his Washington DC vantage point.

Carroll noted that his Washington friends were critical of his coverage, defending federal workers who were losing jobs. But Pfaff pushed back on this “DC attitude,” arguing that “these people that are losing their job in Washington DC…really should never have these jobs to begin with.”

From Clinton Surpluses to Today’s Crisis

Pfaff provided important historical context for understanding how government spending waste reached its current levels. While acknowledging he’s “no fan of Bill Clinton,” Pfaff noted that Clinton had a Republican Congress “determined to make some reforms,” resulting in “a couple years in the 90s where we were running surpluses.”

The turnaround was so dramatic that by 2000-2001, the Office of Management and Budget projected the national debt could be paid off by 2013 if the trend continued. “I’ll send you the Wall Street Journal article,” Pfaff told Carroll, promising documentation of this forgotten moment in fiscal history.

However, that progress was abandoned. Federal spending increased from approximately $4.5 trillion in 2019 to $7 trillion today—much of it due to COVID-19 spending that was never rolled back. “No one’s willing to go back even on inflation-adjusted basis to 2019 levels,” Pfaff lamented. “If they did, we would have a balanced budget.”

Pfaff traced the roots of current government spending waste back over a century: “This is the end of a progressive project that began in the Wilson Administration more than a hundred years ago, expanded in FDR’s time in office, and got even worse in LBJ’s time in office. This thing has just metastasized under a progressive mindset.”

The Stacy Abrams Example: $2 Billion in Political Payoffs

As a concrete example of how government spending waste functions as a political payoff system, Pfaff highlighted the case of Stacy Abrams. The EPA earmarked $2 billion for her organization—despite Abrams having no apparent expertise in environmental issues.

“I don’t think her expertise in energy even rises to the Hunter Biden level,” Carroll quipped, with Pfaff agreeing that Abrams has no “skills that are discernible to me other than politics.”

The trajectory of Abrams’ organization tells the story: it had just $100 to its name in 2023, then suddenly stood to receive $2 billion in federal funding in 2024. “That’s a $2 billion payoff,” Carroll stated plainly.

“You’ve got government employees who are Democrats and they’re political operatives and then you got people like Stacy Abrams getting two billion with a B dollars for her organizations and she doesn’t have any skills that are discernible to me other than politics. That is absurd.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus

Pfaff connected this to the broader problem: “We just built up a brand new spoil system. So you’ve got government employees who are Democrats and they’re political operatives and then you got people like Stacy Abrams getting two billion with a B dollars.”

This case exemplifies how government spending waste isn’t just about inefficiency—it’s about using taxpayer dollars to reward political allies and maintain power structures.

The Trump Administration’s Approach

Pfaff expressed cautious optimism about the current administration’s efforts to address government spending waste. He recalled predicting during the 2016 campaign that Trump would “kick over the trash cans in Washington” and “expose everything that’s going on”—which is exactly what has happened.

The DOGE initiative has only begun scratching the surface. “They’ve got the US AID, they’ve just started to take a look at the Department of Education, they just went into the IRS,” Pfaff noted. “This is a tiny part of government yet. They haven’t fully gotten into DOD. No one’s talking about yet having gotten into USDA, which is just one of the most absurd agencies that we have in the federal government.”

Pfaff emphasized that Trump’s executive orders are largely within presidential authority: “The vast majority of what he’s doing in these executive orders is under his authority as the executive.” If the current pace continues for four years, and potentially through a subsequent administration, “we will have in the executive branch gone 12 years under a totally new way of doing business.”

However, Pfaff identified Congress as “the weak link,” noting that Republicans “have been unwilling to fully go down this path.” They’ve continued continuing resolutions that maintain Nancy Pelosi-era spending levels rather than making the tough choices necessary to truly address government spending waste.

Key Takeaways

1. Unprecedented Scale of Waste – DOGE has uncovered nearly $5 trillion in unaccounted government spending waste, including $2.7 trillion in Medicaid funds allegedly spent overseas and $4.7 trillion in a treasury “black hole.”
2. Systemic Lack of Transparency – Congress has not had open access to executive branch financial records since 1947, creating a system designed to hide fraud and waste from oversight.
3. Unearned Wealth Concentration – Washington DC contains six of America’s ten wealthiest counties, enriched by federal employees making high six-figure salaries despite lacking equivalent private sector skills.
4. Dysfunctional Workplace Culture – The “80-20 rule” prevails in federal agencies, where 20% of employees do 80% of the work while others sleep at desks, run side businesses, or otherwise fail to perform their duties.
5. Political Payoff System – Government spending waste includes billions in political payoffs to allies like Stacy Abrams, whose organization received $2 billion in EPA funding despite having no relevant expertise and only $100 in assets the previous year.
6. Historical Context Matters – The current crisis represents the culmination of progressive policies dating back over a century, with brief periods of reform (like the Clinton-era surpluses) quickly abandoned.
7. Congress Is the Weak Link – While the Trump administration pursues aggressive reforms through executive action, congressional Republicans remain unwilling to make the spending cuts necessary to truly solve the problem.
8. Reform Requires Sustained Effort – Meaningful change requires at least 12 years of consistent policy—four years under Trump and eight under a like-minded successor—to fundamentally alter how the federal government operates.

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About The Conservative Caucus:
The Conservative Caucus is a grassroots public policy action organization, formed in 1974. Headed by President Jim Pfaff, the Caucus is committed to advancing free enterprise, limited government, and traditional values.

Originally broadcast February 27, 2025 on The Conservative Caucus.