Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) is a non-profit organization in the United States. It functions as a think-tank, a “government watchdog,” and an advocacy group for fiscally conservative causes. The Council for Citizens Against Government Waste (CCAGW) is CAGW’s lobbying arm, organized as a section 501(c)(4) organization and therefore permitted to engage in direct lobbying. As its website puts it: “CAGW is a private, non-partisan, non-profit organization representing more than one million members and supporters nationwide. CAGW’s stated mission is to eliminate waste, mismanagement, and inefficiency in the federal government.”
CAGW and CCAGW seek to influence public policy through public education, lobbying, and the mobilization of email- and letter-writing campaigns. CAGW claims to have helped save taxpayers $1.04 trillion through the implementation of Grace Commission findings and other recommendations.
Three fights that made the name
Cases CAGW called out
- The Air Force tanker deal. CAGW was one of the critics of the 2001 plan to lease and then buy 100 refueling tankers from Boeing Co. for $23.5 billion. Congress squashed the plan after it was revealed that an Air Force official had inflated the price in exchange for an executive job at Boeing.
- The $2.3 billion railroad loan. CAGW was a prominent critic of Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) and his effort to secure a record federal loan for a railroad company that once employed him as a lobbyist. Citing an “unacceptably high risk to taxpayers,” the Federal Railroad Administration denied the loan to the Dakota, Minnesota, and Eastern Railroad (DM&E) in 2007.
- Porker of the Month. CAGW named Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.) its June 2008 Porker of the Month for accepting a preferential mortgage deal from Countrywide Financial — a company that stood to benefit from the very mortgage bailout bill Dodd was pushing through Congress.
Citizens Against Government Waste is, again in its own words, a private, non-partisan, non-profit organization representing more than one million members and supporters nationwide, with a mission to eliminate waste, mismanagement, and inefficiency in the federal government. Founded in 1984 by the late industrialist J. Peter Grace and syndicated columnist Jack Anderson, CAGW is the legacy of the President’s Private Sector Survey on Cost Control — better known as the Grace Commission.
The Council for Citizens Against Government Waste, its lobbying arm, advocates the elimination of waste and inefficiency in government through non-partisan public education programs and lobbying activities. Each year, CCAGW tabulates its Congressional Ratings, evaluating how every member of Congress measures up on key tax and spending votes.
The Grace Commission: where it all began
In 1982, President Reagan directed the Grace Commission to “work like tireless bloodhounds to root out government inefficiency and waste of tax dollars.”
For two years, 161 corporate executives and community leaders led an army of 2,000 volunteers on a waste hunt through the federal government. The search was funded entirely by voluntary private-sector contributions of $76 million — it cost taxpayers nothing. The Commission produced 2,478 recommendations which, if implemented, would save $424.4 billion over three years — an average of $141.5 billion a year — all without eliminating essential services.
The 47 volumes and 21,000 pages of the Grace Commission Report amounted to a vision of an efficient, well-managed government accountable to its taxpayers. CAGW has worked to make that vision a reality — and in a little over two decades, it has helped save taxpayers $1.04 trillion through the implementation of Grace Commission findings and other recommendations.
What Washington says about it
“CAGW researches and identifies the most blatant waste in government and shows how it can be eliminated. CAGW has a long and successful record of winning major cuts in wasteful spending without sacrificing America’s defenses.” Bob Dole, former Senate Majority Leader
House Republican Policy Committee Chairman Christopher Cox (R-Calif.) went even further: “CAGW has fought side-by-side with us for welfare reform and massive cuts in wasteful spending to shrink the size of government and the deficit.” Rep. Cox called CAGW “the premier waste-fighting organization in America.”
From 5,000 members to a million
CAGW’s membership has grown from 5,000 members in February 1988 to more than one million members and supporters today. That phenomenal growth is the direct result of taxpayers’ mounting frustration with the squandering of their hard-earned money in the nation’s capital.
CAGW is nationally recognized as the source of information on government waste, and its representatives appear frequently on television, on radio talk shows, and in print. The organization produces numerous publications highlighting wasteful spending — among them Government WasteWatch, the group’s newspaper, distributed to CAGW members, Congress, and members of the media nationwide.
The annual Congressional Pig Book Summary is CAGW’s famous exposé of the most glaring and irresponsible pork-barrel projects in the 13 annual appropriations bills — and of their sponsors.
Curious how the organization operates today? Read the companion case: CAGW — an organization to eliminate waste in the federal government.