Celebrate our 100th episode and TCS’s 30th anniversary! Join President Steve Ellis, co-founder Jill Lancelot, and former President Ryan Alexander as they reveal the untold story behind Taxpayers for Common Sense. From killing the infamous Bridge to Nowhere to becoming Washington’s most trusted budget voice, discover how this scrappy startup became the go-to source for exposing government waste. Learn their secrets for staying nonpartisan, making dry numbers compelling, and why fighting wasteful spending requires relentless optimism.
Transcript
Announcer:
Welcome to Budget Watchdog All Federal, the podcast dedicated to making sense of the budget spending and tax issues facing the nation. Cut through the partisan rhetoric and talking points for the facts about what’s being talked about, bandied about and pushed to Washington, brought to you by Taxpayers for Common Sense. And now the host of Budget Watchdog AF TCS President Steve Ellis.
Steve Ellis (00:39):
Welcome to All American Taxpayers Seeking Common Sense. You’ve made it to the right place. Since 1995, taxpayers for common Sense has served as an independent nonpartisan budget watchdog group based in Washington DC and today we’re kicking off taxpayers for common sense as landmark 30th year by diving into how this fierce budget watchdog organization is using three decades of expertise to tackle the biggest spending challenges of 2025 and beyond. You probably know TCS as the group that exposed the infamous bridge to nowhere or as the independent voice that both parties turn to when they need hard facts about federal spending. But that’s just the beginning. Right now, TCS analysts are combing through thousands of pages of federal budgets following the money and uncovering the next generation of wasteful spending before it hits your wallet. In an era of record deficits in mounting national debt, the taxpayers for common sense mission has never been more crucial.
(01:29):
And our approach staying fiercely independent, aggressively nonpartisan, and laser focused on protecting taxpayer dollars is proving more valuable than ever. Over the course of this episode, we’ll tell you how TCS is building on 30 years of success to foster what Americans desperately need. Right now, a government that works smarter, spends wisely and truly serves all its citizens, not just the politically connected. And here to help us do just that, Jill Lancelot, co-founder of Taxpayers for Common Sense and the visionary who helped launch this organization 30 years ago. And Ryan Alexander, who served as the president for 13 years and guide us through some of our most impactful victories. Jill Ryan, welcome to Budget Watchdog all federal.
Ryan Alexander (02:10):
Great to be here.
(02:12):
Great to see you, Steve.
Steve Ellis (02:13):
Great, Jill, let’s start at the beginning. It’s 1995. What was happening in Washington that made you and Rafael DeGennaro look around and say, we need to create taxpayers for common sense?
Jill Lancelot (02:25):
Back in the eighties, I headed out the subsidy foreign project at the National Taxpayers Union, and I and a couple of other folks founded the Taxpayers Coalition against Clinch River, an unusual marriage of different interests, a spectrum of right left organizations, an odd couple coalitions. This strange Bedfellow coalition killed the pet project of the then Senate majority leader. Slated to be built in his home Senate of Tennesse. And I coould see clearly that there was power in such coalitions.
(02:59):
So let’s fast forward to 1995. Raphael and I worked together to lead the green scissors effort with taxpayer conservation and consumer groups tackling wasteful spending that also harmed the environment. We received outstanding press coverage from a broad spectrum of print and broadcast media. I knew we were onto something. So in the spring of that year, 1995, taxpayers for common sense was launched.
Steve Ellis (03:31):
Jill, you called TCSA missing element in the policy landscape. What exactly was missing?
Jill Lancelot (03:38):
I recognized the need for a new budget watchdog that was committed to bringing policymakers together on common goals of tackling waste and improving transparency and accountability. Because as you said in the intro, no matter where you are on the political spectrum, no one wants to see their tax dollars wasted yet without an Eagle Eye group watching out for such abuses. This is exactly what occurs time and time again, large corporations and special interest groups have their lobbyists, but not the average citizens.
Steve Ellis (04:13):
Well, I’m certainly glad you created taxpayers for common sense. Ryan, you came to the TCS Board early on and eventually became president. What drew you to this mission of speaking fiscal truth to power?
Ryan Alexander (04:24):
I think what appealed to me most was just that it was kind of a contrarian approach of looking for things that were not necessarily the most obvious until you looked at them and then you couldn’t unsee them. So I liked that kind of looking for the hidden obvious common values and the basic line of no one wants to see their money wasted. True. One of the very rare, totally commonly held political values in the countries, which it remains the case always a question of who finds what as waste, but nobody wants to see them running waste.
Steve Ellis (04:53):
Exactly. So Jill, I have to ask you about Senator William Prox Meyer, our very first contributor, and the man who gave us the Golden Fleece Award tradition. What was that relationship like?
Jill Lancelot (05:05):
Senator Pro Meyer? I have fond memories of him. He was admired for a long, long time for his work in crusade against government waste, and his global feasting award was given to public officials for squandering the public money. So over the years while I was in T, I worked with the senator and his staff on efforts to cut wasteful spending from appropriations legislation. And as you know, Steve legislation, particularly appropriations, can often happen in the dead of night or behind closed doors. So I worked on programs such as the bloated costs of the C five military transport, as well as other unnecessary programs along with Senator Meyer and his staff. Even after his retirement from the Senate, the senator continued to be active and outspoken about government wasteful spending, and in 1999, we gave him an honorary life achievement award, and in 2000 he asked us to revive the Golden Police Award. And of course, we were honored and thrilled.
Steve Ellis (06:12):
It’s a great award and we were certainly honored to have that. Ryan, during your tenure as president, TCS really established itself as the go-to source for budget analysis, how did you maintain that reputation for being scrupulously accurate while also making dry budget numbers compelling to the public?
Ryan Alexander (06:30):
The thing that I brought into taxpayers was kind of a real commitment to showing our work and putting as much information about how we found what we found out into the public for people to challenge if that’s what they needed to do. The first time we published all of the work we had done to create earmark databases, it was, I think the third time we had done one. A lot of people asked us how we did that. I take great pride in the fact that lobbyists from Lockheed would call us and ask us if we would help them look through our database. And I think that commitment to being open about our methodology and clear about our sources, relying on relying on government sources and being really clear, that’s what we did. We were not reinventing the wheel. We were reading everything that was there.
(07:15):
So that helped propel us that and the timing of what was happening. And then I think in terms of keeping things entertaining, that’s one of those things that I think I had a good staff. I’m not necessarily as funny as all people in the world, although of course I like to think I have a decent sense of humor. But when you stare at something and read something and you kind of are looking for things, the absurdity leaps out. So the people who were doing the work and would come across the bridge to nowhere or the cold of Kaiser Sloan, which was not as well known of one of our victories, I think, but such a great story.
Steve Ellis (07:52):
Please go ahead. It was actually a golden fleece.
Ryan Alexander (07:54):
So there was a member of Congress and a lobbyist from Pennsylvania, I believe that member of Congress’s name was Flood.
Steve Ellis (08:02):
That’s correct. With an excellent mustache,
Ryan Alexander (08:04):
An excellent mustache. Also, he was ced, certainly for being corrupt by Congress, and he was from a region in Pennsylvania that was coal producing, but that the type of coal they were producing, there was less and less demand for it. So when he was in Congress, he put in a provision that certain military bases in Germany could only use this specific type of coal that came from his district in Pennsylvania that stayed on the books for 30 years, I think. And Wendy Jordan at the time national security person looked at it, remembered that when she had been a staffer, she saw it and thought it was weird, and we just kept pulling the threads. There was a lobbyist who had been on the case the whole time, as far as we can tell, this was his one client, maybe not. And so we just kind of pointed it out that this was what’s happening, and by this time, Germany in particular was coming off coal. So it was particularly absurd. And that’s the kind of thing where you have to see what’s weird and decide to figure out what it’s, and that makes it more interesting because you found out and you didn’t gloss over. I
Steve Ellis (09:15):
Certainly remember you saying that we should show our work. And it’s a little scary as an analyst because then you feel like it’s all out there that anybody can just walk away with it and take it and use it. But it really did prove the power of putting that out there because then you’re actually amplifying T TCSs ability because there are more bodies out there and people who are interested in pulling strings and reporters and individuals. And so it certainly was proof, and that’s certainly a model that we’ve continued where we show our objective analysis with the data, and then we have our subjective, what we take from the data. So hoping that even in these days where truth and accuracies under attack, we can say, here’s the facts, and then you can disagree about how to relate to those facts. And the cold deli Sloan was a great example of where you find that little thread in the bill and you just be pulling on that thread and then you really reveal that absurdity. So thank you for highlighting those, Ryan. Now, Jill, we’ve always prided ourselves on being nonpartisan, but let’s be honest, in today’s political climate, that’s not always easy. Jill, how do you stay true to that founding principle when everything seems to get politicized?
Jill Lancelot (10:26):
Well, in the past, traditionally bipartisan initiatives have been a winning strategy, no question. Last, this seems to be breaking down. When extreme rigid divisions engulf a legislative process, as is currently the case, but across the public spectrum, I believe it remains steadfast that taxpayers still want an end to wasteful and unnecessary federal spending. So since our beginnings, TCS has built an enormous level of trustworthiness with the public on tax waste issues, I believe we can still leverage this even at these times to break through the seemingly unbreakable polarized mentality.
Steve Ellis (11:11):
Ryan, you oversaw some of our biggest victories, like getting inspectors general for the Iraq and Afghan Wars, the Boeing Tanker deal, army Corps reforms, tell our budget watchdog, faithful what it takes to actually kill a wasteful program and to make sure it stays dead.
Ryan Alexander (11:27):
I always credit you with this, Steve, but I’m not sure that you actually deserve the first credit of you have to Kill, kill, kill till it’s dead, dead, dead. But I mean, it’s definitely persistence. It’s persistence and going back every single year to see if things have been renamed, if something has just been stuck somewhere else. Over the years of watching the government, the federal government, there’s always things that terms that change as appropriators or agencies are trying to be more persuasive. Cybersecurity became the name that everybody followed, but initially there would be network protections and computer assistance and capacity building all things that are actually accurate, but buried in budgets for the same thing, even when it hadn’t worked, but just give it a new name every year. So that kind of looking repeatedly, and once you have one victory, the thing about appropriations is it’s like a popcorn popper. Things can come up at any time. Just because you’ve got something taken out of one bill doesn’t mean it won’t pop up somewhere else. Doesn’t mean it won’t pop up the next year. So it’s that persistence and repetitiveness and being willing to go back and look at what you did before, what Congress is doing, what an agency said, and comparing past to present is really what it takes to make sure that things are continue to not rise from the dead.
Steve Ellis (12:47):
Yeah, it was an old lobbyist, right when I first started that first told me that you have to kill, kill, kill until it’s dead, dead, dead. But I’ve made it my own since then.
Jill Lancelot (12:55):
To follow on what Ryan, that you’re saying about how it pops up every year in the appropriations process, I was going to harken back to our very first report that launched us, which was the budget for the Living Dead, which we showed X number of programs that we thought were dead, but like the Zombies came back to life. And we did that right around Halloween. It was October, 1995. That was our first beer report to really launched us as our own organization. And it really speaks to what you say about how everybody should kill, kill, kill until they’re dead, dead, dead. They’re going to pop up somewhere.
Steve Ellis (13:36):
Certainly, and certainly there’s other examples of projects like that, like Auburn Dam, we had to kill that multiple times, other ones that fit that. So it’s a perfect illustration, and I remember I wasn’t at TCS at the time, but we still have the tape of the press coverage on that report and you stabbing through the report with a knife or a stake, I guess it was. And then one reporter doing their reporting on the report, a TV reporter and a graveyard. So that also gets to making things entertaining, as Ryan was saying as well. And you were saying to capture the public’s administration rather than just drive budget numbers. Well, we can’t talk about TCS history without mentioning the bridge to nowhere, the $233 million at least initially bridge in Alaska to an island with about 50 people on it. Jill, take us back to that moment at the Hawk and Dove when Keith dubbed the Grina Access Project with that now famous moniker.
Jill Lancelot (14:32):
Nothing like the beer or two to get their creative Jesus flowy, but I have her admit, I really wasn’t there at that very moment that Keith had the bright idea of naming it the gio. But I vividly remember the next morning when we all came to work, there were lots of high fives and cheerings.
Steve Ellis (14:52):
Well, BRINO certainly sounds better than Gina Access Project. Bill Sapphire called it the phrase that launched a thousand editorials. Ryan, what was it like watching that story explode nationally?
Ryan Alexander (15:05):
What was amazing about how much that took hold is both that it didn’t actually happen right away. It took a fair amount of repeating it to reporters and saying it over and over again. So whenever something seems like it burst onto the scene, sometimes there’s been a lot of work before that happens. So that was just another reminder that you’d never know how much work goes behind things. At the time, at the height of awareness of the idea of the bridge to nowhere, more people could say bridge to nowhere. It’s a proposed bridge in Alaska than knew who the vice president was. And at the time, the vice president was Dick Cheney. And I remember a pollster telling me that, and I was like, victory. Our very small group has just changed the vocabulary. So I mean, it was pretty cool to see it happen.
(15:48):
It was also one of those things that it did change the debate, but man, it still was hard in Congress. I mean, Senator Coburn put forward lots of different amendments and efforts to try to get rid of it, including swapping it out to help rebuild bridges and highways in New Orleans after Katrina. It took a lot to get rid of it, and while former governor Pillen deserves some credit for it, it just took a lot. So it was a meaningful, meaningful vocabulary shift. It also gave people the general idea of people are putting things in appropriations bills and we have no idea what they are, and they may have nothing to do with what needs to be done or the priorities of the country.
Steve Ellis (16:25):
And certainly to elaborate on that, the Alaska delegation somewhat helped us do our work. I mean, Don Young, when he talked about the transportation bill where he first put in a bridge, he said that he stuffed it like a Turkey. When that vote came up on the floor, which was Senator Coburn’s vote to shift the money from there to rebuilding the I five bridge in New Orleans, like you said, Brian, Senator Stevens, the senior center from Alaska was in Histrionics talking about if you voted for this amendment, I don’t want to work here. I don’t want to be here anymore. You have to carry me out of here on a stretcher. And we got single digits on that vote. But then within a year, the project was killed. And it certainly was something where just poking the bear and getting them engaged can really elevate the issue. And to that point, Ryan, during your 13 years as president, how did you see TC S’S influence evolve? We went from being a more or less a scrappy startup to having our staff testify to more than a dozen congressional committees.
Ryan Alexander (17:22):
I think one of the elements that was most important in the kind of increase in influence that taxpayers had while I was there is that we had really good staff that stayed for a long time and became experts in ways that other people hadn’t. Autumn Hannah, there are very, very few people who understand energy subsidies as well as autumn. And while that may not be the first thing people think when they think of taxpayers for common sense, if somebody is looking for information on it, they’ll get to Autumn. Eventually either staff from another Congress member will send you there. I mean, I always like to tell people that, Steve, that you had history books on the Army Corps of Engineers next to your desk just in case. And at this point, Josh has been there a long time, Josh Sewell and working on the Farm Bill.
(18:04):
So I think letting people develop expertise was one big piece of it. But I also think it is harder and harder, and it was starting to be harder and harder to stay non-partisan, but numbers don’t have parties. And starting with quantitative analysis, adding editorial comment about how we thought different decisions reflected the values that we express as what we think are common sense values helped us. We didn’t change our mission. We had opportunities to take much bigger grants to go in certain directions and echo certain party lines, which we didn’t take, which is always a little bit painful, but I feel like sticking to your knitting is the small way of saying it, but being true to our mission is what in a volatile time is what helped us really increase our profile and our influence. And the bridge to know made it easier to push things into the press because people had heard of us, but so we kept building on our own successes.
Steve Ellis (19:08):
Well, budget Watchdog, AF Faithful. I certainly know both Autumn and Josh, they’ve both been on our podcast quite a bit. And you’re right, I mean, autumn has been here almost as long as me. She came just a few months after me, and she’s been here for 25 years, and Josh is coming up on, I think this is his 18th year at TCS. And there are others that are similarly situated with long tenures, and that certainly made my job easier having people that have this experience and this longevity.
Ryan Alexander (19:36):
One of the things that I always liked about the origin stories of TCS is that Raphael Di Janero, the other co-founder, basically went out on Pennsylvania Avenue with a clipboard and did the equivalent of mall testing and asking people their opinions of different names of organizations and taxpayers for common sense one, which it should have. It’s a great name. It was a great moment when I was testifying one time, representative Vices said, Ryan Alexander, president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, the best title in Washington.
Steve Ellis (20:05):
Yep, I remember I was there. Jill, looking back on 30 years, what surprises you the most about how TCS has developed?
Jill Lancelot (20:14):
Well, to tell you the truth, I actually have to say that I am not surprised what I’ve heard, what we’ve been talking about. This is why we are still here, particularly because no one wants to see their hard-earned tax dollars squandered, and we know how to get things done. So for me, it’s a foregone conclusion that we’re still here after 30 years, we know how to do our jobs and we do it well.
Steve Ellis (20:41):
Absolutely. Jill, what drove you both to keep fighting those fights year after year? You were at TCS?
Ryan Alexander (20:49):
On a small level, you always find people who are acting in good faith in all positions. And so the search for the good faith congressional staff member, member of Congress agency staff, person who wants to really make things better is gratifying and is kind of one of the things that you want to be able to support those people and put that stuff to work. So that’s kind of a small thing, not what you do all day. You talk to those people some of the time. But I think the other thing is that it is, again, this is for me, I really loved learning about gazillions of random things and how they fit together. And it was gaining that constantly deepening and broadening understanding of how we were setting priorities as a country and not doing it sort of a job on that. That kept me going because it seemed like it was work worth doing.
Steve Ellis (21:43):
Certainly I can say that you never quite know what’s going to come over the transom from day to day and what you might be working on. You have your plans and then things can quite quickly change. And so if you do have that curious mind, like you’re saying, Ryan, that that is a value. It’s a big federal budget. There’s a lots of places to look, Jill.
Jill Lancelot (22:01):
Yeah, I think for me it’s passion. I need to be working on something that I really, really care about, and that wasteful government spending hits me personally. I don’t want my hard earned tax dollars to be wasted. I want transparency in our government and in our budget. So it’s definitely a very personal feeling that I have.
Steve Ellis (22:28):
Ryan, you mentioned in our prep that working at TCS requires you to be an optimist. Can you explain that? Because when you’re surrounded by government waste all day, cynicism seems like it would be an easier path.
Ryan Alexander (22:39):
One of the things I used to always say when I was running taxpayers is that we have a right and a duty as taxpayers to demand excellence from government. And I want my government to work well and to be responsive to people. I have to believe that at least some people who run for office are doing so in good faith. And I actually think most people run for office in good faith. They may not stay in good faith, but that they have a vision of what they want to do to make the country better. And that may have some overlap with what we’re doing at taxpayers for common sense or elsewhere, but it’s up to us to hold the government accountable. It’s up to voters, it’s up to nerds who are reading the fine print. And I think that my underlying commitment and belief that the only way democracy will work is if people remain engaged and informed is it could lead to cynicism. True. I may have my days, but I think that’s, I just believe that. I think it’s important for democracy to work and for democracy to work. We need to know what it’s doing.
Steve Ellis (23:37):
Jill, TCS has been around for 30 years, but as you’ve been pointing out, you’ve been working on these issues for a couple decades even before that. What’s been your biggest lesson about creating lasting change in Washington?
Jill Lancelot (23:50):
That’s a great question. Steve and I believe that finding hub and ground, that’s the key, working together with a single focus and really win the day
Steve Ellis (24:01):
As we kick off our fourth decade, we’re facing challenges that we’re not even on the radar in 1995. Climate change costs, cybersecurity, space commerce. I know that the national debt was less than $6 trillion in the year 2000. It’s more than 37 trillion to today. Jill, how do you recommend you adapt a 30-year-old mission to 21st century realities?
Jill Lancelot (24:27):
Well, that’s a great reflection, Steve, and I think a very smart question that we all need to wrap our heads around. So that 30-year-old mission, which is fighting Lee suspending and promoting accountability and transparency, must stay rooted in the founding principles while evolving to meet today’s reality. Guarding against government, waste demanding accountability, telling the truth about the federal budget is as relevant in 2025 as it was in 1995.
Steve Ellis (25:00):
Well, thank you, Jill Lancelot and Ryan Alexander. There you have it. Podcast listeners, 30 years of fighting government waste has taught these budget watchdogs all the tricks when it comes to saving taxpayer dollars from a missing element in the policy landscape to the most frequently cited budget watchdog in America. Taxpayers for Common Sense proves that with persistence, accuracy, and a healthy dose of snark, you can really make government work better for everyone. A huge thank you to our founding visionary, Jill Lancelot and former President Ryan Alexander for sharing their insights and their dedication to this mission. That’s more important than ever. This is the frequency market on your dial, subscribe and share and know this taxpayers for common sense has your back America. We read the bills, monitor the earmarks, and highlight those wasteful programs that poorly spend our money and shift long-term risk to taxpayers. We’ll be back with a new episode soon, so please meet us here to learn more.
