Open the Books (OTB) President John Hart oversees the largest public database ever assembled of government spending at all levels, and two decades ago, he played a central role in making this landmark transparency resource a reality while working for Senator Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) and with then-Senator Barack Obama (D-Ill.) to gain passage of the Federal Financial Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006 (FFATA).

The FFATA required the creation of the USASpending.gov website that makes most federal spending publicly available, and, in conjunction with Freedom of Information laws nationwide, enables OTB and legions of other nonprofit government watchdogs to monitor, analyze, and hold lawmakers and bureaucrats accountable for their decisions on spending tax dollars.

During a December 10 Senate hearing, Hart provided documented example after documented example drawn from official government spending data of wasteful and fraudulent Section (8)a sole source contracts awarded in recent years, including a seemingly endless list of federal aid going to Fortune 500 giants like Walmart that was actually meant to help firms owned by historically disadvantaged Americans and struggling Mom-and-Pop Main Street shops.

As it currently stands, SBA operates 8(a) set-aside programs from its Washington, D.C. headquarters and across the government in 22 other departments and agencies, and as much as 5% of all federal contracting is awarded through such initiatives. The SBA is also ground zero for trillions of dollars in benefits such as the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) established during the COVID-19 pandemic that began in 2020 and was not officially declared ended until 2023.

Journalist Luke Rosiak has devoted most of his career as an award-winning investigative reporter uncovering hundreds of billions of federal tax dollars lost to chronic — but entirely preventable — waste, fraud, and abuse found in virtually every major department and agency in the nation’s capital.

Rosiak provided the same hearing with a similarly lengthy list of examples of (8)a-based contracts and low or interest-free loans that could well have made the difference in keeping the doors open of minority-owned enterprises, just as intended by the original 1978 law that created such programs. He explains that the programs have evolved from the noble original purpose to being “the most openly abused and shockingly corrupt program in the federal government.”

One of Rosiak’s most vivid illustrations of a too-easily manipulated bureaucratic process were the 19 contracts collectively valued at more than $48 million and separately awarded by seven federal departments to a northern Virginia-based firm owned by an Indian-American who has accumulated sufficient wealth first as a Wall Street analyst and in more recent years as a government contractor to purchase “an 11,000-square foot estate, replete with a wine cellar, for $7 million.” Indian-Americans are included in the federal government’s income demographics S

“South Asian” classification, which is the wealthiest ethnic group, ranking ahead of Caucasians, Japanese, and all others.

No response was received to The Washington Stand’s request for comment from OCT Consulting.

Hart and Rosiak were witnesses testifying before the Senate Small Business and Entrepreneurism Committee’s December 10 hearing entitled “Running Government Like a Small Business: Cut Waste, Crush Fraud.” Senator Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) is the panel’s chairman, while Senator Edward Markey (D-Mass.) is the Ranking Member. The committee has oversight authority over the SBA and its programs throughout the federal government.

Ernst also provided multiple examples of deeply entrenched corruption in SBA lending, noting in her opening remarks for the hearing that many were “too outrageous to believe” but nevertheless all too real.

“I’m talking about [SBA] bureaucrats approving [SBA Paycheck Protection Program] PPP loans for applicants who used pictures of dolls for IDs. Imagine giving Barbie or Ken a taxpayer-funded loan. Not only that, but they also believed folks claiming to be over 115 years old were alive and well enough to be approved for 3,090 loans worth $333 million, including $36,000 to a 157-year-old. That is pure hogwash,” the Iowa Republican said.

But as far as Markey and Senator Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) appeared to be concerned, none of the above examples of waste, fraud, and corruption were even remotely important as the alleged corruption that they argue characterizes President Donald Trump, his family, and his political cronies inside and outside of the White House.

“Today’s hearing is called ‘Running Government Like a Small Business: Cut Waste, Crush Fraud.’ Sounds important,” Markey declared in his opening statement to the hearing. “A more accurate title would be ‘Running Government Like a Trump Family Business: Cutting Deals with Billionaires and Crushing Small Businesses.’ That’s what the title on this ought to be because this administration, the Trump administration, has chosen to focus on relentlessly attacking small businesses.”

According to Markey, Trump is doing so during his second term in the Oval Office through “tariffs, to health care, to electricity prices, to contracts. Yeah, they are focused on small businesses, crushing Main Street. Through the now-defunct Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the administration disproportionately cut contracts for women-only and minority-owned small businesses. Those are the programs they cut.”

The Massachusetts Democrat continued, “Additionally, 10% of all the contracts cut by DOGE were to veteran-owned businesses, most of whom were veterans disabled in the line of service. Can you imagine, they cut 10% of those contracts for vets? This is all since January. Well, we all want taxpayer dollars well-spent, but we should take note who this administration considers expendable. It’s those least able to defend themselves, it’s those least able to flatter or butter up with gifts to the President and to his family.”

But unlike Hart and Rosiak, Markey offered no specific examples to justify his allegations about Trump administration actions through DOGE, which he mistakenly characterized as “now defunct.” He did, however, further accuse Trump of having a “fixation” on cutting SBA (8)a spending, “which is a program that gives small, disadvantaged businesses training, technical assistance, and federal contracting opportunities for nine years.”

Markey continued, “Now those businesses are principally black and brown owned. That’s who they are focusing on, cutting that program. Those are small businesses trying to get a foothold in this American economy during this very difficult economic time, with help with health care costs, with electricity costs, and with the tariffs, all zeroing in on small businesses.”

The ranking member then mistakenly said the 1978 law that established the (8)a program was signed into law by President Richard Nixon rather than President Jimmy Carter. Nixon was president from January 1969 until his resignation in August 1974.

And he then appeared to dismiss summarily the lengthy list of real-world examples of multi-billions of federal tax dollars lost to waste, fraud, and corruption offered by Hart and Rosiak by observing that “like any federal program, there have been rare cases of bad actors taking advantage of these resources and they should be held accountable, they should be made to pay the price.”

Markey continued, “But these rare instances do not warrant an all-out assault on a program that has created good-paying jobs, provided pathways to success for small businesses and created economic growth for our country. In a hearing devoted to waste, fraud, and abuse, we just cannot avoid the elephant in the room, President Trump’s pay-to-play system to receive special status, [like] a foreign country [gifting] the president a $400 million jetliner that he gets to keep when he leaves the White House.”

In fact, Trump will not personally own the Boeing 747B given to the U.S. government by Qatar, as it was accepted for use by the U.S. Air Force and is being modified for use in the Air Force One fleet. Upon Trump’s departure from the White House in 2029, according to the Memorandum of Understanding between the two countries, the aircraft will be gifted to the Trump Presidential Library at some point in the future.

Markey also claimed private donors funding construction of a new ballroom for the White House are getting “a goldmine of government contracts,” and to avoid “Trump’s terrible tariffs, simply give a lavish gift to the president or pay to dine at Mar-a-Lago.” Markey offered no examples of “goldmine” contract awards given as a result of ballroom contributions. Much of the ballroom work is being done by defense contractors and Silicon Valley giants like Google that have billions of dollars in current contracts and are bidders on hundreds of open award processes that predated the White House expansion.

Curiously, Markey was not a signer of an October 28, 2025 letter led by Senator Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and 11 other Senate Democrats to White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles demanding a list of all donors to the White House ballroom project. The letter was inspired, according to the signers, by “troubling questions about the potential for influence peddling and other forms of corruption. To assess possible conflicts of interest and violations of law and ethics obligations, Congress and the American public deserve meaningful transparency.”

The California Democrat is infamously associated during his tenure in the House of Representatives with allegations that Trump was aided by Russian intelligence resources in defeating former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s bid to be elected president in 2016, as falsely claimed by the Steele Dossier. The dossier was compiled by a discredited former British spy agent who was not deemed credible by the FBI and was paid for by the Clinton campaign.

As Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Schiff repeatedly claimed to have documents that left no doubt at all that Trump cooperated with and benefitted from the efforts at the direction of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin of Russian intelligence to influence American voters to oppose Clinton. Schiff has never made such documents public.

Hirono’s comments were of the same vein as Markey, including multiple undocumented allegations of corruption by the president, his family, and supporters within and without government and politics. In her opening questions, Hirono claimed Ernst was demanding that the 8(a) programs be ended. The Iowa Republican responded that she was not seeking termination of the programs, but rather a pause in view of the deeply entrenched waste and fraud already uncovered while a more comprehensive audit is completed.

Hirono also asserted that “this regime has gotten rid of all of the independent entities such as the Inspectors-General (IG) who might be able to point out to us overseers about this kind of waste fraud and abuse.” In fact, Trump has terminated 18 IGs since January. There are 74 IG positions, with 38 appointed by the president, with Senate confirmation, and 36 by agency heads, without Senate confirmation. The IG system was created in 1980 by the administration of President Jimmy Carter as semi-independent watchdogs against waste and fraud.

The Washington Stand has requested responses from Markey and Hirono to multiple questions about their numerous claims during the hearing, but none have been received as of publication time.

Asked about Markey’s DOGE criticism, Hart told TWS that the Massachusetts lawmaker can easily know everything Elon Musk knows about federal spending and at the same time, make it possible for every other American citizen with a laptop and internet access to see it as well.

“If Senator Markey wants to see what DOGE sees, he should use his power as a United States Senator to give himself and all taxpayers the same level of visibility Elon Musk enjoyed, which was access to the Treasury Payment System. Real-time transparency is achievable and would build on the success of Coburn-Obama’s FFATA.”

Hart’s observation recalls the wisdom of two key influences on the U.S. Constitution, James Madison and Jesus Christ. Years after his tenure as America’s fourth president, Madison declared in 1822 that “A popular government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy.” And 2,000 years before Madison spoke, Jesus Christ explained in the Gospel of John at verse 3:20 that “for everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed.”