Jeff Flake

Mr. FLAKE

Mr. FLAKE. Madam Speaker, reserving the right to object, I have a few concerns. Early this year when authorizations came to the floor, authorization bills and the CR and also last year with appropriation bills and in previous years, it is a common practice to have the report come to the floor very late in the day. In fact, for the Intelligence authorization bill, I believe the report came to the floor a few hours after the deadline for submission for earmarks. What assurance do we have that reports, the committee reports that contain the earmarks, will actually come to the floor in a timely manner? Because it will be difficult to enter into any unanimous- consent agreement on a bill if we haven't had adequate time to actually review the earmarks. I know there has been talk, there's always talk, about some 48-hour rule or 72-hour rule, but it is routinely broken. And is there any assurance that we can have on this side that we'll do better in that regard? Because the record so far this year is not good with regard to authorization bills. I know that is not your fault, but I'm concerned that we won't get the committee report in time to adequately review the earmarks in it in order to enter into a useful unanimous-consent agreement.

Mr. FLAKE. In the same vein, we now have rules that require submission of a letter. You have them in the committee now. What assurance do we have that the letters will be released to the public? For every earmark that is in the legislation, will there be a letter with the Member's name next to it, the description of the earmark, the entity that is receiving it; will that be released to the public as soon as the committee report comes out?

Mr. FLAKE. With regard to authorization, I sent a staff member to the Armed Services Committee. The staff member could not remove the list, could not make copies, had to sit and actually just make notes of the some 680 earmarks, letter request forms that were there. Is that going to be the practice of the Appropriations Committee? Will copies be available? Can outside groups come in?

Mr. FLAKE. I would submit that it's unacceptable. The reason we have this transparency, where we have letters actually requesting the earmark, indicating the entity that it goes to, the specific purpose for the earmark, is so that we make informed judgments here on floor. If all we can do is have one staff member go in, they have to wait while meetings are held, they can't go in certain rooms, they are told that they can only read from the list and take notes, not make copies. The practice in the past has been, and I am not saying that this is more a problem with the majority than it was with the previous majority, we had trouble then. But if we're going to have an open, transparent process, it would be nice to have, to actually think that you want this information out rather than holding it back as long as you can.

Mr. FLAKE. I thank the gentleman. I do hold the gentleman in high regard. It just seems to me that when the committee report is released, there is no reason for the Appropriations Committee at that time to make it difficult for other Members to view request letters.

Mr. FLAKE. All right. I just wanted it on the record that there would be. We've had it with the authorizing committee already. I just want to make sure it doesn't happen with the Appropriations Committee.

Mr. FLAKE. Good point. Another point, you made the example of the education bill last year that took some 12 hours to get through. My expectation is that there will be a lot of earmarks in that bill and many others. Last year I offered a total of 39 on all appropriation bills. I was constrained considerably. Many of the amendments that I drew up and brought to the Parliamentarian, I was told that it would be subject to a point of order because the earmark was so vague, that the language was so vague, and that it didn't refer to a specific facility. There were many amendments that I wanted to bring forward and couldn't. I don't expect that to be the case this time because we have better rules in terms of the letters, the request forms, the entity that has to be there. So what I am saying is I expect there to be more amendments brought. I think it may be unrealistic to expect us to be constrained by last year's time frame. It may be longer. As long as it is subject to a unanimous consent agreement, and Members like myself or others who want to bring additional, or maybe more than were brought last year, can still bring those forward, then I think that's the only basis that we can move under. Madam Speaker, I yield to the minority leader.

Mr. FLAKE. I know that.

Mr. FLAKE. I understand that. I know we need to move on. Let me just make one point. I think it is extremely important that the letters requesting the earmarks are made public at the quickest possible time. I will object to any unanimous consent request.

Mr. FLAKE. Oh, no, I am talking about those that are approved, that are going into the bill.

Mr. FLAKE. But what I am saying is outside groups have come as well. They would like access. I share the gentleman's pain in trying to go through and review these. That's why it would be useful at the quickest possible time to let outside groups as well review these.

Mr. FLAKE. That's what I am after. Madam Speaker, I withdraw my reservation.

Mr. FLAKE

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. I have great respect for the chairman of the Appropriations Committee, and I heard what he said about the position he's in. I don't envy being in that position, to try to wade through 30,000-some earmark requests. As he mentioned, there are some within that number that will embarrass this institution and embarrass the Members, I have no doubt of that; and I think that's part of the reason that those have not been made public. I think that is the reason that they are kept with the committee. But we are in a situation now where this well has been poisoned. If we go ahead and go through with the proposal that we simply in August list the earmarks that are being put into the bill, that are going to be airdropped into the bill later, without the ability to challenge them individually, there will surely be accusations, founded or unfounded, that people are being targeted for their opposition to earmarks, to speaking out on the floor, for speaking about them, against them or for them, or people will be favored or not. That's the nature of the game. That's the nature of the political process. So I think it will be virtually impossible to go through that kind of atmosphere without the process being tainted even further. I believe the chairman when he says that he hates earmarks. I think if it were up to him, he would get rid of them, and I would certainly support him. I don't think that the Democratic Caucus would allow that to happen because I fear that they believe, as we did as Republicans, that that's the surest path to reelection, that you protect vulnerable Members by giving them earmarks, that you spread it around in ways that you can curry favor with your constituents and your voters. I think that is a road that leads directly back to the minority, but I wouldn't propose to give advice in that regard. I think that's part of the reason we are where we are today. But all I know is that, when we have a situation, there is no perfect solution, certainly. We are in a fix now. But a situation where you have a choice of actually putting earmarks in bills with information about who has requested that earmark, what entity that earmark goes to, or balance that against a process where you simply can write a letter to the committee and ask about specific earmarks, I think that we as Members should demand the latter. I, for one, am not willing to trade in this voting card. This is a card that we all get when we are elected that we use multiple times a day on this House floor. It allows us to register our support or opposition for specific legislation. I am not willing to give this up for the ability to write a letter to the chairman of the committee or anyone else in Congress. That's a bad trade. I don't think that's a trade that anybody should be happy with. I am intrigued by the chairman's proposal to offer an amendment on each appropriation bill to strike earmarks. I would be most pleased if the gentleman would be glad to yield time if he would explain that amendment there is to offer. I will support it. I will gladly support it. So I would love to learn more about it. Perhaps we can jointly sponsor it. But until then, until then, I think the country deserves to know what's in the bills when we vote on them. We aren't well served with the process, however intended, a process that keeps earmarks secret until a time that it is too late to actually challenge that earmark on the House floor. So I think that this is a fight that is worth fighting, and I am glad that my colleagues have taken it up. I support the amendment.

Mr. FLAKE

Mr. FLAKE. I would.

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Chairman, I move that the Committee do now rise.

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the remarks of the gentleman from New York, and I do agree with him that it would be best, certainly, if the debate could center around the substance of the bill, the legislation. That's why we're here tonight; the fact that we will have 12 appropriation bills coming up, and we can't focus on much of the substance of that legislation because it won't be included in that legislation. We'll have to wait. We'll have to write to the committee and ask for a request or request for a response back. You know, a lot of us receive letters from Boy Scouts who are writing for their Citizenship in the Nation merit badge. I'm wondering if we'll qualify for the same thing by writing to the committee. I think we're entitled to a little more than that as Members of Congress. I think we're entitled to actually debate this on the floor. The other gentleman from New York who talked a bit earlier said that we're standing with the American people. I would suggest, you may want to go in and log on and see how this is being debated in the blogosphere or in the newspapers tomorrow. Let me just read a bit of one editorial in tomorrow's Roll Call, for example, and see how they're playing it. Roll Call is not exactly a bastion of the right. It mentions here, it says, ``So, on Monday, he,'' meaning the chairman of the Appropriations Committee, ``announced a new policy: Earmarks will be fully disclosed prior to the August recess after House voting, but before House-Senate conference, and may be challenged by writing a letter to the Appropriations Committee. After considering defenses from their sponsors, the chairman of the Appropriations Committee will decide whether to put earmarks into conference reports. There will still be no votes on the issue.'' The chairman of the Appropriations Committee ``reiterated this system was necessitated by time constraints that made it impossible to vet 32,000 earmark requests before upcoming votes on appropriations bills. Asked if he would revert to a policy of full and early disclosure next year, he said that he wanted to but couldn't rule out the possibility that specific circumstances would arise.'' This is what they say. ``This simply isn't good enough. The chairman of the Appropriations Committee should not only be disclosing all earmarks before House voting, but all earmarked requests. Earmarks should be open to public vetting, full debate and floor challenge.'' I have the utmost respect for the chairman of the Appropriations Committee. He calls himself a reformer, and I believe that. I've had the opportunity to debate him over the past several years on these earmarks, and I know that he is troubled by them, as well he should be. And I know that he struggles with a way to deal with them. I simply believe, and I think people across the country feel that we're better served with real transparency. And real transparency is not keeping these earmarks secret until the point at which you have no ability to challenge them on the floor, when you can simply write a letter and ask for a response. We are legislators; we are not potted plants here. We are here for a purpose. We are here to legislate. And to be relegated to just writing a letter and asking for a response is simply not sufficient. So I simply would say, Mr. Chairman, if the majority party thinks that they are with people across the country, I would beg to differ and I would ask them to reconsider that and wonder if people across the country really want a process where earmarks are kept secret until people in this body whose job it is to legislate don't have an opportunity to legislate.

Mr. FLAKE. I yield to the gentleman from Wisconsin.

Mr. FLAKE. Not one. I came to the floor 39 times and was beaten like a rented mule every time.

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for his courtesy. One thing that I didn't have when I came before, I never had the ability to know whose earmark I was challenging. Many of those 39 times I came to the floor, debated, even asked for a vote, and still had no clue, after the vote was called and it was lost, whose earmark that was. That wouldn't happen today, and I commend the Democrats for doing this, because of the rules put in place for disclosure. That is great. That is good transparency. But with that transparency, we have to have accountability.

Mr. FLAKE

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. The chairman of the Appropriations Committee mentioned that this debate is really not about the bills that we are debating this week, and in a sense, he is right. Unfortunately, that is the case. Particularly later this week, we will be debating three other appropriation bills, some of which have headroom or a placeholder for tens of millions or hundreds of millions of dollars that we don't know what that spending is. It is put in place for earmarks to be added later. So we really are not debating the real bills, and that is unfortunate. We should be. How can we as a legislative body decide whether this is appropriate spending or not when we don't know what is in the bill, when that will be added later? I am well aware of the plan to have Members request and that these earmarks later on will be somehow made public. But that is the legislative equivalent of appointing an ombudsman. Why does a body like this need something like that? We are not potted plants. We should be able to see what is in the bills. These are earmarks that should be transparent. The Appropriations Committee has before it right now some 30,000 earmark request forms that could be made public. Other Members could see them. We could see if these earmark requests are appropriate or not. But we are not allowed to see them. We won't be allowed to see them. We will only be allowed to see those few that the leadership decides that we can see, the ones that are approved later; and then once we do see them, we will have no ability whatsoever to have an up or down vote on the individual earmarks. None. That is not a legislative body. That is saying that we can't handle it, so we are going to appoint an ombudsman, in this case maybe a couple of members of the Appropriations Committee, and hope that they will sufficiently scrub these earmarks. That is simply not acceptable. To the other point, that we are simply defending what the President has done or what the administration has done, let me just take one program here that we are discussing today, and that is the State Homeland Security grant program. This program is being plussed up by, I think, about $50 million, a significant plus-up. Yet the chairman of the Appropriations Committee, I think very wisely, in the committee report indicated several areas where this grant program is being misused, where there are several frivolous programs going on. Let me just name a few of them. A $3,000 grant was given under the State Homeland Security Grant Program to the city of Converse, Texas, for a trailer used to transport lawn mowers to lawn mower drag races. For a fire department in Wisconsin, $8,000 for clown and puppet shows. That is under the Assistance to Firefighters grant program. Under the State Homeland Security grant program, $202,000 was spent on ``downtown'' security cameras for a rural fishing village in Dillingham, Alaska. Now, ``downtown,'' there is a population of 2,400. This is 300 miles from Anchorage. There are no roads linking that city to anywhere. So $202,000 for security cameras in a remote fishing village in Alaska. Keep in mind, we are plussing up spending for State Homeland Security grants by $50 million. Why in the world are we doing that? Just a few others. $3,500 for small crates and kennels to hold stray animals. This is in Modoc County, California. There are some even in my own State and in my own district; I think we are spending $100,000 or so for synchronization of traffic lights in Apache Junction, Arizona, in my district. That money shouldn't come from the Federal Government. We are making local governments dependent on the Federal Government. Why are we plussing up funding for the State Homeland Security grant program by $50 million in this bill with this kind of wasteful spending? As I mentioned, the chairman of the Appropriations Committee wisely pointed out some of these abuses. I will offer amendments to strike some of that funding. I hope that we have the support of the majority here. This is not frivolous time being spent here. We are spending far too much money. We can ill afford it. If we can't do it here, when will we do it? As I pointed out, we are not discussing a lot of the funding that is in the bills. It is off limits. We don't know what it is. It will be added later. It is secret at this point, secret from us, the Members. So I applaud my colleagues for bringing forth amendments, and I hope that we will have more time to debate it.

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, I rise again in support of the amendment. Again, we're being asked to approve a bill that increases spending over the President's request by more than $2 billion. The majority party wisely, I believe, in the report accompanying this bill, explained that there are several misuses in spending; that there is money that is being misspent. How in the world can we, then, appropriate $2 billion more than was requested by the administration? If we believe in fiscal discipline, we should act like it, and we simply can't afford to spend this much more money. I would also, again, talk about the earmark process. It seems to me that if we have a transparent process, or we require Members to actually put their names next to earmarks and to indicate the entity that the earmark goes to, that that ought to mean something, that we should be able to do something with that information. Last summer, during the appropriation process, I offered I believe it was 39 earmark amendments, and I got beat on every one of them. I was beat like a rented mule. I never got more than, I think, 90 votes, and most times under 50 for those that we called a roll call on. It was because of the process of log rolling. I'll vote against your earmark or amendment if you'll vote against the others. And so it goes. But we never had the luxury of actually knowing whose earmark that was. Sometimes, when the earmark was questioned on the floor, the author of the earmark would come to the floor and defend it. Sometimes they wouldn't. Sometimes we'd have the debate. We'd have a vote, roll call vote even, and we still had no idea who requested that earmark or what entity it really went to, because the language was very vague in the bill or the committee report. Now we actually have that information. We would have a different dynamic. If you came to the floor and said, I'm going to strike funding for this amendment, or, I'm sorry, for this earmark, because it goes to a project that is duplicative, it's wasteful, and besides, it goes to a project that maybe this Member is a little too close to, maybe that Member is getting campaign contributions that are linked to that earmark. Those are things that you can find out if you actually have the information. That information now sits at the Appropriations Committee. More than 30,000 request letters sit there right now, and we have no access to them, nor will we. We'll only have access to those few who are approved by a very few Members. And then we have the luxury of actually writing a letter and asking about the project and having the Member supposedly respond. But then to what effect? We can take no vote on it. It's all an academic exercise because we'll have one vote, up or down, on the bill and no ability to strip the earmark. So this process is simply wrong. It's been said that the majority is backsliding on commitments made on earmarks. We've seen that, unfortunately. I was pleased to see the reforms that happened in January. I have said more than once I think there were more effective reforms, more comprehensive than we did as the majority party last year. The problem is your rules are only as good as your willingness to enforce them or use them, and that's where we've fallen down. That's where we're not only backsliding, but I would submit we're actually cutting and running the other direction. And unfortunately, a process in which you have some transparency but no accountability is an unacceptable process.

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, I think at this time of night, it is good to remind those who might have been watching or listening why we are here. First, this bill is $2 billion over the President's request. So it is spending that we simply cannot justify moving forward with. The second reason we are here debating and still on, I think, the first paragraph of the bill is that the majority has decided to keep earmarks secret until this bill passes and until we get to the conference report when it will be too late to amend or to strike or to challenge those individual earmarks. That is why we are here. The distinguished chairman of the Appropriations Committee has said that if this process does not go well, we may just have to get rid of earmarks completely. That would be wonderful. I would gladly sit down for the rest of the appropriations season if we were to do that. But if we are not going to get rid of earmarks completely, at least we should have a process that even the majority party has said that we need, one that has transparency, one where we actually know what is in the bills, one that has both transparency and accountability. If you have transparency, if you have Members' names next to earmarks and an indication what entity that earmark is to support, that is a good thing. That is an element of transparency, and it is a good thing that the Democrats put that in their reform bill in January. It was a good move, and I think all of us applaud them for it. But what good is transparency if you don't have accountability with it? What good is it to know which name is next to an earmark if that request letter is just buried over at the Appropriations Committee? And none of us have seen them; there are some 30,000 earmark request letters sitting over in the Appropriations Committee. The distinguished chairman said last year that we simply had gotten out of control with earmarks and there is no way, with the staff that we have, to police these earmarks. He was right. He was right. If you don't believe him, you can ask a couple of the Members who are in prison today. We simply haven't policed that process very well. I would submit it is beyond reason that the Appropriations Committee and its staff can alone police 30,000-some earmark requests. It is simply impossible. So why not release those letters and let the other Members see them? Some 30,000, if you do the math, that amounts to 73 earmarks or so per Member. You can't expect the Appropriations Committee to police those earmarks. It is beyond them. I think they make a valiant attempt, and that is great, but it is simply beyond reason that you can police that many earmarks. So release them. Let others see them. Let outside groups and others help in that regard instead of keeping those earmark requests secret, and keeping earmarks out of the bills until those bills pass and then drop them in at a time when it is too late to challenge them. If you want transparency, that's great. Let's have it. Let's also have accountability. That is what we want with this process, and that is why we are here tonight. That is why we are only on the first paragraph of this very large bill. I would suspect until we reach an agreement that either we will have no earmarks, which would be the best in my view, until we reach that kind of agreement; or we will proceed under a different fashion, we will say we are going to have real accountability, real transparency, I think we are going to have this same kind of activity. Because I think that this institution deserves better. Certainly the taxpayers deserve better than the process that they have been given over the past several years. So I'm pleased that the gentlewoman has offered this amendment. I do support it. There will be many more amendments, I believe, tonight. I plan to offer others myself.

Mr. FLAKE

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding. This has been an interesting discussion with regard to which system is better in order to challenge earmarks: one in which you can actually come to the floor and challenge specific earmarks in a bill, or in a committee report; or have a situation where the conference report comes to the floor and you have no ability whatsoever, no ability, to bring to a vote any of the earmarks that are in there. The distinguished chairman of the Appropriations Committee mentioned that it is better to be able to write a letter to the Appropriations Committee and question an earmark than actually bring it to the floor because he mentioned that Mr. Flake brought 14 amendments to the floor last year and failed on every one of them. I actually brought 39, and I failed even more miserably; I failed all 39 times. Nineteen of them called for a rollcall vote. I didn't come close on any on them because as the distinguished Member mentioned, logrolling works pretty well. People will say, I won't vote against your earmark if you don't vote against mine. But this year is different, partly thanks to the reforms that the Democrats put in place in January of this year following the lead of the Republicans in the fall of last year where you actually said, All right, if you want an earmark, you have to sign your name and claim credit for that earmark. Of the 39 times I came to the floor last year, most times when I came to the floor I had no clue who had sponsored the earmark I was challenging. Many times we had a vote, sometimes a rollcall vote and sometimes a voice vote, and I still left the floor not knowing whose earmark that was because we didn't have a requirement that the Members claim credit for them. That is no longer the case. The Appropriations Committee right now is sitting on more than 30,000 request letters where the Members signed off and said, This is my earmark and it is going to this specific entity. That is something we haven't had before, and I applaud the Democrats for putting that reform in place. The problem is, if we go forward with what has been proposed, it won't mean anything. But here I can tell you, if I was able to come to the floor with some of those earmarks, knowing which entity it was going to, knowing which Member had requested it, and to have the media and others, the blogging community and other organizations going through and finding out what that private entity was or had that private entity made campaign contributions to that Member, if there was a tie that we didn't know about before, it changes the dynamics incredibly here because them Members have to weigh, Do I want to do that or not? The Appropriations Committee chairman pointed out there have been problems with Members and earmarks. There have been investigations and Members in jail, and there are other investigations going on. If you have good information, more information, that gives you power. When you come to the floor and are able to point specifically at earmarks, knowing which entity they are going to and knowing which Member requested them, it changes the dynamics. I would respectfully disagree with the chairman of the Appropriations Committee when he says that this process that is being put in place is superior to being able to challenge earmarks. Again, let me repeat. Under what has been proposed, we will never have a vote on any earmark; and that is simply wrong.

Mr. FLAKE. I thank the gentlelady for yielding, but we will have no vote. The process of logrolling will work just as it has in the past. There will be no vote, no ability by anybody to challenge specifically those earmarks on the floor of the House.