Jeff Flake

Mr. FLAKE

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk designated as No. 1 in part B.

Mr. FLAKE. May I inquire as to the time remaining?

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk designated as No. 596 in part A.

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

Mr. FLAKE. Let me just state, since the gentleman wouldn't yield time at the end of his statement for me to ask, with the last earmark amendment I had, the only information we have from the committee says that the money is to go to Mexico for a program in Mexico, for radios for Mexico. Afghanistan was never mentioned. If it is covered, we don't know that. But when the Appropriations Committee takes 18 minutes to mark up the bill and then brings it to the floor and then the chairman of the subcommittee won't answer a question about it, to just say, Well, it's for Afghanistan as well, that doesn't help with this process at all. And I think that will be the pattern today, whether to simply reserve time and then not yield any so we can have any kind of colloquy to find out what really is at the heart of these earmarks or what these are really for. So I hope that changes. I hope we have a real discussion here because we didn't get it in the Appropriations Committee. Remember, 18 minutes to approve a bill unanimously, with more than 1,000 earmarks in it that nobody in the full body had seen, and we only got a copy of days before the bill came out. Eighteen minutes. Anyway, this amendment would prohibit $5 million from going to fund Enhanced Navy Shore Readiness Integration. The earmark is going to Concurrent Technologies. Now, most people who have been following this process will know that name and know it well because Concurrent has drawn considerable attention due to its proclivity for earmarks. According to Taxpayers for Common Sense, Concurrent received more than $200 million in earmarks between 2001 and 2006. Concurrent technically is a nonprofit organization, with revenues in the hundreds of millions of dollars. And it is receiving earmark after earmark after earmark after earmark, although questions are raised all over the place. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Concurrent Technologies' employees have donated more than $113,000 to current members of the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee since 1998. Let me just use a chart here. This chart kind of explains the phenomenon that we will see over and over and over again. And with every earmark amendment I am offering today, this pattern exists where Members of Congress will earmark dollars; the earmark spending goes to the earmark recipient; the earmark recipient will then turn around; and lobbying firms representing the earmark recipient, PACs there, executives from the lobbying firm, executives from the company itself, contribute handsomely to Members of Congress, and it recycles again and again and again. Circular fund-raising, that's what we're talking about here. Now, I will point out that when Members of Congress request an earmark, they are forced to sign a certification letter saying that they have no financial interest. This kind of circular fund-raising is not illegal, and that's not what I'm alleging at all. But is it right? And should we, as Members of Congress, tolerate it again and again and again when these companies like Concurrent Technologies are in the news for having problems explaining what they've done with the earmark money that they've received again and again? And here we go saying, Now we have transparency and accountability, and we've changed the earmark process, and yet here we are again appropriating more money through an earmark to Concurrent Technologies. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. FLAKE. I thank the Chair. Before I start with this amendment, I want to say that I support the part of the manager's amendment that the gentleman from Pennsylvania offered with regard to the F-22 program. I'm glad that we're doing what we're doing there, and I commend the committee for sticking with what the President wanted there. I think we've done the right thing. This amendment would remove $160 million in funding for the U.S.-made first responder radios for use by Mexico's police force. This request is not classified as an earmark but is programmatic funding, and it came to my attention last week when it was featured in a story by the Washington Post. According to the article, 12 Members of Congress requested this funding which is to be used for radios with certain specifications. The article goes on to say that while no specific company is named in the bill, Motorola, which makes radios that fit the parameters set forth in the bill and which is based in Illinois, home to seven of the requesting Members, appeared to be the intended beneficiary of this funding. At the same time, the article points out that because this request is not considered to be an earmark, the Members who requested it are not required to publicly report it. Typically they have to sign a certification saying they have no financial interest in the earmark, and that was not the case here. Mr. Chairman, if it looks like an earmark, sounds like an earmark, I think it's an earmark. It ought to be disclosed under House rules, and it isn't here. Even if we accept that funding directed to a nameless company based on a certain set of requirements that only one company could provide is not an earmark, then we're met with an inconvenient problem: Why bother to make the earmark process more open and transparent when it would be just as easy to request the funding--in this case, funding that is several times more expensive than the average earmark--by calling the beneficiary a program and tailoring its description to suit the needs of one company? It's bad enough that this bill includes over 500 earmarks directed at private companies. The sponsors of those earmarks are all required to disclose their requests on their Web sites; and they even certify, as I mentioned, that they have no financial interest. But that is not the case here. They write letters, but it doesn't show up as an earmark. The Post article quotes Bill Allison, senior fellow at the Sunlight Foundation, as saying, ``It kind of makes a mockery of the disclosure requirements we have. They will disclose the little things, the $1 million projects; but when you have big-ticket items, you don't have Members willing to take responsibility for those.'' I agree with Mr. Allison's assessment. If we truly want to drain the swamp and make the earmark process more transparent, we can't continue to allow private companies to be funded outside the current House rules. I urge support for my amendment and reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. FLAKE. May I inquire as to the time remaining?

Mr. FLAKE. I have an amendment at the desk designated number 553 in part B.

Mr. FLAKE. I would submit that the gentleman knows full well that the Senate will not retain that language, that that bill will come back to the House without that language, and that we, unless we take a stand here--and we can with this amendment--and simply strike funding for those, if these companies are great--some of them are, I'm sure--then they'll win these contracts. If they're not, they won't. But the Member won't be earmarking and saying, This money needs to go to this company at this address. That is a no-bid contract. That's what the Member is seeking; and that, unfortunately, is what happens when it gets to the Defense Department. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Chairman, when we were discussing earmarks earlier in the appropriation cycle, one Member defending his earmark came to the floor and said he was getting an earmark for a university. Based on things I've read in the papers, this college does not have a lobbyist, either a Federal or State lobbyist. No one from the school has donated to my campaign; nothing at the school is named after me or is proposed to be named after me. To my knowledge, the school has never received an earmark of any sort from the Federal Government prior to this. I would ask the gentleman, the sponsor of the earmark, if he can make the same statement with regard to this earmark. Have moneys come back from the recipient of the earmark? And I would yield him time to do so.

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

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Chairman, I offer an en bloc amendment made in order under the rule.

Mr. FLAKE. Roll Call has noted that PMA, and we will get to another PMA earmark a little later, has been--well, let me step back just a bit. Sunlight Foundation has noted that Concurrent Technologies paid PMA $320,000 in lobbying fees in 2008 and received more than $14 million in earmarks sponsored by five Members, including the sponsor of this amendment. This signifies an impressive 4,463 percent return on investment. It's no wonder this process of circular fund-raising continues. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the sponsor of this earmark is reportedly among the five top recipients of PMA contributions. Roll Call noted that PMA has been the largest source of campaign contributions since 2001 and PMA and its client have provided the sponsor of this earmark with nearly $200,000 in campaign contributions since 2001.

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

Mr. FLAKE. Excuse me. I have very limited time.

Mr. FLAKE. Will the gentleman yield?

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

Mr. FLAKE. If they were, in fact, competed, we wouldn't need to earmark them. That's the point. An earmark is a way around competition. We've seen it in other appropriations bills, and it's no different here in defense. You earmark dollars because you want that company, either in your district or out, to be sure to receive that funding. That's why in the certification letters the Members say, This earmark is to go to this recipient at this address.

Mr. FLAKE. I yield to the gentleman.

Mr. FLAKE. Reclaiming my time, I would submit that if it's going to be subjected to competition, there is no reason to name the recipient organization that's to get the earmark.

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

Mr. FLAKE

Mr. FLAKE. I thank the gentleman for yielding. You know, some of us did stand up and vote against the initial authorization back in 2005, I believe it was, because we were told by our Appropriations Committee chairman, we don't have the money to pay for this. We knew it. Everybody knew it. But the reason that passed, we all know, is because there were 6,300 earmarks in it. You spread enough of that around and people are going to vote for it. There were only eight votes against it here in the House, three in the Senate. And we will likely do the same again. At some point we have got to say, let's pay for it. And for a State like Arizona, let me tell you, where we give a dollar to Washington for this highway bill and only get about 92 cents back, it is not a very good deal. We would rather keep the tax money and spend it on our own. We could get a lot more infrastructure for that, and that is our complaint, more than anything. Money is sent here, then it comes back 92 cents on the dollar, and that that does come back is restricted in ways that diminish the value of the dollar, and then it is earmarked completely. It is simply not a good deal for people around the country. So we need a new model.

Mr. FLAKE. I thank the gentleman for yielding. Here we are again: the second bout of highway robbery, taking money back into the trust fund from the general Treasury. We are told, well, sometime back in 1998, some money was taken from the trust fund into the general fund, so this is just payback. How many times can we keep saying that? It may have made some sense the first time. It doesn't the second time. It won't the third or fourth time we do this. Yet we are told we are bemoaning the fact we don't have the reauthorization on the floor this week. Thank goodness we don't. If you think we overspent what we had in the trust fund before, we are really going to do it the next time. A bill has been proposed that has twice the spending we currently have in the Highway Trust Fund, without revenue to pay for it. We don't have the revenue to pay for the one we have got. How can we double it with no revenue source? Let's get serious about things here. If we really need a place for the money to come from, I would suggest, as the gentleman did before, take it from the stimulus. But part of the problem is that we are spending for things in this bill, or in the highway program, that are probably worth spending some of the things we have seen in the stimulus. In the current highway program that we are taking money from the general fund to now fund, there is $3 million for a parking garage in suburban Chicago; $1.6 million for a bike path in Wisconsin; $1.2 million for improvements in the Blue Ridge Music Center in Virginia; $1 million for improvements to the Police Touch Museum in Pennsylvania. Why don't we rescind some of these programs in the highway bill, and we won't have to take so much money from the general fund? We can't continue to do this, Mr. Speaker. We are spending money on a suspension bill. We are suspending the rules and passing a bill that is going to cost us $7 billion. I think the limit on suspension bills used to be something like $50 million. If it does more than that, you come under a general rule; $7 billion we are spending here, and it will go almost without dissent. And that is a shame, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. FLAKE

Mr. FLAKE. May I inquire as to the time remaining.

Mr. FLAKE. It was said again that I'm just trying to delay this process. If I were trying to delay this process, I could stand up here with a privileged resolution and read every one of the amendments that I wasn't allowed into the Record. It would take hours to do that. I'm not trying to delay this process unnecessarily. This isn't a dilatory tactic. It's just about the only way we can stand and actually register objection to this closed process. I suppose I could, and this would be chilling reading, read the transcript of yesterday's court trial of an individual who, I believe, is pleading guilty in some fashion, a contractor who received earmarks and passed them on to other contractors who weren't doing any work at all. That was under a previous Defense bill that wasn't vetted, as it should have been, that came to the floor probably last year under a closed process; no amendments could have been offered. And so here we have investigations, particularly with the PMA scandal, swirling around this institution because we aren't doing our work. We aren't vetting these bills. I wish that the Appropriations Committee would, but they're not. And then when you come to the floor and say, we'd like to challenge a few of these earmarks, you say, you can challenge eight of them; 8 of the more than 550 no-bid contracts to private companies. You can only question eight of them. That's all we have time for because we have to pass this bill today for some reason. The fiscal year doesn't run out until the end of September. This is not a bill that has to be passed today or tomorrow. We can spend the time that we need, or we should have taken time earlier this year instead of doing suspension bills or last Friday, instead of passing a wild horse welfare act or whatever we did. The appropriations bills are the most important work this Congress does. And to say that we have to move through them quickly so nobody sees what we're doing, so nobody sees that we're doing no-bid contracts for private companies is simply wrong. That is the abuse of power in this institution, not bringing 553 amendments to the floor. With that, I urge opposition to the rule and yield back my time.