Jeff Flake

Mr. FLAKE

Mr. FLAKE. I thank the Chair. This amendment would prohibit $250,000 in funding for the Murphy Theatre Community Center, Inc. for building renovation, and it would reduce the cost of the bill by a commensurate amount. According to the sponsor's Web site, funding would go to the complete renovation of the Murphy Theatre. The theater is a focal point of downtown Wilmington, Ohio. It's 90 years old and has been in constant use since it opened. It's now in need of major rehabilitation. According to the Murphy Theatre Web site, the theater was built by the shrewd Chicago Cubs owner Charles Webb Murphy in 1918, and ``When he built the Murphy, he owned his hometown,'' it says. Mr. Murphy has his name painted on the theater's rear large wall, enough to be seen from the railroad tracks, and when the town druggist questioned the town's financial viability, he was quoted as saying, ``Dan, that's not an investment, that's a monument.'' That sounds like a great theater. I think many districts and towns across this country have something similar. The question here is, should the Federal taxpayers' moneys, should the taxpayers in the State of Washington or Wisconsin or Arizona or Alaska or elsewhere be sending their hard-earned tax dollars to Washington to be earmarked to renovate a theater in Ohio? With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Mr. FLAKE. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. FLAKE. I have an amendment at the desk, Mr. Chairman, designated as No. 8 of part B.

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

Mr. FLAKE. I have an amendment at the desk designated as No. 9 in part B.

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Chairman, this amendment would prohibit a quarter of a million dollars in funding for the Monroe County Farmers' Market facility construction and would reduce the cost of the bill by a commensurate amount. The sponsor of this earmark says in his Web site that ``these funds will be used to construct a new market facility that will promote economic development and provide added benefits to the local community.'' Farming is an important component of Kentucky's economy. According to the Kentucky Department of Agriculture, Kentucky farmers sold nearly $5 billion worth of farm products in 2007 alone. Given the number of farmers' markets throughout the State, that is not too surprising. The Department of Agriculture's Web site shows that there are more than 100 farmers' markets currently up and running in the Commonwealth of Kentucky. Nearly 200 vendors participated in these markets in 2008. Farmers' markets in Kentucky appear to be both successful and profitable. So my question is why are we saddling the taxpayers with a bill for construction of one more farmers' market? I have no doubt that this farmers' market in Kentucky has seen a drop in business as a result of the economy. Virtually every business across this country has. I also think that we could find that these earmarks do benefit the agricultural community there. That isn't any doubt. The question again here is how do we choose? And why do we say, all right, we're going to aid this one but not another one? And in particular at a time like this, why are we taking money from the taxpayers and then distributing it out as we see fit, rather than allowing them to keep it themselves? With that, I reserve.

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Chairman, doesn't the sponsor of the amendment have the right to close?

Mr. FLAKE. Oh, okay. All right. I should have known. According to the sponsor of this earmark, the funds would go for additional turn lanes, signals and a sidewalk on Rib Mountain Drive. The certification letter for this earmark refers to this particular stretch of road as the ``primary roadway in a commercial district,'' and it says that the project will ``enhance both safety and efficiency.'' I have no doubt that it will do this. I have no doubt, but my understanding is that the State of Wisconsin has a program where they grant funding for programs like this, for projects like this on a priority basis. Apparently, the State of Wisconsin didn't see this as a priority or they would have funded it, or perhaps they did, but in realizing there was a powerful Member here in Congress, felt they didn't have to because the Federal taxpayer could pick up the tab. So, here again, why are we paying for a roadway that doesn't serve an interstate purpose? This is not part of the Interstate Highway System. Again, here, it's a parochial interest, and I understand that, and the Member will advocate fiercely for it and for his right to get that earmark. Certainly, the Member, my good friend from Wisconsin, is in a position to do that. The question is why. Why do we continue with a program like this? Let me show you this chart again. Here is the appropriations chart for this year. We have all of the legislation that we have considered so far. We have just shy of 24 percent of the Members of the House. This includes the appropriators, who make up between 13 and 14 percent. The leadership Members and ranking minority members and chairmen of committees get a low of 46 percent in this bill and a high of 70 percent in the Financial Services bill. This seems to be a pattern, and it's a pattern that stretches beyond. Last year, I think there were similar spoils here. I understand that. Members, when they're here longer, apparently understand their districts better than Members who haven't been here as long, but it begs the question: Why do we continue to do this? I always appreciate when the chairman stands and says that earmarks grew under Republican rule. They did, and that's something that will haunt us, I think, forever, and as Republicans, it should. The chairman also says, when he was chairman of the Appropriations Committee prior to the Republicans' taking over in '94, there were no earmarks whatsoever in the Labor-HHS bill, not one earmark. Tomorrow, we'll consider that bill. I think there are well over 1,000 earmarks in that bill. There are over 1,000 earmarks in the bill today. There are well over 1,000 earmarks in the defense bill that we'll consider later next week. Just because Republicans ramped it up doesn't mean the Democrats have to continue it this way. Some will make the case that we've cut down the number and the dollar value. That's a good thing. Yet, when you go from zero and say with pride ``there were no earmarks when I chaired the committee before, and now there are only 1,000, and we should feel good about that,'' there's something wrong with this picture. Again, it's not just the money and the earmarks. It's not just that we're spending on a local transportation project that should be funded locally. It's that, when you get earmarks like this in a bill and when you include 1,000 of them, you gather support for a bill that, in this case today, increases overall spending by 13 percent, I believe, over last year's bill. In a year when our deficit will approach $2 trillion, we are here, saying that's okay. We'll have a big vote on this bill-- Republicans and Democrats is my guess--largely because there are so many earmarks in this bill that people think ``I've got a little piece of it, so I'm going to vote for the broader bill.'' That's what has driven up spending under Republicans and Democrats alike. When we lard up these bills with earmarks and pet projects, we grease the skids for them to pass when we should stand up and say that we cannot sustain this level of spending. Again, it's not just a Democrat thing or a Republican thing. This body, as a whole, is guilty of it, but earmarks are a large part of that, and we have to recognize it. You can cloak it in whatever language you want with regard to ``representing my constituents,'' but every constituent is out there, wanting money. I can tell you mine want to keep a lot more of theirs rather than send it to Washington so Washington can decide, well, I'm going to spend a little on a roadway in Wisconsin. With that, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

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

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

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk, a final amendment.

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Chairman, this amendment would remove $500,000 in funding for the reconstruction of Rib Mountain Drive in Wisconsin, and it would reduce the cost of the bill by a commensurate amount. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. FLAKE. I yield 30 seconds to the gentleman to finish his thought.

Mr. FLAKE. I thank the gentleman for making that point, and I have no grief for faceless bureaucrats, believe me. I don't want them running my health care. But if we don't like the way they're doing things, let's change it. Let's not appropriate the money. Frankly, this account from which these funds are drawn probably, in my view, should not exist. I mean, economic development initiatives? You can fit anything under that. And it's just an excuse to give out money here from Congress or let the bureaucrats do it. I'm not saying that we should give all of our money there and say don't do it. If we don't like the way they do it, then set up a structure and say, You have to do it by merit. And if we don't like the way you've distributed it the following year and we can prove that you did it on a basis that is not equitable, then we cut your funding completely the next year. That's what our purview is, not to say we don't like the way you do it so we're going to set up a system by which the appropriators take upwards of a low of 46 percent, appropriators and powerful Members, when they represent only 24 percent of the body, and a higher limit of 70 percent.

Mr. FLAKE. Fifteen.

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

Mr. FLAKE. He makes the point exactly. We shouldn't appropriate this money at all. This money for economic development should stay in the hands of small business before it's taxed and let them do with it as they will: cut their payroll tax, cut something else, leave it with them. Don't take it and then distribute it by means of congressional earmark or Federal bureaucrat fiat. I'm saying don't spend it that way. But if we don't like how they do it, let's not create a parallel program that is just as inequitable. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. FLAKE. The gentleman from Kentucky makes a wonderful point about overall spending. Earmarks represent a small portion of Federal spending, a very small portion. The problem is, as my colleague in the Senate Dr. Coburn calls them, the gateway drug to spending addiction. And the problem with earmarks is that when you load them up in bills, you will support bills, both the majority and the minority, that you would in no other case support. Now, take for example, in 2005, we reauthorized the highway bill. In that bill, it was a $285 billion multiyear authorization. We knew because the chairman of the Appropriations Committee stood up at that time and said, We don't have the money in this bill to fund what is being authorized. We're going to run short. Sure enough, we've run short. We had to transfer $8 billion into that bill just a while ago. We were asked to transfer another $6 billion, and there will be more and more. But you know why that bill passed when everybody in this body knew that we were spending money we didn't have? Because it had 6,300 earmarks in it, and nearly every Member of this body had some. And they knew that if they didn't support it, they might get their earmarks yanked out when it went to conference. That's the problem with this body, and that's the problem with earmarks. Earmarks are much greater than the sum of their parts. They force you to support bills you would in no other case support simply because you've got your earmarks in and you have to support that bill. And so, that's the problem here. And then year after year, we say, ``Well, they're only a small part, and if we cut funding for this earmark, it won't cut funding for the bill. It will just go somewhere else,'' when we could, if we wanted to, simply lower the allocation for the bill by the amount that the earmarks represent. But we don't do that so we can use the excuse later that we can't get rid of these earmarks because it won't save any money. Well, I don't think the people across the country are buying that. They've heard that song too much. We'll have a deficit this year that might approach $2 trillion. We need to start somewhere, and I would suggest we start here. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. FLAKE. I have an amendment at the desk designated as number 10 in part B.

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

Mr. FLAKE

Mr. FLAKE. I yield myself the balance of my time to answer the gentleman. I want to make the point that I'm not trying to delay the process. I could call a vote and waste 30 minutes. I'm not going to. I know the outcome here. That's not the point. The gentleman mentioned that I've been given a lot of amendments. I have, but it is only because the majority knows that they can beat them. And when I've offered to substitute some of my colleagues' amendments that were germane that simply weren't ruled in order, objection was raised 16 times to do that. So this isn't about time. This is about the majority wanting only the amendments that it wants to see on the floor. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. FLAKE. Madam Speaker, I raise a point of order because the resolution violates section 426(a) of the Congressional Budget Act. The resolution contains a waiver against all points of order in the Congressional Budget Act which causes a violation of rule 426(a).

Mr. FLAKE. Again, I rise today not because this bill may or may not violate the Unfunded Mandates Act--it may or it may not. The question here is why, again, and we're near the end of the appropriations cycle and we've been living under what is the equivalent of legislative martial law, where the majority has stated that they cannot allow appropriation bills to come to the floor because we have to get through this process. We have to move through it. The Appropriations Committee chairman said, There is a limited numbers of hours between now and the time we recess. If we want to get our work done, we have to limit the debate time that we spend on these bills. Now, appropriating is one of the most--if not the most important-- thing that Congress does. We maintain the power of the purse under article 1. This is our responsibility. And to say that we've got to move through it quickly and so we have to deny the minority party the ability to offer the amendments it wants to offer simply because we have to make the trains run on time here. When the Republicans were in the majority, one Member said the other day that he was in the chair for over 3 days on the interior bill simply because Members on the majority side and the minority side had a lot of amendments they wanted to offer--3 days on the interior bill. Here we're allowing just an afternoon on the THUD bill. We're allowing just less than a day on the defense bill next week that contains more than a thousand earmarks that haven't been vetted by the Appropriations Committee, 540 of which are no-bid contracts to private companies. And we aren't allowing probably but a few, if history holds, amendments to that bill. And they will likely be amendments that the majority chooses. Last week, on a previous appropriation bill, I asked for unanimous consent 16 times on 16 amendments that I had to allow us to substitute an amendment that one of my colleagues had offered that was not allowed. So making the point that this isn't an issue of time; the time constraints were already set. We simply wanted to substitute amendments that we thought were maybe more important, that Members were denied the ability to offer, and we were rejected. Objection was raised 16 times to unanimous consent requests simply to substitute amendments. So we know what this is about. It's not about an issue of time, although that is a sorry excuse, frankly. When appropriating dollars is the most important thing we do here, we shouldn't limit ourselves to just a few days to get the appropriations process done on the floor. But even if you accept that, the minority party simply wanted to offer the amendments it wanted to offer, not the ones that the majority party had chosen for the minority party to offer and were denied 16 times. And here again today we're going to be discussing a bill. More than 70 amendments were offered to the Rules Committee. Only, I believe, 24 were ruled in order. We just had four or five Members offer privileged resolutions to make the point that their amendments, which were germane, which should have been allowed, were not allowed by the minority party. Madam Speaker, this isn't the way this House ought to be run. We're breaking from tradition here with the appropriations process, and at a time when we need more than ever to scrub these appropriations bills and make sure we're not spending money that we shouldn't be spending. We have a deficit that will near $2 trillion this year. When I came to Congress just 8 years ago, that was almost the entire Federal budget. Now our budget deficit will equal that amount, and yet we're throwing appropriation bills at the floor and saying got to get them done in 1 day and not allow the minority party to offer the amendments that it would like to offer. I would submit that while the majority party may think that they can get away with it because process arguments don't mean much outside the Beltway, I can see that. But a bad process begets bad policy, and sooner or later, it will come back to bite. And it just doesn't come back to bite the majority party; it comes back to haunt this institution. And institutionally, we ought to be better. We ought to have more regard for this institution than to simply break with precedent like this and deny the minority party the ability to offer the amendments I would like to offer.