Jeff Flake

Mr. FLAKE

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Chairman, this amendment would prohibit funding for the City of Jal, New Mexico, for use in renovating a vacant building and reduce the cost of the bill by a commensurate amount. According to the sponsor's Web site, the building would be renovated with funds in this bill. The building that would be renovated is a former site of a junior high school which has sat vacant for a number of years. The purpose of the project is to replace the building's roof, windows, doors, and upgrade its plumbing and electrical systems in order to attract a private buyer. However, the sponsor's description of the earmark says the city already has a buyer in mind--Louisiana Energy Services, which already has declined to purchase the old school due to its condition. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk, designated as No. 4 of part B.

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

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. 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 demand a recorded vote.

Mr. FLAKE. Again I would say, what the Web site says is that the buyer is likely to be this company, LES, a subsidiary of URENCO; and that's fine. But we might as well be giving them the $400,000 and allowing them to renovate it and then purchasing it, or giving the city that much. And that's fine if that's what we decide to do. But this is no way to distribute these kinds of moneys. This is no way to run a program. I would submit that when you have a deficit that may hit $2 trillion this year, at some point, somewhere, sometime this body has to say enough is enough. And if we can't keep a half million dollars from going to a program like this, where are we going to start? Where are we going to say enough is enough? Where are we going to say, we are going to get this deficit under control and we are really going to go after entitlement suspending now? If we can't do it here, where can we do it? With that, I reserve.

Mr. FLAKE. I thank the Chair. I thank the gentleman for that explanation. That sounds like a wonderful theater. As I mentioned, I think we all have them in our districts. My own hometown of Mesa a few years ago decided to construct a theater, and it was a hard-fought process to get the local residents to tax themselves to build this particular theater. That's as it should be. If the community feels that it needs a theater and it needs to renovate a theater, I think it falls on the local residents to decide, because they are the ones, frankly, that benefit from that. But we can't have a policy at the Federal level where we renovate every theater across the country, particularly while we're running a deficit that could hit $2 trillion this year. How many theaters out there are in need of repair? How many districts are experiencing high unemployment? I can tell you mine is. All of them out there are. At some point I think we have to decide that perhaps we can't fully fund this account, which is for economic development initiatives. Now, I won't make the case at all that this theater doesn't fall within the purview of this program. There is nothing that could possibly not fall under the purview of economic development initiatives. Whenever you spend money anywhere, there is some economic benefit, if only fleeting. So it fits well within the program, but I think it behooves us now to say you know, maybe we ought to forego that. Maybe we ought to decide we ought to change the 301(b)s and the 302(a)s and all of the numbers so we do save money on this, so we do actually spend less this year than we did last year, perhaps, because we're spending it elsewhere. We cannot continue to spend money as we're spending money, and I would submit this is a good place to start to say let's not fund some of these renovations of theaters under the guise of economic development that clearly anything could fall under and virtually every district around the country could claim that they need. But we just can't decide here in Congress we're going to fund that one and that one but not that one. It doesn't make sense to do it that way.

Mr. FLAKE

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

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Speaker, I rise to a question of the privileges of the House and offer the resolution previously noticed.

Mr. FLAKE

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Speaker, people are asking, Where are the jobs? And I think it's an appropriate question to ask. I myself get a little leery when any administration, any administration, says that they're going to create jobs. They do so for a while, but government jobs don't last very long, or they shouldn't last very long. What the administration should do, and this Congress, is create an environment in which private sector jobs can be created. And that's what we're not doing with this health care bill. This health care bill will kill jobs, not create them. It doesn't create an environment where jobs can be created. Now, the administration and this Congress say we've got to get to work. But last week, last Friday we spent an entire day on a welfare- for-wild-horses bill. There's an old Garth Brooks song that says, wild horses keep dragging me away. And, apparently, wild horses keep dragging this Congress away from actually creating an environment where jobs can be created. And this health care bill goes the wrong direction.

Mr. FLAKE

Mr. FLAKE. Madam Speaker, pursuant to clause 2(a)(1) of rule IX, I hereby notify the House of my intention to offer a resolution as a question of the privileges of the House. The form of my resolution is as follows: Whereas, The Hill reported that a prominent lobbying firm, founded by Mr. Paul Magliocchetti and the subject of a ``federal investigation into potentially corrupt political contributions,'' has given $3.4 million in political donations to no less than 284 members of Congress. Whereas, the New York Times noted that Mr. Magliocchetti ``set up shop at the busy intersection between political fund-raising and taxpayer spending, directing tens of millions of dollars in contributions to lawmakers while steering hundreds of millions of dollars in earmarks contracts back to his clients.'' Whereas, a guest columnist recently highlighted in Roll Call that ``. . . what [the firm's] example reveals most clearly is the potentially corrupting link between campaign contributions and earmarks. Even the most ardent earmarkers should want to avoid the appearance of such a pay-to-play system.'' Whereas, multiple press reports have noted questions related to campaign contributions made by or on behalf of the firm; including questions related to ``straw man'' contributions, the reimbursement of employees for political giving, pressure on clients to give, a suspicious pattern of giving, and the timing of donations relative to legislative activity. Whereas, Roll Call has taken note of the timing of contributions from employees the firm and its clients when it reported that they ``have provided thousands of dollars worth of campaign contributions to key Members in close proximity to legislative activity, such as the deadline for earmark request letters or passage of a spending bill.'' Whereas, the Associated Press highlighted the ``huge amounts of political donations'' from the firm and its clients to select members and noted that ``those political donations have followed a distinct pattern: The giving is especially heavy in March, which is prime time for submitting written earmark requests.'' Whereas, clients of the firm received at least three hundred million dollars worth of earmarks in fiscal year 2009 appropriations legislation, including several that were approved even after news of the FBI raid of the firm's offices and Justice Department investigation into the firm was well known. Whereas, after a cursory review, the fiscal year 2010 defense appropriations earmark list recently made available includes at least seventy earmarks worth hundreds of millions of dollars for former PMA clients. Whereas, the Associated Press reported that ``the FBI says the investigation is continuing, highlighting the close ties between special-interest spending provisions known as earmarks and the raising of campaign cash.'' Whereas, the persistent media attention focused on questions about the nature and timing of campaign contributions related to the firm, as well as reports of the Justice Department conducting research on earmarks and campaign contributions, raise concern about the integrity of Congressional proceedings and the dignity of the institution. Now, therefore, be it: Resolved, That the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct shall immediately establish an investigative subcommittee and begin an investigation into the relationship between the source and timing of past campaign contributions to Members of the House related to the raided firm and earmark requests made by Members of the House on behalf of clients of the raided firm.

Mr. FLAKE

Mr. FLAKE. I ask unanimous consent that my amendment be modified to the form I have at the desk.

Mr. FLAKE. I thank the gentleman. I respect the gentleman from California. He and I have worked together on a lot of legislation. But in this case, I would simply say there are a lot of areas in the country that are hurting. In California, El Centro has an unemployment rate of 27 percent. Just across the California border in Arizona, Yuma has an unemployment rate of 20 percent. There are a lot of people hurting in a lot of places. But when I hear the gentleman say this is going to be a one-time expenditure, we have heard that before. We have heard that many, many times before. I'm sure some of the earmarks that we talked about earlier, the first year the Member got the earmark, he would have said, this is going to be a one-time expenditure. And yet year after year after year, we are funding the same earmark. These business incubators are particularly prone to repetitive earmarks over the years. We seem to keep funding them again and again. Again, let me say that there are a lot of business incubator services provided by chambers of commerce, trade associations and private sector organizations just wishing to supply services and to make a dollar. And yet now they are going to be asked to compete with a government entity that is receiving Federal largesse. And it simply doesn't work very well. We know we don't have sufficient money to spread around to everybody who wants it. We are running a deficit that could approach $2 trillion. So we have to prioritize here. I would suggest it is time to say that we can no longer fund these business incubators that have kind of a nebulous mission that is provided by a lot of private sector organizations around there. I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Mr. FLAKE. Yes, I do.

Mr. FLAKE. The inquiry is, under unanimous consent, can the majority party agree to modify my amendment?

Mr. FLAKE. I thank the gentleman. I hope I have the opportunity, because I will offer an amendment to the Defense Appropriations bill to stop funding the F-22. The gentleman has a good point. But we should also make the point that we cannot continue to pick and choose winners and losers here. What we are doing is borrowing money from our kids and our grandkids all around the country. We are borrowing money from small businesses and others because we simply don't have the money here. We are running a deficit. So what we are doing is selling bonds to finance the deficit that is going to have to be paid back at some time. We are saying, Mr. Small Businessman or Mrs. Small Businesswoman, we are going to take money from you now because we think we know how to spend it better on that business over there or on that incubator over there. I would submit that that simply is not the most efficient use of resources. The market would tell us that is the most inefficient way to allocate money. Government doesn't do a particularly good job of allocating money, allocating money to startup businesses or anything else. So we have got to say ``stop'' somewhere. I will be glad to support some of the programs that the gentleman has, some of the amendments to cut big items of spending from our entitlement programs and elsewhere. But we have got to do that, and we have got to do this. We can't let any program go and simply say that we are not going to cut spending when we have a deficit of nearly $2 trillion. With that, Mr. Chairman, I would urge support of the amendment. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. FLAKE. Parliamentary inquiry, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent that my amendment be modified in the form I have at the desk.

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

Mr. FLAKE. I plan to ask for unanimous consent to modify my amendment to reflect some of the amendments throughout this process that were not made in order by the Rules Committee. What I want to know is, is it in order, if the other side agrees with the unanimous consent request, and is it possible for them to do so and allow these other amendments to be offered?

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Chairman, to be honest, I'm not sure how much more help southwestern Pennsylvania needs in the way of defense procurement assistance. And I'm not sure how much more the taxpayers in this body can actually afford. According to usaspending.gov, the district in which the Economic Growth Connection of Westmoreland appears to reside has benefited from nearly $1.4 billion in Federal contracts from 2004 to 2009, hardly the poorest of the poor. The Army, Navy, Air Force and Defense Logistics Agency make up four of the top 10 contracting agencies, and more than 60 percent of these funds were not subject to full and open competition. Similarly, usaspending.gov indicates that the district of the sponsor of this earmark has benefited from more than a billion dollars in Federal contracts from 2004 to 2009, with less than half available for everyone to compete for. Among the list of contractors receiving these funds, according to usaspending.gov, are many that we've come to know very well, all too well: Kuchera Defense Systems, Argon ST, KDH Defense, and Concurrent Technologies. Kuchera Defense Systems. That is a defense contractor for whom the sponsor of this earmark requested funding over the past 2 years, was raided by the FBI in January, suspended by the Navy, reported for ``alleged fraud,'' including multiple instances of incorrect charges, along with allegations of defective pricing and ethical violations. Argon ST has been in the news lately because it purchased Coherent Systems International in 2007. It has been reported that the former head of Coherent Systems pled guilty in Federal Court Tuesday, just this last Tuesday, to a kickback scheme and defrauding the U.S. Air Force. KDH Defense also made headlines when Roll Call reported that the bulletproof vest company received millions of taxpayer dollars to build a sonar system that it had no experience to design. Concurrent Technologies has long been the focus of defense earmark critics. For example, at the end of 2007 the Washington Post highlighted that the National Defense Center For Environmental Excellence that was managed by Concurrent had received more than $600 million in funding, and that little of the center's work had been useful to the Department of Defense. How long can we continue to provide defense-related procurement dollars for an area with so many organizations that have been associated with conduct that I think people in this body would say are certainly not deserving of more earmarks? Yet we're doing it here again. How much longer are we going to do this, Mr. Chairman? With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

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