Jeff Flake

Mr. FLAKE

Mr. FLAKE. I thank the gentleman. Mr. Chairman, this sounds like a great program. There are many great programs all over the country. Why do we need to earmark money for this one? There are a lot of other universities that would love to compete for these dollars and for this kind of funding. That is the problem with the earmarking process that we have. Members of Congress are able to pick and choose. We typically take from those accounts where we have money set aside for competition, where people can, based on merit rather than on political designation, compete for these funds. So, with that, I would ask for support for the amendment. I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Mr. FLAKE. I thank the Chair. According to the Web site, the MARET Center is also known as the Missouri Alternative Renewable Energy Technology Center. It has been around since 1992. It has been funded several times, I believe, with earmarks. It has received, I think, $3 million in earmarks. When we have a deficit nearing $2 trillion this year, I think it behooves us to find areas where we can save. This is an earmark that goes to a college to study renewable energy when we are doing that all over in the budget--in this bill and in others. I think it behooves us to save the money where we can. This amendment would strike that funding, and would save it in the bill. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. FLAKE. I will have to go back to my original amendment. Let me just make a point, and I will be making it frequently coming up, so the gentleman or others may want to consult with the Rules Committee. We were told at the beginning of this process that we were going to be restricted in terms of what we could offer simply because of time, that we could not have so many amendments that would take so much time. There were 108 amendments offered. We would never be able to get them done, we were told. So here we have a bill. The time constraints are set. We are told that some 20 amendments are going to be offered. We are simply asking to swap out amendments. The Appropriations chairman said, We have an obligation to get our work done, so what Mr. Hoyer and I did was offer the minority leader an opportunity from a compressed number of amendments to select their own amendments, any amendments they wanted, but they did not want to limit the number of time. Here we are saying we will agree to the time, and we are simply asking for unanimous consent to allow us to offer the amendments we would like to offer, and they're objecting. So, Mr. Chairman, all you can conclude, again, is that the majority simply doesn't want to take votes on these amendments. For the first time in years, in decades, we are shutting down an appropriations process, and saying, You can't offer the amendments you want. You only offer the amendments we want. Now, that is simply wrong. I just want to make that point, and I'll be making it again and again. So I don't blame the gentleman from Arizona. He is not authorized here, but his party has told us that we are only compressing and having, basically, martial law in terms of appropriations bills because of compressed time. We are agreeing to the compressed time. We are simply saying allow us to offer the amendments that are germane that we want to offer. We are being told, no, you only offer the amendments we want to hear. That's what we're being told here, and I just want to register an objection to that because we ought to have the freedom to offer the amendments that we have offered like we've been able to do for decades in this House. With that, let me get to the substance of the amendment. This amendment would simply strike $1.5 million for the MARET Center at Crowder College in Missouri. May I ask as to the time remaining?

Mr. FLAKE. I would ask the Chair to ask the gentleman. I would yield to the gentleman for a response if the gentleman from Arizona would respond to why he is objecting to this unanimous consent request.

Mr. FLAKE. May I inquire of the gentleman from Arizona why he objects? We were told that this appropriations process, particularly today's bill, was under a modified structured rule simply because of time constraints. I am simply offering to modify my amendment to reflect an amendment that was offered but not accepted by the committee so that no more time would be consumed. This is an amendment that is in order, and it is germane. I would just ask the gentleman why the objection is being heard. Announcement by the Acting Chair

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Chairman, before proceeding with the time constraints here, I would ask unanimous consent that my amendment be modified to the form I have placed at the desk.

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

Mr. FLAKE

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Speaker, I realize that this is an unfunded mandates point of order that has been raised. This is not unfunded mandates we're talking about here. Unfortunately, this is about the only way we can get time to actually talk about this rule at sufficient length. As to the way that these appropriations bills are being shut down for Members and when the gentlelady said that this bill should be voted on according to its merits, the problem is there were dozens and dozens of meritorious amendments that were submitted to the Rules Committee. The fact that they actually had to be submitted tells us we've got some problems here because, as I mentioned, appropriations bills have traditionally been open, but meritorious amendments have been submitted, and only a few have been allowed. Now, I happen to have six, I believe, allowed in this bill, and I know full well the game here. I offer limitation amendments on earmarks. The majority party knows full well that earmarking is a bipartisan addiction and that the process of logrolling takes effect and that my amendments are defeated routinely. So they can throw me a bone here and there, and that's fine. I understand that. Still, we need to raise these issues. Let me tell you why. This was in the Washington Post today, and you can look yesterday in Roll Call or in The Hill from the day before. Virtually every day there is a news story about earmarks having gone awry. This one in particular talks about defense earmarks, that there are some individuals in the lobbying community and in the defense community who have pled guilty to taking earmarks from this body and to spreading them around to several contractors who didn't do the work that they promised to do. Some actually took kickbacks for the earmark money they distributed. These were earmarks that were supposedly vetted by the Appropriations Committee, but we know that the Appropriations Committee doesn't have the time or resources to vet these earmarks. We're going to be doing a defense appropriations bill in just a couple of weeks. We've allowed one day for that bill to be on the floor, and if history holds, only a couple of amendments will be allowed, particularly amendments to strike earmarks. If on this floor we are not going challenge these earmarks, where are we going to do it? They're not doing it in the Appropriations Committee. From sad experience, we know that. Over the past several years, the chairman of the Appropriations Committee has said they don't have the time or the resources to adequately vet these earmarks, so we have two choices. We ought to have two choices. Either strike the earmarks and not bring the bill to the floor with congressional earmarks in there or have proper time to vet them on the floor. Or simply say that we're not going to allow them at all until we get this process fixed. Instead, what we've chosen to do is to cover up the process and to pretend that there is no problem here and to simply limit the number of amendments that can be offered on the floor and hope that nobody notices, that nobody sees. What happens when nobody sees--last year, for example, we weren't allowed to offer any amendments on the floor. The defense appropriations bill was offered as part of a ``minibus'', and no amendments were offered at all. Then we get stories like this. Let me just quote one paragraph from this story: It really puts a fine point on the murky unaccountable web that exists around earmarks, said Steve Ellis of the watchdog group Taxpayers for Common Sense. These earmarks, because there is very little accountability, provide a petri dish for corruption. Certainly, that is what we've seen over the past several years, but we are not allowing adequate time on the floor to vet what will be likely over 1,000 earmarks or close to it--if there are not 1,000, there will be several hundred--in the defense bill that's going to be coming up. What is worse is that hundreds of these earmarks that will be in the defense bill will be given to companies whose executives will turn around and will write large campaign contributions to the sponsor of the earmark in the bill. So, essentially, we are earmarking for our campaign contributors. I think we should all agree that, if there are earmarks in this body, they certainly shouldn't be going to those who can turn around and can then make a campaign contribution directly back to them. To give a Federal appropriation a no-bid contract--and that's what earmarks are, particularly in the defense bill, no-bid contracts--to somebody who can turn around and write a campaign contribution right back to you is wrong. What makes it doubly wrong is that now, in the House, we are going to tell Members you can't even challenge those earmarks on the floor because we're going to limit you to three or four amendments. Choose them. That's it. That, Mr. Speaker, is wrong. We can't continue to do that. People say that, outside of the Beltway, nobody cares about process. That may be true, but take it from somebody who was in the majority and who is now in the minority, who is squarely in the minority: Bad process yields bad results, and it will catch up to you sooner or later. What is worse is that what we're doing, particularly with earmarks in the defense bill, reflects poorly on this House. The cloud that hangs over this body rains on Republicans and Democrats alike; and we ought to stand up to the institution and say, We think more of this institution than that to have this cloud out there. So I would plead with everyone, Mr. Speaker, to not proceed with bills like this which don't allow Members to offer amendments on the floor, the amendments that are meritorious, that are not trying to slow down the process. They are simply trying to improve the bill. With that, I yield back the balance of my time.

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

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

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Speaker, we are going through an appropriations process. We will do two bills this week. Traditionally, appropriations bills have been open rules. They come to the floor. Members are allowed to offer as many amendments as they wish--striking funding, moving funding around, making a policy point. That has been the tradition of this House. It is sometimes pointed out that it hasn't always been this way, that the appropriations bills haven't always been open, and that there is no reason why they should be. Yet I would remind the House, Mr. Speaker, that, over the past 20 years, we've gotten into a practice of loading up and larding up these appropriations bills with all kinds of congressionally directed spending. The chairman of the Appropriations Committee likes to say that, when he chaired the Appropriations Committee in 1992, when the Labor-HHS bill came through, there was not one congressional earmark, not one. That's less than 20 years ago. There was not one congressional earmark. I think, in the past couple of years, there have been upwards of 2,500 earmarks in that bill. In the bill that we'll address today, the energy and water bill, there are literally hundreds of earmarks. Now, one would like to think that the Appropriations Committee would vet these earmarks, would actually check them out to see if they're meeting Federal purpose, if money is being wasted, if it, maybe, looks bad and looks like it's tied to campaign contributions or whatever, but they don't. They don't have the time or the resources or, perhaps, the inclination to do so, so all we have is this forum here on the floor. When you bring an appropriations bill to the floor under a closed rule or a restricted rule--a structured rule--and deny Members the ability to offer amendments, then you've shut down this place in a way that is simply not right. For this bill, there were 103 amendments submitted. Now, because you have to pre-file your amendments, a lot of Members will submit more amendments than they intend to offer on the floor just to protect their place. So the majority party knows that we would never have offered 103 amendments on the floor. We won't have time to do it. We have done it in years past, but only 21 of these remained in order--78 Republican amendments were submitted, and only 14 were made in order. The gentleman from Georgia, to whom I will yield 3 minutes, has been offering a number of amendments, and has not been able to have them made in order. I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia.

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Speaker, I raise a point of order against consideration of the rule because the resolution violates section 426(a) of the Congressional Budget Act. The resolution contains a waiver of all points of order against consideration of the bill, which includes a waiver of section 425 of the Congressional Budget Act which causes a violation of section 426(a).

Mr. FLAKE

Mr. FLAKE. I just want to welcome the gentleman from the Northern Marianas to this Chamber, and it's great to have him here. This is something that we have wanted for a long time, to have this territory represented here in the U.S. Congress. This is a good bill. It's a bill that some of us have worked on for years to ensure that the submerged lands are where they belong, that the ownership is there, and that the rights that accrue to that attain to the Northern Marianas. So I just stand in support of this legislation. Again, welcome, the gentleman from the Northern Marianas. We're glad he's here in Congress where he belongs.

Mr. FLAKE

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

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

Mr. FLAKE. I thank the gentleman. The gentleman mentioned that this would cut several programs. This does not cut one dollar. It simply returns the money to the account and the military services would decide where to best----

Mr. FLAKE. Will the gentleman yield for a 15-second clarification?

Mr. FLAKE. Madam Chairman, this amendment would simply strike funding for all of the Member-requested earmarks for military construction projects and would return the money to the various accounts. I am not here to dispute the merits of any of the earmarks in this account. I have no doubt that each of these projects will vastly improve the quality of life for military servicemembers and for their families, but that is not the issue here. I am here to draw attention to what we have talked about before, and that is the spoils system that these earmarks represent. There are 109 Member-requested earmarks in the bill; 43 of them are going to powerful Members of Congress who serve in leadership or as appropriators, committee chairs, or ranking members. That represents about 40 percent of the share of earmarks being taken by less than 24 percent of the Members of the House. I am sure my colleagues will tell me that these projects are sorely needed at the military bases they are earmarked for and that servicemembers will suffer without them, but what about the many installations that don't receive Member-requested earmarks in the bill and the servicemembers stationed there? Neither Camp Lejeune nor Camp Pendleton received any Member-requested earmarks in the bill. Each of these camps houses a Marine Expeditionary Force comprised of tens of thousands of marines who deploy with great frequency. I am willing to bet that each of these installations have suggestions for new structures to build. Why haven't they received any earmarks in this bill? The answer is pretty simple: Neither of them resides in a district represented by a powerful Member of Congress. The earmarks in this bill total more than $578 million. That is just a little bit less than the earmark totals for the CJS and Ag bills put together. Of that dollar amount, more than $240 million are being taken home by powerful Members of Congress. That is nearly 41 percent. When you take into account earmark dollars secured by rank-and-file Members in conjunction with powerful Members, that number jumps to more than $300 million, or 52 percent. So just to reiterate, the earmarks in this bill favor powerful Members by a ratio of 2 to 1. One-quarter of the Members of this House are associated with more than half of the earmark dollars in this bill. I wish I could say that this is an anomaly, but this is pretty consistent with the rest of the appropriation bills we have considered so far this year, and I have a chart that demonstrates that. Earmark dollars associated with powerful Members of Congress. Again, those are committee chairs, leadership, or those on the Appropriations Committee, representing 24 percent of the Members in this body. In the CJS bill that we considered earlier, 58 percent of the earmarked dollars went to just 24 percent of the Members. In the Homeland Security bill, 68 percent of the earmarked dollars went to just 24 percent of the Members of the House. In the Interior bill, 64 percent of the earmarked dollars went to just 24 percent of the Members of the House. In the Agriculture bill, 67 percent of the earmarked dollars go to just 24 percent of the Members of the House. And in this bill, 52 percent of the earmarked dollars go to just 24 percent of the Members of this House. That is a pretty stark pattern. There are different types of earmarks, obviously. There are those that are simply wasteful. We see those for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and whatever else that is easy to laugh at. Sometimes it is small amounts of money and sometimes it is a lot larger. And then there are those, particularly in defense bills, where you are giving no-bid contracts to private companies. There is often a pattern of campaign contributions coming back to Members who secure no- bid contracts in private companies. That does not describe what is going on here. These earmarks, as I mentioned, I have no doubt that they are for a legitimate purpose. But here is another problem with earmarking: It represents a spoils system where rank-and-file Members of the House are not given access to those that others are. In the Homeland Security bill, it was particularly stark. As I mentioned, a huge percentage, nearly 70 percent, went to just 24 percent of the body. In fact, more than 50 percent went to just 14 percent, those represented on the Appropriations Committee, and these were for predisaster mitigation programs, flood control districts and the like. I don't think Mother Nature decides, I'm going to hit those districts represented by appropriators more than I am going to hit other districts. It is just because they are able to do it, and so they do it. So the rest of the country that competes for these grants on a competitive basis has, at least in that case, 25 percent of that account is earmarked before they can even compete for the rest of the grants that are given out on a competitive basis. Madam Chair, that is just not fair. That is just not the way we should do this. I think we ought to rethink this and we ought to strike that funding in this bill.

Mr. FLAKE

Mr. FLAKE. I appreciate that. I'm not going to call a vote on this. I'm not trying to delay the process. We're just given so little time to speak because we're not allowed to bring amendments to the floor that we have to take every opportunity that we can. I appreciate your yielding.

Mr. FLAKE. Will the gentlewoman yield?

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Speaker, there may well be unfunded mandates in this bill, but that's not why I rise today. I rise because it's about the only mechanism we have to talk about the fact that we are bringing appropriation bills to the floor under closed or structured rules, which violates basically every precept we've had in this House about openness and transparency on appropriation bills. For years--and decades--appropriation bills have been brought to the floor under an open rule, allowing Members to offer amendments to various sections of the bill and not be precluded from that. But these bills are being brought to the floor all year under closed or structured rules, allowing very, very few amendments. Let me tell you why that's important. Here, in the past, when Republicans were in the majority, we were lacking a lot of transparency on earmarks. I would come to the floor and offer sometimes a dozen earmark amendments on the floor to strike earmarks, and I had no idea most times when I would come to the floor whose earmark I was challenging. I would simply come and challenge it. And sometimes the sponsor of the earmark would come down to the floor to defend it, sometimes they wouldn't; but at least I had the opportunity to come down and challenge the earmark and there was some type of back and forth and discussion of it. Now we have some transparency rules, which is good. Some of us have pushed for these transparency rules for a while. Now we know whose earmark we're challenging on the floor. Now we know because there is a name next to it, and Members are required to fill out a certification letter stating that they have no financial interest in the earmark that they are sponsoring. Those are good reforms; I'm glad we have them. The Speaker of the House said during the campaign a couple of years ago that we were going to drain the swamp, referring to some of the corruption that had gone on, much of it due to earmarking. And I am pleased that some of these transparency rules have come into being. It's a good thing. The problem is we have not drained the swamp; we simply know how deep the mud is. We know that we have a problem, but we have not done much to correct that problem. Let me give you an example. And this is the case here with this rule and the rules on other appropriation bills this year. Now we know whose earmarks are in the bills, and we know that some of them raise questions, particularly in the Defense bill that is upcoming later this month. There are numerous investigations going on by the Department of Justice right now examining the relationship between earmarks and campaign contributions. Our own Ethics Committee issues guidance that says if you receive a campaign contribution in close proximity to an earmark that you've sponsored, that doesn't necessarily constitute financial interest; in other words, go ahead and do it. And we have many examples of earmarks going out and campaign contributions flowing in to the sponsor of the earmark. We may not see that as a problem here, but clearly the Justice Department seems to see there is a problem with that. And so what do we do here in the House? Instead of allowing Members to come to the floor during debate and saying, what about this earmark, what about the campaign contributions that seem to have been received as soon as that earmark was sponsored, as soon as that report came to the floor saying that that earmark was in the bill, why did campaign contributions flow in response to that--instead of being able to examine those things, we've decided to cut off debate. And so we have transparency rules where we now know whose earmark is in the bill, but we've prohibited Members from actually coming to the floor to examine that. So you have some more transparency, but you've cut out accountability. Now, we've done a number of appropriation bills, and some amendments have been allowed--very few. I think in one bill there were more than 100 amendments that were prefiled and only maybe 20 or so were allowed. I myself have submitted, in one of the latest bills, about a dozen amendments and was only allowed to offer three on the floor. My guess is that these are going to be narrowed further and further until we get to the Defense bill later this month, which we have allowed only one day of debate for. Keep in mind, this is going to be a bill that will have, likely, if tradition holds, more than 1,000 House earmarks in it, several hundred of which will constitute no-bid contracts for private companies, nearly all of which there will be a pattern of campaign contributions flowing back to the Member who sponsored that earmark. Now, I am not a fan of public funding of campaigns. That's not the direction we should go. And campaign contributions typically flow to Members who share the philosophy of the person who is making the contribution. But when you have a pattern, as the press has duly noted, accurately noted, that as soon as an earmark is sponsored, often there are campaign checks that come directly to that Member who sponsored the earmarks. There is an appearance of impropriety that we simply have to take account of here in the House. Our role here in the House and the role of the Ethics Committee is to make sure that we uphold the dignity of this institution, and we simply can't do that when you have the appearance of impropriety. And when you give a no-bid contract to a private company whose executives turn around and make large campaign contributions back to that Member who sponsored the no-bid contract to them, you have the appearance of impropriety. And it is simply wrong for us now to shut down debate on that and to say, all right, now we used to allow Members to challenge these things on the floor, but now that we know that there's an appearance of impropriety, we're simply going to shut down debate, we're not going to talk about it, we're not going to allow that debate to occur on the House floor. Now, I would hope that these earmarks would be talked about and discussed and vetted in the Appropriations Committee, but clearly that is not the case. If it were the case, if these were properly vetted in the Appropriations Committee, we wouldn't see the scandals that we've seen. We wouldn't have Members of Congress behind bars right now for sponsoring earmarks and taking money for them. Now, I'm not saying that that's occurring now, but that has in the past. And when we clearly haven't vetted these properly--and we don't do this body any service by cutting off debate on the House floor and saying we're just going to turn a blind eye because there might be a problem, and if we stand on the floor and debate these things, then people might see that there is a problem. So it's good to have transparency rules. That's wonderful. But once you do have transparency, you need accountability. And when you cut off debate and cut off amendments coming to the floor and bring appropriation bills under closed rules in violation of every tradition we've had in this House, then we've got a problem. It is said that people outside of the beltway don't care about process, and that may be true. It's tough to make political points about process because it's tough to understand the process of this institution. But bad process always yields bad results and bad policy. It happened when we were in the majority, when we held votes open for 3 hours to allow leadership and others to twist arms. That violated every tradition of the House where you're supposed to only hold votes open for 15 minutes or slightly longer. There's a problem with that. People may not understand that outside, but it leads to bad results. And I would submit that if you shut down appropriation bills, if you shut down the process allowing Members to offer amendments on the floor and just turn a blind eye to what might be occurring, then you're going to have a problem, and you're going to increase the cynicism, rightfully, that people have about this institution. I have served in the House of Representatives for 9 years. This is a wonderful institution, it really is; and we owe this body much more than we're giving it. And I would hope that the leadership here would exhibit maybe more of a vested interest in upholding the dignity of this institution instead of sweeping these things under the rug and saying let's just not have debate on the House floor because people might see what is occurring. Mr. Speaker, I hope that, particularly when we get to the Defense bill later, where there are going to be hundreds and hundreds of earmarks that represent no-bid contracts to private companies, that we allow amendments to come to the floor to examine some of these instead of sweeping the process under the rug and hoping that nobody pays attention. With that, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Speaker, I raise a point of order against H. Res. 622 because the resolution violates section 426(a) of the Congressional Budget Act. The resolution contains a waiver of all points of order against consideration of the bill, which includes a waiver of section 425 of the Congressional Budget Act which causes a violation of section 426(a).

Mr. FLAKE

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

Mr. FLAKE. I would ask the gentlewoman, if that's the case, why list them? If they have to compete competitively, why do we list them? Why do we say to the agencies, well, you have a competitive program but we want you to look at these programs, we want you to look at this exchange program, this sister city program, and we're going to list it here in the report? If it's not an earmark, then don't list it and simply have those organizations compete like everyone else does.