Jeff Flake

Mr. FLAKE

Mr. FLAKE. Sometimes I think we are just talking completely in a vacuum here, that inside the Beltway here in Washington, that we see it somehow differently than the rest of the country. To hear the debate on the other side, you would think it was just one crazy guy from Arizona and another crazy guy from Wisconsin who think that we are out of bounds here. That is hardly the case, and I will read some of what the rest of the country is saying later. I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Kind).

Mr. FLAKE. I thank the gentleman. I mentioned that it is often said on the other side that it is just a couple of guys who don't know what they are talking about, and the rest of the country feels differently. Let me tell you what some people around the country are saying about this farm bill. The Minneapolis Star-Tribune wrote: ``The Senate passed a $286 billion farm bill that makes only minor changes to the bloated agricultural subsidy system that rewards rich farmers for being farmers.'' The Burlington, Vermont, Free Press: ``The farm bill making its way through Congress is a good example of what's wrong with the way major legislation gets passed in Washington.'' The Boston Globe: ``That kind of calculation is just the sort of special-interest politicking that is making voters nationwide question what was gained by giving the Democrats power.'' The East Brunswick, New Jersey, Home News Tribune: ``The farm bill is the sort of confounding public policy document that too often wins approval in Washington; it's stuffed full of pork and misdirected at the same time.'' This is not a Republican issue or a Democrat issue. The Republicans passed, I thought, what was a far too generous, bloated farm bill back in 2002, and I believe the gentleman from Arkansas and I had a debate at that time. So this isn't a partisan debate at all. This is a debate about what taxpayers should be required to pay. The Orlando Florida Sentinel: ``The system those lawmakers would perpetuate dumps billions of dollars a year in taxpayer subsidies on the farmers of a few crops, whether they need it or not. The largest commercial farms reap the bulk of the subsidies, while most growers get little or nothing.'' The Charleston South Carolina Post Courier: ``So far the impulse to reform has been overwhelmed by the efforts of those representing the beneficiaries of farm program largesse.'' The Winston-Salem, North Carolina Journal: ``The legislation that was designed to put American family farms back on their feet has now become the massive giveaway program to mega corporations that manage family farms. The farm bill is hopelessly bloated and outdated.'' The Pittsburgh Pennsylvania Tribune-Review: ``The U.S. Senate has once again failed to slow the nonstop pigout in multi-billion dollar family farm subsidies.'' The Bismarck, North Dakota Tribune said: ``The provision that would get wide agreement would require that government payments be attributed to an actual, named person, rather than to shadow entities that might even belong to people who do no farming themselves.'' We call that reform. The Lewiston, Maine Sun Journal wrote: ``The prospect of starving constituents is unpalatable. What's worse, though, is using them as chattel to negotiate subsidies for wealthy farmers.'' As the gentleman from Wisconsin said, we're hardly talking about payments to those who are just getting by. In some cases, payments are going to those with adjusted gross incomes nearing $1 million. Yet we're saying, well, there are large expenses that farmers have. Yes. That's adjusted gross income after expenses are already backed out. So we're not a couple of guys here who are seeing things differently. I think we're seeing it as the rest of the country does. I think that this place is in a bubble sometimes when we discuss continuing a program to subsidize people who, in many cases, aren't farming, and having subsidies tied not to crop prices at all, not a safety net, mind you, but payments that go and go and go, regardless of whether or not crop prices are high or low. With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. FLAKE. I will yield the gentleman an additional 5 minutes, if he would like, as long as he wants.

Mr. FLAKE. Before yielding to the gentleman from Wisconsin, let me simply say that we are not talking about the food stamp program here. We are not talking about nutrition programs or conservation programs. We are talking about direct payments. This is a different program. This is simply an effort to say, let's not increase the amount of money going to direct payments at a time when commodity prices are so high and when the farm community is doing so well. It just not make sense to reform by increasing the subsidy. I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Kind).

Mr. FLAKE

Mr. FLAKE. Madam Speaker, under rule XXII, clause 7(c), I hereby announce my intention to offer a motion to instruct on H.R. 2419. The form of the motion is as follows: Mr. Flake moves that the managers on the part of the House at the conference on the disagreeing votes of the two Houses on the Senate amendment to the bill H.R. 2419 (an Act to provide for the continuation of agricultural programs through fiscal year 2012) be instructed to agree to the provisions contained in section 1703(b)(2) of the Senate amendment (relating to a $40,000 limitation on direct payments).

Mr. FLAKE

Mr. FLAKE. I thank the gentleman. Mr. Speaker, as we allow authorization bills to come to the floor and we don't have a prohibition about the money being appropriated later from being earmarked, we are going to see them earmarked. That has been the trend around this place in recent years. That trend is not just continuing; it is accelerating, with the Homeland Security bill, as I mentioned. So I would appeal to everyone to vote down this rule. Let's bring back a rule that allows a broader scope of amendments, ones that will actually preclude all of the grants authorized in this bill from being earmarked for political purposes. And with that, I would urge a ``no'' vote on the rule.

Mr. FLAKE. I thank the gentleman for yielding. Seventeen amendments were ruled in order. But I can tell you one that wasn't: It was one that I offered. It would have been simple to do it. If we are going to make seventeen amendments in order, why not make this one? I offered an amendment that would simply have prevented any funds appropriated to the Federal agencies that must participate in these grant programs from being used for earmarks. Now last week we had a bill called the Beach bill. It came under an open rule; so I couldn't be blocked from offering a similar amendment saying no funds authorized in this bill could be used for earmarks. I offered that amendment and it received overwhelming support. It passed by a 2-1 margin. I believe more than half of the Democrats voted for it and an overwhelming number of Republicans. Why wouldn't we allow that amendment to be offered here? We have programs here, grant programs, and it's conceivable there could be 5,000 or 6,000 grants offered under this program. The temptation is going to be, as it is with all of the other accounts that we have earmarked in this place, to earmark it, for Members to simply set it aside and say I want this grant to go to one of my constituents or somebody else. And for those who say we haven't traditionally done that with this program, well, we didn't traditionally do it with the Homeland Security bill either. For the first 3 years that it came to the floor, some $32 billion, none of it was earmarked. But last year about $750 million was earmarked, more than 600 earmarks, nearly all of them air-dropped in at the last moment. So we have a habit around here of discovering a pot of money that can be earmarked for our own political purposes. I know that the overwhelming majority of rank-and-file Members in this body don't want this to happen because it's typically those Members in a leadership position or a committee Chair position or some Member of seniority that typically benefits more than other Members. But I was denied that ability to bring that amendment to the floor today, and I would submit that the more we allow bills like this to come to the floor without amendments being offered like this, the more we're going to suffer.

Mr. FLAKE

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

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

Mr. FLAKE. Madam Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding. I believe that soon after this we are going to have a vote on this legislation. Again, this amendment is simply to preserve the bill as it is, to make sure that Members don't meddle in it. It is there to protect the waters and the beaches, not protect incumbents for reelection. That is what this is about.

Mr. FLAKE. I thank the gentleman from Georgia for yielding. And I want to thank the gentleman from Minnesota, Madam Chairman. I could not agree more with virtually everything he has said. This is an important bill. It was brought here, and it has not been historically earmarked. That is great. We need to keep it that way. We need to keep, as he so aptly put it, Members from meddling in this. That's the purpose of this amendment, to keep Members from meddling with the formula-based program in the bill. It was mentioned that it's unnecessary because it hasn't been historically earmarked. I suppose the same would have been said had I brought the same amendment last year to the Department of Homeland Security authorization bill or the appropriation bill because it hadn't historically been earmarked. We promised not to do that. But yet we have earmarked between $500 million and $1 billion, hundreds of earmarks air-dropped at the last minute, never debated on the House floor, never debated, never an opportunity to amend them out. And that's what we are trying to do here is to protect this important legislation from the same fate. It was mentioned that we have increased the authorization for money in this legislation. That is true. We did that in the FEMA grants in Homeland Security and then earmarked it. We increased it by a little and then earmarked it by a lot. It doesn't take conspiracy theorists to say that this might be happening here, that maybe this is what is going to be attempted here, to start earmarking this legislation, to get these programs that are funded by formula to instead fund Members who need protection in their re-election or who need to be rewarded in some other way. That's not how we should do business. The purpose of this amendment is recognizing the importance of this legislation and making sure that Members don't meddle in it. I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. FLAKE. Madam Chairman, the focus of the Beach Act is to ensure that citizens enjoy recreational activity in the coastal waters and that they can do that safely. That should be the focus of the bill, and that's where I think we should keep the focus of the bill. The purpose of this amendment is to make sure that the purpose of the bill is not to protect vulnerable Members, vulnerable incumbents. And, unfortunately, that's been the case with a lot of legislation that we have passed in the past. It just simply becomes a magnet for earmarks, for Member earmarks, to protect vulnerable Members or to reward Members or to go towards Members in leadership or in high positions on particular committees. The Beach Act authorizes a formula-based grant program to help implement State and local beach monitoring, assessment, notification programs. What we don't want to see is money bled off from these formula-based programs to Member projects. Unfortunately, that has happened. And if we don't think that it will happen with this bill, then we have our heads in the sand. The purpose of this amendment is simply to say that none of the moneys authorized in this legislation will go toward earmarks, that all of the money as it is now will go toward formula-based funding. Now, some might say that the Beach Act has not been historically earmarked. That is true. That's how it should remain. The problem is some of the legislation that has not been historically earmarked is now earmarked. In fact, when we passed the Homeland Security bill, which we celebrated today 5 years after, we were told this will not be earmarked. This will be formula-based grants, it will be spread out, but it will not be earmarked. And for 4 years that remained true. But last year the legislation to fund the Department of Homeland Security had a boatload of earmarks in it. According to Taxpayers For Common Sense, the 2008 omnibus bill contained 128 earmarks worth more than $400 million in Homeland Security funding. According to a story by the Hill, 115 new earmarks worth $117 million were air-dropped at the last moment. These were earmarks that we said we weren't going to do anyway in a bill that we said we were not going to earmark. These were, obviously, to assist vulnerable Members. Many were earmarks in the funding for FEMA's Predisaster Mitigation Program. This was a program intended to ``save lives and reduce property damage'' by providing funds for ``hazard mitigation planning, acquisition, and relocation of structures out of the floodplain.'' In 2007 this program received $101 million to fund competitively awarded projects with no earmarks. According to Taxpayers for Common Sense, in 2008 this program received a boost in funding to $114 million, but nearly half of the amount, $51.3 million, was tied to 96 earmarked projects, including earmarks for projects that should not have qualified for funding under the program. So we could have earmarks in this beach program for projects that aren't even eligible under the formula-based funding that's currently here, and that's what we should all fear. This body has gone far too far over the past several years, under Republicans and Democrats, in bleeding off necessary funding for particular programs just to protect vulnerable incumbents during re-election or just to reward particular Members. Some people will say, well, we know in Congress better than those faceless bureaucrats in some department. Well, if that is the case, then we should have parameters. We should provide oversight. That's what this body is supposed to do. There is a process called authorization, appropriation, and oversight. And that's the process we need to follow, not circumventing that process by earmarking. That's the purpose of this amendment. I hope that we can all agree that this is needed to ensure that this program is not earmarked in the future. With that, Madam Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. FLAKE

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Speaker, I voted against H.R. 3773, the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, which was approved by the House of Representatives on March 14, 2008. I believe that this bill was a good compromise between the RESTORE Act approved by the House on November 15, 2007 and the version of the legislation approved by the Senate on February 12, 2008. However, I opposed the version of H.R. 3773 considered in March, because it failed to include immunity for the telecommunications companies that cooperated with the administration's request to assist in intelligence collection. I disagree with the President's decision to bypass congressional authority in authorizing such surveillance. However, I believe that the telecommunications companies were put in a difficult position and acted in a good-faith interest of national security when they cooperated with the administration's request. If Congress fails to grant them immunity, the consequences would be far-reaching. Without immunity, the pending lawsuits against the telecom companies will carry on for years and saddle the telecoms with millions of dollars in legal fees--fees that will, in turn, be passed onto consumers. There will he scenarios in the future when cooperation between the private sector and the Federal Government will be necessary. These situations will likely be met with distrust and extreme hesitance on the part of private companies because we failed to come to their defense in this matter. This could be detrimental to U.S. security. Instead of immunity, the FISA Amendments Act would allow the telecoms to defend themselves in court by lifting current restrictions and allowing classified information to be introduced as a part of their defense. This may or may not be sufficient to prove the innocence of the telecoms. but the introduction of this information would set a dangerous precedent. Over the objections of the President, highly classified information would be handed over to judges and lawyers who are unlikely to possess the appropriate and necessary security clearances. This would almost certainly make the introduction of such classified evidence in future proceedings easier, and could severely compromise our ability to collect and conduct future intelligence activities. The initial House-approved FISA reform legislation, the RESTORE Act, did not contain any immunity provisions. I supported it with the expectation that we would consider immunity during a conference with the Senate. We voted instead on the FISA Amendments Act, which I believe is a good bill that represents a careful compromise. Immunity is critical and, because H.R. 3773 has no immunity provisions, I voted against its passage.

Mr. FLAKE

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Speaker, I just want to say a few things about earmarks this week. Yesterday was not a banner day for Congress. In the House, we approved a budget that had no restrictions on the contemporary practice of earmarking. In the Senate, they turned down an amendment which would have placed a moratorium on earmarks. It went down bad. It went down 71-29. There will come a day, and I think it will come soon, when we get rid of the contemporary practice of earmarking. Now, many in the other body and in this body have tried to defend earmarking by saying that this is a constitutional prerogative, and somehow suggesting and even, some have said, that the Founding Fathers would be rolling over in their graves if they knew we were contemplating a moratorium on earmarks, as if to equate all Federal spending or Congress' power of the purse with earmarking. There is a place for earmarking. There is a place for Congress to say to an administration, you are not adequately addressing this area; therefore, we are going to go through the process of authorization, appropriation, and oversight and tell you how we want money spent. But that's not the contemporary practice of earmarking. The contemporary practice of earmarking is all about hiding your spending, not going through the process of authorization, appropriation and oversight, but rather to circumvent it. That's what it's all about. When you have a bill that comes to the floor, as we did last year and the year before and the year before, several years with up to 2,500 or 3,000 earmarks in them placed just hours before the bill comes to the floor, that is not the appropriate role of Congress; that is not power of the purse that should be exercised. That's an attempt to hide spending and to spend in a way that will benefit you politically. That is simply wrong, and I would suggest that the contemporary practice of earmarking, everybody knows it when they see it. The difference between the proper use of an earmark and an improper use is whether or not you are attempting to hide funding, attempting to have funding slip through the cracks that nobody sees, rather than saying that we are going to authorize, then we are going to appropriate, and then we are going to have oversight. Another myth that is often put forward is that we have to earmark because that's how we maintain control or oversight on the administration when, in truth, the contemporary practice of earmarking means that we do far less oversight. You can look at it empirically. Over the past decade, decade and a half, as we have seen a ramp-up in the area of earmarking, we have actually seen far fewer oversight hearings in the Appropriations Committee. Believe me, when you have 26,000 earmark requests a year for the Appropriations Committee in the House to deal with, you don't have time or resources or the inclination to do the proper oversight on the rest of the budget. By earmarking, we are basically giving up our power of the purse. We are giving up our prerogative just to be able to earmark what amounts to about 1 percent of the Federal budget. We are effectively giving up control of the rest of the Federal budget. When you hear people say that we have to keep earmarking the way we are doing in order to control the Federal bureaucracy, that simply doesn't square with reality. The contemporary practice of earmarking, as we have seen it over the past several years under Republicans and under Democrats, has been a way to hide spending for individual Members' benefits. It has led to corruption, it has led to scandal and will continue to do so until we end it. I would encourage Members of the House and say that we are going to get there soon enough. People across the country know that this is the wrong thing to do. Senator McCain made the statement yesterday that there is only one town in America that doesn't understand that this is wrong, and that town is Washington, DC. Everywhere else across the country, people understand that this is a practice that has to stop.

Mr. FLAKE

Mr. FLAKE. I thank the gentleman for yielding. Mr. Chairman, I rise today in opposition to the budget resolution. We have received repeated warnings about Medicare and Social Security, that they are on their way to insolvency. I think we all know that. In fact, CBO recently projected that Social Security will begin to pay out more than it takes in by the year 2020, and at the same time Medicare spending will likely double over the next 10 years. But inexplicably, this budget does nothing. It contains no action over the next 5 years to change this course. Instead, it would allow the unfunded liabilities of both of these programs to grow from almost $39 trillion today to about $52 trillion by 2013. That is a 2 to $3 trillion increase every year. This means that over the next 5 years alone, every American household will be responsible for more than $450,000 to keep these programs functioning as is. We can't ignore this ever-increasing, this massive problem. I have seen reports, press reports, that Medicare and Social Security aren't the priorities anymore. I would submit that, if we don't start working on a real solution, the taxpayers will quickly see either drastic cuts to their benefits or a spike in their taxes, unless we change the trend that we have. Mr. Chairman, I am disappointed that instead of confronting this issue, we are again burying our heads in the sand. It is not realistic. We can't continue to do this. It is a huge disservice to everyone in this country. I must oppose this budget. Also let me say, it is not just the level of spending that is problematic; it is the type of spending. We have had a lot of arguments lately about earmarking. This budget, the Democratic budget, does nothing to change the practice. Last year we had some $15 billion spent on earmarks, and a lot of those earmarks were never vetted on the House floor. In fact, the vast majority of them, 99 percent of them, were never given a thorough vetting on the House floor, and, in fact, about a billion dollars, just under a billion dollars was spent on earmarks that were air-dropped into the conference reports that never got any vetting at all, that was never subject to any House decision. That is nearly $1 billion. But what do we have in this budget to prevent that? Nothing. Nothing. We are on track to do it again or perhaps even worse. We have got to do better, both on the level of spending and the type of spending that we are doing. In Congress, we have had a process for centuries called authorization, appropriation, and oversight, and over the past several years we have gotten away from that. Instead, we do very little authorizing, a lot of appropriating, and very, very little oversight. There is nothing in this budget to change that process. We are doing the same. And the Democrats will say, hey, over the past several years you Republicans have done wrong as well. And we have. That is the biggest reason we are here in the minority today. But at least you could say it took Republicans awhile to get to this point. In the meantime, there were balanced budgets. There was the reformation of welfare. There were some good things that happened. Then we got fiscally lazy and we started having budgets much like this, and the voters turned us out, as I would suggest they will do to the majority party, who got into this much more quickly than Republicans did. I hope that they change. I would like nothing more than to support a good budget here, but this is not, and I would urge my colleagues to reject it.

Mr. FLAKE

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Speaker, I stand in opposition to the GIVE Act. I think that it has as its premise that we won't have volunteerism in America unless we pay for it somehow or unless this body comes up with it. The volunteerism represented by AmeriCorps and the other programs here represent, I would venture, about one hundredth of 1 percent of all of the voluntary activity that goes on out there. But here we act as if it won't happen unless we create it and pay for it. Paid volunteerism is not a very good principle, in my view. We have to remember we are running a deficit. Our Federal Government is running a deficit. So any money we pay here, any increase in any programs, any new authorization, which I think over the 5-year reauthorization is about $4.1 billion more than we were paying before, that's money that has to be borrowed from the Treasury and, in effect, borrowed from our kids. And I think it's prudent to ask what this is going to be used for. I think that most people would be surprised to learn that this legislation would expand and reauthorize programs that the Office of Management and Budget has rated as inefficient and ineffective. For example, the Learn and Serve Program was rated as not performing and results not demonstrated by the OMB. The AmeriCorps National Civilian Community Corps was rated as not performing and ineffective. It's bad enough that we are continuing funding, but under the Learn and Serve Program, that was rated again by the OMB as not performing and results not demonstrated, we are actually creating a new program within that and funding it with 20 million more dollars. That simply is not a prudent use of taxpayer dollars. We have to remember we are taking money from people who are working and giving it to others who are supposedly volunteering to work. When you are providing a financial incentive, be it defrayment of tuition costs or anything else, you are paying people to volunteer. I would urge my colleagues to reject this legislation and return to fiscal sanity and a little more fiscal discipline in this House.

Mr. FLAKE

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Speaker, I would like to bring another aspect for sustaining the President's veto that hasn't been talked about yet. When this bill was brought to the floor initially, there were some 26 earmarks in the legislation. First we were told there are no earmarks. Then we had kind of a wild goose chase up in the intelligence room to find if there were. We found out there actually were. Then we finally got a list, belatedly. We got the list of earmarks, I think, about 5 hours after the deadline for us to submit a list of earmarks that we wanted to challenge. How convenient was that? And we were told, No, it is just procedural, but too late. You won't be able to offer any amendments. We were told at the beginning of the process this year that every earmark that was offered in a piece of legislation in a conference report, in a committee report would be able to be challenged on the House floor. That wasn't the case here. We had 20-some earmarks worth about $80 million that were never challenged that still, to this day, cannot, have not, will not be challenged by this House. So that, for the process alone, we shouldn't go forward with this piece of legislation. These weren't just any earmarks. One, $80 million worth; and, two, there were big earmarks like $23 million for the National Drug Intelligence Center. This is a center that the President has been trying to shut down for years because it doesn't coordinate efforts as it should. It gets, I think, about $39 million in the underlying bill and another $21 million in earmarked money in this piece of legislation. That's $23 million in taxpayer dollars in this piece of legislation. That's $62 million in taxpayer funding for an entity that the President and the executive branch want to close down, but it happens to be in the district of a particular powerful Member, so it stays. Again, we weren't able to challenge that. That led, as we all know, to an altercation on the House floor between a few Members, a privileged resolution that was offered, but still, that earmark remains. All of these earmarks that still haven't been able to be challenged by the House remain in this piece of legislation. Mr. Speaker, if there was ever, ever a case study in why we need an earmark moratorium, it is this piece of legislation that we are dealing with right now. No matter what you do, the earmarks remain. We even had a motion to instruct offered by my colleague from Michigan to take the earmarks in this bill out, remove them because they haven't been challenged, and they weren't brought to the floor in the proper manner. That motion to instruct passed with a vote of 249 votes in favor. A sufficient number of Republicans and a significant number of Democrats voted for that motion to instruct to take the earmarks out, but here we are with this piece of legislation here again today, and every one of those earmarks still remains. You can't take them out. We have to have a moratorium on earmarks so we can address this process. You can have good rules. And I commended the Democrats when they put the rules in place in January of this year. I mentioned that I thought that they were, in fact, a little stronger than what we, as Republicans, had put there. Having said that, rules are only as good as your willingness to enforce them, and the rules were not enforced here. Again, this legislation came to the floor with earmarks that we were never able to challenge, that came after the deadline when we were to submit the list to challenge. And then the House acted, we acted to address, and with a clear, sufficient majority said, let's take the earmarks out. But still they remained. I urge us all to sustain the President's veto of this legislation.

Mr. FLAKE

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Chairman, Ronald Reagan once said, ``No matter how big or powerful government gets and the many services it provides, it can never take the place of volunteers.'' I believe that wholeheartedly. But listening to the debate today, you might easily conclude that volunteerism wasn't discovered until Congress discovered it, and that the only meaningful service that anyone can provide is in a program sponsored by government. We all know that that is simply not the case. In truth, the programs that are being talked about today, the government-sponsored programs, make up probably less than one-hundredth of 1 percent of all the volunteer activity that takes place across this country. But when we have community service and volunteer positions, when we end up financing them or providing incentives from government, it becomes just another government service. The new Summer of Service grant program created by this legislation gives incentives to community service work in the form of financial benefits at taxpayer expense. The amendment that I am offering today would simply strike all the language in the bill relating to the so- called Summer of Service program and reduce the authorization by $20 million. This is the amount designated to the program. The new Summer of Service program would award $20 million annually for education awards for volunteer positions in which school-aged participants can earn up to $1,000 for completion of a 100-hour community-based service-learning project. Now, we are all familiar with volunteer service that goes on: churches, Rotary Clubs, Boy Scout organizations. In fact, this weekend, 2 days from now, my own son will be doing his Eagle project. He will provide up to 30 hours of service himself, and more than 100 hours will be provided by people that he has recruited to help him in his project. This kind of activity goes on every day, every minute of every day, every second of every day. And yet, we feel that we have to have new and more government programs somehow to prompt volunteer service. That, I think, sells people across this country short. People can volunteer on their own and do without benefits provided by government. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. FLAKE. May I inquire as to the time remaining on my side.

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

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Chairman, this $20 million program is being authorized under the Learn and Serve program. I would be glad to yield 30 seconds to the sponsor of this program or to the committee if I can find out if they actually studied whether this program is working as it is. It doesn't seem they are near the microphone, so I will read something from the Office of Management and Budget. The Office of Management and Budget audited this program a while ago under the Learn and Serve program. The Learn and Serve program was audited to be not performing, results not demonstrated. The AmeriCorps National Civilian Community Corps, not performing. Ineffective. This is our own government telling us what our own programs are doing, and yet here we are under the Learn and Serve program authorizing $20 million more for a new program without trying to go in and actually fix the old program or eliminate the old program. We in Congress sometimes wonder why our authorizing committees are sometimes neglected. This is why. This is why. This program, the whole AmeriCorps program hasn't been reauthorized I think since 1996 or so; and yet, when we do come to reauthorize it, we ignore what our own government, our own agencies are telling us about these programs and we simply pile more money on. No matter what we do on the overall bill, and I can read the writing on the wall, the bill is going to pass, let's at least give some thought to the taxpayers here who have to fund this, to say that we are not going to increase a program to create a new program under an existing program that has been rated by our own Office of Management and Budget as not performing, results not demonstrated. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. FLAKE

Mr. FLAKE. Madam Speaker, I respectfully request the opportunity to record my position on rollcall votes 43, 44, and 45. I was regrettably absent from the chamber on February 12 during rollcall votes 43, 44, and 45. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yea'' on rollcall 43, ``yea'' on rollcall 44, and ``yea'' on rollcall 45.

Mr. FLAKE

Mr. FLAKE. I thank the gentleman for yielding. Mr. Speaker, as was mentioned, you could easily say that there are unfunded mandates in the bill. You could also say there is a particular earmark in the bill. Because the bill didn't go through regular order and we don't have a committee report to go along with it, there was not a certification that came saying that there were no earmarks in the bill. Of particular concern is a provision that would allow New York City to keep up to $2 billion worth of the employer share of payroll taxes and invest the funds in a transportation project. This is not the first time we have seen this. The New York Liberty Zone Tax Credit earmark was included in a previous energy bill passed by the House, but it was removed by the Senate. Now, I think we can all quibble about where the benefits go on some of these things, but it's clear that the target here is New York City. It's a targeted tax provision, and it's what we typically refer to as an earmark in the authorizing bill. And I would say that if it looks like an earmark and acts like an earmark, it is one. And it shouldn't be in this bill unless there is some kind of certification or something that is not an earmark. I just don't know how you can call it anything but that. This is just another example of how little impact Congress's steps to reform the process have actually had in the day-to-day operation of the House. For a point of order against an earmark to be rejected, the chairman needs to simply insert a statement into the Record saying there are no earmarks in the bill, and then the point of order can't be lodged. Here we don't even have that kind of statement, and still we are saying a point of order can't be lodged in this regard. So I would say that we ought to reject this bill for many reasons, not the least of which it's going to blow a $2 billion hole in the budget here for a limited specific tax provision benefiting only one group across the country. With that, I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. FLAKE

Mr. FLAKE. Madam Speaker, just 2 days ago, we witnessed a transition of power in Cuba. It is no surprise that the new government in Cuba looks a lot like the old. It's time for a get-tough policy on Cuba. It's time to end the isolation that has been both a friend and an enabler to decades of oppression. This isolation has given the Cuban Government a convenient scapegoat for the failure of socialism. We should not give Raul Castro the same benefits that we gave his brother Fidel. We cannot continue to be the Goliath to their David. For too long, U.S. policy toward Cuba has missed the island by about 90 miles. Our Cuba policy, under both Republican and Democratic administrations, has been more about Florida than about Cuba, more about securing votes in Miami than securing the right to vote in Havana. Madam Speaker, we are too great a country than to deny Cuban American families the right to visit family members in Cuba. We are too great a country than to deny our own citizens the right to travel to the island and to give aid and comfort to those who have endured decades of oppression. Freedom in Cuba is a worthy goal, a goal that would perhaps be more easily achieved if we practice a little more of it ourselves.