Jeff Flake

Mr. FLAKE

Mr. FLAKE. Madam Speaker, we have always been fortunate to have in this body of legislators Members who, for lack of a better term, are called ``institutionalists.'' These are Members on both sides of the aisle who understand and appreciate the fact that this institution will outlive all of us and that we should try to ensure that when we leave the Congress, we leave the institution better than we found it. Madam Speaker, we desperately need these institutionalists to stand up today and play a role in reforming the practice of earmarking that is beneath the dignity of this great institution. It is almost a daily occurrence that we wake up to newspaper articles detailing questionable earmarks that coincide with large campaign contributions, earmarks that face little or no scrutiny in this body, earmarks that were more intended to garner votes or contributions than to address legitimate needs. We have also seen little inclination on the part of those currently in the position of leadership on either side of the aisle to address this issue in a meaningful way. We have changed the parties in charge, but we haven't changed the practice. So the mantle falls on the institutionalists among us to foster this change, those who deep down know that we owe more to this institution than we are giving it. It is time to stand up and be counted.

Mr. FLAKE

Mr. FLAKE. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding. I was in my office and I heard the distinguished majority leader talk about personal responsibility and how we've got to get this deficit and this debt under control. Personal responsibility begins with personal responsibility. There's an article that ran a couple of weeks in the Washington Post that mentioned one Member, who shall remain nameless, tucked in $96 million worth of pet projects into next year's Federal budget, almost all of which is in today's bill that we will deal with. Included in that was an earmark for a group called InTune. When asked what they would do with the grant, they said it might be music camps, it might be lessons, it might be how to be a DJ, it might be how to create a television show. The last earmark that this group got was spent on lesson plans for funk music. This is not personal responsibility. Were there not earmarks in this bill, we would likely have a continuing resolution that would fund at last year's levels, and we could start to get a grip on this debt and deficit that we have.

Mr. FLAKE

Mr. FLAKE. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding. I oppose this rule that will allow this omnibus to be brought to the floor. We had some discussion yesterday, and it should continue today, about the over 9,000 earmarks that are in this bill. It was mentioned by the majority leader yesterday, or the day before. He said, ``Having said that,'' in justification for bringing this bill forward, when it was pointed out that many of these earmarks had been brought to the floor for the first time with this bill, he said, ``this bill incorporates all of the bills that passed this House. This is not as if these are items of first impression. These are bills that we considered in this House and passed with essentially overwhelming bipartisan votes.'' That is only partly true. Yes, these bills, many of them were brought to the House before. A few of them left the House earmark-free. One of them, the Department of Homeland Security bill, we were told we can let this one go and not have the earmarks added because it isn't traditionally earmarked. Guess what? There are more than 100 earmarks that have now been air-dropped into that bill. We are sitting today with hundreds, literally hundreds of earmarks that have been air- dropped into the bill that we have never seen before yesterday. Never seen before yesterday, or Monday, I should say. That is simply wrong. Let me give you just a couple of examples. There was $1.6 million for the City of Bastrop, Louisiana. According to the Bastrop Daily Enterprise, ``The money is officially earmarked for the purchase of bulletproof vests and body armor. Bulletproof vests only cost about $700 to $800, however, so $1.6 million would appear to be overkill.'' Police Chief Curtis Stephenson agrees, conceding, ``There's no way we need that kind of money just to put all our people in vests.'' Again, this was an earmark for bulletproof vests for the police officers in this city, and the city comes back and says, We don't have that many police officers. We are told that these earmarks are vetted. How are they vetted? The answer is they are really not. They are not vetted by that party; they aren't vetted by this party. It's more of a game of ``Can you catch me with my hand in the cookie jar or not?'' Earlier this year, when I was challenging a couple of earmarks on the floor, one Member who had one of the earmarks I was going to challenge beat me to the floor to withdraw his own earmark because he didn't want the scrutiny that would come if that earmark were publicly debated. Later that same week, the Appropriations Committee, when they found out certain other earmarks might be challenged on the floor, called the Rules Committee and struck some other earmarks that were to be debated on the House floor because they couldn't withstand the scrutiny. That isn't vetting. That is hoping that your hand isn't caught in the cookie jar. Now we have this bill today with over 9,000 of these earmarks. Now, the majority will say, Hey, that is a 17 percent reduction in the number of earmarks in our worst year. Put another way, that's like saying, You know, last year I smoked five packs a day and I am down to three this year. I darn-well quit. That is hardly something to pat ourselves on the back about. Put another way, we have just 17 percent fewer earmarks than the worst year in congressional history for earmarking. Please don't use this side of the aisle as a bar with which to judge yourselves. That is a bar that a snake could crawl over. We didn't handle ourselves well in the majority with regard to earmarks. That is one of the big reasons we find ourselves in the minority today. But when the new majority came into power in January of this year, we were told that we would have transparency, that we would have names next to earmarks, that there would be time to actually discuss these earmarks and debate them, that if there were earmarks air-dropped into a bill, there would be an opportunity to strike all earmarks, at least one vote. We don't have that today because this isn't a conference report. You simply have to change the name of the bill that is coming to the floor and you obviate your obligation to live by your own rules. That is simply not right. It's nothing that we should be proud of. I mentioned earlier on the floor today that an astute Member of Congress told me yesterday one of the toughest parts of being a Member of Congress is to remember what we should be outraged about. I would submit that this is something that we should be outraged about, but we are not. We blithely pass it as if this is standard business. It shouldn't be. It shouldn't have been for us when we were in the majority, and it shouldn't be for the new majority. It was in a press report yesterday that some Members were upset, I think justifiably, that there seemed to be just a few Members getting all the earmarks. They mentioned in the press article that a lot of the earmarks are going to the vulnerable Members instead of to the established Members in their district. I would say that that is something I think outside of the Beltway people say that is just wrong, for money to go to Members just to be re-elected. But here, unfortunately, we see that and say, Hey, that is one of the noblest purposes we have seen for earmarks. Usually they're tied to campaign contributions or something else. We need a moratorium on earmarks. We should pass a CR rather than this omnibus and go into next year without these 9,000 earmarks.

Mr. FLAKE

Mr. FLAKE. Madam Speaker, one of my astute colleagues recently said, ``One of the toughest parts of being a Member of Congress is remembering what we are supposed to be outraged about.'' I thought about this yesterday when I heard the report that surprise, surprise, earmarks were being used to help Members get reelected. The reason that is treated with kind of a ho-hum is because, as it turns out, that is one of the more noble explanations as to why earmarks are used. With the reporting that is going on about earmarks being tied to campaign contributions, or chairmen, or people in leadership positions getting tens of millions of dollars in earmarks for favored companies or organizations in their district, it seems that we have simply gone too far when we don't recognize this as a problem. I would call on my colleagues in the new year to have a moratorium on earmarks. Let's put a brake on this process until we can put a process in place to adequately vet these. There is no noble purpose for the contemporary practice of earmarking. Try as we might, we aren't coming up with one.

Mr. FLAKE

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Speaker, in the past 24 hours, we have heard word from Cuba that President Fidel Castro does not plan to return to power. This is good news, I think, for all of us. And this is not a surprise to those of us who have been watching Cuba. But here we are, as Americans, on the sidelines again still. For the past 40 years, we have been on the sidelines offering no influence whatsoever in what happens in Cuba. This is a travesty, Mr. Speaker. It is time for a get-tough policy with Cuba. It is time to allow Americans to travel there and spread freedom and influence. If we lift our travel ban, some say that Cuba will simply impose their own on us. But if somebody is going to limit my travel, it should be a communist, not my own government. We should let freedom ring here, and it will soon ring free in Cuba.

Mr. FLAKE

Mr. FLAKE. I thank the gentleman for yielding. Mr. Speaker, those of us who have teenage kids at home know very well the saying ``nothing good happens after midnight.'' That is why you have a curfew. Nothing good happens after midnight. I would say the same holds true when you are putting together an omnibus. Here is what you get when you pass an omnibus and you present it after midnight; 34 pounds, some 3,400 pages of documents here that we have no idea what is in there. Any Member who says that he has read it isn't telling you the truth. Nobody has read through this thing. We will be discovering for months items that are in this bill that we simply don't know. Preliminary analysis, and you will hear me say this several times, because that is all you can do is a preliminary analysis, a cursory reading will tell you that there are 9,241 earmarks in this omnibus bill. Now, we earlier in the year passed a couple of bills without any earmarks in saying we would probably be nearly earmark free when it comes to the omnibus, or when it comes to the end of the year, MILCON and I think Homeland Security, because typically, particularly Homeland Security, that bill is not traditionally earmarked. Well, guess what? It is now. There are well over 100 earmarks in the Homeland Security one, and I think over 150 in the MILCON, earmarks that I have never seen, I don't think anyone in this body has seen until midnight last night. So those are air-dropped earmarks, more than 300 of them, I think, in this bill that we have had no opportunity to see, let alone challenge on the House floor, we are just seeing for the first time now. Let me just give you an idea of what happens when you do things after midnight. Here are a few of the earmarks that were slipped in. These, by the way, we are always told that you have to leave it open to air- dropped earmarks because there are vital things that need to be done. Maybe there is a natural disaster somewhere, something that you have to account for. Well, here is what was added last night. One was a $1.8 million earmark for the East Capitol Center for Change, Capitol Area Asset Building Corporation, and the National Center for Fatherhood to administer Marriage Development Accounts in the District of Columbia. That is something that couldn't wait for a regular bill to go through? Did we have to do that in the middle of the night? How about $400,000 for the Burchfield-Penny Art Center in Buffalo? The Burchfield-Penny Art Center was so important that we had to air-drop it into this bill and not have any challenge, any way to challenge it on the House floor. Let me remind my colleagues that we agreed in the transparency rules earlier this year that if there were air-dropped earmarks into a bill, we would have an opportunity to offer a point of order to strike them out, to at least eliminate them. We can't do that here because this is not a conference report. This is an amendment between the Houses. We have had that before. Rules are only as good as your willingness to enforce them, and we have seen a pattern of unwillingness to enforce the rules or to seek ways around them. Now, some will stand up and brag and say, Hey, we have 40 percent fewer earmarks here than we had 2 years ago. They will say we have 40 percent fewer, the dollar value is down. Well, if you look at last year, we have, I think the figure is, about 400 percent more earmarks than last year. It is hardly, hardly a mark of fiscal discipline to have 9,200 earmarks in this bill when you have already had 2,000 pass in the defense bill. For one, that is not a 40 percent reduction, and two, it is about a 400 percent addition to last year. Let's reject this rule and reject this bill.

Mr. FLAKE

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Speaker, I didn't plan to speak on the bill itself. I already spoke on the rule. But I have been hearing some of the conversation in my office and felt I had to come down. The honorable majority leader mentioned that there are things in this bill we have seen before. That's not entirely true. There are literally hundreds and hundreds of earmarks that we have not seen before. Now, some of them are part of the bills that passed without earmarks, MilCon or homeland security. But in the case of homeland security, we were told we could do that because that's not a bill that is traditionally earmarked. It hasn't been. Well, it is now. There are more than 100 earmarks there. And the gentleman from Wisconsin mentioned that in Labor-HHS, there were only earmarks added for new Members who are coming because they are entitled to representation. I would suggest that nobody is entitled to get earmarks. You're entitled here, as a Member of Congress, to exercise oversight in how the Federal agencies spend money. It doesn't entitle you to get earmarks. And, also, on that same point, we have the Energy and Water bill that we did consider, and there were hundreds, if not, I think, close to 1,000 earmarks there. Well, we added 34 more. I will just highlight one of them. There's one for the Northwest Regional Planning Commission manufacturing conversion for energy efficiency, a $5 million earmark.

Mr. FLAKE. I said 34, but I will take your correction. Thank you. But, Mr. Speaker, these were earmarks that were added in addition to what was there before. They were air-dropped. They are earmarks that we haven't seen before that we do not have an opportunity here to strike or even debate. I mean, there are some of them that are simply for a city. We are told Findlay, Ohio, will get $100,000. For what? Ottawa, Ohio, $100,000. For what? We don't know. The City of Santa Clarita, California, will get $41,000. For what? We have no idea. We simply don't know what's in this bill. How can we be voting on it?

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

Mr. FLAKE

Mr. FLAKE. I thank the gentleman for yielding. Mr. Speaker, I rise today a bit disappointed but unfortunately not surprised. On December 4, just a week ago, the House of Representatives passed a motion to instruct conferees to remove the earmarks from this authorization. That vote passed by a margin of 249-160. Now, I have a little bit of experience with amendments trying to strike earmarks, and I don't think I've ever come close to 249. That's a significant number of votes. That was a bipartisan total, in that 60 Democrats joined Republicans to oppose these earmarks; yet these earmarks remain in the conference report. Every House earmark that was added remain in the conference report. Simply put, if controversial earmarks like these can remain in a report and aren't eliminated, what earmark will ever be eliminated? When will we ever get around to eliminating these? Let me just remind you that procedural irregularities surrounded the consideration of this bill when it came to the House. The earmark list required by the House rules was not submitted with the House report. The amendment review procedure was flawed. Members didn't have the critical time necessary to review these earmarks. In fact, the earmark list, when we finally got it, was submitted after the deadline to go to the Rules Committee to offer the amendments that would be considered. So we got the list of earmarks after the deadline to oppose them. So we had considerable irregularities going into this. And then we have a vote where the majority of this House, a clear majority, 249 Members, 60 Members of the majority party, said please remove these earmarks; yet they remain. They're still here. Why are we doing that? Why are we doing that? If we can't remove these controversial earmarks, when will we ever remove any earmarks? Let me remind you as well there have been numerous, numerous newspaper articles, media accounts since that time about these same earmarks; some of the private companies they are going to, what kind of consideration or scrutiny was given. I can tell you, very little, if we don't even get the list in time to be able to offer amendments to strike them and then we're presented with a conference report where we have no opportunity to strike individual earmarks after a majority of the House has said let's remove them all. Why are we bringing this bill up? Why are we being urged to vote ``yes'' on this? I would ask the majority, please tell us. As mentioned, I attempted before to convene a secret session to provide a review of the classified earmarks in the bill. That was defeated. But I would ask my colleagues who are associated with the 23 House earmarks in this bill to please voluntarily give them up. Concede that no proper scrutiny was given. And I will offer legislation in the next session to actually defund each of these earmarks in this authorization bill. And I would encourage all of those, and I look forward to having all of the 249 Members who voted to remove these earmarks, to join me in pushing that legislation.

Mr. FLAKE

Mr. FLAKE. Madam Speaker, at some point this week, Congress is going to consider a massive omnibus spending bill that rolls the 11 remaining appropriation bills into one enormous bill. I wish I could take the floor today and talk about what's in the floor bill, but I can't, because I have no idea. I'm far from alone. Save for a few Members of leadership, all of us are in the dark about what could be in this massive bill that we're going to be voting on in just a matter of hours. With the likelihood of thousands and thousands of earmarks in the bill, our constituents deserve a process that, at the very least, Members have an opportunity to read the bill before we vote on it. Now, the majority argues that such tactics are no more egregious than those that Republicans employed during our years in the majority. That may be true, but I would remind my colleagues that that's one of the reasons we find ourselves in the minority today. This institution deserves far better.

Mr. FLAKE

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Speaker, I raise a point of order against consideration of the rule because the rule contains a waiver of all points of order against the bill and its consideration. Therefore, it is in violation of section 426 of the Congressional Budget Act.

Mr. FLAKE. Let me just make one point with regard to special interests, that they have been removed from this process. Because we were trying to get copies of this legislation and couldn't yesterday, we couldn't get it from the majority, so many of the Republicans were actually getting excerpts and pieces of this legislation from firms along K Street, from the special interests themselves. They seemed to have copies before we in the majority did. There is something wrong with this process. We only get it last night from the majority, but we were getting it yesterday from special interests downtown who already had copies of it, or portions, at least.

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Speaker, the Congressional Budget Office says that there are unfunded mandates in this bill, but we really don't know what's there because we got this thousand-page bill, thousand-page bill, just about 12 hours ago. As we know, we have a House rule that says we are supposed to get a bill like this 72 hours before instead of 12. Common practice has been if you can't get 72 hours, then at least 24. We've cut that in half, just 12. And most of that was during the time when most of us were asleep. I can guarantee you that few, if any, in this body have read this bill; yet we are voting on it, a billion dollar bill that virtually nobody knows what's in it. We do know, however, and that's the reason this point of order lies against the bill, there are unfunded mandates in the bill. We also have rules with regard to earmarks air-dropped in a bill like this. It's not a conference report of an appropriation bill but an actual bill where they are dropped in at the last minute. The truth is, with a bill that's over a thousand pages long, we simply don't know what's in there; yet we are being told we have got to pass it, we've got to move this thing today. That's simply wrong. I would like the assurance of those from the Rules Committee that there are no unfunded mandates in the bill or there are no earmarks that have been added to the bill. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Speaker, I would gladly yield to the gentleman if he will answer the question if there are any unfunded mandates in this bill in violation of the rules, had the rules not been waived, or if there are any earmarks in the bill. Would the gentleman answer that question? Are there unfunded mandates in the bill or any earmarks in the bill?

Mr. FLAKE. I thank the gentleman. Let me read from the CBO: ``These provisions also contain several private sector earmarks. CBO estimates that their aggregate costs would well exceed the annual threshold established in the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act for private sector mandates, $131 million in 2007, adjusted annually for inflation. There is the answer to the question of unfunded mandates. They are in the bill. We're waiving those points of order so we can get around that. I would suggest that at some point you've got to say, are we living up to the promises that were made at the beginning of the year? Now, the majority has made a habit, and I don't blame them, of saying this is what you Republicans did while you were in the majority. That is true. Many of us stood here and raised these same points of order when our own party did it. I would love to see on the other side somebody stand up and say this is the wrong thing to do. If it was wrong when Republicans did it, it's wrong when Democrats do it. With regard to earmarks in this legislation, nobody has been able to do anything more than a cursory read of a thousand-page bill that we got just 12 hours ago. But in the biofuels subtitle, we've found a university-based research and development competitive grant program. This grant will be for universities to conduct research and development of renewable energy technologies for ``trees dying of disease or insects infestation as a source of woody biomass.'' This grant is for universities that are near ``trees dying of disease or insect infestation as a source for woody biomass.'' That smells a lot like an earmark to me. It sounds like there is probably just one university, a particular university, or two that meet that qualification. That is certainly an earmark. And that's why these rules were waived again to get around that kind of thing. The Democrats put in some good earmark rules at the beginning of the year, but your rules are only as good as your willingness to enforce them. And that's the problem here. We are not enforcing our own rules.

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

Mr. FLAKE. I have no clue.

Mr. FLAKE. Thank you. I know it's a very difficult thing. That is a very large bill. That earmark is somewhere in here. We have no idea where. My guess is there are a lot more of them. Let me just talk about one other one. Another questionable provision that looks like an earmark to me is a provision terminating the remaining portions of the New York Liberty Zone tax incentives program. The House-passed previous version of the energy bill gave New York a tax credit of $2 billion to build a rail line from JFK to Lower Manhattan. The bill now purports to reduce the cost of the New York tax provision to $1.1 billion, but the result is only true thanks to some very creative drafting. In fact, passage of the bill would still let New York keep a total of $2 billion of Federal taxpayer money, with at least $900 million of that coming between the year 2018 and 2019. Again, that creative drafting is somewhere in this document that we got last night, 12 hours ago. And we're expected to go through this and make sure that it complies with the rules. Why are we doing this? Why are we doing this when we have very specific rules? And as I mentioned, I was the first to commend the majority for putting in some good transparency and accountability rules in January. I felt they were better than what we did last year. But your rules are only as good as your willingness to enforce them, and there seems to be no willingness here. That's the problem. So I would be glad to hear from the other side. I will retain my time and hope to hear an explanation of whether or not there are actual earmarks in the bill or unfunded mandates. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Speaker, the gentlelady's comments that we have finally removed special interests from the energy field with this bill, when you have a bill like this, I guarantee you it's full of special interest provisions, many of which we haven't discovered yet. I mentioned you have one earmark in here, a grant for universities that are near ``trees dying of disease or insect infestation as a source of woody biomass.'' I would suggest it's probably one particular university in mind, or some special interest, that an earmark will be going to. The New York Liberty Zone provision is another special interest provision. I would also make the point that this is technically not a conference report; there wasn't a conference. This is a House amendment to a Senate amendment to H.R. 6, if I'm not mistaken. What that means is the point of order that I would have liked to have raised against the provisions that may include earmarks in the bill doesn't lie against the bill because it's not a conference report, because it's a House amendment to a Senate amendment. That's another creative way to get around the rules that the majority themselves have put in place. If you say that there are no problems with this bill, why are we waiving all points of order against it? Of course it's to hide things in it. People should be skeptical whenever they see something a thousand pages long, a thousand pages long that nobody, not anybody on the Rules Committee, not anybody anywhere has had the opportunity to read, 12 hours, 12 hours to read that. I don't think Evelyn Wood, with a speed-reading course, or anybody could get through this. And when the majority can simply say, We're not aware of anything, I mean, you can take the Fifth, you can plead the Fifth in court, but I don't think you can do it here. I don't think that that flies, certainly not outside of the Beltway. Certainly people around here should be skeptical of a multi-billion-dollar bill with special interest provisions rife throughout it that we've had 12 hours to review before voting on. When all the majority can tell us is, We're not aware of things in there, let me remind the majority that we had an instance earlier this year, or several instances, where the chairman of the Appropriations Committee signed off on an appropriation bill saying, There are no earmarks in this bill, which prevented us in the minority from actually lodging a point of order against the bill, after Members had already issued press releases claiming credits for their earmarks in the bill. So clearly you can pass some good rules, which you have, but you have got to enforce those rules, and they're not being enforced here. That's why we should uphold this point of order and not move forward and proceed with this bill. You cannot put a thousand-page bill, give it to us with 12 hours to review, with problems rife throughout it, and not have problems. With that, Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Speaker, I would like to reclaim my time.

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Speaker, I object to the vote on the ground that a quorum is not present and make the point of order that a quorum is not present.

Mr. FLAKE

Mr. FLAKE. Madam Speaker, I got a kick out of a recent warning made by the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee. He cautioned Members that if congressional negotiators were forced to make additional cuts in this year's spending bills, that he just might do away with all earmarks in the bill. Well, that may pass for a threat here in Washington, but taxpayers all over the country are applauding. Despite the perception that many in Congress seem to have that taxpayers are eagerly awaiting the completion of appropriation bills to see if their earmarks ended up in the bill for their hometown, taxpayers, whether they're Republicans or Democrats, are applauding. They think that earmarks are a waste of money. Chairman Obey has said on many occasions that if it were up to him, he would do away with earmarks altogether; they are a waste of his time and his committee's resources. I couldn't agree more. In fact, I can't think of a better Christmas present to Chairman Obey than releasing him from the stress and hassle of having to deal with our earmarks. I'm sure he would be grateful, and our constituents would be grateful even more.

Mr. FLAKE

Mr. FLAKE. I thank the gentleman for yielding. I have enjoyed working with Representative Schiff on this, and I thank the committee for addressing our concerns. Our concerns had to do mostly, my own concern in particular, with making sure that we are not involving a court when you are talking about foreign-to-foreign communications or communications between persons who are not known to be U.S. residents or not known or reasonably believed to be within the U.S. I believe those concerns were addressed here, and I appreciate the work that was done to do that. As mentioned, our language also requires that if a U.S. citizen is inadvertently tripped up in the communication, that proper procedures are taken to deal with that and that the information is disseminated to the right people and committees. So I appreciate the committee's work on this.

Mr. FLAKE

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Speaker, I raise a point of order against H. Res. 817 under section 2 of H. Res. 491 because the resolution contains a waiver of all points of order against the conference report and its consideration.