Jeff Flake

Mr. FLAKE

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

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Chairman, I won't speak for long on this. This is an amendment that seeks to limit Monroe County in New York from spending $1 million on Xerox Area Road improvements. This is one of 111 earmarks New York received in this bill worth more than $46 million, the fourth highest total of all States. These earmarks include more than $1.6 million in transportation earmarks in this appropriations bill. Xerox is a Fortune 500 Company. It is a $15.7 billion global enterprise and a valued employer to Monroe County, New York. The Xerox area they are speaking of is made up of 47 major buildings, 5.5 million square feet. I simply don't know why the Federal Government, Federal taxpayers, are being asked to essentially pave their driveway. Monroe County has already offered many incentives to Xerox, including a $500,000 loan for new equipment, $100,000 training grant from Empire State Development and incentives through the County of Monroe Industrial Development Agency. Let me just say how pernicious this becomes when the Federal Government weighs in on behalf of local governments who are seeking to incentivize private companies to locate their facility there. You are inevitably picking winners and losers. If Xerox is not going to locate their new facilities or more facilities or more employees in Monroe County, they are going to do it elsewhere, in another part of the country, and it is likely that we may have to fund job training or other in that other area where it is moving from. At what point do we say this is not our business? The Federal Government's business is not to weigh in and aid one local government at the expense of another. That is essentially what we are doing here. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. The gentleman mentions that he does not begrudge those in Arizona seeking water subsidies, for example. I do. I hope the gentleman will join me in voting against the extension of the next farm bill, which gives massive subsidies to cotton farmers in Arizona. They should not have those subsidies. They should not have them anywhere. So I simply think we have got to start somewhere, and when we say we are going to incentivize and we are going to join with local governments in incentivizing businesses to come, again I have to ask the question. I would love some guidance from the chairman of the committee on what would happen if the city of Newark, New Jersey, for example, said we are trying to lure Xerox to come here and we would like you to help. How does the committee make the decision? Do you look at seniority of the Member who is asking? Do you look at something else? What criteria are then used? When does the Federal Government stop weighing in and picking winners and losers? Again, if they are relocating facilities, they are relocating from somewhere else. How do we jump in and say we are going to do it here and not elsewhere? Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. This amendment would limit the city of Weirton, West Virginia from spending $100,000 on a facility. Now, I am not being deliberately vague here. This is all we know. This is all we know about this earmark. Again, city of Weirton, West Virginia, we are spending $100,000 on a facility. I would ask for guidance from the committee as to what that facility is, or the author of the amendment. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Again, I would ask again, we do not know, is it a facility? Is it not a facility? I guess it is planning for perhaps a facility, maybe not. Are we simply subsidizing the city of Weirton, West Virginia? Are we in the practice of subsidizing all cities who are having trouble with their budget? Where do we pick and choose? Again, we are tasked with providing oversight. How do we provide oversight if we do not even know if we are funding a facility or not? Let me just give a couple of other examples in this bill, ones that I am not highlighting today. Other examples of vague earmarks, $250,000 to the Salvation Army Family Enrichment Center in Anchorage, Alaska, for the construction of a ``blank.'' The sentence was not completed; $250,000 to the city of Marathon, Florida for the construction of a facility. Again, is it a facility? It may or may not be. We do not know. How can we offer oversight in that case? This is what it says: $400,000 to the South Valley Community Dental in Albuquerque for the construction of a new, again, ``blank.'' The sentence was not completed; $200,000 in transportation funds for Cedar Bluff, Alabama, no further description; $550,000 to Ed Roberts Campus, Berkeley, California. No other description. What is the money for? We have no idea. We are, in the Congress, tasked with oversight. This is all we are given from the committee; $750,000 to the city of Temple, Texas for the acquisition and renovation of a facility. There is that dreaded ``facility'' again. Keeps popping up. We do not know what kind of facility. Yet we are asked to fund it. My staff went so far as to send an e-mail to the committee staff requesting help in determining the intended use of appropriated funds in some of the particularly cryptic line items. We did not receive anything back. I can understand that. There was a lot going on this past weekend. There were 1,500 earmarks added Wednesday of last week. It is tough to get around to deciding what they are, but I would submit that if we cannot, we should not bring them to the floor and ask Members to vote on them, just to vote on appropriating money for ``facility'' when it may or may not be a facility. Mr. Chairman, I retain the balance of my time.

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Chairman, I think I am the best intentioned multiple- amendment loser in the House these days, I guess. I keep being told I am well intentioned, but these aren't going anywhere. Let me just say again. As I mentioned last week or a couple of weeks ago, this is the only opportunity we have. This is it. If we are going to offer any oversight, this is it. And when we get amendments that say for a facility, and let me just say that my staff e-mailed the committee last Friday and said, please, can you give us further explanations so that the authors of these amendments can come to the floor and better defend them? Please let us know what this is. We didn't get anything back from the committee. Nothing. That was 4 or 5 days ago. Now, I understand it is a difficult thing, but maybe the committee ought to think that maybe 1,500 earmarks in the manager's amendment might give rise to a little suspicion that we can't police this very well; that when we are spending money on swimming pools and facilities that we don't even know whether it is a real facility or not, that we have overstepped our bounds. I am not going to apologize for standing up and offering 12 amendments, 12 out of 1,500 that we could choose. There is nothing wrong with that. In fact, we ought to be doing it more often. So I would ask for the indulgence of the Members. This process, this is the only opportunity we have. We found out about the amendments last Wednesday. We go to the committee and attempt to look at them. We are told we can only look in the committee at one binder, right there. We can't even take it back to our office to study these amendments. Not until Friday did we get a copy. As soon as we did, we sent an e-mail back saying please give further explanation on these amendments. We heard nothing back. What else are we to do? I am asking. What else are we to do? I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Chairman, this amendment seeks to limit the City of Yucaipa, California, and I think it was misspelled in the manager's amendment that this is from, from spending $500,000 on an athletic facility at Crafton Hills College. Funding for a California community college project should be under the jurisdiction of the State, not for Congress. This $500,000 is part of nearly $12 million provided to the State of California in HUD earmarks, which is part of $87 million in total earmark funds included. This is the highest amount of any State in the bill. You would expect that. California is a big State. But, still, when we are spending HUD monies on athletic facilities at community colleges, I would submit something is wrong. We should not be doing this. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Chairman, again, I do not know what else to say on this one. I think we have spent enough time on it. This is money for an athletic facility, a HUD grant for an athletic facility in Yucaipa, California. Simply, why we are spending money on that I don't know. I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Chairman, this amendment would limit the Strand Theater Arts Center from spending $250,000 for conversion of a theater in Plattsburgh, New York, into a performing arts center. I simply have trouble again understanding why the Federal Government should pay $250,000 to renovate a theater in Plattsburgh, New York. This is not the only frivolous earmark included in the HUD grants in this bill. Others include $100,000 for the Village of Jamestown, Ohio, for building renovations to the Jamestown Opera House.

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

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

Mr. FLAKE. I apologize. We will send down the one we intend to do.

Mr. FLAKE. I do.

Mr. FLAKE. I thank the Chair and the Members for their indulgence, and I apologize to the Member from New York. As I mentioned here, this is funding for the Strand Theater Arts Center, $250,000 for the conversion of the theater in Plattsburgh, New York, to a performing arts center. There are other earmarks in the bill of this type: $100,000 for the Village of Jamestown, Ohio, for building renovations to the Jamestown Opera House; $100,000 to the Metropolitan Theatre Foundation in Morgantown, West Virginia, for the construction, renovation, and buildout of facilities; $100,000 to the Houston Zoo in Houston, Texas, for the construction of the Outdoor Life Science Learning Center. It goes on and on and on and on. Again, you have to say, where do we stop? Where do we say this is not the role of the Federal Government? Where do we say local government knows best. We say that we know better than Federal officials and bureaucrats over in the Department of Transportation or elsewhere where to spend money, then it stands to reason that those at the local level know a lot better than we do about what to spend money on. Sometimes in these cases these are facilities that they have decided specifically not to fund, yet we are going to go ahead and fund them. That may or may not be the case in this case. But when we are saying we know best, we are going to decide where these monies are going, whether or not it is leveraging local funds, we simply can't justify it to the Federal taxpayer. We need to remind people again and again we have a deficit this year of somewhere between $300 billion and $500 billion, depending on how you count and what you count. We have a Federal debt approaching $8 trillion, and yet we are spending money to renovate theaters in small towns across the country. Where do we say we have done enough? This ought to be done at the local level or it shouldn't be done at all. But how can we justify using taxpayer money at the Federal level for projects like this? Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I appreciate this debate. As I have said before, this is the only forum we have to try to exercise a little fiscal discipline over this process. A few speakers prior mentioned it is the definition of insanity to stand up, do the same thing, and expect you are going to get a different result. I don't know that I will ever get a different result here. I understand this process. I understand log rolling. I understand what this is about. But somebody has to stand up at some time. I think the definition of insanity is assuming that the taxpayers are buying this, that they believe this is a good use of Federal taxpayer dollars. I think they see it for what it is. I simply think you have to stand up at some point and say enough is enough. That is what we are doing here. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Chairman, I rise today to offer a series of amendments on earmark limitations to the Transportation, Treasury, Housing and Urban Development 2007 appropriation. While the Appropriations Committee is touting a two-thirds reduction in earmark spending, the sad news is that even with that decrease, the bill still contains more than $930 million in pork-barrel spending. With more than 1,500 earmarks, this bill contains more earmarks than all of the appropriation bills passed in each of the years 1995, 1996, or 1997. This bill provides for new zoo docks, opera houses, bike paths, hiking trails, and 1,500 other congressional priorities, all paid for at the expense of the taxpayer. The most disturbing part of this bill is that these earmarks are paid for with ``funny money,'' with fictitious offsets that would have never left the Treasury to begin with. So while you will hear during this debate many times you are not saving money by getting rid of these earmarks, all the Appropriations Committee would have to do is to simply say we are not going to fund earmarks this year. We will take a lower 302(b) allocation or we will apply it elsewhere instead of funding these earmarks. So that argument that you will hear again and again is simply wrong. We were unable to identify whose earmarks are in this bill many times, who requested them, or how they were chosen, because we were simply given the manager's amendment last Wednesday, I believe, with these 1,500 earmarks. It is very difficult, and you will see with some of these, they are very vague as to what they are actually funding. So I would submit that oversight is tremendously difficult when you do not even know what the earmark is really for. If it is to fund a facility, a facility could mean a lot of things. We do not even know anything more than that from the manager's amendment. We are left with these limitation amendments as the only means of shining daylight on the process, on these projects and programs and on this spending, and there is plenty to shine in light of this transportation bill. I hope that we will take the time today to actually look at what we are doing. This first amendment would limit the University of Mississippi in Oxford from spending $1 million on the new William Faulkner Museum. This $1 million is part of nearly $12 million that the State of Mississippi has provided in earmarks in this bill, including nearly $2 million in HUD grant earmarks. Currently, the University of Mississippi already owns Rowan Oak, which was a family home of the Faulkners for more than 40 years. Currently, Rowan Oak nonstudent visitors pay $5 for the tour. According to the University's Web site, this earmark will go toward building a new wing in the University museums featuring a biographical timeline exhibition dedicated to the author who once wrote ``I don't care much for facts, am not much interested in them . . . '' I would say that if we are interested in the facts here, we are spending too much money. We are often told there are criteria when these earmarks come before the committee, strict criteria that these earmarks have to pass or they are not funded. I would ask, please, someone explain what criteria we are using to take money from taxpayers in California or Arizona or elsewhere to pay for the William Faulkner Museum in the State of Mississippi. If you can justify this kind of spending, I would submit you can justify just about anything. If you can just identify it on economic development grounds, what cannot be justified on economic development grounds? Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. FLAKE

Mr. FLAKE. I am very concerned about the lack of oversight on an annual basis for, say, tax provisions in this country.

Mr. FLAKE. Ninety-six percent of the earmarks that we passed last year were in conference reports that were just spending construction to the agencies. The agencies have very little knowledge that the funding is even there, yes. The problem is, if you want little oversight on your earmark, if you want it to continue without scrutiny, it pays to be vague about your earmark, vague about its goals, vague about any benchmarks that there might be. Because as soon as you spell it out and leave a paper trail, you are subject to an amendment. If you don't, it might be ruled out of order. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, this is $750,000 for the Missouri Forest Foundation. This foundation has been funded for at least 3 years, and is funded through the Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Program earmark section of the bill. The section of the bill includes more than $50 million in congressionally directed research earmarks. According to CRS, earmarks in the appropriations for the Renewable Energy program have tripled in the past 3 years. According to the Office of the President and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, this level of earmarking hampers the program from being able to achieve its research goals. Let me say that again: According to the Office of the President and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, this level of earmarking hampers the program from being able to achieve its research goals. It was these kinds of earmarks in the fiscal year 2006 appropriations that the National Renewable Energy Laboratory said caused a $28 million shortfall and forced them to lay off 32 positions. While these positions were ultimately restored, this shows the downside of earmarks and how they can wreak havoc on the administrative agencies. The Missouri Forest Foundation, an education and research foundation of the forest industry, supports the research and implementation of a program that would utilize wood biomass to produce energy. The task force mission is to develop a program where wood products from Missouri are fully utilized, solving forest health problems and current energy issues. Bioenergy ranks second to hydropower in renewable U.S. primary energy production and accounts for 3 percent of the primary energy production in the United States. While I support a diverse energy sector, I cannot see the benefit of earmarking a program to the point of ineffectiveness. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, before yielding 1 minute to the gentleman from Texas, let me just say that we are again faced with a false choice here. The notion is, should we spend it, or should the administration spend it? Perhaps it shouldn't be spent at all. I would submit, if we are spending $700,000 or so for the end-of-life electronics project in West Virginia, we are spending too much money, the government is as a whole, whether it is us or whether it is the administration. So the choice isn't, should we spend it or should they? Maybe we should just have a smaller budget. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Hensarling).

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time. Mr. Chairman, again, I thank the gentleman from Texas for his comments. It couldn't be more true. At what point, where do we say, let's stop? We have grown earmarks in the past decade 872 percent. When is it enough? Do we earmark every account in the Federal Government? Do we look at those agencies and say, we know better than you do? What about the maintenance accounts that they have? What about other things that they come back to us the next year and say, you shorted us? You earmarked this account. Now we still have to maintain this runway or this tower or perform this maintenance, and then we have to up the funding again. I will say again, my colleague in the Senate described earmarks as ``the gateway drug to spending addiction.'' Once we start with earmarks, we just can't stop spending in other areas. I would submit that if you look at the Federal budget growth over the past several years, a lot of it is due to earmarks, simply because you get earmarks and they leverage higher spending everywhere else. You look at how few votes there are against these appropriation bills in the end when you know more people are opposed to much more in the provisions. It is because they have earmarks, and they have to support it.