Jeff Flake

Mr. FLAKE

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

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, this will be my final amendment, at the risk of hearing cheers from the gentleman from Idaho. Mr. Chairman, this is $1 million for the Juniata locomotive shop. I believe that it goes to a locomotive shop owned by Norfolk Southern. I can't know for sure, because there is no description of the earmark anywhere in the bill. Let me read a quote from Norfolk Southern Chairman David Goode in 2005: ``Thinking back to the beginning of my rail career in the late 1960s and early 1970s, rail systems were failing badly. There were strongly held beliefs that we were headed for a failed and nationalized system. In that context, you began to realize the strength of an industry that rebuilt itself, albeit with a lot of government policy help, although essentially no government money.'' But now it seems that we are giving them money as well. Again, here is a situation where we know so little about this earmark, and this seems to be the only forum where we can find out about it. When we come and debate it on the floor, we might get a little window into the process and see what this is about: Has this been authorized? What is the process of oversight? That is what we are here for. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Chairman, I yield such time as he may consume to the sponsor of the earmark, Mr. Scott, and I would just like to ask him what kind of oversight is offered. Is there a reporting requirement? How do we know the museum is actually spending the money for scientific research rather than having the traveling exhibits from the Jelly Belly Candy Company?

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Chairman, I simply think this is a great example of the problem with having so many earmarks, over 10,000 earmarks in any given year, in all appropriation bills. As the minority leader mentioned yesterday, we simply don't have the staff or the resources to police these earmarks to know if they are going for the intended purpose and for oversight. When we try to figure out which of the hundreds of earmarks to actually bring up here, we will often try to find out about the earmark. Sometimes the only information we have is from the press release that the Member who requested the earmark put out. The Federal agencies have nothing. Perhaps we can go to a Web site for the recipient of the earmark. But in terms of oversight, there is virtually nothing. We are just approving $100,000 here, $200,000 here, $5 million there, until it adds up to hundreds of millions of dollars with virtually no oversight; nobody to check back. Then, when we try to actually conduct proper oversight of Federal agencies, it is almost a laughing matter because we have already stipulated that they spend funds for a museum. In one case last year, it was money for a museum in the Defense appropriations bill, and there are several museums in this piece of legislation. I would submit that we have got to get a handle on this. We have to change the process. That is why we are here today, because I have exhausted every other avenue privately. This is the only place we can actually exercise any oversight, right here, in 5 minutes, to look at this earmark and look at the millions of dollars that are spent elsewhere. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

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

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

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Let's get back to this specific earmark. I would like to know, like I said, all we know is what we gleaned from the press release, because there is no other information available at all. But the press release indicated that there was just the latest traunch of funding that had already gone to this project. Would the ranking minority member happen to know if any oversight has been conducted on funds that have already been provided to this project?

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

Mr. FLAKE. That is part of what is wrong with this process. We have no oversight. The Federal agencies don't know what is going on. We heard this story about an earmark that worked. We always hear those when we are doing these earmarks. We never hear about the massive failures that go on as well or the massive waste that goes on. We have no idea how, if that money had not been spent by us, by Congress or the bureaucrats, how, if companies would have been able to keep more of their tax dollars, they might have done something even better or even faster. We just don't hear that. So it is simply a false argument to say that the font of all knowledge is here in Congress, and we can outguess the market. We can do better than that simply by saying I know my district, and I am going to put that money there. That is a good company. I like them. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Chairman, I would say to the gentlewoman that all we have to go on is the language in the committee report.

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Chairman, can I yield to the ranking minority member and ask: Has there been any hearings on this project, the Virginia Science Museum?

Mr. FLAKE. Okay. Does anyone know? Have there been any hearings, or has this ever been authorized? All right. Thank you.

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. This earmark provides close to $2 million in Federal funding for a publicly traded natural gas corporation to do research and development on an air conditioning system that uses natural gas instead of electricity, a so-called GEDAC. I am not disputing the potential benefits of GEDAC technology for consumers and natural gas companies. Homeowners are demanding year- round comfort in their homes, particularly in Arizona, wanting to stay cool on hot days and keep warm on cool days at an affordable cost. GEDAC use in the Southwestern United States has the potential to save significant electrical power and reduce water usage. The gas industry has long sought to sell more natural gas for cooling during the summer months. However, I cannot see the role of the Federal Government in sponsoring corporate research and development that would seek to give one industry a leg up over another. How can we pick winners and losers? The Southwest Gas Corporation boasts more than a million customers, many of whom are in my State. They want more customers, as they should. This earmark seeks to subsidize natural gas technology with Federal money at the expense of other industry sectors. According to the most recent quarterly report, Southwest Gas Corporation reported more than $3 billion in assets and after-tax income of over $48 million for last year. Beyond that, the defense authorization that was recently reported out of committee includes more than $6 million for GEDAC demonstration projects. Not only are the American taxpayers supposed to help develop the technology to expand the gas company's market share, but we are footing the bill for road testing it as well. We have to be careful, I believe, when we have earmarks for nonprofit corporations and others. I think we have to be doubly careful when we are actually funding a for-profit corporation and just handing them a check and saying do some research. How do we choose that company over another? I happen to know the people at Southwest Gas. They are fine people and have a fine company, but why are we saying we are going to give them an earmark and not others? Another problem here, the earmark we have chosen to highlight here is $2 million in Federal funding. This is in Nevada. We found out only after offering the amendment there is an additional earmark for this same company. It is on another page and it simply doesn't say Southwest Gas. I think it is for another $3 million. So there is some $4.8 million that is being spent to subsidize a private company. I would submit that is not our role. We get in the business of doing this, spending the taxpayers' money this way, and also picking winners and losers in the economy. It is something that we should not be doing. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

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

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

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. This is an earmark for the Mystic Aquarium and Institute for Exploration. These are divisions of the Sea Research Foundation, which is a nonprofit institution. According to the Foundation, its mission is to inspire people everywhere to care about and protect our oceans by exploring and sharing their biological, ecological and cultural treasures. According to its Web site, the Mystic Aquarium is a nonprofit organization whose donations and revenue from admissions go to the development and execution of educational programs, marine research, marine animal rescue and deep sea expeditions. This is a good thing. I am sure it is a great museum. Corporate membership in the aquarium includes Foxwoods Resort Casino, American Laboratory Trading, CL&P, Coca-Cola, the Kraft Corporation, Hubbell Manufacturing, Monsanto and Pfizer, to name a few. Donations from these entities pay for some wonderful things. The aquarium is a recognized leader in aquatic animals and archeological exhibits and also a recognized leader in oceanic research. Let me say again, Mr. Chairman, these are very good things. This is wonderful that they are doing these things. But with all the groundbreaking research and programs at the aquarium, why is it then that the taxpayer should fund $400,000 for this research and environmental center at the Mystic Aquarium? Where is the Federal nexus? With so many private partners and local funding sources, why do we involve ourselves? There are aquariums all over the country. If we decided that we were going to give an earmark for every one, how would we fund it? How do we pick and choose between this one and that one or this one and that one? I would submit that we simply can't, and we shouldn't. We ought to have a process that doesn't allow individual members to say, I think I need that money for my project in my district. When we do that, we simply get away from what we are all about here. We have a process, authorization, appropriation, oversight, and we seem to have ignored the end of each of that, the authorization and the oversight, and we just do the appropriations. When we do that, we get ourselves in trouble. We embarrass ourselves with some of the earmarks that we do. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I would simply say again there have been no hearings on this project. There will be no oversight hearings to see if the money is spent properly, and it is an earmark, so it is not authorized. So we have circumvented the process again. When we do that, when we circumvent the process and we do not have direct oversight, we diminish our ability to offer credible oversight. Again, when we tell the Federal agencies, the Department of Defense, for example, you ought to be spending more money on body armor, they come back and tell us, hey, we cannot because you stipulated that we spend a million dollars in our defense budget for a museum in New York. It is like that in bill after bill after bill. And those who say these earmarks do not cost any money, if it is not spent here it will be spent somewhere else, don't tell the full story. We are often earmarking accounts that we have not earmarked in the past. Those accounts are for maintenance, say the FAA to maintain runways and towers. Well, they will come back to us next year and say you earmarked our accounts for maintenance, so you have to backfill this account. So we have to appropriate more. So these do cost. If we just got rid of these earmarks, we could lower our allocation in this committee and let us spend it on defense or give it back to the taxpayers. Let's do something else. So the notion that we heard a lot of yesterday that this will not save any money to knock out earmarks is simply wrong. If the Appropriations Committee would say they are not going to do earmarks this year, they could lower their allocation by the total amount of earmarks. In the bill yesterday, it was about $500 million. This is the only forum we have to stand up for 5 minutes on some of the amendments that we choose to highlight to say this process has gone awry and we need to change it. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, let me just make the point that why would we assist only the locomotive sector? What about construction vehicles, highway vehicles? Again, we are picking and choosing, just based on our decisions. We are not the font of all knowledge. And if we decide that we are just going to direct every bit of spending and that we are not going to have oversight because we have directed it and therefore we need no oversight, and all we have in terms of oversight is this 5 minutes that we have really never exercised before to question an earmark when it comes to the House floor, Mr. Chairman, I would submit that we have a broken process here. It is simply wrong. We cannot be doing this. Again, let me just simply say, when do we concede that we are out of control? It was 5,000. We are up to over 10,000 earmarks a year. When it is too much? In 1987, President Reagan vetoed the highway bill because there were 152 earmarks. The last highway bill we passed last year had over 6,000. Other bills have had similar increases in earmarks. And yet we say it is not enough. If we know our own districts and we know how to direct spending, then why not direct it all? Why not earmark every account? Again, we have demonstrated again and again, some of the authors of these amendments have not even shown up to defend them. We do not even know if there is any oversight for previous earmarks or for the ones that are here now. Yet we just blindly just say, all right, if a Member wants it, let's approve it. I would simply submit that we have got to stop that. We have got to stop that. We are out of control. We have a fiscal train wreck coming up when it comes to entitlement spending and discretionary spending. And this notion again that cutting those earmarks is not going to save money because it will simply be spent by the government agency is simply not true. All the committee had to do was the 302 allocations, and then they can simply say let's designate that for war funding. We know we are going to spend that money. You can reallocate before you report the bill out of committee. So this notion that, okay, we are here, we might as well spend it or the administration will, that is simply a false choice. We are here as legislators. Again, as I said yesterday, we are not potted plants. I think taxpayers expect us to make hard choices, and we are not making them. We are basically saying, if you can justify a project in your district, if you think it is a good idea, then we ought to fund it, by golly, and there ought to be very little oversight, because you know what is best for your district. That is not the best way to go. We are not the font of all knowledge. We cannot outguess the market. We try and try and we will come up with an example of where this earmark led to this discovery or that, and we ignore that when we take money from the taxpayers and spend it on a teapot museum or on the Punxsutawney Weather Museum in Pennsylvania or on the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame or on the Baseball Hall of Fame, then we are taking money we should not take from the taxpayers at all. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Mr. FLAKE. Yes.

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, I take it I am not going to get an answer to this. All we know is from a press release, and we know that this is simply the latest traunch in other funding that has been provided. What I hear, and I guess the author is not here of the amendment or, I am sorry, the author of the earmark, the sponsor of the earmark, that no oversight has been conducted. Do we feel comfortable going ahead and appropriating more when no oversight has been conducted at all on what has already been expended?

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. When I first saw this earmark, this is for Center for End-of-Life Electronics in West Virginia, I thought that it might have something to do with improving treatment technology for terminally ill patients. It is not. This earmark is about the end of life for electronics, that is, computers, televisions, cell phones, et cetera. This earmark intends to help a single organization that is in the business of recovering the components of electric devices that can be recycled or that could be environmentally hazardous. My amendment would simply prevent funding for this purpose. As with many of the earmarks I pointed out recently, there is simply no explanation or justification in the bill or the committee report. My staff, trying to find out where this earmark came from or what it is to do, had to finally look at a press release that mentions other funding secured for this organization. So I assume it is for the same purpose. We simply do not know. Again, no hearings, no authorization, no method of oversight here. Evidently, the program has received $3 million in the past. Now it needs another $600,000. I would ask the gentleman from Ohio, Mr. Hobson, what oversight has been exercised over this program up until this point, if he knows. Public institutions and private groups in Davisville, West Virginia, have partnered and established A Center for End-of-Life Electronics to seek solutions for electronic waste. What Federal role does this particular center fill? How should we explain this one to the taxpayers of Missouri or Connecticut or Arizona or any other State outside of West Virginia? I welcome the justification for a Federal function in this case. But then I ask, why are we picking winners and losers throughout the earmarking process? Again, we are choosing one organization. If this recycling operation and others like it or any organization or business wants to exceed and excel, we should let them compete freely in the marketplace. Let's keep Congress out of it. I am sure there are many other electronics recycling operations throughout the country, but we are favoring just one of them with this earmark. I don't think that the Congress ought to be making calls like this. I am certainly not capable. I know my district pretty well, but I don't think and I wouldn't presume to say that a center in my district is the best in the world in end-of-life electronics. That is simply a call that we shouldn't be making. Rather than seeking to salvage electronic components, Congress should be intent on salvaging the process by which we spend tax dollars. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. At what point do we admit we are out of control with earmarks? Would it have been at 5,000 earmarks a year? 6,000? 8,000? 9,000? 10,000? We are well above that. We have grown in the past decade. I think it has been an 872 percent increase in the number of earmarks. The dollar value has increased substantially as well. Yesterday, we had the ranking minority member concede we have no idea, and it is ``grotesquely out of control'' were his words. We have that concession on that side. On this side we are saying that as well. We do not have a way to police these earmarks or to provide oversight. At what point do we say we need to sit back and go through the regular authorization appropriation process in Congress? Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.