[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 148 (Wednesday, September 17, 2008)]
[Senate]
[Pages S8910-S8911]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              THE ECONOMY

  Mr. DeMINT. Mr. President, my colleague has made a case for more 
Government intervention into the problems on Wall Street and in our 
economy, basically blaming the free markets for our failures.
  I would like to make it clear what I think most Americans already 
know, which is that many of the problems we are having today, 
particularly the problems with AIG, the failures on Wall Street, the 
mortgage industry, actually go back not to greed in the private market 
but political greed--the problems that were created when this Congress 
and this Government set up Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as government-
sponsored enterprises with

[[Page S8911]]

the implied and now very explicit backing of the American people. It 
provided so much cheap credit to the market, securities that were 
bought and sold by many companies. AIG is in trouble because of these 
bad mortgages that basically originated with Fannie Mae and Freddie 
Mac.
  My point is that the problems we are having are caused by the wrong 
kind of Government intervention. This is not a failure of free 
enterprise; this is a failure of Government solutions and the lack of 
Government oversight into enterprises such as Fannie Mae and Freddie 
Mac that were started.
  Now, in a situation where we already have debt as a nation, we are 
borrowing excessively and our economy is slowing down. We are in a 
situation where we have to continue to spend money to bail out these 
companies because of bad Government decisions decades ago. A lot of 
money is being spent and a lot is being wasted by this Congress.
  We have had a debate over the last 2 years about wasteful spending 
and earmarks. There has been a lot of talk about creating more 
transparency and stopping this wasteful spending. We had an ethics bill 
that passed with a lot of fanfare where we talked about making these 
earmarks more transparent, putting them in the bills themselves so that 
the American people could see what we are spending, and that if we were 
going to have a ``bridge to nowhere,'' at least the American people 
knew we were spending that money.
  We have talked about this for the past 2 years, and even the 
President has recognized that so much of this earmarking has resulted 
in wasteful spending in transportation, and especially in the military, 
that he has issued an Executive order that has made it clear that when 
we produce a bill, such as the Defense authorization bill, and then, as 
an aside, we produce what we call report language, with oftentimes 
thousands of earmarks, politically directed spending all over the 
country--few that the military asked for, most they did not.
  A lot of these are meritorious projects. The fact is, if we want to 
look up the bill itself, the text, and search for different types of 
spending, it is not available because it is not in the bill itself. For 
many years in the Senate and the Congress as a whole we have produced 
spending and authorization bills and then did the report language on 
the side with hidden earmarks that people didn't know were there. The 
President said in his Executive order that when we send a bill over 
with report language on the side, he is going to direct his agencies 
not to honor these earmarks unless they are meritorious, unless they 
agree with the mission of the agency and the purpose of the 
legislation. It doesn't mean these are all taken out and lost, which is 
what has been presented on the Senate floor today. What it means is 
they have scrutiny; that the administration, if it sees wasteful 
projects, does not feel obligated to spend the money, which is a good 
thing.
  In this Defense authorization bill, some Senators, my Democratic 
colleagues, have decided they want to go around the Executive order. 
They want all of these earmarks to have the force of law, which means 
whether they are meritorious or not the administration has to honor 
them. The way they have done this, which sets us back years as far as 
earmark reform in the Senate, is they have put a little section in this 
bill that references all of these earmarks and in effect makes them 
law. What I have offered is an amendment. I asked to have one amendment 
on this bill. There is a tradition in the Senate that Senators are 
allowed to offer an amendment. I have been waiting a week to offer the 
amendment. It strikes that section that tries to secretly attach all of 
the earmarks to the actual law. It is a simple amendment of three 
words: ``Strike section 1002.'' It does not eliminate all of the 
earmarks, but it gives the administration the right they should have 
not to spend money on projects in this green book that are not needed 
by the military or to defend this country and that the military 
considers wasteful. We should not allow Members of the Senate to 
pretend to have reformed the earmark process, to pretend to have a more 
ethical process, when, in fact, what they have done is the most 
unethical thing we have ever done with earmarks: to try to make 
something secret actually have the force of law with a little section 
written here.
  My amendment would change that and put it back to the way it has been 
for years. I ask my colleagues not to go backwards as far as earmark 
reform, not to defy what the American people have told us increasingly 
about wasteful spending at a time of an economic downturn, a time of 
war, a time of heavy debt, when we have 5 billion dollars' worth of 
earmarks in this little green book that Americans won't see, and we 
can't bring it up, as we talked about in the ethics reform bill, in a 
searchable format where people can find all this wasteful spending. It 
is hidden, and it is not right.
  I encourage my colleagues to appeal to the majority leader to give me 
this amendment so that we can at least have a vote. I encourage all 
colleagues to vote for it.
  I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

                          ____________________