[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 43 (Wednesday, March 11, 2009)]
[House]
[Page H3322]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        END PRACTICE OF EARMARKS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Flake) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Speaker, today, President Obama made two major 
announcements. First, he wants serious earmark reform. In particular, 
he wants to get rid of earmarks that represent no-bid contracts to 
private companies.
  Second, he will sign the $410 billion omnibus spending bill 
containing nearly 9,000 earmarks, several thousand of which represent 
no-bid contracts to private companies. It should not go unnoticed that 
the announcement to rein in earmarks was made to great fanfare when the 
ceremony to sign the earmark-laden omnibus into law was taking place in 
a quiet room away from public view.
  So, Mr. Speaker, as much as we know we need adult supervision around 
here on the earmark question, I think it's safe to say that we are on 
our own. We can't expect the President to help us out that much. This 
is not a criticism of this President. The last President talked a lot 
about earmark reform but didn't carry a very big stick. In the end, he 
left it to us, and we didn't reform the process. We are in that same 
position today.
  Mr. Speaker, the bill that's being signed into law today contains 
thousands and thousands of no-bid contracts to private companies. Many 
of those no-bid contracts to private companies will go to clients of 
the PMA Group, a lobbying firm that is currently under investigation by 
the U.S. Department of Justice. Yet we continued. We let it go in this 
bill.
  So I think those of us who worry that we are not going to be serious 
about earmark reform this coming session have reason to be worried, 
despite the announcements to get serious about the prospect both by the 
President and by the Democratic majority here.
  Let me just tell you a little about the scope of the problem we face. 
I have here 83 pages. These represent certification letters that 
Members of Congress write in order to request an earmark. These 
requests were made for the 2009 defense bill which we passed in 
September of last year without any debate where somebody could 
challenge any one of the earmarks which were more than 2,000 in that 
piece of legislation.
  These 83 I hold in my hand now were requests for earmarks made to 
clients of the PMA Group, again the firm that is under investigation by 
the Department of Justice. In every one of these cases, a private 
company is listed here to receive the earmark.
  I will just read through a couple. This is one where the recipient of 
this earmark is to go to Ocean Power Technologies located at Pier 21 in 
Honolulu, Hawaii.
  Here is another. This one is to go to L-3 Communications Systems 
project located in Salt Lake City, Utah.
  Here is another for Parametric Technology Corporation located at 140 
Kendrick Street, Needham, Massachusetts.
  There is another for General Dynamics Ordnance and Tactical Systems, 
Scranton Operations in Scranton, Pennsylvania.
  These are all no-bid contracts to private companies. They are all to 
clients of the PMA Group.
  In every case here, in all 83, those who requested these earmarks for 
these private companies, these no-bid contracts, then received, or 
before, in every case here, received a contribution either from 
executives at the PMA Group or the PAC operated from the PMA Group.
  So we have a problem here, Mr. Speaker, that we need to address. Now, 
there were some reforms that have been outlined today saying that no-
bid contracts will have to be competitively bid. If these no-bid 
contracts, if these companies are actually listed and the Federal 
agencies receive these requests and then bid it out, then it's not an 
earmark anymore.
  So we have a bit of a misnomer here or something that doesn't quite 
make sense. But I think a lot of us who have been around here a while 
are justifiably skeptical that this will actually take place. Most of 
us were here in January of 2007 when the new majority outlined some 
earmark reforms in terms of transparency and accountability.
  But we all in the past 2 years have realized that new rules are only 
as good as your willingness to enforce them, and these rules have gone 
unenforced.
  Mr. Speaker, let's have some real earmark reform.

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