[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 11]
[House]
[Page 15859]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                COMPLAINTS DEPARTMENT IS NOT GOOD ENOUGH

  (Ms. FOXX asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend her remarks.)
  Ms. FOXX. Mr. Speaker, I love my colleague from Missouri, appreciate 
his leading our prayer breakfast during the week; but he is wrong. This 
is not a delaying tactic. We have been bringing things out into the 
open with this bill, with our discussions of the Homeland Security 
bill, and he knows and we know that the bill does not have to be 
approved until September because it doesn't go into effect until 
October so we are not delaying any fence building.
  The discussions we have been having on the floor have been 
tremendously enlightening, as the Republicans have fought literally 
through the night to restore openness to our government. My colleagues 
on the other side of the aisle have raised these complaints that we are 
distracting from the real issue.
  The debate on making earmarks public before we vote on the bill is 
the real issue. I can think of nothing more important than defending 
the rights of Members of this House to contest potentially wasteful 
spending requests. But as we have highlighted for the past couple of 
days, the majority wants to kill that right and instead replace it with 
a complaints department and massive slush funds. A complaints 
department is not good enough. My constituents, and every American, 
deserve to know what will be in this bill before we vote on it and 
telling us to write a letter to the committee when to contest an 
egregious earmark once they are announced merely amounts to 
wallpapering over the core issue here.
  We need openness. And the more my colleagues in the majority fight to 
keep earmarks secret, the more Americans will see them as the party of 
hypocrisy.

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