[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 25]
[House]
[Page 34002]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                                EARMARKS

  (Mr. FLAKE asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute.)
  Mr. FLAKE. Madam Speaker, at some point this week, Congress is going 
to consider a massive omnibus spending bill that rolls the 11 remaining 
appropriation bills into one enormous bill.
  I wish I could take the floor today and talk about what's in the 
floor bill, but I can't, because I have no idea. I'm far from alone. 
Save for a few Members of leadership, all of us are in the dark about 
what could be in this massive bill that we're going to be voting on in 
just a matter of hours. With the likelihood of thousands and thousands 
of earmarks in the bill, our constituents deserve a process that, at 
the very least, Members have an opportunity to read the bill before we 
vote on it.
  Now, the majority argues that such tactics are no more egregious than 
those that Republicans employed during our years in the majority. That 
may be true, but I would remind my colleagues that that's one of the 
reasons we find ourselves in the minority today. This institution 
deserves far better.

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