[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 11]
[House]
[Pages 15093-15094]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                      EARMARK LIMITATION AMENDMENT

  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, every year now we hear a lot of high-minded 
rhetoric about earmarks and how earmarks represent Congress' Article I 
authority, that we earmark in Congress because we have the power of the 
purse and we are simply exercising that power.
  But the reality belies that claim. Let me talk about one earmark 
tonight that will give just an example of how this high-minded rhetoric 
that we often hear is so wrong.
  We may not even get appropriation bills on the floor this year. We 
may not have any. It may be that we simply do a continuing resolution 
to fund appropriations for the next fiscal year; and then in January 
have a big omnibus bill and all of the earmarks, the thousands that 
have been put as part of the bill that we haven't even seen on the 
House floor, will be dumped into the bill.
  So all we can do, I guess, is come to the floor in a forum like this 
when we are not even officially challenging the earmarks, but to 
highlight what a waste some of these earmarks are.
  This earmark that I want to talk about tonight is $200,000 in funding 
for the Advantage West Economic Development Group's Certified 
Entrepreneurial Community Program in North

[[Page 15094]]

Carolina. There are a number of earmarks similar to this in the Labor-
HHS bill which we won't see later this year. These are funds set aside 
for economic development, business incubators and workforce programs.
  I would never argue, nor would any of us in our campaign literature, 
that this is a proper role and function of government. Yet we see time 
and again earmark after earmark to fund these kinds of programs.
  This is not the first time I have challenged an earmark for this 
specific group. In fact, last year I came to the floor and argued that 
this group need not have Federal funds to carry out its objective. I 
say this because Advantage West Economic Development Group's Website 
has a long list of corporate sponsors, including BB&T, BellSouth, 
Qualcomm, Sprint, UBS, Verizon and Wachovia. In addition to more than 
80 corporate sponsors listed, the group also counts the National Park 
Service, National Endowment for the Arts and the U.S. Department of 
Commerce as ``funding partners.''
  On top of that, the group received a $282,000 earmark in last year's 
appropriation bill.
  So why in the world, Mr. Speaker, with so much financial support 
coming here should this group receive an additional subsidy? It simply 
makes no sense at all.
  I think that we ought to mention here, as was mentioned in the July 9 
issue of Roll Call, that we often hear that earmarks are given out 
because Members know their districts much better than faceless 
bureaucrats in some department.

                              {time}  1945

  But why is it, then, if there is such a noble purpose for earmarks, 
and the Members are simply knowing their district and getting these 
districts, why is there such a disproportionate allocation of earmarks? 
Why are so many going to leadership or so-called vulnerable Members on 
one side.
  Why are earmarks given out to Members who are at risk of losing their 
election? According to a Roll Call article just a few days ago, it said 
that ``Sixteen Democrats in the `Frontline' program, aimed at 
protecting the 29 most vulnerable House Democrats, secured $810,000 
worth of earmarks each'' in the Labor-HHS bill. This is not a one-sided 
effort. It's not just the Democrats, it's my party as well.
  The article went on to say, ``Among the 23 Republican incumbents 
participating in the `Regain Our Majority Program' this cycle, 14 
secured $900,000 or more in the Labor-HHS bill.
  ``Twelve of those--the Republicans pulled down $1 million or more in 
the CJS bill, with 8 of them securing $1.5 million each.''
  Again, why is it, after we hear all this lofty rhetoric about 
earmarks, because we know our constituents best, why is it that the 
only ones that really know their constituents best are those who are at 
risk of not being re-elected back to this body? It simply doesn't make 
sense. It cheapens this institution. We are a better institution than 
that, and we should, we should respect this institution more than that 
and respect taxpayers' money more than that.
  Also, another reason that's often given for earmarks is that we need 
to provide oversight. Earmarking is a way to provide oversight, 
because, after all, we know better than those bureaucrats on how to 
spend money.
  I asked the Congressional Research Service to do a little research to 
see where the actual oversight in Congress has gone since the 
contemporary practice of earmarking has really started in the mid-
1990s. If you look at the 104th Congress, we just had--not very many 
earmarks. By the time we got to the 109th Congress, we were up around, 
I think, the final numbers were about 15,000 earmarks. Yet the 
oversight hearings actually go down. That's not a legitimate reason for 
earmarking.

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