[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 156 (2010), Part 13]
[Senate]
[Pages 18221-18225]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                                EARMARKS

  Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, first of all, I appreciate the fact no one 
objected to my unanimous consent request that I will be taking my 15 
minutes from this side and 15 minutes from the other side and run them 
together. I appreciate that very much.
  Let me say, before getting into this subject, something really great 
happened today in a bipartisan nature. We have a new Governor who will 
be coming in to Oklahoma, Mary Fallin, who used to serve over in the 
House. In fact, I flew her around in my airplane and helped her 
campaign, and she won handily.
  She made her first--she is still Governor-elect, but she made her 
first commitment today, and I was very excited about it. We have a guy 
in Oklahoma named Gary Ridley who has been the highway director and 
then the secretary of transportation in the State now for years and 
years and years. I was so proud that today she said she was going to 
reappoint him.
  I can remember 8 years ago when Governor Brad Henry, who is a 
Democrat, was elected. I called him up and I said: I only have one 
request, and that is you keep Gary Ridley because he's the best there 
is in the Nation, and I really believe that. Now, 8 years later, she 
has done this.
  I remember when I was critical of President Clinton in 1998 when he 
took $8 billion out of the highway trust fund and put it into deficit 
reduction. It was something that was the wrong thing to do, and Gary 
Ridley stood by my side for 8 years before we were able to correct 
that. So we are going to have a great road program and hopefully we 
will be able to get into some of these things. After all, that is what 
we are supposed to be doing.
  In a minute I am going to kind of identify myself as a different type 
of person than you have been hearing from on the floor. I happen to 
have the distinction of being the only Republican who objected in our 
conference a couple weeks ago to the ban on earmarks, as they define 
it. I just had no problem doing that at all. But it is something that 
is not a fun thing to do.
  Something happened tonight that went completely by everybody. It was 
a total change in the Republican position, and it is a good change when 
Senator McCain and Senator Coburn both talked about authorization. I 
have often said that authorization is the only discipline on 
appropriations, and I believe that, and that is true. So we have a 
situation where I have been saying--not for months but for years--that 
if you will just define an earmark as an appropriations that has not 
been authorized, I am with you. I heard them tonight say that. 
Unfortunately, that is not what the bill that we are going to have 
before us says.
  I would just like to do away with the whole word ``earmarks'' or else 
define it in such a way as I just described it. Now it seems as if 
everybody would be in agreement with it, and maybe that is going to be 
the road we will be taking.
  Let me, first of all, before I surprise a lot of people, give my 
conservative credentials. I have always been ranked as one of the most 
conservative or the most conservative Member of the U.S. Senate, the 
National Journal's most conservative Senator for 2009. That is the last 
one they gave out: ``The only Senator with a perfect score on 99 key 
votes.'' I have also been voted the ``most outstanding U.S. Senator'' 
by Human Events.
  So I am a conservative. I am a conservative but a conservative who 
loves the Constitution. I have also been waiting for a long time. I 
love these guys. Certainly the author of this, Senator Coburn, is a 
brother and I love him. And brothers do fight sometimes. This fight is 
going to be over with and we are going to have a happy ending.
  I have been waiting for years for this Tea Party thing to happen, for 
conservatives, anti-establishment people to come in, and I just get 
very excited when I see what we are looking at. Yet we have an 
administration with a majority in both Houses that we have had now for 
quite some time: spend, spend, spend. When they talk about George W. 
Bush, look, it is this administration with the increase in the debt to 
the amount it is now, which is a greater increase in debt than we have 
had collectively with every President, every administration from George 
Washington to George W. Bush.
  All the time, they have been talking about earmarks that totally 
distract people from the real problem. That is not the problem. I have 
been listening on the floor now for the last 2 years. Every night we go 
through the same thing. They talk about earmarks, earmarks, earmarks. 
What they do not do is pay attention to the fact that during that 
discussion this President, with his majority in both Houses, was able 
to give my 20 kids and grandkids a $3 trillion deficit in 1 year. It is 
mind-boggling that this could happen. But we hear the President say: 
Spend, spend, spend. And he has used the words quite often: We need to 
give the people what they desire. It reminds me of the story of the guy 
who went in the department store and there was a beautiful, young, 
voluptuous saleslady who came up and said: Sir, what is your desire? He 
said: Well, my desire is to pick you up after work and go to a fine 
restaurant, have dinner, and buy a bottle of champagne, go to my place, 
and make mad passionate love. But I need a pair of socks.
  Now, what we are going to have to understand is, there is a 
difference between desire and need. That is what I am here to try to 
do. To think we could actually have said today--now, the bill does not 
do this, but it was said that authorizing is kind of a lost art. 
Senator McCain said that. Frankly, I do not quite agree with that 
because we have an authorization committee in Armed Services of which 
he is the ranking member, and I am the second ranking member, and it is 
something on which we have done a pretty good job. But in other areas 
we have not. Keep in mind, authorizing is the only discipline that 
there is to appropriating.
  Now, I have a family picture I show you in the Chamber. These are my 
20 kids and grandkids. I have to tell the occupier of the chair that I 
was so proud to have all of them at one table on Thanksgiving. How many 
people are blessed that way? Not many. But this little guy here--where 
is Jase Rapert. Here he is down there on the picture, the football guy.
  He came up to me one time--this is some time ago--and he said: PopI--
``I'' is for ``Inhofe.'' So MomI and PopI. He said: PopI, why is it you 
do things no one else will? I said: That's the reason, because no one 
else will.
  I am reminded of 9 years ago when everybody--I am talking about 
Democrats and Republicans--all said global warming is coming. The world 
is coming to an end. It is manmade gases that cause global warming. I 
looked into the science. At that time Republicans were in the majority. 
I was the chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee that 
has that jurisdiction. I looked at that and I found out they were 
cooking the science, that it was not true.
  Then we had the McCain-Lieberman bill and all these things that would 
pass a cap and trade which would constitute the largest tax increase in 
the history of this country. We beat them one at a time. The last one 
was Waxman-Markey. But, again, this has been something that has finally 
evolved, that that one, my voice in the wilderness 10 years ago, is now 
the prevailing thought. That is why I said to my little grandson, Jase 
Rapert, that I do it because no one else will.
  So let me just say this. How much more fun it would be to come down 
here and do the politically correct thing and say: yes, earmarks are 
bad, earmarks are bad, earmarks are bad. We are going to do away with 
earmarks, and let everyone applaud before they realize what it really 
is.
  I hear the staffers right now telling their Members: You know, you 
have the greatest opportunity. You can vote for this amendment to ban 
these earmarks and you can make people think you are conservative, No. 
1. No. 2, you can make President Obama happy because he is publicly 
supporting this. This is what he wants because this means, as has been 
said by Senator Lautenberg, Senator Harkin, and several others, if we 
do not do it, that goes to the President. I want to explain how that 
works in just a minute.

[[Page 18222]]

  We could also be politically correct, so there would be a lot of them 
thinking: What an opportunity this is. People will think, if I vote for 
this amendment, I am a conservative. Obviously, I can make our 
President happy. That will do me no harm, and I can be politically 
correct.
  Well, it has been demagoging now for so many years. Let me define 
what Webster's Third New International Dictionary says about demagogy. 
The definition of demagogy: ``Political leaders who seek to gain 
personal or partisan advantage through specious, extravagant claims, 
promises and charges.'' That is what we have been listening to now for 
at least the last 2 years, on a regular basis.
  The big problem I have with all the demagoging that has been going on 
every night for the last 2 years is that people are just not paying 
attention to the real problem. The real problem is not earmarks. The 
real problem is that during that 2-year period--when everyone is 
concerned about a few dollars--we found out we have increased the debt 
more than it has been increased in the history of this country, and we 
have given my 20 kids and grandkids a $3 trillion deficit in just 2 
years. I thought that was not possible. I never believed that could 
happen. But that is what has happened here. They have distracted 
people. Get this thing behind us so we can start working on this and 
not make people think we are doing something great for them when we 
really are not. It would be nothing short of criminal to go through all 
the trouble of electing great, new anti-establishment conservatives, 
only to be politically correct and have them cede to Obama their 
constitutional power of the purse. That is exactly what would happen.
  I want these new people coming in to tackle the three issues to 
really save America, in my opinion the deficit, the debt, and 
Obamacare, and not be distracted by the bogus issue of earmarks. I say 
``bogus.'' It is kind of a strong word. Why is it bogus? It is bogus 
and unconstitutional, but the bogus part shows the definition of what 
we are saying. The House of Representatives Republicans--not the 
Democrats, the Republicans--took a moratorium, a 1-year moratorium 
banning earmarks in that period of time. How did they define it? They 
said:

       Resolved, that it is the policy of the Republican 
     Conference that no Member shall request a congressional 
     earmark, limited tax benefit, or limited tariff benefit, as 
     such terms are used in clause 9 of rule XXI of the Rules of 
     the House. . . .

  What is clause 9 of rule XXI? It applies to every appropriation or 
authorization. In other words, they have said: we will neither 
appropriate nor authorize for a whole year. Now, the Democrats are 
going to do it. The President is going to do it. But they say they are 
not going to do it.
  Of course, the authors of this amendment, they all agreed with and 
praised the House for doing this. But let's go ahead and see what the 
Constitution says, article I, section 9. Several people here have 
talked about the Constitution. It is times like this that I miss Bob 
Byrd. Senator Byrd, talking about the Constitution right now, would be 
really outraged. It is so plain what we are supposed to be doing here. 
But article 1, section 9 says:

       No money shall be drawn from the Treasury but in 
     consequence of appropriations made by law.

  Law, that is us. Article I, section 9 of the Constitution. That is 
not the President.
  I would just say if you are looking at the Senate language, it says 
the term ``congressionally directed spending'' means a provision 
primarily at the request of a Senator providing expenditures, and so 
forth, to an entity targeted to a specific State or with any--
everything is with or to an entity. In other words, they say--again, 
they are talking about all appropriations, all authorizations. We are 
not going to do that anymore. We are going to let the President do 
that. That is what this whole thing is about.
  I was so excited when I heard for the first time them agreeing with 
me. By the way, it is not appropriate for me to tell this group or to 
say publicly what goes on inside a conference. In a Republican 
conference, I can say what I said, and I said to my colleagues when 
they were trying to get us, and they did, I went up in 2008 and I went 
ahead and voted for a ban because I was told they would define it as an 
appropriation that has not been authorized. Now, all of a sudden--they 
didn't do it then, and all of a sudden they are talking about doing it, 
and I think I know why and I will tell you in a minute why I think it 
is.
  So we are having this situation now where we are saying we are not 
going to authorize, we are not going to appropriate. There are two 
reasons to ban Senate spending by either definition. It cedes 
constitutional authority to the President and also gives cover to big 
spenders.
  Let's go back to that article I, section 9 chart. The Constitution 
restricts spending only to the legislative branch and specifically 
denies that honor to the President. We take an oath to uphold article 
1, section 9 of the Constitution. Now, maybe there is some doubt about 
this. If you think there is some doubt, let's go back and see what the 
Founders of this country said. Let's see what the authors of the 
Constitution said. Let's look at James Madison. He said:

       The power over the purse may, in fact, be regarded as the 
     most complete and effectual weapon with which any 
     Constitution can arm the immediate representatives of the 
     people for obtaining redress of every grievance.

  The two reasons he did, if you studied the Federalist Papers, they 
said they wanted Congress to do the spending because if they do it 
wrong--first of all, they know the needs of the people of their State 
or their--whatever the unit was at that time. If they do it wrong, they 
can fire them. Look what happened on November 2. That is exactly what 
happened. Alexander Hamilton said:

       The legislature not only commands the purse but prescribes 
     the rules by which the duties and rights of every citizen 
     should be regulated.

  That is what we are supposed to be doing.
  Mr. President, I have talked about Alexander Hamilton and James 
Madison. Probably the guy who was most knowledgeable on the 
Constitution was Justice Joseph Story, back in the early 1800s, when he 
actually said in his commentary:

       It is highly proper that Congress should possess the power 
     to decide how and when any money should be applied. If it 
     were otherwise, the executive would possess an unbounded 
     power. Congress is made the guardian of the Treasury.

  I say all this to impress upon any impartial patriot that the 
legislative branch--which is us--has the power to spend money. How does 
a ban on earmarks cede our authority to the President? This is 
something that is heavy lifting, but I think it is very important 
people understand why and how this happened. This is how it works. This 
is the way things work here and have for many years. The Constitution 
is very clear.
  The President submits a budget to the House and Senate--us. There is 
an overall budget, but within the budget he says how much is going to 
be spent to defend America, for roads and highways, for water and 
infrastructure, all these things. We have these top lines under which 
we are operating. So let's take this as an example. I happen to be the 
second ranking member on the Armed Services Committee. In his budget 
last year, he had, I think, $330 million set aside for a launching 
system called a box of rockets. It is a good program, something we 
need. But with limited funding, we on the Armed Services Committee--and 
Senator McCain talked about this--have experts who look at our missile 
defense system and say: How can we best defend America? The President 
doesn't know this. They can say that comes from the Pentagon, but that 
is not so. That is the reality. Instead of this launching system for 
$330 million, we decide to spend that same amount of money and buy six 
new, shiny FA-18 fighters or things that we knew we needed at this 
time. It didn't cost any more money. We are taking that money he wanted 
to spend on something else and we are exercising our constitutional 
prerogative. If we substitute our appropriation for

[[Page 18223]]

his budget item, it would be an earmark by any definition. If we pass 
this, that means we have to take whatever the President wants to spend 
on America, and we would not do anything we wanted to. So we said six 
new FA-18s were what we needed, and it didn't cost 1 cent more.
  In other words, we would be letting the President do what James 
Madison wanted us to do. If you look at this in the Armed Services 
Committee, the unmanned aerial vehicles, right now we have 36 of them 
flying around Southwest Asia over areas where there is combat, feeding 
information to our kids in the field there. We would not have unmanned 
aerial vehicles if it weren't for earmarks. We took something the 
President wanted and put that same amount of money into these unmanned 
aerial vehicles. Also, we would not have our improved armored vehicles 
and add-on armor. Why do you think we on the committee spent so much 
time on Iraq, Afghanistan, and around the world on that? We do it to 
find out our needs. Then we know more than the President knows about 
the needs.
  We are doing what Hamilton, Madison, and Story wanted us to do. That 
is what we are supposed to do. I don't know how many of our young men 
and women in uniform would be dead today if it hadn't been for that. We 
wouldn't have Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles. That was a 
congressional earmark. We wouldn't have had $14.2 million for the 
detection of landmines and suspected bombmakers and IEDs in Iraq and 
Afghanistan. That was my earmark on the Armed Services Committee. It 
didn't cost another cent. We merely canceled an equal amount of money 
that the President wanted to spend on something else and we exercised 
our Constitutional right. It didn't cost anything additional.
  Eliminating earmarks wouldn't allow us to change anything in the 
Obama budget and would allow President Obama to perform our 
constitutional duties. As I said, constitutionally that is where we are 
and that money would be transferred, for all practical purposes, to 
President Obama. Second, it gives cover to big spenders. Under the 
current definition, let's look at two of the four largest earmarks in 
2008. Using the Senate definition ``expenditures with or to an 
entity,'' the following qualified as earmarks. But rather than arguing 
as to whether they are earmarks, I will put them up to get a 
perspective. These are two of them in 2008. The TARP is one that I 
think--I know people get upset when I say this, but 10, 15, 20 years 
from now, historians will say the most egregious vote ever cast by the 
Senate was on the $700 billion bailout. You know where that went--AIG, 
Chrysler, and the General Motors bailout. That $700 billion was given 
to an unelected bureaucrat to do what he preferred.
  Next was the PEPFAR bill, $50 billion. The author of this amendment, 
Senator Coburn, voted for both of these. I voted against them. This is 
something I wish all Members would do. This is called the Inhofe 
factor. I know I am not as smart as a lot of guys around here. When I 
see billions and trillions of dollars, I have to put it somehow into a 
perspective that I know what this costs my people in Oklahoma.
  In 2009, $2 trillion in taxes was paid by individuals across the 
country, and $18 billion came from Oklahomans, which is about 1 percent 
of the Federal total. The average Oklahoma individual's tax return was 
$11,100 that year. Therefore, the average Oklahoma taxpayer is 
responsible for providing the percentage shown here of the total 
Federal revenue. For every $10 million in spending, Oklahomans pay 
about a nickel--not all the State but each taxpayer who files a tax 
return in Oklahoma. So that is what we have.
  Put the next chart up. We see how that works in reality. If you take 
the amount and use the same factor to those two bills, the TARP bill, 
the $700 billion bailout, and the $50 billion PEPFAR bill, that is $750 
billion, and you apply that factor, each of my tax-paying families in 
Oklahoma would have to have an obligation of $3,500 that year. That is 
what it would cost. Someone might argue that they didn't spend the 
whole $700 billion, that some of that came back in. That is true. But 
they authorized it and said you can do it. They were willing to have 
each taxpayer in Oklahoma spend $3,552 in taxes. The total amount of 
requests that I had--in other words, earmarks--were some $80 million, 
and that was mostly in the area of defense. Using the same factor for 
each family in Oklahoma to get to the $80 million, because we are 
trying to defend America, it would cost them 40 cents. Those are 
earmarks--40 cents versus $3,552 that the author of this amendment we 
are talking about would have to spend. You know, I think at some point 
you have to look and see what this cost is.
  If you go back to the chart No. 4 there, several things have been 
said today that were not true. I am not saying they intentionally 
misrepresented the truth, but they did it inadvertently while being 
caught up in this thing. The statement was made by a Senator--it might 
have been the occupant of the chair. The statement was made that, as 
earmarks are going up, this is causing spending to go up. That is not 
what is happening. If you take the total amount of earmarks in 2010, 
according to OMB, that would have been $11 billion. If you look and see 
what happened each year, it goes down in the amount. It started at $18 
billion 5 years ago and went down to $15 billion and then to $12 
billion and now to $11 billion. So it is coming down. That is why we 
have to look at this in reality.
  I notice my good friend, Senator DeMint, from South Carolina, has 
been active in this, and the last time I spoke on the floor I pointed 
out that Senator DeMint had all these different earmarks that he has 
been able to get for his State, and I don't know how you can talk about 
eliminating earmarks and yet do that.
  The platitudes that are used--it is interesting when you don't have 
the facts on your side, you don't have logic on your side, but you have 
a population who has been led to believe earmarks are bad--that means 
appropriations are bad, authorizations are bad unless they are done by 
the President; those individuals say earmarks are a gateway drug that 
needs to be eliminated in order to demonstrate that we are serious 
about fiscal restraint. There is only one problem with that. It is not 
true.
  According to the Office of Management and Budget, again, and the 
Federal spending watchdog groups such as Citizens Against Government 
Waste, earmarks have dramatically decreased over the last several 
years. I mentioned 2005, $19 billion; 2008, $16 billion; 2009, $15 
billion; 2010, $11 billion. So while the total number of earmarks and 
all dollars of earmarks have declined, the Obama deficit has ballooned 
to $3 trillion in 2 years. So obviously they are not a gateway drug, 
but it sounds good. But these are the platitudes.
  When they say it is symptomatic of all this garbage, we are talking 
about real dollars here. And we can't get down to doing something about 
real spending until we quit demagoguing this issue.
  I am going to give an easy way to correct this problem in just a 
minute, but if you need further proof, in 2009 the Senate performed a 
rare action of considering many appropriations bills individually 
rather than doing the irresponsible thing we are talking about doing 
now and lumping them all into one bill to consider at the end of the 
year. The value of considering these bills individually is that it 
gives Senators the opportunity to exercise some oversight in 
government.
  In 2009, Senators could offer amendments to both cut spending and 
strike particular earmarks if they desired, and they did desire. 
Between the months of July and November of 2009, there were 18 votes 
specifically targeting earmarks. Now, they failed, but if they had 
passed, it wouldn't have saved one penny. Instead of putting the money 
back into the pockets of the American people by reducing spending or 
shrinking the deficit, these efforts to eliminate earmarks would have 
put the money into the hands of President Obama by allowing his 
administration to spend the money as it saw fit. At the end of the day, 
none of the money would have been saved. President Obama wins, the 
American people lose.

[[Page 18224]]

  In another case, Members offered an amendment to strike funding out 
of a program called Save America's Treasures, for specific art centers 
throughout the United States, but the money was simply shifted to allow 
the Obama administration to do it. The same thing happened with the 
transportation projects. Several Members offered amendments to strike a 
variety of transportation projects in many States, and they were 
unsuccessful. So what happened? That money went back to the bureaucracy 
controlled by President Obama. Not one of these actions saved a dime, 
but it made President Obama happy because it went back to his coffers.
  We have clearly demonstrated two points. First of all, spending is 
the exclusive obligation of the Senate and, secondly, killing an 
earmark doesn't save a dime; it merely gives money to President Obama.
  It reminds me of what I went through 10 years ago when I couldn't get 
anyone to understand how they were cooking the science and why we 
should not pass a cap and trade. Everybody thought the world was coming 
to an end, and I was that one person. Granted, that was 10 years ago, 
but now it is the prevailing thought here in Congress. In fact, the 
United Nations, which started the whole concept of global warming, is 
having their big annual party next week and not even one--none--of the 
media is going to show up. Hardly anyone is going to show up to the 
thing because people realize it was a phony issue. It was, in fact, the 
greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people. I said it, and 
everyone got mad at me and even hated me. So I do not mind being the 
only one, and I am the only one on this.
  A couple of good things have happened, though. It has been mentioned 
by several of those who were the most adamant in opposition to 
earmarks. In the case of Rand Paul, from Kentucky, our new Senator--
whom I am so happy to have with us--has said he would argue for things 
for the State of Kentucky. And Senator Mike Lee said:

       I wouldn't say there's a mandate to stop spending for roads 
     or any other general purpose like that.

  Another House Member, Michele Bachmann, said--and I think this has 
already been stated by one of the other Senators:

       I don't believe that building roads and bridges and 
     interchanges should be considered an earmark.

  Great. I agree. That is my whole point. So we are seeing these people 
now coming around and saying: Well, we do have a job to do.
  Senator Chambliss said:

       There are times when crises arise or issues come forth of 
     such importance to Georgia, such as the Port of Savannah, 
     that I reserve the right to ask Congress and the President to 
     approve funding.

  Well, there it is. So I would say those individuals who are on the 
other side realize that is the wrong side. But let me say something 
else. I am very proud of some of the talk shows. I am on quite a few 
talk shows. And when you get a chance to talk, the way I am now, and 
explain to people what the situation is--I am looking now at I think 12 
major talk show hosts in America who now pretty much agree with what I 
am saying tonight: Mike Gallagher, Mark Levin, Dennis Prager, Scott 
Hennen, Janet Parshall, Hugh Hewitt, Michael Savage, Crane Durham, Lars 
Larson, Jason Lewis, Rusty Humphries, Jerry Doyle, and quite a few 
others. And it was not easy for them to say: Maybe Inhofe has a point, 
so let's look at this a little closer.
  So let me just say there is a solution. And I have to give credit 
where credit is due. These are not my thoughts. This is what I did. We 
have eight great Americans and the conservative groups they head up, 
and I am talking about Tom Schatz, president of Citizens Against 
Government Waste; Melanie Sloan, director of Citizens for 
Responsibility and Ethnics in Washington; Steve Ellis, Taxpayers for 
Common Sense; Craig Holman, Public Citizen; Jim Walsh, Rich Gold, Manny 
Rouvelas, and Dave Wenhold. Thanks to them, we can put this whole 
earmark issue to rest because they authored ``The 5 Principles of 
Earmark Reform.'' There they are, the five principles of earmark 
reform. These are all the conservatives who said we really need to do 
something about this and at the same time preserve our constitution. So 
I introduced, a couple of weeks ago, S. 3939, and what I did is I took 
everything they had and I put that into a bill. And there it is. So 
take it a section at a time.
  No. 1 of the five principles: To cut the cord between earmarks and 
campaign contributions, Congress should limit earmarks directed to 
campaign contributors--exactly what S. 3939 does.
  Section 2:

       No earmark beneficiary shall make contributions aggregating 
     more than $5,000.

  The second principle: to eliminate any connection between legislation 
and campaign contributions. That is the second. The third principle: To 
increase transparency, Congress should create a new database of all 
congressional earmarks. And it goes on, and they elaborate and say this 
is all something you can find, but you can't get your hands on it. It 
is too complicated. So consequently we put in our bill, in section 4, 
the following:

       The Secretary of the Senate and the Clerk of the House 
     shall post on a public Web site of their respective houses, a 
     link to the earmark database maintained by the Office of 
     Management and Budget.

  Every one of these things--and I could go through each and every 
one--is answered in S. 3939. So if you really want to do something 
about it, pass that bill and you will have solved the problem and you 
will have kept our constitutional duties intact.
  We did one more thing because it goes one more step. This is very 
important. There was an oversight, but they all agree with this now. 
This goes a step further. It says that the administration--President 
Obama, the bureaucracies--will have the same transparency as senatorial 
earmarks. So Senator McCain talked about lobbying these bureaucracies. 
Sure, they are doing it, because if we don't do the spending or the 
appropriating and authorizing, then the President does it. So the 
bureaucracy is doing that. So we have a section in this bill that 
subjects them to the same thing.
  Do you remember when Sean Hannity came up with the 102 most egregious 
earmarks? This is just some of them. There were 102, and I read them 
all on the floor from this podium, and I did it to make sure people 
understood what he had found out. I said at the end of reading all of 
these earmarks--look at some of these: $300,000 for helicopter 
equipment to detect radioactive rabbit droppings--that all 102 have 
something in common: not one of them was a congressional earmark. They 
were all bureaucratic Obama earmarks. So that is the reason for that. 
And if you want reform, that is how to get it.
  I know there will be some Members who will not be able to resist the 
fact that they can have a great opportunity with one vote. They can 
make people think they are conservative and give President Obama what 
he wants, and they can be politically correct. But, again, we have a 
solution to the problem. That solution will come.
  Mr. President, in that conference I mentioned about 30 minutes ago, I 
said that if you want to do something to do away with the earmark and 
all this, all you have to do is define an earmark as an appropriation 
that has not been authorized. Authorizing committees are the discipline 
for appropriations. A lot of our appropriating friends won't like this 
idea, but that would do it. We heard several of the Senators, including 
my junior Senator, the author of this amendment, and Senator McCain, 
saying this is good, we have done away with authorizing. We need to 
authorize these things.
  In the Armed Services Committee, we have experts in every field. One 
of the experts is a group of people who look at our missile defense 
system. Right now, we are in very serious problems in this country by 
taking down the site in Poland that would stop the ground-based 
interceptor site. That is something we should be doing. We need to have 
redundancy. We know we can hit a bullet with a bullet, and we should do 
that. We have the experts who know how to do that.

[[Page 18225]]

  So I would say we have an opportunity. We can reform this. We can 
subject the bureaucracy to the same transparency to which we are 
subjected. We should do away completely with terms such as ``earmarks'' 
as people are thinking of them in their minds and go to having them 
redefined as appropriations that have not been authorized. I know it is 
a hard concept and one that not many people want to believe, but it is 
much easier to oversimplify it and say that all earmarks are bad. Well, 
if you define them properly, I agree they would all be bad. Anything 
that is appropriated that is not authorized, in my opinion, is bad and 
should be done away with.
  So with that, this one voice in the wilderness, one conservative is 
saying this is the true story. If you really do want to cede our 
constitutional authority to President Obama, you can do it by passing 
this amendment. This allows them to get the authority we have. And if 
you really believe that is the thing to do, after looking at the 
Constitution and what Justice Joseph Story and Hamilton and Madison all 
said we are supposed to be doing here, let's seriously consider that 
and resolve this problem, put it behind us so we can quit distracting 
from the big spending going on today that has given us a $3 trillion 
deficit in 2 years.
  With that, Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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