[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 1]
[Senate]
[Pages 1262-1264]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         ORPHANED EARMARKS ACT

  Mr. BEGICH. Mr. President, I rise to join my friend from Oklahoma to 
talk about a commonsense piece of legislation. I come to the floor 
pretty often to talk about the deficit, and I wish to talk about 
something very specific we can do to address this matter. The Orphaned 
Earmarks Act would rescind earmarks that remain 90 percent or more 
unused 9 years after being appropriated.
  In early January, USA Today published an article examining 20 years 
of earmarks that have not been spent. According to the analysis: ``In 
at least 3,649 of those earmarks, not a single dollar had gone toward 
its intended purpose'' and ``Many of the orphan earmarks also count 
against a state's share of federal highway funds and have taken 
billions of dollars away from state transportation departments across 
the nation.''
  During the past 20 years, orphan earmarks reduced the amount of money 
States would have received in Federal highway funding by almost $7.5 
billion. That is $7.5 billion that States could have used to replace 
obsolete bridges, repair aging roads, and bring jobs to rural areas.
  As all of us know, when lawmakers earmark money, even if it is never 
spent for pet highway projects, that money still reduces what States 
receive from the Federal Government. In my own State of Alaska, $187 
million in funding was lost out in the past 20 years because of 
orphaned earmarks.
  I know some of my colleagues are concerned about States losing out on 
money we all could use, especially these days, but let's not worry. I 
don't want to take away your earmarks that help communities in need and 
help create jobs. We are talking about earmarks that have been 
abandoned for more than 10 years and are just sitting there like 
uncashed checks. Dr. Coburn and I have addressed this in our 
legislation. We have built in a 12-month period--I repeat, a 12-month 
period--for agency heads to make sure earmarks can be used before 
rescinding.
  On that note, I wish to make something else clear. I do not 
personally support an earmark moratorium. I know my friend from 
Oklahoma and I disagree on this earmark funding, but I believe it is 
vital to my home State of Alaska. We have unique needs and have relied 
on this critical funding from day one to support health, safety, and 
jobs. What I have a problem with is wasteful spending that could have 
otherwise been used for a project or to cut the deficit.
  Our legislation requires the Director of OMB to submit to Congress 
and publicly post on the OMB Web site an annual report that includes a 
listing and accounting for earmarks with unobligated balances 
summarized by agencies, including the amount of the original earmark, 
the amount of the unobligated balances, and the year the funding 
expires; the number of rescissions resulting from this section and the 
annual savings resulting from this section for the previous fiscal 
year; finally, a listing and an accounting for earmarks provided to 
Federal agencies scheduled to be rescinded at the end of the current 
fiscal year.
  Senator Feingold offered an amendment last March to the FAA bill to 
rescind any DOT earmarks that remained 90 percent or more unobligated 
for 9 years after being appropriated, with the possibility of holding 
funds 1 more year for earmarks the agency head believed would be funded 
within 12 months. Because Senator Feingold had modified the legislation 
to reflect concerns by Senator Boxer and Senator Murray, the Senate 
voted 87 to 11 to pass this amendment. However, as we all know, the FAA 
bill did not pass last year.
  The Coburn-Begich bill is modeled after a Bush administration 
proposal from 2008 and would have rescinded any highway and bridge 
earmark funds from the 1998 highway bill, TEA-21, that had less than 10 
percent of the funds spent or obligated. That proposal would have saved 
about $626 million, including $389 million in 152 earmarks that had no 
funding obligated a decade after passing. The Coburn-Begich bill 
targets all orphaned earmarks, not just those in the highway bill.
  Let me conclude. I know my friend from Oklahoma is here to speak as 
well. I will tell my colleagues that when I became mayor in 2003 in 
Anchorage, AK, we looked at what all of our bonds voters had voted on 
year-in and year-out, and we looked at all the projects. What we found 
was that sizable amounts were being spent on projects where they were 
intended, but there was another percentage that for years had just been 
lying there for a variety of reasons. Maybe the project didn't pan out, 
maybe they didn't get enough money from another source or the project 
just vanished from the books because of public opposition to it. But 
what we found was we were passing bonds for projects that never went 
forward. So we cleaned the bonds up when I was mayor.
  Then we did one other thing which I think this legislation now on the 
Federal level really focuses on, not only to make sure we clean up the 
books but also, when you have money, to make it very clear that we need 
to spend the money on the project for which it was identified. We made 
sure those projects that were on that bond, that voters voted for, that 
they put their taxpayer money toward, that 75 percent or more of those 
projects would be completed or substantially underway by the end of the 
year. That was important to make sure taxpayers knew their dollars were 
being used--not just forwarded or put away in an account somewhere and 
not having a project that they thought was happening.
  So I think this is a good piece of legislation. It brings fiscal 
responsibility to the money that is out there. When we think about it, 
if we have a piece of legislation, an earmark, that has not been 
utilized--90 percent of it not utilized for 10 years or more--there is 
no reason we should have that money in some bank account in some agency 
somewhere hidden away. It should come back and go toward the deficit.
  So I yield the floor at this time for my colleague from Oklahoma. I 
am honored to be able to join him in this effort to bring--I will use 
my words--fiscal sanity to this effort of trying to figure out how to 
manage this Federal Government's budget in a better way.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Oklahoma.
  Mr. COBURN. First of all, let me thank my colleague from Alaska. As 
somebody who has been working on areas of fiscal management in our 
Federal Government for the last 6-plus years, this is one small step. 
Whether it saves $500 million or whether it saves $1 billion, it is 
important that America knows we need to do this 1,500 more times.
  We hear a lot in the press now from the Republican appropriators, the 
Republican budgeteers, about the battle of how much to cut. It is the 
wrong language. The deficit is $1.5 trillion this year. It was $1.4 
trillion last year. We have tons of areas, as my colleague knows full 
well, as does our former colleague, the Senator from Wisconsin, Russ 
Feingold, where we don't effectively utilize the money that has been 
given to us or that we are borrowing against our kids' future.

[[Page 1263]]

  So this is a great start. We need to do this every day on every bill 
that comes before us. We can find it. We have identified 50 sets of 
duplication within the Federal Government, and they are not small 
duplications. There are 49 job-training programs across 9 different 
agencies. There are 105 science, technology, engineering, and math 
programs--something the President, in his State of the Union Address, 
said he wanted to enhance. We don't have a metric on any of them. We 
already have 105 programs. We are spending $18 billion on job training, 
and we don't know if it is working, and we don't know if the people we 
have trained have gotten jobs in the areas in which they were trained. 
So I am excited about my colleague joining with me. The hope is that we 
can set a trend so that with every bill that comes out, we will start 
looking.
  By the way, we do have coming from the Government Accountability 
Office the first third of all of the government programs. When we 
inquired 2 years ago to the Congressional Research Service and to the 
Office of Management and Budget and the GAO, we said: Give us a list of 
all the programs. Do my colleagues realize that nowhere in the Federal 
Government do we have a list of all of the programs where we spend 
money? We are highly critical of the Defense Department because it 
can't pass an audit, and we rightly should be, but we can't pass an 
audit because we don't even know what we are doing.
  So this should not be controversial at all. It should save us close 
to $1 billion when it is all said and done, and that is $1 billion we 
won't borrow from the Chinese. All we have to do is do that 1,500 more 
times. The fact is, we can. We are like that little engine. We can. We 
can get up that hill. But what it is going to take is reaching across 
the aisle, as the Senator from Alaska and I have done, and saying: Here 
is an area of common ground, it is based in common sense, and it is 
something that should be done and should be done now.
  Just to show how silly this is, the data shows that in Atlanta there 
is still money for the 1996 Olympics. Fourteen years ago, there was 
$2.7 million sitting in a bank account. They can't spend it because the 
Olympics has already occurred, but we still have that money out there. 
That is the kind of silly stuff that happens when the Federal 
Government reaches into areas where it shouldn't be reaching.
  What we can do--not to lay blame, not to say it is about earmarks or 
not about earmarks, but here is a commonsense solution that says: Here 
is a way to free up $1 billion or $500 million. If it is $500 million, 
great, but here is a way to do that.
  I wish to also take some time on the floor now to elucidate that the 
President's fiscal commission outlined $4 trillion over the next 10 
years we could eliminate that would go a long way toward starting to 
solve some of our problems.
  So my hope is that with this amendment, we will start a trend where 
we can grab hold of and capture the things that make sense, that most 
Americans will never miss, and if they do miss it, it is because they 
are going to get something better instead and more efficient instead, 
and we start down this road. This is a great start.
  I congratulate my colleague for his initiative in bringing this back 
up. What we need to do now is get on the phone and get our colleagues 
in the House to do the same thing and make sure, when this bill goes 
through and this amendment is adopted, it actually happens. Don't 
forget that the Bush administration wanted this to happen, and so does 
the Obama administration. Think about the amount of labor we are 
spending taking care of details on things that can't get spent or won't 
be spent and the amount of man-hours that goes into that.
  I just thought I would finish with one of the recommendations of the 
fiscal commission, which is on the Federal workforce. There is a 
wonderful article that was published by Iain Murray on February 3 about 
how many Federal employees we have. It is easy for us to think about 
the fact that when we count true--just true--Federal employees, it is 
2.8 million. But that doesn't come close to the actual number of 
employees the Federal Government has. When you add up what is actually 
there and you add in postal employees, you add in military, you add in 
contractors, we are at 11 million Federal employees.
  We have a great Federal workforce. There are a lot of areas where we 
can be efficient and downsize. We don't have to lay anybody off; we can 
just not add. What we can do is, through attrition, markedly decrease 
the number of Federal employees we have, which will be that second, 
third, and fourth billion dollars.
  The other thing the Commission recommended, which the Obama 
administration embraced, was a freeze on salaries, but most of us don't 
recognize that we have $3 billion owed right now to the IRS in back 
taxes by Federal employees that has already been adjudicated.
  So there are all sorts of things we can do. We have lots of ideas. My 
pledge is to work across the aisle with our colleagues to try to find 
one of these every day or one of these every other day. If we do that 
together, we don't have to borrow 40 cents out of every dollar we spend 
in this country. We can take it down to 20 or 15 or down to zero so 
that we can, in fact, ensure the future for our children.
  Again, I thank my colleague, and I yield the floor.
  Mr. BEGICH. Mr. President, I wish to thank the Senator from Oklahoma 
for joining me. I will tell my colleague, whether you look at--you are 
right, this should not be controversial. It should be easy. I mean, it 
is like if you receive a check and it sits there for 10 years, I can 
guarantee my colleagues, if you are in private business, as I have 
been, you have written that off already. It is gone. In this situation, 
what we are saying is that there is $500 million--I think you are 
right; when it is all tallied up, it is probably closer to $1 billion--
sitting out there. We did this once before. We had great support on a 
much more narrow focus. If we did this on a regular basis, the 
opportunity is unlimited.
  I wish to thank the Senator. I have sat in the Presiding Officer's 
chair many times and listened to the presentations of the Senator from 
Oklahoma regarding the budget. We may not always agree, but when we 
find agreements, here is an opportunity. This is an easy one, by the 
way. There are others, as the Senator knows and I know, regarding 
surplus property the Federal Government has that is under incredible 
disrepair, not being realized. From my real estate experience, I have 
seen this, and there is an enormous amount of resources there that 
could be turned back to the private sector for future development. That 
could actually grow this economy.
  Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, the Federal Government has $950 billion 
worth of property it is not using right now. We are spending $9 billion 
a year taking care of it, and we have a budget gimmick that says an 
agency that needs a new building, because we are going to account for 
the cost of that building in the year in which they buy it and charge 
it all to the agency--what are we doing? We are leasing buildings. I 
guarantee we could own them much more cheaply than we could lease them. 
What we should be doing is changing that and getting rid of the excess 
property, lowering our cost to maintain it--there is 9 out of the 1,500 
we have to do, right there, if we would just do that--and then change 
the way we purchase buildings for the Federal Government so the agency 
can own it instead of leasing it because it costs, over the life of the 
building, about twice the lease.
  Mr. BEGICH. Mr. President, if the Senator will yield, as someone who 
has been in the real estate business for almost 30 years, there is 
enormous opportunity. I know that when I was mayor, we put more of the 
lands--we are not talking parks; we are talking about just surplus old 
buildings and sites that are no longer in use--we put them back into 
operation because not only will it save the Federal Government money in 
the sense of getting that surplus property off the books, but what we 
end up doing is turning that into

[[Page 1264]]

economic development companies for those communities. The private 
sector will come in and revitalize it and use it. There are many ideas 
out there.
  I thank the Senator for the opportunity to sponsor this with him. As 
the Senator said, $500 million is the minimum. I think it is close to 
$1 billion just on this one idea.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. ROCKEFELLER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the 
order for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.

                          ____________________