Floor Statements

Madam Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

This amendment would simply eliminate funding for the Mission Force Enhancement Transfer Fund, which amounts to more than $348 million. The fund was created in this bill in order to ensure that additional funding remain available for the Secretary of Defense to transfer, if he needed to, to other accounts to ``mitigate unfunded requirements'' according to the committee report. The report also contains a list of seven priorities that the Secretary can transfer these funds in support of.

I am not sure about this concept myself, particularly in this budget climate, of providing the Pentagon an authorization that essentially amounts to a blank check for a couple of hundred million dollars. It's my understanding that the committee identified $1 billion in savings in the underlying bill and created the fund using these savings. It's also my understanding, however, that during the full committee markup more than $650 million of that money was moved out of this fund by members of the committee seeking to increase funding for their own priorities in the bill.

I understand that Members want to retain the ability to move money around to areas they feel are underfunded and that should receive additional funding. However, if the committee was able to identify $1 billion in savings, I think it ought to put that savings toward decreasing the underlying, or, I am sorry, the cost of the underlying bill. We have to make tough choices all around in this budget, and Americans across the country are making tough choices with their budget.

But to identify a billion dollars in savings, then to move it into a new fund and then allow Members to designate their own priorities and take 650, I am just not sure what this is all about.

There are some concerns out there, there was a news article a couple of days ago that said that some people think this is some kind of slush fund designed to provide Members with a pot of money from which they can transfer money to fund their own projects. This would be similar to the earmarking culture that we have had around here, a culture that hopefully has ended and that we can move beyond. So I hope this is not what we are seeing here.

I have two amendments that will be considered later, I believe in the en bloc portion, that will seek for more transparency moving ahead to see how these funds are actually used and awarded.

I reserve the balance of my time.

May I inquire as to how much time remains?

I appreciate the gentleman's efforts to get rid of earmarks. I do have some concern about this. The guidance from the HASC, from the committee, says that the request may not direct funds to, or any funds with or to, any entity or locality.

It's been the practice in the past that when Members get their earmarks in a bill, they will take a victory lap, put out a press release. I have seen one of these already, and it says funding for a nonprofit charitable foundation, Technology Ventures Corporation, TVC, to help expand innovation in New Mexico's emerging satellite industry. This names both an entity and a locality. And this is a Member who got a particular request.

I yield to the gentleman from California.

I appreciate the Member's commitment on that, and I appreciate also--I believe they are accepting the amendments that I have offered later, which would set up a process whereby we can see how these funds were actually disposed of, and that will help a great deal. I appreciate the chairman working on that.

I would just say, in closing, this amendment specifically is to save the money that is still left in that account. If the concern is not to give the President the ability to direct all of these funds or the Secretary of Defense, then this accomplishes it. There is $350 million left in this account. Let's apply that to pay down the debt and deficit.

That's what this amendment actually does. It takes the remaining money that has not been designated in that fund and applies it to deficit reduction. So that's what this amendment does, and I would appreciate support for it.

I thank the chairman for his comments, and I thank the chairman for his commitment to get away from this earmark culture.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

I thank the gentleman for yielding, and I would just like to engage in a colloquy briefly if we can.

As the gentleman knows, I have worked and he has worked to decrease funding for the NDIC, the National Drug Intelligence Center. This is a center that has received hundreds of millions of dollars over the years, yet in 2005 a White House OMB report said that the NDIC ``has proven ineffective in achieving its assigned mission.'' Reports subsequent to that have pointed to similar failures and problems. Yet it still received last year, I think, $44 million.

I had intended to bring an amendment to this authorization bill, but I don't want to hold up this important authorization for FY 11. If I could just ask the chairman if he plans to bring an authorization bill for 2012.

I yield to the gentleman.

I thank the chairman.

I thank the gentleman for yielding. I won't take 2 minutes.

I've been listening to part of the discussion here, and it just strikes me that when you see graphics with an oil rig sucking money out of Social Security or Medicare or whatever that was, you know that you have gone beyond the realm of what is logical for a debate or the real facts about what this legislation does.

The bottom line is that it will make it easier for us to become more energy independent, not completely energy independent--it can't go that far--but it will make us more independent than we were before. It will create an environment where jobs can be created by the private sector. It will help, over time, to lower the price of gasoline because it will create more supply in the end. That's what it does. It doesn't put a big oil rig on the top of Medicare and suck money from our seniors. Come on.

This is just a measure to help the situation, to make it better. We've locked off too many areas to oil drilling, and we've not exploited our own supply enough to help bring down price and to help consumers out there in the world.

So that's all this does, and I commend the gentleman for bringing it forward. I urge support for it.

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

I rise in support of the RSC budget. With a deficit of $1.6 trillion, a debt of $14 trillion, it's no surprise that we've got to do something. We have to do something dramatic. This budget actually balances over a 9-year period, and it reforms the programs that are important to many Americans, to make them solvent and sustainable over time.

The proposals from the other side of the aisle simply don't do that. They ignore the time bomb that we have in these programs. So I commend the RSC staff and Members for putting this together. This is a good budget. We ought to support it to put our Nation on a path of financial stability and security.

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

These are serious times that we're in right now with regard to the debt and deficit. Serious times call for a serious budget, and this is a serious budget. This is one that can actually lead us out of the problems we're in. That is what we need.

For those on the other side of the aisle who are saying that they want to preserve Medicare by sticking to the status quo, as I think it was George Will said on Sunday, Your problem isn't Mr. Ryan, it's Mr. Arithmetic. It just doesn't work. You just can't do it.

So for all this talk about preserving Medicare, preserving Medicare as it currently is means that you are consigning it to history. It won't survive. You have to change it. You have to change it in ways that make it sustainable and solvent for the long-term future.

What we are hearing now is that we need more investment, and that we've got to maintain current spending levels to have more investment. I would refer you to the stimulus that we just passed a year or so ago. What good has that done? Sure, it's a lot more investment or spending-- or whatever you call it--government to government, or the government spending, but it is not enabling the private sector to create jobs.

The job of the Federal Government should be to set a conducive tax and regulatory environment so that the private sector can produce jobs. That's what this budget does. That is why I support it.

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

This is a fascinating discussion we are having here. The gentleman who spoke a while ago said, because this is a lottery and because not every one of the children who wants in this program can get in the program, it represents not a choice but a chance. I can tell you a lot of these kids will settle for a chance. I mean, give them a chance. Give them a choice, a chance, whatever. Just give them the opportunity, however slim it might be. The fact that they only have a chance and that not all of them can get in the program speaks about the demand for the program. It speaks about how many people actually need it and value it and want it, and we ought to expand it further and give more individuals a chance.

I live in an area where there are pretty good public schools. My children--I have five of them--have either been in the public schools or are currently in the public schools. Those public schools are better because of the competition around them. We have a robust charter school program in Arizona. There are lots of them around. There are many choices for kids to have. The public schools my kids attend are better for it, and the same will hold true in D.C. as well.

If you want to improve the public schools where most children typically attend, then offer a choice and a chance. Competition and accountability does that. It does it all across the economy. It does it in every other phase of our lives. Why we say it won't happen in public education is just beyond me.

So I commend those who have put this bill forward. I wholeheartedly support it. I was involved several years ago in crafting the original one, and I am very pleased to support this today. This will be good for all kids.

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

I hope that nobody in this Chamber or watching here misses the irony of this, that we are spending money to subsidize Brazilian agriculture so that

we can continue to subsidize agriculture here. That is just incredible when you think about it.

And what this amendment will do is to force us back to the table. It won't spark a trade war. It will simply say, all right, stop subsidizing your own agriculture in a way that violates your trade agreements. That's what we want to do is force the issue where we can actually get out of these subsidy programs. We cannot continue to send money to Brazil so that we can continue to subsidize agriculture here. It just makes no sense at all. This is a great amendment. I hope that my colleagues will support it.

I thank the gentlelady for yielding.

The gentleman before said, in the base bill, these represent the largest cuts we've ever made. That is true, but we are running the largest deficit we have ever run. We have had the largest debt we have ever had, and what the situation calls for are deeper cuts than are in the underlying bill.

If we are really going to get on the right track here, we have got to understand that we have to make unprecedented cuts and realize that what we are doing here is a rounding error compared to what we are going to have to do with entitlement spending, which is going to come. But to ensure that we can make those choices when we deal with entitlements, we've got to go deeper than we are going in this base bill.

Again, we are running a deficit of $1.5 trillion this year on a debt of $14 trillion. The $100 billion in the base bill is 1/15th of the entire deficit that we are running--just 1/15th. That's not enough. We have to go further. I support the Jordan amendment. Let's make deeper cuts.

I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. Chairman, the taxpayers have subsidized ethanol for far too long. This amendment will simply bring that slowly to a stop.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, this is not a choice at all. It's a mandate. That's why we've got to end it. It's been a boondoggle for 30 years. It remains so. Let's vote for this amendment.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

I have an amendment at the desk, No. 367.

This amendment would be to save the taxpayers roughly $30.5 million by preventing the funding of Radio and TV Marti.

I have decided to withdraw this amendment in the interest of time and also to work on it in committee with the gentleman from Florida. So we will enter into a colloquy for just 1 minute and go from there.

I happen to feel that we have spent hundreds of millions of dollars on Radio and TV Marti over the past 20, 25 years. TV Marti is seen by very few. The gentleman from Florida has a different view. We have agreed to scuttle the debate here and take it up in committee.

I yield to the gentleman from Florida.

I yield to the gentleman from Washington.

Yes.

I ask unanimous consent to withdraw the amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of the amendment. If the Department wants to issue a rule, do a rule that actually targets the abuses rather than takes on a segment of the industry that may or may not be complicit in the kind of allegations that are there. This is overly broad. Let's have them go back to the drawing board and actually target abuses that occur, not a segment of the industry that's actually providing services.

I yield back the balance of my time.

I move to strike the last word.

Madam Chairman, I want to thank the gentleman from Indiana for bringing this amendment forward. It was said earlier in this discussion that this is a war being waged by one Congressman on one organization. I don't think that that's accurate. I think that this is an effort by many Members of Congress, each of whom represents some 650,000 individuals, who do not want to see their tax dollars used to fund abortion. I think it's as simple as that. And when you see the videos that have been referenced earlier today about what went on in these clinics, and the misrepresentation that was there, and the out and out illegal behavior that was encouraged, that warrants some kind of action. And I think that's what this effort is about.

So I think it behooves us to tone down the rhetoric and to actually decide what is this effort about. And it's about ensuring that individuals who do not want their tax dollars used to fund abortions may have that right to say so here in the House of Representatives on the floor here, and to vote to have their Members of Congress, their Representatives here vote in the way that they feel they should vote. That's what this effort's about. I commend the gentleman for bringing it forward.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. Chairman, this amendment seeks to reduce the EPA's Science and Technology account by $64 million. It transfers the money into the Spending Reduction Account. Sixty-four million dollars is the level of the agency's astronomically expensive Science to Achieve Results, or STAR program, funded in fiscal year 2010. It's the intent of this amendment to zero out this costly program for the rest of the year, something that due to procedural limitations will be accomplished by supporting the cut to the account's top line for that purpose and the agency's operational plan that will come forth in 2011.

According to the EPA, the STAR program is the agency's primary grants program for funding extramural research in environmental science and engineering. In a recent press release, the EPA boasts that the taxpayer-backed awards ``ensure the best science is being used to protect the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the land we build our communities on.'' What it doesn't mention is that these grants average 3 years and about $1 million.

This program was funded at roughly $60 million last year, and the President requested $87 million for it in fiscal year 2011. I believe the committee used $50 million as an assumed funding level based on this CR for the rest of the year.

Don't get me wrong. If we were printing money in a basement and if we had plenty of it, this may be something we'd want to spend some money on. I'm sure something good comes out of it, but we're not in that situation now. We have a debt of $14 trillion, and we have an annual deficit now of $1.5 trillion. When we're funding research like this, just out of an account to give to grad students, I think it's time to question whether or not this is the time we should do this or not.

Not all of the grants that are issued, obviously, are used for good research. It's not all above reproach. For example, here are just a couple of the reports that we've received for the research that was done on these topics:

Environmental Regulation and Productivity Benefits in the Paper Industry;

Estimating Ownership and Use of Older Cars;

Transforming Office Parks into Transit Villages;

Public Opinion on Environment and Water Quality Management in the New York City Watershed;

Ironically, there is a study on Experimental Programs to Stimulate Competitive Research.

I thought that's what this program does.

I've often talked about a lot of the earmarks we used to have that were just simply earmark incubators that begot more earmarks. It seems that some of the funding for studies like these are studies that beget further studies.

If we can't move in now and say, hey, maybe we ought to slim back a little and save a little money for the taxpayer--remember, the money saved here will go into the spending reduction account and can be applied against this year's deficit--then we have to ask ourselves:

How can we go back to our constituents and explain, ``Sorry, that $50 million was better spent giving out research dollars to study experimental programs to stimulate competitive research or to transform office parks into transit villages or for public opinion on the environment and water quality management in the New York City watershed or for environmental regulation and productivity benefits in the paper industry?''

Let's say to the taxpayer that we are serious here, that we are serious about this debt and this deficit. Let's vote for this amendment and put $50 million into the spending reduction account.

With that, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. Chairman, this amendment reduces the Administration for Children and Families programs by $100 million, with reductions specifically targeting the Community Service Block Grant program. Under this amendment, this reduction would be transferred to the savings reduction account and would save the taxpayers $100 million. The agency has already spent $295 million on this program for fiscal year 2011. This amount of money is already out the door, and an authorization requiring $10 million to be spent on discretionary activities is already out; but this amendment would essentially zero out funding for grants for the remainder of the fiscal year.

The program is administered through the Department of Health and Human Services. It provides Federal funds to States, territories, and tribes for distribution to local agencies to support a wide range of community-based activities. This program, however, has been flagged previously for its lack of accountability and oversight for the use of taxpayer dollars.

In 2006, GAO was asked to review the administration of the Community Service Block Grant program. GAO indicated in a letter to the Assistant Secretary for Children and Families on February 7, 2006, that ``the Office of Community Services does not have the policies, procedures, and internal controls in place needed to carry out its monitoring efforts.''

Later, GAO writes: ``By sending staff without sufficient expertise in financial management on monitoring visits, the Office of Community Services failed to ensure that States spend Federal dollars appropriately.''

We have a projected deficit, as we've said many times today. It's $1.5 trillion this year alone. Sobering reports say that the national debt may soon exceed our annual GDP. Simply put, the Federal Government does not have the resources to fund every grant program, particularly one that has little accountability over how taxpayer dollars are spent.

Beyond issues related to oversight, there have been concerns related to the effectiveness of taxpayer dollars spent on grants under this program.

In a New York Times article published on February 5, White House Office of Management and Budget Director Jacob Lew wrote about the CSBG program, stating: ``For the past 30 years, these grants have been allocated using a formula that does not consider how good a job the recipients are doing.''

In fact, presumably for this reason, President Obama cut funding for the Community Service Block Grant program by 50 percent in his FY 2012 budget request. Let me say that again: the President for the FY 2012 budget has cut this program in half, from $700 billion to $350 billion. I suppose it's likely because of these problems.

The President defended this reduction by stating: ``CSBG provides funding for the important work of Community Action Agencies, but does not hold

these agencies accountable for outcomes.''

On November 2, taxpayers sent a clear message to all of us here to spend money more wisely.

As I mentioned, we are borrowing 40 cents for every dollar we spend. So when you have programs we are told by GAO and other groups that simply aren't using taxpayer dollars wisely, it behooves us to cut the funding. If we don't cut this funding, we will actually be funding this program at a greater level than the President is asking for. Let me repeat that:

Unless we do this cut that we are talking about today, we will be funding for fiscal year 2011 this program at a greater level than the President is requesting for the following year.

I think that we ought to move now, when we have a deficit of $1.5 trillion and a debt nearing or over $14 trillion, to save money where we can for the taxpayers.

I yield to the gentleman from Illinois.

I think any impact there will be is dwarfed by the impact of having a $1.5 trillion deficit and a $14 trillion debt and what happens to us as a country if we continue to run that kind of deficit and debt.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

I thank the chairman. I just want to say a few words about the process here.

It is refreshing to so many of us to come to the House with an open rule. There are some Members who have been part of this body for 4 years now and have not been allowed the opportunity to offer one amendment on the floor because of the absence of open rules. So we are going to have a number of amendments offered here, and this is just a great process.

I also want to commend the Appropriations Committee for the hard work that it took to get the level of savings that we are in the legislation and what a positive step, as was mentioned, it was to cut out the earmarks. There are no earmarks in this bill. That is a wonderful thing. We can actually talk more about the substance and less about just pet projects on the side.

This amendment would reduce by $18.57 million the operations and maintenance defense-wide account. It would send the money to the spending reduction account. We are often told that when we offer amendments like this on the floor, it is not going to save any money. This one does. The money that is saved here will go to the spending reduction account.

Last August, Secretary Gates ordered a review of all outside boards and commissions that provide advice and studies to the Defense Department with an eye toward eliminating unnecessary entities and cutting funding for the studies that they produce by 25 percent.

According to CRS, the Department of Defense funds 65 boards and commissions at a cost of about $75 million. This amendment would achieve the approximate savings that Secretary Gates sought for FY 2011 that would equal $18.75 million. That is 25 percent of the $75 million over time. I certainly don't have any problems with the various panels from which the Defense Department seeks counsel, but I am sure there is some waste there. That is why Secretary Gates has targeted a 25 percent reduction.

I realize the amount of savings in this amendment is relatively small compared to the overall defense budget, but I think the point has to be made here that the defense budget is not sacrosanct. We can't say if it is defense, it is all good; that there is no waste here, we can't cut any. So it is important to look for ways we can actually save.

In fiscal year 2010, more than $1 trillion was spent on discretionary spending. The Department of Defense received more than $508 billion of that. Certainly in a Federal agency that requires the largest budget, this is the Federal agency that has the largest budget, there is going to be some waste and inefficiencies.

This is a great place to start. This is a proposal that came from the Defense Secretary himself, one that wasn't included in the underlying bill, and one that will be addressed in the FY 2012 budget, according the documents released yesterday. In fact, according to the Defense Department, it intends to achieve a savings of more than a billion dollars in FY 2012 simply by eliminating internally produced reports and reducing funding for the types of studies that I'm talking about here.

I applaud the Department's willingness to talk about cuts in its own budget. I urge my colleagues to adopt the same willingness here. If the Defense Department is willing to find savings, we ought to be able to do that here as well. We need to reduce this account which funds boards and commissions and the studies they produce by $18.75 million.

Again, passing this amendment will reduce funding that will not impact the warfighter. It won't impact the war in Afghanistan or the war still going on in Iraq. This would simply signal that this body is willing to cut where we can cut without affecting the necessary protections that we have in the Department of Defense.

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Let me just say it was asked which boards and commissions are there which this would cut. There are some 65 boards and commissions. Some are blue ribbon panels. The biggest three are the Defense Policy Board, the Defense Science Board, and the Defense Business Board.

But let me say, again, what this amendment does is simply moves forward what the Secretary of Defense has already identified as savings that he would like to achieve. He has said that they want to cut 25 percent of the budget for these boards and commissions.

The Secretary put this report out in August of last year, so it seems that he intended this for the FY 2011 cycle. That's what we're in right now. We're simply doing what, in my view, the Secretary of Defense has asked us to do or what he is going to carry through.

If we can't do this on Defense or on other wasteful spending, where can we do it? This is a great place to start. We should get this done now because it's going to be tackled later on. Why not get a head start and do it in the FY 2011 budget. If we're trying to realize the savings that we're trying to realize, let's take these boards and commissions that the Secretary of Defense has already said we should cut by 25 percent and give them what he asked for.

I move to strike the last word.

I won't take the 5 minutes. I just want to rise in strong support of this amendment. The gentleman is right; this was not asked for by the Department of Defense. And if we could save a half billion dollars, money that will not affect the war or the warfighter--but we see these kind of programs all the time. And it's more a way to generate economic activity than actually respond to any need. It assumes that the private sector out there, and small businesses aren't innovating on their own unless we ask them to do it.

Unless we specifically direct them or provide money for them to do it, they won't do it at all. That's just a false assumption.

So I commend the gentleman for bringing the amendment to the floor.

I yield to the gentleman from Kansas.

Reclaiming my time, I just want to say, in closing, the gentleman is exactly right. Any dollar that we provide in this program has to be taken from a small business or an individual through taxes. That is money that they can't use to innovate on their own. And to actually go out and to respond to an RFP or to respond to needs of the Defense Department or to contract with them, they can do that without us having the specific program for them. So I urge support for the amendment.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. Chairman, this amendment is straightforward. It would simply reduce more than $34 million in funding for the National Drug Intelligence Center and transfer that money into the spending reduction account.

In short, the amendment would zero out funding for the National Drug Intelligence Center, which has survived for the past 3 years by way of a very broken earmarking process.

For many institutions, drugs are handled with a zero tolerance policy. I would submit that taxpayers should send a clear signal here that we have a zero tolerance policy for this kind of wasteful spending.

There has been no better example for wasteful spending than the NDIC, an entity I have come to the floor many times within the past to criticize and to limit funding for. Not just me, but many other Members.

A pet project that once belonged to a powerful Member of Congress, the NDIC was established in 1992 and has been the recipient of hundreds of millions of dollars since then.

In 2005, the White House OMB reported that the NDIC ``has proven ineffective in achieving its assigned mission.'' In 2006, a spokesman for the DOJ asserted that the resources of the NDIC should be ``realigned to support priority counterterrorism and national security initiatives.'' And yet, here we are, 5 years later, funding the NDIC in spite of what will be 3 years of trillion-dollar deficits and a skyrocketing national debt.

According to a CQ article from today, even the current administration's Deputy Attorney General James Cole said that many of the center's functions could be performed elsewhere.

The President's budget request was released yesterday; and according to CQ, the NDIC is slated to receive a cut from its current level of funding from $44 million down to $25 million. I submit that that is $25 million too much.

According to the fiscal year 2011 budget summary for the National Drug Control Strategy, we spent more than $15 billion on antidrug and drug-control efforts in fiscal year 2010. Even if

you believe that the NDIC is effective and that it pulls its own weight, the anti-drug effort, like the budget of the Department of Defense, should not be immune from commonsense cuts that increase efficiency, and I can think of few things more efficient than closing down the NDIC once and for all.

Let me just note, The Wall Street Journal said at one point: ``Conservatives have argued that the center is a waste of taxpayer money, and critics argue that it has never fulfilled its promise to provide high-quality analysis of drug networks.'' Again, an internal White House budget proposal aims to save nearly $17 million by downsizing NDIC.

Clearly, clearly, I think everybody admits that there is no reason for this facility to exist anymore and to keep sucking millions and millions of dollars every year from the taxpayer. The White House, successive White Houses, Republican and Democrat alike, have said this is inefficient. It is not filling its mission. So it is up to Congress now, when we're running a $1.5 trillion deficit that stacks up against a $14 trillion debt, to look at programs like this and say, All right. Enough is enough. It's time that we close them down.

So with that, Mr. Chairman, I say let's adopt this amendment. If we can't do this, where can we save money? If we can't close down a center that's received hundreds of millions of dollars that the White House, successive administrations, Republican and Democrat, have said it is duplicative, it is not fulfilling its mission; if we can't close these kind of things down, when are we going to save money?

I yield back the balance of my time.

Offered By: Mr. Flake

Amendment No. 457: Page 293, line 25, insert ``(reduced by

$100,000,000)'' after the dollar amount.

Page 294, line 1, insert ``(reduced by $100,000,000)''

after the dollar amount.

Page 359, line 15, insert ``(increased by $100,000,000)''

before the period at the end.

Offered By: Mr. Flake

Amendment No. 252: Page 182, line 4, after the dollar

amount, insert ``(reduced by $24,010,000)''.

Page 359, line 3, after the dollar amount, insert

``(increased by $25,010,000)''.