Floor Statements

Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk designated No. 5.

Mr. Chairman, this amendment would simply prohibit the grant program established in the Small Business Early Investment Program from ever being used as a vehicle for earmarking.

As my colleagues are aware, I have offered this noncontroversial amendment many times to legislation in both the 110th and 111th Congresses. I would expect that this would be accepted by the majority. This is noncontroversial.

There is language in the bill that says this is a competitive grant program. Having said that, unfortunately, we have many programs that are slated to be competitive, or there is language saying these grants will be awarded on a competitive basis. And still, unless we have language like this amendment provides for, they become a vehicle for earmarking.

If we look at some of the FEMA grants in the Homeland Security bill, some of those are competitive grant programs, and 100 percent of the money in some of those accounts has been earmarked. So it behooves us to opt for language like this that prevents that from happening.

Under the Small Business Early Investment Program, this is a little different than others. Private investment companies can apply to receive a grant from the SBA. These grants are to be used by approved applicants for the purpose of making investments in new small businesses, presumably with a goal of creating or preserving jobs.

Language contained in the committee report says applicants ``should be judged by the merits of their application and should compete on equal footing with other applicants for selection to participate in the program.'' That is all we are trying to preserve, just with language to make sure that happens.

I reserve the balance of my time.

I thank the chairwoman and the ranking minority member on the committee for accepting the amendment.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, there is much we don't know about the health care legislation being developed behind closed doors somewhere here in the Capitol. But this much we do know: the promises being made that this legislation won't add a dime to the deficit just don't hold water. Any characterization of this legislation as being deficit neutral is based on an assumption that we will obtain significant savings from Medicare, that we will somehow over the next 10 years summon up the courage to tell seniors that the benefits they currently are receiving are too lavish, and that they will need to sacrifice some of their current coverage to pay for those who don't currently have coverage.

Mr. Speaker, this type of courage doesn't reside with this Congress. We recently passed legislation to shield high-income seniors from a slight increase in Medicare part B premiums. If we have to shield seniors who make more than $170,000 annually from paying another $20 monthly, how are we going to find $500 billion in savings from Medicare over the next 10 years? It simply doesn't add up.

I have an amendment at the desk designated No. 7.

This amendment is straightforward and, I believe, noncontroversial. It should be familiar to those of us here. The underlying bill establishes a new competitive grant program called the Fishing Safety Training Grants program. This amendment would simply prevent the new grant program from being a vehicle for earmarking.

I try to offer this amendment as often as I can when new grant programs are established. The reason I do this is because, unfortunately, we have a history now of these grant programs being established and, even if the underlying legislation says that they are to be awarded on the basis of merit or on a competitive basis, then, oftentimes, a little down the road, many of these grant programs are earmarked, some of them, we have learned through sad experience, almost completely earmarked.

Competitive grant programs earmarked by Members of this body, we simply can't have that. Now, I question why the Federal Government is using taxpayer dollars to fund training for individuals who operate commercial fishing vessels. I think that that's something that commercial fishing organizations ought to do themselves. However, if we are going to do this, then we should at least ensure that these grants are awarded on a competitive basis and aren't earmarked.

And so I hope that this can be adopted. I should note that in the 110th Congress, this similar amendment was adopted to H.R. 2357, the Beach Protection Act. It was approved by a roll call vote of 263-117. And in the 111th Congress, this amendment was accepted on three separate occasions, each time by voice vote.

I reserve the balance of my time.

I thank the Chair, and I thank the chairmen of the committee and subcommittee for their vigilance here to make sure that these awards, these grants, are awarded out on a competitive basis. That's what we're seeking here. I'm glad that's going to happen.

For the record, I found no earmarks on Jabonwod, the island that I stayed on. It was an incredible experience. Thanks for mentioning it.

I yield to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. LoBiondo).

I yield back the balance of my time.

I have an amendment at the desk designated as No. 8.

Mr. Chairman, this amendment is identical. It simply deals with a separate grant program established by the underlying bill. This one would refer to the Fishing Safety Grant, the fishing Safety Research Grant program, whereas the last one was the Fishing Safety Training Grants program. So I believe the same arguments apply here.

And with that, if the gentleman will agree to accept the amendment again, then I'll be prepared to yield back the balance of my time. But for now, I'll reserve.

I yield back the balance of my time.

I thank the gentleman for yielding. I do not plan to support the rule or the underlying legislation. I have some of the concerns that were raised earlier about adding items that don't belong in a Defense bill. We simply shouldn't do that.

But I do rise in support of a provision contained in the Defense authorization conference report that will hopefully shed some light on the process by which earmarks are competitively awarded by the Department of Defense.

Section 1062 of the report represents a compromise between language in the Senate's version of the bill and an amendment dealing with earmarks that I was able to successfully offer in the House bill.

The practice of earmarking, as we all know, has come under significant scrutiny in the media with the advent of the PMA Group scandal when it was revealed earlier this year. Yet, since that time, Congress has taken very little action to actually deal with the root cause of this problem.

The Defense authorization bill, the Defense appropriation bill each contain hundreds of--in one case more than a thousand--individual earmarks, many of which--in fact, in the Defense appropriation bill, more than half of the earmarks are going to for-profit entities. We simply cannot continue to do that.

No Member of Congress should have the ability to provide a sole- source or no-bid contract to their campaign contractors. Until we address the root of that problem, we're going to have problems like this.

A while ago, I worked with the Department of Defense--or, in fact, I've been working with them for several months now--to try to see where these earmarks are going and to see what process they have by which they are competitively bid. I should note that I'm skeptical that this language will do very much good because the Department of Defense tells us now that they follow a process by which earmarks are competitively bid; yet, I provided the Department with a subset of roughly 160 earmarks in the FY 2008 legislation and asked for information regarding the competitive practices used to award these earmarks.

After an initial review, though apparently consistent with competitive requirements, it was found that, with uncanny alignment, these earmarks actually went to their intended recipients.

So we have much more work here to do, and I hope in the coming months we can fix this problem completely. Members of Congress shouldn't have the ability to award no-bid contracts to their campaign contributors.

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

The gentleman from Minnesota mentioned or decried the lack of bipartisanship here now. The problem with the highway bill has never been a lack of bipartisanship. The problem has been a lack of fiscal responsibility.

When we did SAFETEA-LU 5 years ago, or 4 years ago, it passed by a margin, I think there were only eight dissenting votes here in the House and only three in the Senate. Yet it was a bill that was far too big for the Highway Trust Fund. We didn't have sufficient money there.

The other gentleman from Oregon mentioned that we were able to fund out of the Highway Trust Fund without borrowing any money. If that is the case, why have we transferred twice this year $8 billion in one tranche, $7 billion in another tranche, money that would backfill for the money we simply don't have in this legislation?

Let me point out another thing that is troubling here. In the bill there are extensions of certain projects and not of others. I'm glad that a lot of the projects, including most of the 6,300 earmarks that were in SAFETEA-LU, are now finished and completed, and we won't be extending those projects beyond. But there are exemptions here, projects that had a specific line item in the legislation:

Three-quarters of a million dollars for America's Byways Resource Center in Duluth, Minnesota.

More than $11 million for the magnetic levitation train system in Nevada.

These are projects that will continue to receive funding because they have a line item in the bill.

Now there is an uncanny alignment, I think anyone would see, between some of these projects and those who are working on this legislation. So you can say what you want about earmarks or whatever else, but this is an example, if nothing else, of the spoils system alive and well.

We shouldn't extend for 3 months what we ought to take up now. If somebody says we need to increase taxes, that's a debate we ought to have, but we shouldn't continue to spend money that we don't have in the Highway Trust Fund because we will simply have to transfer it later.

I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. Chair, this amendment, I believe, is noncontroversial. It simply ensures that the funds within the new grant programs created in this bill are not earmarked but, rather, that they are awarded on a competitive or on a formula basis.

It is important that we add prohibitive language here. There is prohibitive language in one of the sections of the bill, but it does not apply to the entire bill, so we need to ensure that the entire bill with these new grant programs isn't earmarked.

As we have seen in the past, unfortunately, even when Congress says we have no intention of earmarking these accounts or this bill, we do. The best example, perhaps, is the Homeland Security bill. When the Homeland Security legislation came through first and we created the department, we were told that we wouldn't be earmarking these funds. Well, it just took us a few years, and now there are literally hundreds of earmarks in the Homeland Security bill.

Many of the accounts that should be awarded on a competitive basis-- disaster mitigation and other things--are now earmarked, so when communities and organizations apply for this funding, it's already earmarked, and they can't even compete. We don't want this to happen in other areas as well, so it's important that this amendment is accepted. I believe that it will be.

It is consistent with legislation that I've offered before to the BEACH Act a couple of years ago. That was voted on with a roll call vote and was approved. Later, when the Paycheck Fairness Act passed last year, this amendment was accepted by a voice vote. Most recently, it was accepted by voice vote on H.R. 1262, the Water Quality Investment Act, and on H.R. 2200, the TSA authorization bill.

I reserve the balance of my time.

I thank the gentleman.

I wish the gentleman would make that statement, but I don't expect that here, certainly, and I am pleased that this amendment will be accepted.

I yield back the balance of my time.

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

I just want to say, I thought I'd heard it all until I came to the floor today. Somebody said earlier, this bill's a success. Ford Motor Company loves it. I think that that's self-evident. But I think that there are taxpayers around the country who are wondering why we're taking $2 billion more from them to decide which industry here is going to get a break.

We decided to give out free money, and now we're surprised when people take advantage of it and love the program. I mean, that's the nature of human nature. If you're given free money, you like it and you want more. And that's what this program is. Why are we deciding to aid this sector and not another?

If you're Mr. or Mrs. Businessman across the country, you've got to be wondering if we have lost our minds here by saying that we're going to continue to give out more money just for this industry but not help the others. I don't understand this process and how we can bring this up this quickly. But an Appropriation Committee that can bring a Defense bill to the floor in 18 minutes for a markup that has more than 1,100 earmarks, I guess, has no problem doing this.

Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk designated as No. 596 in part A.

I thank the Chair. Before I start with this amendment, I want to say that I support the part of the manager's amendment that the gentleman from Pennsylvania offered with regard to the F-22 program. I'm glad that we're doing what we're doing there, and I commend the committee for sticking with what the President wanted there. I think we've done the right thing.

This amendment would remove $160 million in funding for the U.S.-made first responder radios for use by Mexico's police force. This request is not classified as an earmark but is programmatic funding, and it came to my attention last week when it was featured in a story by the Washington Post. According to the article, 12 Members of Congress requested this funding which is to be used for radios with certain specifications. The article goes on to say that while no specific company is named in the bill, Motorola, which makes radios that fit the parameters set forth in the bill and which is based in Illinois, home to seven of the requesting Members, appeared to be the intended beneficiary of this funding. At the same time, the article points out that because this request is not considered to be an earmark, the Members who requested it are not required to publicly report it. Typically they have

to sign a certification saying they have no financial interest in the earmark, and that was not the case here.

Mr. Chairman, if it looks like an earmark, sounds like an earmark, I think it's an earmark. It ought to be disclosed under House rules, and it isn't here. Even if we accept that funding directed to a nameless company based on a certain set of requirements that only one company could provide is not an earmark, then we're met with an inconvenient problem: Why bother to make the earmark process more open and transparent when it would be just as easy to request the funding--in this case, funding that is several times more expensive than the average earmark--by calling the beneficiary a program and tailoring its description to suit the needs of one company? It's bad enough that this bill includes over 500 earmarks directed at private companies. The sponsors of those earmarks are all required to disclose their requests on their Web sites; and they even certify, as I mentioned, that they have no financial interest. But that is not the case here. They write letters, but it doesn't show up as an earmark.

The Post article quotes Bill Allison, senior fellow at the Sunlight Foundation, as saying, ``It kind of makes a mockery of the disclosure requirements we have. They will disclose the little things, the $1 million projects; but when you have big-ticket items, you don't have Members willing to take responsibility for those.'' I agree with Mr. Allison's assessment. If we truly want to drain the swamp and make the earmark process more transparent, we can't continue to allow private companies to be funded outside the current House rules.

I urge support for my amendment and reserve the balance of my time.

I would inquire of the gentleman on the subcommittee if he believes that this is an earmark; and if it is, why Members aren't required to certify that they have no financial interest if they're requesting money for it?

I yield the gentleman time to respond.

May I inquire as to the time remaining?

I will reserve the balance of my time.

We have a process here that I think over the years has been abused severely. We see that whenever we pick up the paper. We see examples of earmarks that have gone out of this place in prior years with no notice at all. Last year we didn't even have any opportunity to offer any amendments. The Appropriations Committee didn't even mark up the Defense bill. We see story after story from prior years of what happens when we don't have adequate disclosure and transparency. I would submit that that's what we're continuing here. We have a programmatic request that 12 Members signed a letter. Seven of those Members represent the State in which the recipient of the earmark clearly will receive a huge contract, and yet we don't have to file the disclosure requirements that we do for regular earmarks. I would say that we should not fund this programmatic request, which is really a stealth earmark, and get back to the process that we at least pretend to follow here, where we have disclosure and accountability. I would urge support of the amendment.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk designated as No. 1 in part B.

Let me just state, since the gentleman wouldn't yield time at the end of his statement for me to ask, with the last earmark amendment I had, the only information we have from the committee says that the money is to go to Mexico for a program in Mexico, for radios for Mexico. Afghanistan was never mentioned. If it is covered, we don't know that.

But when the Appropriations Committee takes 18 minutes to mark up the bill and then brings it to the floor and then the chairman of the subcommittee won't answer a question about it, to just say, Well, it's for Afghanistan as well, that doesn't help with this process at all. And I think that will be the pattern today, whether to simply reserve time and then not yield any so we can have any kind of colloquy to find out what really is at the heart of these earmarks or what these are really for.

So I hope that changes. I hope we have a real discussion here because we didn't get it in the Appropriations Committee. Remember, 18 minutes to approve a bill unanimously, with more than 1,000 earmarks in it that nobody in the full body had seen, and we only got a copy of days before the bill came out. Eighteen minutes.

Anyway, this amendment would prohibit $5 million from going to fund Enhanced Navy Shore Readiness Integration. The earmark is going to Concurrent Technologies. Now, most people who have been following this process will know that name and know it well because Concurrent has drawn considerable attention due to its proclivity for earmarks. According to Taxpayers for Common Sense, Concurrent received more than $200 million in earmarks between 2001 and 2006.

Concurrent technically is a nonprofit organization, with revenues in the hundreds of millions of dollars. And it is receiving earmark after earmark after earmark after earmark, although questions are raised all over the place. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Concurrent Technologies' employees have donated more than $113,000 to current members of the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee since 1998.

Let me just use a chart here. This chart kind of explains the phenomenon that we will see over and over and over again. And with every earmark amendment I am offering today, this pattern exists where Members of Congress will earmark dollars; the earmark spending goes to the earmark recipient; the earmark recipient will then turn around; and lobbying firms representing the earmark recipient, PACs there, executives from the lobbying firm, executives from the company itself, contribute handsomely to Members of Congress, and it recycles again and again and again. Circular fund-raising, that's what we're talking about here.

Now, I will point out that when Members of Congress request an earmark, they are forced to sign a certification letter saying that they have no financial interest. This kind of circular fund-raising is not illegal, and that's not what I'm alleging at all. But is it right? And should we, as Members of Congress, tolerate it again and again and again when these companies like Concurrent Technologies are in the news for having problems explaining what they've done with the earmark money that they've received again and again? And here we go saying, Now we have transparency and accountability, and we've changed the earmark process, and yet here we are again appropriating more money through an earmark to Concurrent Technologies.

Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, when we were discussing earmarks earlier in the appropriation cycle, one Member defending his earmark came to the floor and said he was getting an earmark for a university. Based on things I've read in the papers, this college does not have a lobbyist, either a Federal or State lobbyist. No one from the school has donated to my campaign; nothing at the school is named after me or is proposed to be named after me. To my knowledge, the school has never received an earmark of any sort from the Federal Government prior to this.

I would ask the gentleman, the sponsor of the earmark, if he can make the same statement with regard to this earmark. Have moneys come back from the recipient of the earmark?

And I would yield him time to do so.

Roll Call has noted that PMA, and we will get to another PMA earmark a little later, has been--well, let me step back just a bit. Sunlight Foundation has noted that Concurrent Technologies paid PMA $320,000 in lobbying fees in 2008 and received more than $14 million in earmarks sponsored by five Members, including the sponsor of this amendment. This signifies an impressive 4,463 percent return on investment. It's no wonder this process of circular fund-raising continues.

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the sponsor of this earmark is reportedly among the five top recipients of PMA contributions. Roll Call noted that PMA has been the largest source of campaign contributions since 2001 and PMA and its client have

provided the sponsor of this earmark with nearly $200,000 in campaign contributions since 2001.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk designated as No. 258 in part B.

Mr. Chairman, before I get to the substance of the amendment, if people out there want to know why members of the Appropriations Committee, and particularly the Defense Subcommittee, are loathe to talk about these earmarks and to talk about this process and why the markup in the full committee took a full 18 minutes, this might explain it.

If you look here to the left of this chart, 33 percent of the dollar value of the earmarks in the Defense Appropriations bill go to just under 4 percent of the Members of this body. One-twenty-fifth of the Members in this body take home 33 percent of the earmarked dollars in this appropriations bill. So I don't blame them for wanting to get through this quickly, for having an 18-minute markup where nobody really talks about anything; you just shove it on through and it's a unanimous vote. If you want to know why, here it is.

But this Congress, the rest of the body, the rank-and-file Members who aren't on that committee ought to be concerned, particularly when over and over again there are press stories that are unflattering about what happens when earmarks go in this fashion. The Washington Post's top story above the fold today is another one, talking about how Members are loathe to get rid of these pork projects in the bill or these earmarks.

So I would submit that if anybody out there is wondering why this process goes so quickly and Members are so disinclined to debate, why not? If you can do it, do it. If 4 percent of the Members in this body can take home 24 percent of the earmarks, that's a pretty good gig. But the rest of us ought to be concerned, and I think the country is concerned, certainly the press is reporting that there is an issue there.

This amendment would remove $5 million for funding for the Reduced Manning Situational Awareness program. According to the sponsor of this program, it's a command and control system with smart sensors, 3-D visualization, video analytics, and bandwidth management.

I'm not here to argue the merits of the program. I frankly don't have much knowledge in that area. But what we see here again is an earmark going to a private company. Sometimes Members will say, I'm just working for my district; I'm just getting earmarks for economic development in my district. In this case the company is not even located in the sponsor's district.

Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I'm glad the gentleman brought up this phrase in the bill that it should be opened to full competition. The reason for the earmark is to get around competition. We all know that. Now we can have language in the bill that requires that. But I had a meeting with some Defense Department procurement officials and the Comptroller General a while ago, and I asked the Defense Department officials, What is your process with these earmarks? And they said, We subject them to full competition, basically except when we don't. So I asked them, Can you do a random sample of earmarks in the 2009 or 2008 Defense bill and come back to me and let me know how many went to the intended recipient for the earmark?

I yield.

I thank the gentleman for trying to clarify that. But I would submit that that is the process that the Defense Department says that they follow now. So they will take this language and say that's what we do already, except when we don't. And when they don't subject it to full competition, they simply issue what's called a J&A. And the J&A is the justification for why that earmark was not subject to competition.

I have asked for months and months and months, and I'm still waiting for some of those J&As. But we know with uncanny precision these earmarks end up with the intended recipient and simply putting in language in here, which my guess is will be taken out in the Senate anyway, though it doesn't mean much in the first place, it will not likely survive the Senate; but if it does, the Defense Department will say we do that anyway.

If it's subject to full competition, the gentleman mentioned with Concurrent Technologies that they had won in open competition for another pot of money. Well, great. If they're so good, why do we have to earmark money for them? Why don't we say compete on your own like everybody else? That is the purpose of these earmarks, to get around competition. That is the purpose of it. So to say, well, we inserted language in it and that will solve it all, it simply doesn't because the Defense Department knows who butters their bread. They know that they need to follow with uncanny precision the intended recipient.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

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

Mr. Chairman, let me just finish the thought I had before.

President Bush a couple of years ago said that earmarks that end up in the report language and not in the bill itself, like these earmarks, that he would instruct the Federal agencies to ignore them and to simply openly compete contracts out there. This Appropriations Committee inserted language after the President did that and said that the President or the Federal agencies should have to follow the language in the report even though it wasn't legislative language.

So if we're all keen on competition here, why in the world, until the public started to focus on it, did we instruct the Federal agencies and say you have to take the language that's in the report as if it were law?

Anyway, let's get to this amendment.

This amendment would remove $2.2 million in funding for KDH Defense, for a Body Armor Improved Ballistic Protection.

I have not come here to debate the merits of the earmark. Again, I'm not an expert in improved ballistic protection defense. But I should say again I think people in our military are and the Pentagon is and that they should probably make this decision rather than a single Member of Congress.

As reported by Roll Call earlier this week, KDH Defense has received millions in earmarks to produce an underwater swimmer detection sonar system for the Navy to be used to protect its docks and ships. KDH's expertise lies in sewing bulletproof vests, but reportedly this earmark project was the first product to be delivered by KDH Electronic Systems, a startup company affiliated with KDH.

After several years and a series of botched agreements with subcontractors, KDH has yet to deliver this product. Based on the statements made by the president of KDH, it doesn't appear as though they ever will. And yet we are here today again ready to provide KDH with millions more in taxpayer dollars.

I would ask why are we doing this when we already have information that some of the individuals or companies that will be associated with this earmark haven't exactly done well in the past, haven't produced what they said they would, in some cases have little expertise in the area that they say they do in order to get the earmark?

Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, again, here we have the same pattern of circular fund-raising. Again, I am not alleging any illegal activity here. This is legal. It is unfortunate, but it is legal for Members to sign a certification that they have no financial interest in the earmark. But our same Ethics Committee issues guidance to the Members saying campaign contributions do not necessarily reflect or constitute financial interest.

That, I would submit, Mr. Chairman, is the wrong approach, and we are going to continue to see story after story where earmark recipients simply don't have the capability or the inclination to deliver on the product that they said they would deliver on, and yet they still continue, even in this environment with investigations swirling around all over, to receive these same earmarks.

By now, my colleagues are familiar with the PMA scandal that has plagued this body for months. There is an investigation, at least they are looking into it, we are told, by our own Ethics Committee here.

I am unconvinced that the PMA scandal will be the last scandal we see in this body. I am convinced that there will be earmarks that we approve today that later investigation will determine were not aboveboard, that these companies receiving these earmarks simply weren't delivering, because we have seen that again and again and again, and yet we go through this same process as if nothing were amiss.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, an editorial in The New York Times, entitled ``Political Animal 101,'' referred to the ``relationship between campaign dollars and the customized appropriations they are fed by grateful lawmakers'' as ``the ultimate in symbiotic survival and cynical influence trading.''

That is The New York Times. There have been editorials in the Washington Post. They have been in Roll Call and The Hill and just about everywhere. The mainstream media has done a great job investigating this and showing that this process leaves a lot to be desired.

Again, it doesn't have to be illegal to be something that Members of this body should stand up and say, you know, our House should have a higher standard here. We ought to have a higher standard than whether we can survive an investigation going on by the Justice Department right now, that we ought to leave some confidence with the public that we are doing things right here. And I would submit when you have more than 1,000 earmarks, more than 500 of which represent no-bid contracts to private companies like this one, then we have got a problem.

I urge support of the amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk designated as No. 389 in part B.

Mr. Chairman, I want to respond a little to what the chairman of the Defense Subcommittee said.

He mentioned some of the horrible things that are happening in Iraq and Afghanistan. I have attended funerals myself of members who were killed by an IED or some other measure out there that they need greater protection from. But that is not what we are talking about here.

The reason we are here and the reason I offered the last amendment is it is going to a firm that, according to press reports, doesn't have the expertise to do what they intend to do and in the past have not delivered on the promises that were made before.

We see stories again and again and again on that same theme, that earmarks go to such companies. In fact, there is a trial going on, I believe, right now in Florida where an earmark recipient has pled guilty, I believe, to distributing earmark money to contractors who had no intention of following through and delivering on the contract. That is why we are here.

So we can talk all we want about the needs of our troops in the field, and that is why I am offering these, because this money should be going to our troops in the field. Instead, it is being bled off, in some cases, according to press reports, to companies who don't know enough about what they are doing to receive the earmark. But they are getting an earmark and getting around competition despite the language in this year's bill which claims that these will be subject to free and open competition.

This particular amendment, Mr. Chairman, would remove $3 million from funding for a Gulf Range Mobile Instrumentation Capability project. Again, I am here not knowing the specifics of the technology here, but I would submit that there are people in the Defense Department that perhaps might know better than some Members. And in this case, I would think that the chairman of the Defense Subcommittee would concede that we shouldn't be giving money to companies that have been implicated, at least it has been alleged, that they are under investigation.

The Wall Street Journal reviewed real estate records and reported that many of the facilities that ProLogic, the recipient of this earmark, uses are partly owned by the family of the CEO, and ProLogic pays the CEO monthly rent that is higher than prevailing local rates. ProLogic was also subpoenaed in a broader Federal investigation into earmarks going to West Virginia, where ProLogic is headquartered.

The Wall Street Journal also noted that four of ProLogic's six facilities were located in the congressional districts of senior members of the House Appropriations Committee. CBS News reported that ProLogic has spent more than $880,000 lobbying and contributed more than $400,000 to congressional campaigns.

I should note this company has denied allegations of wrongdoing and the status of the investigation is currently unknown.

But here we have a company that press reports say is either under investigation or cooperating with an investigation, and we are still giving it an earmark, a no-bid contract. Despite what is said about this will be open to free and open competition, we are giving them an earmark and saying this company at this address should get this money.

I just don't see where this connects with the speech about the needs of our men and women in the military. Again, I will stipulate, we need to make sure that our men and women are armed, that they have force protection, that they have the arms and everything else they need. And that is why I am so against this process that we have here, because we bleed off money that should be going to our military into companies, through no-bid contracts, who in too many cases simply aren't doing the work that they were contracted to do.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

I would disagree with the gentleman. I think we're in total agreement on this amendment. CBS News reported ProLogics businesses are getting a lot of attention, a lot of it from the FBI, which is investigating whether it diverted public money for its own private profit. This company is reported to be under investigation. And so should we be giving it an earmark?

The gentleman mentioned that he doesn't know the company. But this we do know; that this company, it's reported by CBS and by others, that it is under investigation, and we're giving an earmark. So when the gentleman says that he thinks that we are in agreement that we shouldn't give earmarks to companies that it's alleged that there's some impropriety going on, I would submit that that's what we have here, according to the press. And unless we know completely that they're clean and doing good work, then we shouldn't give them an earmark. We should instead say to the Department of Defense: you decide. The gentleman mentioned that he doesn't know the company. Does he know if this company is the only company that can provide these services outlined?

I yield back.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk designated as No. 432 in part B.

Just in reference to the last amendment, let me finish my thought there. Here we have, and the ranking minority member on the subcommittee concedes that we shouldn't be giving an earmark to a company if there's allegations out there that they're not doing the job that they're supposed to do, or that there's some cloud hanging over, I would assume. And yet that's what this earmark is for.

And so I seem to hear that, yeah, that we shouldn't do that and that my amendment would be agreed to. But all I heard were noes when my amendment was offered. So I would hope that when it comes time to vote, that Members will say, you know, regardless of everything else, perhaps if it's reported that a company is under investigation, perhaps we shouldn't be giving it an earmark until that's cleared up. And so I would hope that that's remembered when it comes time to vote later this day.

This amendment would strike $1.5 million from the Ultra Low Profile EARS Gunshot Localization System. According to the sponsor's Web site, funding for this localization will produce a completely covert detection system which will enhance situational awareness and survivability of our military.

Mr. Chairman, this sounds like a worthwhile project. Even though the military did not request it, it may be something that we will ultimately benefit from. But why are we earmarking funds again here for a private, for-profit company that will not have to compete, regardless of the language that's in the House bill--that will likely not survive the Senate anyway, but which complies with regulations that the Defense Department says they already have about competition?

According to the sponsor's Web site, Planning Systems, Incorporated, will be the recipient of these funds. What's not included is justification for use of taxpayer dollars to an entity that the receiving entity of these funds was a client of now-defunct PMA Group. We're all familiar, all too familiar with the PMA Group. The PMA Group, and the companies it represented, donated more than $270,000 to the sponsor of this earmark in the 2008 cycle alone. Collectively, employees of the PMA Group and its clients have contributed nearly $1 million to the sponsor since 1998.

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, this earmark sponsor was the third-highest recipient of contributions from PMA since 1998. And that's not all. The recipient of this earmark, Planning Systems, Incorporated, has contributed more than $35,000 to the campaign of the sponsor of this earmark, again, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Again, there is nothing in our House rules that prohibit this. I'm not alleging that there are. But I'm saying that we have to stop this process of circular fund-raising. It just looks too bad outside of this body when we have a process where Members of Congress will earmark spending to an earmark recipient, and that earmark recipient, through its employees, through a PAC, through its lobbyists or through its executives, will contribute very handsomely back to the Member of Congress' campaign committee.

There is no other way to look at this outside of this body, I would say, than to say we shouldn't be doing that, particularly in a process where we're told that there are more than 1,000 earmarks in the bill, just days before the bill comes to the floor, and we know that 552 of those earmarks are no-bid contracts to private companies like this one.

I reserve the balance of my time.

I would simply ask, and maybe when he has his time back, to explain why, if it was open to competition in the last 3 years, why we had to earmark it this year.

The gentleman made the point that's been made again, that these have to be subject to fair and open competition. Let me say again, the Defense Department has said that all along. For years they've said the same thing. We subject these earmarks to full and open competition, but that doesn't stop Members of Congress. As soon as this bill is passed today, there will be a flurry of press releases, I guarantee it, where Members will say, I was successful in securing funding for this particular program. And if it's open to competition, how do you know that you've secured funding?

Let me just read from a couple of the press releases in the past:

I was pleased to secure funding to assist these small businesses in Prince George's County working on projects that will benefit our Nation's military and the safety of our troops.

That was somebody who knows the process pretty well. It's the majority leader. He put out a press release as soon as legislation was passed, not waiting for the competition that supposedly comes when the project gets to the Defense Department. And like I said, tomorrow you'll see a round of those same press releases: I was able to secure funds, because Members know, with uncanny precision, the Defense Department will follow these earmarks.

I would say, again, with this particular earmark it sounds like a great program. The sponsor of the earmark indicated that this was open to competition in the last couple of years. That's great. Why do we have to earmark it this year?

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

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

Mr. Chairman, this amendment would prohibit $2.5 million from being directed to Alliant Tech Systems, or ATK, for AARGM Counter Air Defense Future Capabilities.

According to ATK's Web site, AARGM is a supersonic, medium-range, air-launched tactical missile used by the U.S. and by allied forces. The sponsor's Web site and certification letter state that the funds directed to this project in the bill would enable ATK to continue to demonstrate improvements to AARGM, particularly at longer ranges.

Now, here again, I am not going to argue the merits of the problem; neither are most of us here. It's possible that ATK's missile system is the best one out there, but we don't know that. I would suggest that nobody in this body knows that, not even the sponsor of the earmark.

We don't know that because there is no way the Appropriations Committee thoroughly vetted each of the 1,102 earmarked projects in this bill during its 18-minute markup. We don't know that because Members of Congress, in general, don't have the kind of expertise required to make that determination.

In cases like these, when we're determining the kind of missiles that best work for our Armed Forces, it seems to me that the decision is best made by experts at the Department of Defense. Once that determination is made, just like with any other procurement, the contract to make these missiles ought to be competitively bid through the DOD.

But as is the case with nearly 550 of these earmarks, we have a handpicked private company being handed Federal funds for a project based solely on the discretion of one Member of Congress. This is a no- bid contract. This alone

should be troubling enough, but there is an additional facet.

I mentioned the problem with circular fundraising that has been detailed by so many media organizations out there. It's getting tiring reading these stories every day. The Associated Press reported that an ongoing FBI investigation is ``highlighting the close ties between special interest spending provisions, known as earmarks, and the raising of campaign cash.''

As I mentioned, in every one of the individual earmarks that we're discussing today, there are examples of funding going to the earmark recipient, and then the executives from the company, their lobbyists and the PACs are contributing large amounts of campaign dollars back to the sponsors of the earmark. That simply doesn't look right. It may be legal. It is.

Our Ethics Committee has said that you can get campaign contributions in close proximity to earmarks; but Members of this body, I would think, would want to have a higher standard here. We ought to say, you know, maybe we don't know exactly the kind of missile systems that ought to be used. We ought to leave that to those with a little more expertise instead of giving a no-bid contract to a private company which happens to be in the district or doesn't but which is simply willing to provide a lot of campaign contributions.

So I would say, Mr. Chairman, we have to stop this process. We have to say we can no longer afford to award no-bid contracts to private companies, as we have done in the past, regardless of the language that is inserted which says that all of these have to be subject to competition.

We know how it works in the Defense Department because they say now, over the past several years, these have to be subject to competition. Yet, time and time again, when you look, there is an uncanny alignment between the earmark recipient designated by the sponsor of the earmark and the company that eventually gets the dollars.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, again, I would say we can no longer continue to give no-bid contracts to private companies. I would say, as I mentioned, that for those who say we have language now in the bill--and I would certainly yield time to the gentleman, to the chairman of the Subcommittee on Defense--I would hope that he would agree, if they really believe in this language and that if the Senate knocks the language out, that we will not agree to a conference report that has these no-bid contracts in it.

If that is the case, if we are so willing to believe that this language actually has any force--and I don't believe it does because the Defense Department already says that they subject these earmarks to full competition--for those who are placing so much stock in this language, I would assume that they agree so strongly and that they will say these are going to be subject to competition. If the Senate strikes that language out, I would like to hear from those here that the House will also nullify those no-bid contracts, because we have designated who those recipients should be.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

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

Mr. Chairman, this amendment would prohibit $8 million from being directed to Argon ST, which is a private systems engineering and development company headquartered in Fairfax, Virginia.

The sponsor's Web site and certification letters say that the funding

from this earmark would be used to upgrade current naval torpedo defense capabilities that would enhance ship survivability against the modern threat of a torpedo attack.

This isn't the first time that this company has received Federal funding for a project. This project, itself, received two earmarks, totaling $8.7 million in 2007, and $7.5 million was also allocated to such a system in 2006.

The FEC records indicate that, since 2006, employees of the earmark recipient, Argon ST, have donated more than $47,000 in campaign contributions to the sponsor of the earmark. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the Argonne PAC made $23,000 in donations to the sponsor's campaign and to his leadership PAC in the 2008 election cycle.

According to the FEC, this represented more than a third of all donations of Argon's PAC made during the election cycle. In addition, during the 2008 cycle, Argon ST was reported to be the second highest contributor to the earmark sponsor's PAC. The funding for this earmark may very well be vital to national defense or it may not be. We just don't know here, I would suggest. But the earmarking system is so opaque that the purposes and justifications for more than 1,100 earmarks in this bill are a mystery to just about everyone.

Again, the committee took a whole 18 minutes to accept this bill on to the floor with a unanimous vote. Had this earmark been closely examined, it would have been revealed that this earmark recipient acquired Coherent Systems in 2007. Coherent Systems' former president and CEO now faces Federal charges for soliciting kickbacks from a defense contractor.

Argon ST is cooperating with Federal authorities in the investigation and is not facing any charges. But in the wake of the Abramoff scandal and the burgeoning PMA scandals, I would simply ask whether Congress should be providing no-bid contracts to private companies involved in Federal investigations. I would submit that it should not.

There is more than $2.7 billion in earmark spending in this bill. We've had less than 2 weeks to go over 1,100 earmarks that comprise this spending. We simply can't continue to do this.

I know the Member will stand up and say these have to be competed out. And I will again ask the Member, and I will actually yield him the rest of my time, if he will stand and say that if the Senate removes this language that requires open competition, if then we will then remove these no-bid contracts.

And I will yield to the gentleman for that. He doesn't have to take my time. He can take his own.

Again, what I am asking is if the Senate removes the language that Members put, I think, too much stock in because the Defense Department says they already subject these contracts to full and open competition, but if the Senate should remove that language, will the Members of this body remove the no-bid contracts, 552 of them, I believe, from the bill.

And I would yield for an answer.

I yield back my time.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

I have an amendment at the desk designated number 553 in part B.

Mr. Chairman, let me note before I start this amendment, again I ask the chairman that if the Senate nullified the language requiring free and open competition, that the House would say, Okay, we will remove these no-bid contracts. I didn't hear an answer to that.

I would suggest that we know full well the Senate will remove that language. I think we put too much stock in the language anyway, but the Senate will surely remove it, because not to remove it might force some Senators to think they might not be able to secure funding for their earmark, and we know that's not going to happen.

So, if we were serious about this language, if we were serious about free and open competition, we wouldn't be earmarking in this fashion. Full stock.

Mr. Chairman, I would ask unanimous consent that this amendment be modified in the form I placed at the desk.

This amendment would prohibit nearly $200 million for more than 70 earmarks for former clients of the PMA Group that would be funded in this bill.

We are now all familiar with the PMA scandal that I think is in the beginning stages and certainly not the end. PMA Group was a prominent lobbying firm that specialized in obtaining defense earmarks for its clients, whose offices were recently raided by the FBI, according to The Hill, as part of a Federal investigation into politically corrupt-- potentially corrupt political contributions. The lobbying firm has ceased operations and shuttered its political action committee, but not before, according to The New York Times, leaving a detailed blueprint of how the political money churn works in Congress.

PMA is emblematic of the troubling circular fund-raising that's become entrenched in the current earmarking process. CQ Today noted that the firm has charged $107 million in lobbying fees from 2000 to 2008. Safe to say, the PMA Group was associated with showering Members of Congress with campaign cash.

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, since 1998, the firm and its clients have given $40.3 million total to the candidate committees and leadership PACs of 514 lawmakers, nearly every Member of the current Congress. The Center also reported that members of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee have collected nearly $1 million in campaign cash since 1998 from PMA employees and the firm's PAC. If you include contributions from employees and PACs of the parent companies and subsidiaries of PMA clients, the total jumps to nearly $8 million over the last decade.

In review of the 2008 PMA earmarks, the Sunlight Foundation noted that 40 organizations whose sole lobbyist was PMA had an average return on their lobbying fee investment of more than 2,700 percent. Clients of the firm received at least $300 million worth of earmarks in fiscal year 2009 appropriations legislation, including several that were approved even after news that the FBI raided the firm's office and the justice investigation into the firm was well known. That was earlier this year.

The omnibus spending bill that we approved in January, had money for PMA clients in there just weeks after it was revealed that the PMA's offices had been raided, and we still didn't scrub them out. I would submit if we're not going to do it then, when would we do it?

I believe there are 70 earmarks in this bill for former clients of PMA. And we have had several privileged resolutions, of which I think at one count 29 members of the majority party, and nearly all members of the majority party, agreed that we should have the ethics committee look into the relationship between PMA and campaign dollars that have come to this Congress.

I reserve the balance of my time.

May I inquire as to the time remaining?

I would yield the remainder of my time to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Kirk).

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Chairman, I offer an en bloc amendment made in order under the rule.

I thank the chairman.

As my colleagues are aware, I submitted 553 amendments to the Rules Committee, each seeking to strike an earmark that was listed by the sponsoring Member as going to a private for-profit earmark--553 amendments. Nearly half of these--I'm sorry. There are 1,102 earmarks representing $2.7 billion. This is not chump change. This is a lot of money going out the door. I'm sorry. I said 553. 552 are listed as going to for-profit companies. If a dollar amount is attached to these earmarks, it's $1.3 billion, comprising nearly half of the earmarked dollars in the bill. I simply do not believe, and I think the country agrees, that we should be doing no-bid contracts for private companies.

As much as the Members on the other side of the aisle, and this side aisle, as much of the members of the Appropriations Subcommittee will say that these are going to be competed out, we know that they won't be.

We had testimony from the Comptroller General's office in the Government Reform Committee. He said there is no automated database that provides insight into the extent of competition achieved on congressional earmarks. I have been trying for literally months to get some insight into this process. And we were told, as I mentioned, we were told we do compete these out, but then when I asked them to do a random sample of earmarks in a prior bill, they came back and confessed that with uncanny precision, these earmarks find their way to the intended recipients.

This process will not change because language has been submitted in this bill just saying they must now be competed. If the Members really believe that statement, then they would agree that if the Senate nullifies that language, that they would strike these no-bid contracts and say that the Defense Department should simply make them all open to competition.

But we know that they're not going to do that because the Members here know the Senate is not going to agree to that language. Even if they did, the Defense Department confesses here: There is no way to really track these,

but with uncanny precision, even though they've had a process that they claim subjects these earmarks to open competition, they aren't subjected to open competition. They know that unless they follow the guidelines in these conference reports that they may not get funding next year.

I yield to the gentleman from Washington.

If they were, in fact, competed, we wouldn't need to earmark them. That's the point. An earmark is a way around competition. We've seen it in other appropriations bills, and it's no different here in defense. You earmark dollars because you want that company, either in your district or out, to be sure to receive that funding. That's why in the certification letters the Members say, This earmark is to go to this recipient at this address.

I yield to the gentleman.

Reclaiming my time, I would submit that if it's going to be subjected to competition, there is no reason to name the recipient organization that's to get the earmark.

Excuse me. I have very limited time.

May I inquire as to the time remaining?

As I mentioned, I have very little time. I will say that if we believe in that language, then we would agree that if the Senate nullifies it, then we would take out these no-bid contracts. Would the gentleman agree to that?

I would submit that the gentleman knows full well that the Senate will not retain that language, that that bill will come back to the House without that language, and that we, unless we take a stand here--and we can with this amendment--and simply strike funding for those, if these companies are great--some of them are, I'm sure--then they'll win these contracts. If they're not, they won't. But the Member won't be earmarking and saying, This money needs to go to this company at this address. That is a no-bid contract. That's what the Member is seeking; and that, unfortunately, is what happens when it gets to the Defense Department.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Speaker, I raise a point of order against H. Res. 685 because the resolution violates section 426(a) of the Congressional Budget Act.

The resolution contains a waiver of all points of order against consideration of the bill, which includes a waiver of section 425 of the Congressional Budget Act, which causes a violation of section 426(a).

Mr. Speaker, I'm not sure that there are unfunded mandates in this bill. There probably are, but that isn't the reason I raise a point of order. I raise it because it's about the only opportunity those of us in the minority have to talk about this process. It has been extremely restrictive.

The rule reported for the Defense bill marks the 12th time during the appropriation season that the majority has shut down what has traditionally been an open process. It isn't coincidental that the Defense appropriations bill is being considered last and we'll have just about a day to consider it. In recent years, this bill has been rife with earmarks going to for-profit companies, and the measure before us today is no different.

There are 1,102 earmarks stuffed into this bill, and nearly 550 of them, worth at least $1.3 billion, are going to private, for-profit companies. The corrupting nature of this practice, which the President himself has publicly noted, has been, itself, evident with the PMA scandal that has centered around campaign contributions and earmarks.

It is for this reason and this reason alone that I chose to offer 552 amendments to the Rules Committee, each one targeting an earmark that the sponsors listed on their Web site as going to a for-profit company.

These amendments have been derided as an abuse of the process. I would like to address this criticism, which I think is wholly unfair. It's unfair because the Office of Legislative Counsel is not in any way inconvenienced by the drafting of these amendments.

My staff wrote them and wrote them individually. My amendments were delivered to the Rules Committee on Friday of last week, well in advance of a 3 p.m. Monday deadline, giving the staff of the Rules Committee more than enough time to process these amendments accordingly. In fact, I'm told that the Rules Committee closed up shop around 8 p.m. on Friday night. The Rules Committee met yesterday, and the 12th rule of this appropriations process was passed, which restricted amendments again. That meeting lasted just 1 hour.

One hour the Rules Committee met and, in 1 hour, dealt, apparently, with more than 600 amendments that were submitted. That is almost equivalent to the Appropriations Committee meeting for 18 minutes to pass this bill out of committee, a bill with more than 1,000 earmarks, more than 500 earmarks that are no-bid contracts to private companies, passed by the Appropriations Committee in 18 minutes.

Now, the majority talks a lot about making sure that we do this all in a timely process. I would suggest there is something to being a bit more thorough. You cannot vet more than 1,000 earmarks, more than 550 of which are no-bid contracts to private companies, in 18 minutes. And you can't restrict it in this way coming to the floor and expect this to be a thorough process. It is a quick process. Maybe the trains are running on time, but we're not doing our job here.

The flawed process by which the Rules Committee reported this rule does not appear to have been delayed or inconvenienced in any way by the submission of these amendments. Referring to these amendment submissions as an abuse of the process is farfetched considering the severe restrictions the Rules Committee has placed on our ability to offer amendments to appropriations bills. This is a process, again, that has been traditionally open.

Excluding the Defense bill, more than 800 amendments were submitted to the Rules Committee for the 10 appropriations bills the House has already considered this summer. At the start of the process, the chairman of the Appropriations Committee said, ``There are a limited number of hours between now and the time we recess. If we want to get our work done, we have to limit the debate time that we spend on these bills.''

The majority leader echoed this sentiment as an explanation for clamping down on the appropriations process: ``So I tell my friend that the reason for rising was to give us the opportunity to go to the Rules Committee and provide for, as I said, time constraints in which we can effectively complete this bill.''

This has been the excuse that's been used so far, an excuse to only make in order 18 percent of the amendments submitted for appropriations bills we've seen so far.

I realize amongst my colleagues I have been the most fortunate. I have been permitted to offer more than 40 amendments, 26 percent of all the amendments ruled in order, in total, for these bills. I suppose I should be grateful for any crumbs that fall from the Appropriations Committee or the Rules Committee.

But my amendments were ruled in order at the expense of other perhaps more substantive amendments in many ways as a way for the majority to deflect blame for a virtually closed process and to prevent their Members from making tough votes on some of the other amendments that were submitted.

When I was on the House floor with a couple of bills, time and time again, in fact, 16 times, I asked for unanimous consent to substitute some of my colleagues' amendments for my own. We already had the time constraints for the bill, so the notion that we had to make the trains run on time, we had to get this debate done was not the point. But I was rejected 16 times in a row, not because the amendments offered by my colleagues weren't germane. They were. They simply weren't ruled in order by the majority because they didn't want to face those amendments.

And if we're going to talk about abuse of process, there it is. It's not offering 550 amendments because we are doing more than 550 no-bid contracts to private companies. That's not where the abuse lies. The abuse lies in the majority's saying we are only going to

entertain those amendments that we know we can beat or that we want to entertain or that are entertaining, apparently, not the ones that may be difficult for us.

Now, when Republicans were in the majority, I have often said that we did a few things that we shouldn't have. Holding a vote open for 3 hours wasn't a good thing. But I have never seen any of the abuse of the process like this. No matter how the Republicans, when they were in power, didn't want to see amendments, like some of mine, they allowed them. We spent, I think, 3 days on the Interior appropriations bill because Members kept coming forward offering amendments that our own majority did not want to see, but they knew that they shouldn't shut down this process, which has been traditionally open.

But the new majority has decided to completely close it and did not have one appropriation bill this year come to the floor under an open rule. In particular, when some will make the argument that, well, hey, back in the 1970s there were occasions when these appropriation bills were not brought to the floor under an open rule, the situation we have today is a situation in which bills are brought to the floor that have been stuffed to the gills with earmarks like this bill that we're considering today. More than 1,000 earmarks, more than 500 of which are no-bid contracts to private companies for which the Appropriations Committee took a paltry 18 minutes to vet and to send on to the House floor, and then we're told, ah, but you can only offer eight of the 552 amendments you submitted. Only eight of them. You can choose them, but only eight, because we don't have time to vet any more at that time.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

May I inquire as to the time remaining.

It was said again that I'm just trying to delay this process. If I were trying to delay this process, I could stand up here with a privileged resolution and read every one of the amendments that I wasn't allowed into the Record. It would take hours to do that.

I'm not trying to delay this process unnecessarily. This isn't a dilatory tactic. It's just about the only way we can stand and actually register objection to this closed process. I suppose I could, and this would be chilling reading, read the transcript of yesterday's court trial of an individual who, I believe, is pleading guilty in some fashion, a contractor who received earmarks and passed them on to other contractors who weren't doing any work at all. That was under a previous Defense bill that wasn't vetted, as it should have been, that came to the floor probably last year under a closed process; no amendments could have been offered.

And so here we have investigations, particularly with the PMA scandal, swirling around this institution because we aren't doing our work. We aren't vetting these bills. I wish that the Appropriations Committee would, but they're not. And then when you come to the floor and say, we'd like to challenge a few of these earmarks, you say, you can challenge eight of them; 8 of the more than 550 no-bid contracts to private companies. You can only question eight of them. That's all we have time for because we have to pass this bill today for some reason.

The fiscal year doesn't run out until the end of September. This is not a bill that has to be passed today or tomorrow. We can spend the time that we need, or we should have taken time earlier this year instead of doing suspension bills or last Friday, instead of passing a wild horse welfare act or whatever we did.

The appropriations bills are the most important work this Congress does. And to say that we have to move through them quickly so nobody sees what we're doing, so nobody sees that we're doing no-bid contracts for private companies is simply wrong. That is the abuse of power in this institution, not bringing 553 amendments to the floor.

With that, I urge opposition to the rule and yield back my time.

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Here we are again: the second bout of highway robbery, taking money back into the trust fund from the general Treasury. We are told, well, sometime back in 1998, some money was taken from the trust fund into the general fund, so this is just payback.

How many times can we keep saying that? It may have made some sense the first time. It doesn't the second time. It won't the third or fourth time we do this. Yet we are told we are bemoaning the fact we don't have the reauthorization on the floor this week.

Thank goodness we don't. If you think we overspent what we had in the trust fund before, we are really going to do it the next time. A bill has been proposed that has twice the spending we currently have in the Highway Trust Fund, without revenue to pay for it. We don't have the revenue to pay for the one we have got. How can we double it with no revenue source?

Let's get serious about things here. If we really need a place for the money to come from, I would suggest, as the gentleman did before, take it from the stimulus. But part of the problem is that we are spending for things in this bill, or in the highway program, that are probably worth spending some of the things we have seen in the stimulus.

In the current highway program that we are taking money from the general fund to now fund, there is $3 million for a parking garage in suburban Chicago; $1.6 million for a bike path in Wisconsin; $1.2 million for improvements in the Blue Ridge Music Center in Virginia; $1 million for improvements to the Police Touch Museum in Pennsylvania. Why don't we rescind some of these programs in the highway bill, and we won't have to take so much money from the general fund?

We can't continue to do this, Mr. Speaker. We are spending money on a suspension bill. We are suspending the rules and passing a bill that is going to cost us $7 billion. I think the limit on suspension bills used to be something like $50 million. If it does more than that, you come under a general rule; $7 billion we are spending here, and it will go almost without dissent.

And that is a shame, Mr. Speaker.

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

You know, some of us did stand up and vote against the initial authorization back in 2005, I believe it was, because we were told by our Appropriations Committee chairman, we don't have the money to pay for this. We knew it. Everybody knew it. But the reason that passed, we all know, is because there were 6,300 earmarks in it. You spread enough of that around and people are going to vote for it. There were only eight votes against it here in the House, three in the Senate. And we will likely do the same again.

At some point we have got to say, let's pay for it. And for a State like Arizona, let me tell you, where we give a dollar to Washington for this highway bill and only get about 92 cents back, it is not a very good deal. We would rather keep the tax money and spend it on our own. We could get a lot more infrastructure for that, and that is our complaint, more than anything.

Money is sent here, then it comes back 92 cents on the dollar, and that that does come back is restricted in ways that diminish the value of the dollar, and then it is earmarked completely. It is simply not a good deal for people around the country. So we need a new model.

Madam Speaker, later today, the Rules Committee will be promulgating a rule for the Defense appropriation bill that I believe we'll consider tomorrow. This is, in my view, quite remarkable that we will be considering the Defense bill that spends hundreds of billions of dollars, we will be spending less than a day debating that legislation.

What is remarkable about it as well is that there are 1,087 earmarks in the bill, more than 1,000 earmarks in the Defense bill that was considered by the full Appropriations Committee for a total of 18 minutes, not 18 minutes per earmark or per section of the bill or anything else, but the full Appropriations Committee considered that bill for 18 minutes, passed, done, markup finished, and now we've got that bill on the floor tomorrow.

And unfortunately, as is the case or as has been the case with the rest of the appropriation bills this season, it will come to the floor under a structured or closed rule where the Rules Committee, the majority party, will determine which amendments the minority party and members of the majority party get to offer. Breaking from tradition that has held for decades and decades and perhaps centuries in this institution where appropriation bills have come to the floor under an open rule, this will come to the floor under a rule that only allows amendments to be offered that the majority party wants to see, not those that the minority party necessarily wants to offer.

There are 548, at our count, earmarks in this bill that will go to private companies. These will be no-bid contracts for private companies. The majority party will say, well, we're inserting language saying that these earmarks have to be bid out. The purpose of an earmark is to ensure that that contract is not bid out. Otherwise, why earmark it? Why not just let the Defense Department decide where to spend its money?

So these are earmarks. These are no-bid contracts. They're going to private companies. In many cases, those private companies will turn around, and the executives from those companies will make sizeable campaign contributions to the Members who secured the earmarks. That has been the pattern in this place for years, not just with the majority party in power but when the minority power was in power as well. It's simply gotten worse over time.

Our Ethics Committee forces Members--and it's a good thing--to sign a certification letter saying that they have no financial stake in the earmark that they are securing, that a family member doesn't work for the firm receiving it, for example. But there's also guidance issued from the Ethics Committee that says that campaign contributions do not necessarily constitute financial interest. And so Members of this body are given a green light to basically earmark for campaign dollars. It's the so-called circular fund-raising that has become the norm around here.

And if this wasn't bad enough, there are investigations swirling outside of this body. Members' offices have been subpoenaed. Some people on the outside have already pled guilty and are working with authorities involving earmarks and campaign contributions. There are allegations of straw men contributions that have been set up where individuals reimburse for contributions they make to Members who secure earmarks. There are all these investigations swirling outside. Yet we're moving through this appropriation process as if nothing were wrong, and we'll consider a bill in one day and limit the number of amendments that Members can bring forward.

Now, this isn't the perfect way to scrutinize or to vet a bill, I recognize, on the House floor. But it's all we've got when the full committee Appropriations Committee takes a full 18 minutes to approve a bill that spends hundreds of millions of dollars and contains over 1,000 earmarks, 548 of which are no-bid contracts to private companies.

We do that all in a day and then tell Members, oh, but we're only going to allow the amendments that we want to see, not necessarily the ones that you want to offer.

In this legislation that we will consider tomorrow, there's an earmark going to a company called ProLogic, and it is reported that this company is under investigation by the FBI. The status of the investigation is unknown. Reports are simply out there that there are investigations. This company, the executives and lobbyists and those associated with it, have contributed more than $400,000 to congressional campaign committees. Yet we're still allowing this bill to go forward.

Let's have a new rule for the bill.

Mr. Speaker, some things just don't add up. We're told that the Democrats' version of health care reform will cost less in the long run. Haven't we heard this before?

When Medicare was instituted more than 30 years ago, for the first 25 years we were told that it would cost this amount. Instead, it costs nine times that much and that holds true for just about every government program that we institute.

There are multiple, multiple times that it costs more and more and more than we ever thought it would. How do you control costs when you have no money to spend, when you have to borrow money? You control costs by rationing. Markets control costs with competition, a ration by competition. But governments control costs by rationing. And so what will happen here inevitably is that the services that you are now used to receiving, the medical services will be severely circumscribed.

Let's be honest about this reform, at least, and tell people what they're going to get.

Mr. Speaker, I raise a point of order against consideration of the rule because the resolution violates section 426(a) of the Congressional Budget Act.

The resolution carries a waiver of all points of order against consideration of the bill, which includes a waiver of section 425 of the Congressional Budget Act which causes a violation of section 426(a).

Mr. Speaker, I come here today completely baffled at this point. We've had in this appropriations season what can best be described as martial law, in legislative terms, where we've had appropriation bill after appropriation bill come to the floor under a closed rule or a modified structured rule, where the majority party decides which amendments the minority party can offer.

I suppose they thought it was amusing at first. They claim it was an issue of time. And so some of us on this side that had amendments that were ruled in order asked unanimous consent to be able to substitute other Members' amendments that had not been ruled in order--amendments that were germane--that the majority party simply saw unfit for this party to vote on and debate.

And 16 times that I have asked for unanimous consent, that unanimous consent has been denied. So it's not an issue of time at all. It's not an issue of time.

As much as the majority party wants to stand up and say, We've got to get these finished because we have a time limit--for one, it's a pretty sorry excuse. We do appropriations. That's what the Congress does. And to say we've got to get these done in 1 day for the Defense bill next week, one day for Labor-HHS today, but then we find out that that's a ruse in itself, because if we agree to stay within the time constraints, then they still won't allow us to substitute the amendments that we would like to offer.

On this bill, because the majority party had seen fit to give me several amendments on bills to cut earmarks that they knew would likely not pass because of the logrolling that takes effect here, I decided on this bill, although there were plenty of targets, I believe there were over a thousand earmarks in the bill, I decided not to offer one earmark amendment. So surely, surely the majority party would see fit to allow a few of my colleagues' amendments in order so they couldn't say, Oh, we gave you 10 amendments. Of course, 8 of those were Flake earmark amendments. But we gave you 10.

So I didn't submit any. Not one. Our party submitted 12 amendments-- 12 amendments--and we were given 4. Just four amendments. One was given to I think the chairman of the Appropriations Committee and several, my understanding, were rolled into the manager's amendment.

I would love to hear--and I will retain my time--but hear what the Rules Committee is thinking here, or why they see fit to deny the majority party the ability to offer amendments.

I reserve the balance of my time.

I think the gentleman doth protest a little too much. We are here on the unfunded mandate thing because it's the only opportunity we've got. We've been shut out of just about everything else. We offered 12 amendments to a bill that typically has dozens and dozens and dozens and which typically we spend a couple of days on. We're told, ``We've got to get it done today, and we're only going to allow four amendments from the other side, and they are the four that we pick.'' I mean, what has this legislative body come to? I suppose the gentleman was referring to the 540 amendments that I have offered for the Defense bill. I have offered 540 because that represents the number of no-bid contracts that this body is authorizing for private companies in the Defense bill. That's why there are investigations swirling around this body. Yet we come to the floor and authorize 540-- not authorize--we appropriate money for 540 no-bid contracts. So I make no apology at all for offering 540 amendments. But I knew that I didn't want to tie the

hands and tie up Legislative Counsel. That's something that I worry about. So we went to them and said, ``How can we do this without causing you trouble?'' They gave us a template, and we've done it all in our office. My staff and other staffs were up nearly all night last night, making 30 copies of 540 amendments on our own--not taking any of Legislative Counsel's time--just so we could do this body and this institution the favor of trying to actually vet some of the earmarks, no-bid contracts for private companies, that come through this body. And then we get scolded for that; and to say, ``You're taking up too much time. We've given you four amendments on this bill and you should be happy with it''? These crumbs that fall from the table, the Appropriations Committee and the Rules Committee, just be happy with it. Go on your merry way. It just is baffling. I don't know what else to say. I don't know what else we can do on this side. But bad process always begets bad policy, and it will come back to bite at some point. I just wish the majority party would realize that this martial law on appropriations bills is not justified. You shouldn't do it just because you can.

I reserve the balance of my time.

May I inquire as to the time remaining?

I thank the gentleman. If I was looking to waste time and to delay, I would call a vote on this. That would take this body an extra half-hour or so. I am not going to do so. I know I'm going to lose this. But somebody at some point has to stand up and say, We're not potted plants over here. We're in the minority, yes. But we do have some rights, we think. The gentleman said that these amendments that I'll be offering to the Defense bill today are spurious. Last year I would have loved to have been able to offer some of these amendments, but I didn't have any ability at all. Not one amendment was offered to earmarks in the Defense bill. Why? Because it was a closed rule completely. It came in in mini-bus form, and no amendments at all were offered. That's happened, to some extent, over a couple of years. And what has happened during that time? Earmarks have been awarded, no-bid contracts to private companies, that are now being investigated because money went out; and individuals have already pled guilty to taking that earmarked money and spreading it around to some companies that did no work, none. They've already pled guilty for it. Again, we're bringing to the floor next week a Defense bill as if nothing's wrong, nothing's happening, no investigations are occurring. We're still going to award no-bid contracts to private companies. And yeah, we might hide some language or put some language in the bill that says, Well, these things are really going to be bid out. But the Defense Department, if you ask them today, Do you bid these things out? They say, Yes, we're required to. Except when we don't, when we issue what's called a J&A, and we decide, Well, we're really not going to bid that one out because it was asked for by Congress.

That is just unbelievable to me that we are accused of being spurious when we attempt to bring earmark amendments to the floor to vet in some way, shallow though it may be on the floor of the House, it's all we've got because we only got a list of these earmarks this week, we're scolded and told that we're spurious for asking for just a smidgeon of accountability here for the sponsor of the earmark to stand up and justify why he thinks or she thinks that she has the ability to award a no-bid contract to a private company whose executives may turn around and give big amounts of money to that Member. That's being investigated in some cases by the Department of Justice.

And we say, We should be able to do it, and no Member should be able to question it, that we shouldn't be able to raise it on the floor of the House. I just don't get it. Every time I think I have seen it all, I haven't. And today to be scolded for bringing amendments to the floor, and then to have the majority party bring 12 and to be told that we should be happy because they have seen fit to choose four of those amendments, allow us to offer them, and we should be somehow grateful and should embrace this rule just blows me away.

I don't know what to say, Mr. Speaker. But I would urge this Congress not to move ahead with this bill in this fashion. There is no requirement that we have to do this today any more than you have to do health care this week or next week. We're a deliberative body, I hope; and we should deliberate just a little bit more.

I yield back the balance of my time.

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, I wanted to clarify something that was said earlier. The gentleman from the Rules Committee mentioned or suggested that I had tied up the Leg Counsel office by offering 540 amendments for the no- bid contract in the defense bill for next week.

In truth, we went to the Leg Counsel office because we were concerned about that, and they worked with us so that we could draft all of those amendments and so that they didn't have to do any of it. We didn't consume any of their time.

If the gentleman has other information, I would ask him, please, to say so, but I think to suggest that we're doing that is, one, unfair to Leg Counsel. They work hard over there, and they do a great job. Secondly, it's unfair to my staff, who has worked a long time, late into the night, to do that.

I will yield to the gentleman.

I appreciate it. I have a very hardworking staff. They deserve a lot of credit.

Also, since we have the chairman of the Appropriations Committee here and he was mentioning the process that's been gone through, and I, like our representative from the Rules Committee, are now learning who it seems controls what goes on in the Rules Committee. But I'm wondering why my unanimous consent request to simply swap amendments that were germane, like, for example, on financial services, the amendment to protect broadcaster freedom was not allowed. It came within the time constraints. It was germane. It was even offered last year and passed by an overwhelming margin. Why was unanimous consent not received to swap that?

I would ask either the gentleman from the Rules Committee or the gentleman from the Appropriations Committee.

Yes, I will.

I reclaim my time.

There was another one. I asked unanimous consent to swap one of my amendments for the D.C. voucher amendment in D.C. Again, it fell within the time constraints.

Madam Speaker, I raise a point of order because the resolution violates section 426(a) of the Congressional Budget Act. The resolution contains a waiver against all points of order in the Congressional Budget Act which causes a violation of rule 426(a).

Again, I rise today not because this bill may or may not violate the Unfunded Mandates Act--it may or it may not. The question here is why, again, and we're near the end of the appropriations cycle and we've been living under what is the equivalent of legislative martial law, where the majority has stated that they cannot allow appropriation bills to come to the floor because we have to get through this process. We have to move through it. The Appropriations Committee chairman said, There is a limited numbers of hours between now and the time we recess. If we want to get our work done, we have to limit the debate time that we spend on these bills.

Now, appropriating is one of the most--if not the most important-- thing that Congress does. We maintain the power of the purse under article 1. This is our responsibility. And to say that we've got to move through it quickly and so we have to deny the minority party the ability to offer the amendments it wants to offer simply because we have to make the trains run on time here.

When the Republicans were in the majority, one Member said the other day that he was in the chair for over 3 days on the interior bill simply because Members on the majority side and the minority side had a lot of amendments they wanted to offer--3 days on the interior bill. Here we're allowing just an afternoon on the THUD bill. We're allowing just less than a day on the defense bill next week that contains more than a thousand earmarks that haven't been vetted by the Appropriations Committee, 540 of which are no-bid contracts to private companies. And we aren't allowing probably but a few, if history holds, amendments to that bill. And they will likely be amendments that the majority chooses.

Last week, on a previous appropriation bill, I asked for unanimous consent 16 times on 16 amendments that I had to allow us to substitute an amendment that one of my colleagues had offered that was not allowed.

So making the point that this isn't an issue of time; the time constraints were already set. We simply wanted to substitute amendments that we thought were maybe more important, that Members were denied the ability to offer, and we were rejected. Objection was raised 16 times to unanimous consent requests simply to substitute amendments. So we know what this is about. It's not about an issue of time, although that is a sorry excuse, frankly. When appropriating dollars is the most important thing we do here, we shouldn't limit ourselves to just a few days to get the appropriations process done on the floor.

But even if you accept that, the minority party simply wanted to offer the amendments it wanted to offer, not the ones that the majority party had chosen for the minority party to offer and were denied 16 times. And here again today we're going to be discussing a bill. More than 70 amendments were offered to the Rules Committee. Only, I believe, 24 were ruled in order. We just had four or five Members offer privileged resolutions to make the point that their amendments, which were germane, which should have been allowed, were not allowed by the minority party.

Madam Speaker, this isn't the way this House ought to be run. We're breaking from tradition here with the appropriations process, and at a time when we need more than ever to scrub these appropriations bills and make sure we're not spending money that we shouldn't be spending. We have a deficit that will near $2 trillion this year. When I came to Congress just 8 years ago, that was almost the entire Federal budget. Now our budget deficit will equal that amount, and yet we're throwing appropriation bills at the floor and saying got to get them done in 1 day and not allow the minority party to offer the amendments that it would like to offer.

I would submit that while the majority party may think that they can get away with it because process arguments don't mean much outside the Beltway, I can see that. But a bad process begets bad policy, and sooner or later, it will come back to bite. And it just doesn't come back to bite the majority party; it comes back to haunt this institution. And institutionally, we ought to be better. We ought to have more regard for this institution than to simply break with precedent

like this and deny the minority party the ability to offer the amendments I would like to offer.

I yield myself the balance of my time to answer the gentleman.

I want to make the point that I'm not trying to delay the process. I could call a vote and waste 30 minutes. I'm not going to. I know the outcome here. That's not the point. The gentleman mentioned that I've been given a lot of amendments. I have, but it is only because the majority knows that they can beat them. And when I've offered to substitute some of my colleagues' amendments that were germane that simply weren't ruled in order, objection was raised 16 times to do that. So this isn't about time. This is about the majority wanting only the amendments that it wants to see on the floor.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk designated as No. 1 in part B.

This amendment would prohibit $500,000 from going to the Grand Forks International Airport in Grand Forks, North Dakota, and would reduce the overall cost of the bill by a commensurate amount.

This is money going to an airport terminal. Yet we're told that the funds that are being earmarked from this Airport Improvement Program account of the bill, this is a widely used competitive grant program that others can apply for grants from. The Competitive Grant Program stipulates later that the funds can't generally be used for terminals or terminal improvements.

So the biggest question here, I guess, is why in the world we're designating money from this account that is an account for competitive grants to be received by applicants, why we're designating it as an earmark to an airport terminal that typically falls outside of the purview of the funds in this account.

I hope the sponsor can illuminate on that subject.

And I reserve the balance of my time.

I thank the gentleman for the explanation. I hope the reason the airport is so busy is that so many people from North Dakota are coming to Arizona in the wintertime at least, but, unfortunately, they go back in the summertime.

I'm not questioning the need for renovations to the terminal. In the research we did, we found there--they said, The terminal has serious mold problems and other things that are a danger to employees and to travelers. That is not what is the question here.

The question is--and we have this question with virtually every appropriations bill that we now deal with--is that we appropriate money to the various agencies, and we'll instruct them to establish a competitive grant program to distribute the moneys to worthy recipients. Then the folks at home in the municipal airports or States or whatever district they're in will decide that they want to apply for these funds, increasingly over the last couple of decades.

I'm not blaming Democrats. Republicans are just as guilty of this, but we have earmarked those accounts that we have told the agencies to establish. In this particular case, this earmark is taken from an account that is supposed to be competitively offered, and grants are to be awarded on a competitive basis on the basis of merit.

But what happens--and we talked about this a few weeks ago with another big grant program, this one with regard to flood chrome districts in the Homeland Security bill. The problem is the folks at home in all of our districts want to apply for these moneys, and when they apply for these moneys, they find that sometimes half of them or 75 percent or all of the moneys in that account are gone because particular Members, largely on the Appropriations Committee or other powerful Members, have gotten earmarks to take those funds before anybody can apply for them.

Now, I would submit that if we don't like the way the agencies are distributing this money, let's change it. Let's not grant them that money. Let's do it differently. But let's not set up a competitive grant program, an account at an agency, or instruct them to, and then circumvent it ourselves. That, unfortunately, is what we see all too much of, and that's what we have, it seems to me, an example of here.

I reserve the balance of my time.

I thank the Chair.

Like I said, I don't think the appropriations process--you can never have a perfect process anywhere you go, but I would submit that when you have literally thousands and thousands and thousands of congressional earmarks, many of which are earmarking programs that we have instructed the agencies--earmarking moneys that we've instructed them to establish a competitive grant program for, then we have a problem. If we don't like the way the agencies do it, let's change that. We control it because we control the purse. But let's not run a parallel program that turns into really a spoils system.

With that, I urge adoption of the amendment.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk, designated as No. 4 of part B.

I thank the Chair.

This amendment would prohibit $250,000 in funding for the Murphy Theatre Community Center, Inc. for building renovation, and it would reduce the cost of the bill by a commensurate amount.

According to the sponsor's Web site, funding would go to the complete renovation of the Murphy Theatre. The theater is a focal point of downtown Wilmington, Ohio. It's 90 years old and has been in constant use since it opened. It's now in need of major rehabilitation.

According to the Murphy Theatre Web site, the theater was built by the shrewd Chicago Cubs owner Charles Webb Murphy in 1918, and ``When he built the Murphy, he owned his hometown,'' it says. Mr. Murphy has his name painted on the theater's rear large wall, enough to be seen from the railroad tracks, and when the town druggist questioned the town's financial viability, he was quoted as saying, ``Dan, that's not an investment, that's a monument.'' That sounds like a great theater.

I think many districts and towns across this country have something similar. The question here is, should the Federal taxpayers' moneys, should the taxpayers in the State of Washington or Wisconsin or Arizona or Alaska or elsewhere be sending their hard-earned tax dollars to Washington to be earmarked to renovate a theater in Ohio?

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

I thank the Chair. I thank the gentleman for that explanation. That sounds like a wonderful theater. As I mentioned, I think we all have them in our districts.

My own hometown of Mesa a few years ago decided to construct a theater, and it was a hard-fought process to get the local residents to tax themselves to build this particular theater. That's as it should be. If the community feels that it needs a theater and it needs to renovate a theater, I think it falls on the local residents to decide, because they are the ones, frankly, that benefit from that.

But we can't have a policy at the Federal level where we renovate every theater across the country, particularly while we're running a deficit that could hit $2 trillion this year. How many theaters out there are in need of repair? How many districts are experiencing high unemployment? I can tell you mine is. All of them out there are.

At some point I think we have to decide that perhaps we can't fully fund this account, which is for economic development initiatives. Now, I won't make the case at all that this theater doesn't fall within the purview of this program. There is nothing that could possibly not fall under the purview of economic development initiatives. Whenever you spend money anywhere, there is some economic benefit, if only fleeting. So it fits well within the program, but I think it behooves us now to say you know, maybe we ought to forego that. Maybe we ought to decide we ought to change the 301(b)s and the 302(a)s and all of the numbers so we do save money on this, so we do actually spend less this year than we did last year, perhaps, because we're spending it elsewhere.

We cannot continue to spend money as we're spending money, and I would submit this is a good place to start to say let's not fund some of these renovations of theaters under the guise of economic development that clearly anything could fall under and virtually every district around the country could claim that they need. But we just can't decide here in Congress we're going to fund that one and that one but not that one. It doesn't make sense to do it that way.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk designated as No. 7 in part B.

I thank the Chair.

Let me just comment on the last amendment that was offered. The gentleman mentioned that every Member here represents their own district, and they should advocate for their own district. Pretty soon, if that's the only standard we had, parochial interests would completely take over.

It's like the debate we're having right now on the F-22 or on military base closures. Virtually every Member here has a military base in their district. That's why we had to, through the military base commissions, take that out of the hands of Members, because we simply couldn't shut down military bases when we needed to because there is a process called ``log rolling'' in this case, where if you get some money for a theater in your district, I'll take money for a baseball field in mine. You won't challenge my spending, and I won't challenge yours.

That happens all too frequently in this case, and that's why you would hope that you have enough people who say, You know, I could get money for a baseball field in my district, but by golly, that will make us run a deficit that we can't sustain over time. And that's why I would hope that you would have people here to make decisions and say we can't fund every district in the country. So maybe we shouldn't have an account that allows Members to simply earmark wherever they will.

I would submit that that applies to this as well. This amendment would prohibit a quarter of a million dollars from going to Alianza Domenicana, Incorporated, for a construction of a new headquarters in Manhattan. According to the sponsor, these funds would be for a capital grant toward the development of the Triangle Bridge, which is a 48,000, six-story mixed use development currently being constructed that will house for-profit business and nonprofit community services.

I reserve the balance of my time.

I thank the sponsor of the earmark.

But let me just say the problem with accounts like this, these economic development initiatives, as I said, is a catch-all term and it seems to act as an account that Members can simply earmark. But here's what happens with the earmarking process. We're told in very highfallutin terms all the time about how Members of Congress know their districts better than those darn bureaucrats over in the agencies. And I can show you here what happens when you have that attitude. Apparently, only the powerful Members in this body--either those who are on the Appropriations Committee, which makes up 14 percent of this body, just under 14 percent, or if you include chairmen and ranking minority members--powerful committees in leadership. That takes it up to just under 24 percent.

But if you look here, here's the appropriations process this year. We have the numbers for all of the bills now, finishing with defense.

But if you look here in virtually every case, that small percentage of under 25 percent takes the bulk--in some cases, in some bills up to 70 percent--of the dollar value of the earmarks.

And so this notion that Members know their districts best, that those halfwit bureaucrats, they don't know what they're doing so we have to earmark those funds because they won't allocate them on the basis of merit, well, this is what occurs. This is what--I don't know how else to refer to it--but a spoil system where the Appropriations Committee and other powerful Members say this is where the dollar should go.

In this bill, I would commend those involved in this bill, 24 percent of the body is only taking 46 percent of the dollar value of the earmarks. That's the lowest total in any of the bills that we've dealt with this year. Next week we will be dealing with the defense, where we will be up to 58 percent.

So before we believe the rhetoric, it's just the Members working their will here and every Member has a right to represent their district, somebody would have to explain why certain Members get to represent their districts so much better than other Members year in and year out.

Again, as I said, if we don't like how the agencies distribute this money, we should tell them they have to change it. But we can't simply run a parallel program and say, All right. We're going to earmark these dollars. And in this case, it sounds like a wonderful program in New York. I'm not questioning the merits of it at all. I'm questioning why we're doing it by earmark. Why doesn't that program, those involved couldn't apply for the money and compete against those from across the country who are doing the same, instead of going to a powerful Member and saying, Here, will you earmark those dollars for us.

In many cases--it's not the case in this case--but in many cases, you have competitive accounts and people will apply for a grant and not receive it on a competitive basis. Those that are involved will say it doesn't have the merit that others do. So then they will go to their Member and say, Earmark these dollars. And we have some cases--not in this bill--but some cases where the Member will earmark and go around the system that we have told the agencies to create.

So, again, if we don't like how the agencies are doing it, let's change it. Let's not run a parallel system like that.

I reserve the balance of my time.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

I have an amendment at the desk, Mr. Chairman, designated as No. 8 of part B.

Mr. Chairman, this amendment would prohibit funding for the City of Jal, New Mexico, for use in renovating a vacant building and reduce the cost of the bill by a commensurate amount.

According to the sponsor's Web site, the building would be renovated with funds in this bill. The building that would be renovated is a former site of a junior high school which has sat vacant for a number of years.

The purpose of the project is to replace the building's roof, windows, doors, and upgrade its plumbing and electrical systems in order to attract a private buyer. However, the sponsor's description of the earmark says the city already has a buyer in mind--Louisiana Energy Services, which already has declined to purchase the old school due to its condition.

I reserve the balance of my time.

I should mention that this money is going to be used to renovate this building. The sponsor already has a buyer in mind. I mentioned Louisiana Energy Services, which already declined to purchase the old

school due to its condition. LES is a subsidiary of URENCO, which is a global nuclear fuel company and currently holds approximately one- quarter of the world's share of uranium enrichment services. According to the Web site, LES is working toward constructing the first-ever centrifuge enrichment facility in the U.S., which would be based just a few miles from Jal. The hope is, apparently, to renovate this facility and then get this company to buy it. Now that is economic development, I grant you, certainly, and then the proceeds apparently would go to the city.

But that's just saying that we ought to give $400,000 to the city, apparently. This isn't going to be used for a public purpose. It's being sold off to a private company. Now, every city in this country is hurting financially. I think we have established that. But here we had it raised again that we are not going to rely on some faceless bureaucrat. I'd forgotten the term always used, not ``feckless'' or ``hapless,'' but ``faceless'' bureaucrats. It seems strange to me that we won't trust these faceless bureaucrats to distribute earmarks or distribute Federal funding, but we will trust them with health care.

In the context of this debate, that's what seemed odd to me. But given that, simply, if we don't like the way they're distributing money, and we believe that this money should be distributed, and I would question that, I would question the existence of this Economic Development Initiative money that we have here, we probably ought to get rid of it completely given the dire straits we are in financially as a Federal Government.

But if we're going to have it, then we ought to ensure that the agencies set up a program by which every jurisdiction in this country has an equal opportunity to compete, and not just individual Members of Congress, and as I explained before, in particular, powerful members on the Appropriations Committee or those in powerful leadership positions. That's not the way to distribute taxpayer money in this regard.

With that, I reserve.

How much time is remaining?

Again I would say, what the Web site says is that the buyer is likely to be this company, LES, a subsidiary of URENCO; and that's fine. But we might as well be giving them the $400,000 and allowing them to renovate it and then purchasing it, or giving the city that much. And that's fine if that's what we decide to do. But this is no way to distribute these kinds of moneys. This is no way to run a program.

I would submit that when you have a deficit that may hit $2 trillion this year, at some point, somewhere, sometime this body has to say enough is enough. And if we can't keep a half million dollars from going to a program like this, where are we going to start? Where are we going to say enough is enough? Where are we going to say, we are going to get this deficit under control and we are really going to go after entitlement suspending now? If we can't do it here, where can we do it?

With that, I reserve.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

I have an amendment at the desk designated as No. 9 in part B.

Mr. Chairman, this amendment would prohibit a quarter of a million dollars in funding for the Monroe County Farmers' Market facility construction and would reduce the cost of the bill by a commensurate amount. The sponsor of this earmark says in his Web site that ``these funds will be used to construct a new market facility that will promote economic development and provide added benefits to the local community.''

Farming is an important component of Kentucky's economy. According to the Kentucky Department of Agriculture, Kentucky farmers sold nearly $5 billion worth of farm products in 2007 alone. Given the number of farmers' markets throughout the State, that is not too surprising. The Department of Agriculture's Web site shows that there are more than 100 farmers' markets currently up and running in the Commonwealth of Kentucky. Nearly 200 vendors participated in these markets in 2008. Farmers' markets in Kentucky appear to be both successful and profitable.

So my question is why are we saddling the taxpayers with a bill for construction of one more farmers' market? I have no doubt that this farmers' market in Kentucky has seen a drop in business as a result of the economy. Virtually every business across this country has. I also think that we could find that these earmarks do benefit the agricultural community there. That isn't any doubt.

The question again here is how do we choose? And why do we say, all right, we're going to aid this one but not another one? And in particular at a time like this, why are we taking money from the taxpayers and then distributing it out as we see fit, rather than allowing them to keep it themselves?

With that, I reserve.

May I inquire as to the time remaining?

I'll make a note before I yield to the gentleman from Utah. I recall that Eastern Market earmark for D.C., and I challenged that one as well. We shouldn't have distributed that money either.

I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Utah.

The gentleman from Kentucky makes a wonderful point about overall spending. Earmarks represent a small portion of Federal spending, a very small portion. The problem is, as my colleague in the Senate Dr. Coburn calls them, the gateway drug to spending addiction. And the problem with earmarks is that when you load them up in bills, you will support bills, both the majority and the minority, that you would in no other case support.

Now, take for example, in 2005, we reauthorized the highway bill. In that bill, it was a $285 billion multiyear authorization. We knew because the chairman of the Appropriations Committee stood up at that time and said, We don't have the money in this bill to fund what is being authorized. We're going to run short. Sure enough, we've run short. We had to transfer $8 billion into that bill just a while ago. We were asked to transfer another $6 billion, and there will be more and more.

But you know why that bill passed when everybody in this body knew that we were spending money we didn't have? Because it had 6,300 earmarks in it, and nearly every Member of this body had some. And they knew that if they didn't support it, they might get their earmarks yanked out when it went to conference. That's the problem with this body, and that's the problem with earmarks.

Earmarks are much greater than the sum of their parts. They force you to support bills you would in no other case support simply because you've got your earmarks in and you have to support that bill. And so, that's the problem here.

And then year after year, we say, ``Well, they're only a small part, and if we cut funding for this earmark, it won't cut funding for the bill. It will just go somewhere else,'' when we could, if we wanted to, simply lower the allocation for the bill by the amount that the earmarks represent. But we don't do that so we can use the excuse later that we can't get rid of these earmarks because it won't save any money.

Well, I don't think the people across the country are buying that. They've heard that song too much. We'll have a deficit this year that might approach $2 trillion. We need to start somewhere, and I would suggest we start here.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

I have an amendment at the desk designated as number 10 in part B.

Mr. Chairman, this amendment would prohibit the use of $500,000 for the Millennium Technology Park in New Castle, Pennsylvania, and would reduce the spending in the bill by the same amount.

According to the sponsor's Web site, the money would be used to design and construct the Millennium Technology Park, on which ground was broken in 2006. The technology park was initiated by the Lawrence County Economic Development Corporation to create ``new advanced job opportunities by providing small to large forward-thinking companies with prepermitted, shovel-ready sites.''

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

Again, we have here, this is money going to a technology park. Where in the world is the Federal nexus there, I would ask. Why is it that we're being asked, as taxpayers in California and New Mexico, Arizona, New York, to pay for a technology park to attract businesses in Pennsylvania? Under that kind of rubric, what wouldn't qualify for money? Why wouldn't we just scatter money all over? Apparently we have, with a $2 trillion deficit, but we can't continue to do that.

One thing that these technology parks and money for them typically does, they're usually called new business incubators, and what they turn out to be incubators of is earmarks. In fact, this very project received a $500,000 earmark 2 years ago, and my bet is that next year, or the year after or so, there will be another earmark for the same project because you can never have enough business for a district. No Member of Congress will ever take the podium and say, Hey, I've got too much business in my district. We don't need to construct another technology park. We can't use another earmark. Please, no more.

It's going to continue to go and go and go. But where do we stop? Where do we say enough is enough? We can't continue to put out money this way.

I reserve the balance of my time.

May I inquire as to the time remaining?

I yield 30 seconds to the gentleman to finish his thought.

I thank the gentleman for making that point, and I have no grief for faceless bureaucrats, believe me. I don't want them running my health care. But if we don't like the way they're doing things, let's change it. Let's not appropriate the money.

Frankly, this account from which these funds are drawn probably, in my view, should not exist. I mean, economic development initiatives? You can fit anything under that. And it's just an excuse to give out money here from Congress or let the bureaucrats do it.

I'm not saying that we should give all of our money there and say don't do it. If we don't like the way they do it, then set up a structure and say, You have to do it by merit. And if we don't like the way you've distributed it the following year and we can prove that you did it on a basis that is not equitable, then we cut your funding completely the next year.

That's what our purview is, not to say we don't like the way you do it so we're going to set up a system by which the appropriators take upwards of a low of 46 percent, appropriators and powerful Members, when they represent only 24 percent of the body, and a higher limit of 70 percent.

Fifteen.

He makes the point exactly. We shouldn't appropriate this money at all. This money for economic development should stay in the hands of small business before it's taxed and let them do with it as they will: cut their payroll tax, cut something else, leave it with them. Don't take it and then distribute it by means of congressional earmark or Federal bureaucrat fiat. I'm saying don't spend it that way. But if we don't like how they do it, let's not create a parallel program that is just as inequitable.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

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

Mr. Chairman, this amendment would remove $500,000 in funding for the reconstruction of Rib Mountain Drive in Wisconsin, and it would reduce the cost of the bill by a commensurate amount.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, doesn't the sponsor of the amendment have the right to close?

Oh, okay. All right. I should have known.

According to the sponsor of this earmark, the funds would go for additional turn lanes, signals and a sidewalk on Rib Mountain Drive. The certification letter for this earmark refers to this particular stretch of road as the ``primary roadway in a commercial district,'' and it says that the project will ``enhance both safety and efficiency.''

I have no doubt that it will do this. I have no doubt, but my understanding is that the State of Wisconsin has a program where they grant funding for programs like this, for projects like this on a priority basis. Apparently, the State of Wisconsin didn't see this as a priority or they would have funded it, or perhaps they did, but in realizing there was a powerful Member here in Congress, felt they didn't have to because the Federal taxpayer could pick up the tab.

So, here again, why are we paying for a roadway that doesn't serve an interstate purpose? This is not part of the Interstate Highway System. Again, here, it's a parochial interest, and I understand that, and the Member will advocate fiercely for it and for his right to get that earmark. Certainly, the Member, my good friend from Wisconsin, is in a position to do that. The question is why. Why do we continue with a program like this?

Let me show you this chart again. Here is the appropriations chart for this year. We have all of the legislation that we have considered so far. We have just shy of 24 percent of the Members of the House. This includes the appropriators, who make up between 13 and 14 percent. The leadership Members and ranking minority members and chairmen of committees get a low of 46 percent in this bill and a high of 70 percent in the Financial Services bill.

This seems to be a pattern, and it's a pattern that stretches beyond. Last year, I think there were similar spoils here. I understand that. Members, when they're here longer, apparently understand their districts better than Members who haven't been here as long, but it begs the question: Why do we continue to do this? I always appreciate when the chairman stands and says that earmarks grew under Republican rule. They did, and that's something that will haunt us, I think, forever, and as Republicans, it should. The chairman also says, when he was chairman of the Appropriations Committee prior to the Republicans' taking over in '94, there were no earmarks whatsoever in the Labor-HHS bill, not one earmark. Tomorrow, we'll consider that bill. I think there are well over 1,000 earmarks in that bill. There are over 1,000 earmarks in the bill today. There are well over 1,000 earmarks in the defense bill that we'll consider later next week.

Just because Republicans ramped it up doesn't mean the Democrats have to continue it this way. Some will make the case that we've cut down the number and the dollar value. That's a good thing. Yet, when you go from zero and say with pride ``there were no earmarks when I chaired the committee before, and now there are only 1,000, and we should feel good about that,'' there's something wrong with this picture.

Again, it's not just the money and the earmarks. It's not just that we're spending on a local transportation project that should be funded locally. It's that, when you get earmarks like this in a bill and when you include 1,000 of them, you gather support for a bill that, in this case today, increases overall spending by 13 percent, I believe, over last year's bill. In a year when our deficit will approach $2 trillion, we are here, saying that's okay. We'll have a big vote on this bill-- Republicans and Democrats is my guess--largely because there are so many earmarks in this bill that people think ``I've got a little piece of it, so I'm going to vote for the broader bill.'' That's what has driven up spending under Republicans and Democrats alike.

When we lard up these bills with earmarks and pet projects, we grease the skids for them to pass when we should stand up and say that we cannot sustain this level of spending. Again, it's not just a Democrat thing or a Republican thing. This body, as a whole, is guilty of it, but earmarks are a large part of that, and we have to recognize it. You can cloak it in whatever language you want with regard to ``representing my constituents,'' but every constituent is out there, wanting money. I can tell you mine want to keep a lot more of theirs rather than send it to Washington so Washington can decide, well, I'm going to spend a little on a roadway in Wisconsin.

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

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.