Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I rise to a question of the privileges of the House and offer the resolution previously noticed.

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. Speaker, people are asking, Where are the jobs? And I think it's an appropriate question to ask.

I myself get a little leery when any administration, any administration, says that they're going to create jobs. They do so for a while, but government jobs don't last very long, or they shouldn't last very long.

What the administration should do, and this Congress, is create an environment in which private sector jobs can be created. And that's what we're not doing with this health care bill. This health care bill will kill jobs, not create them. It doesn't create an environment where jobs can be created.

Now, the administration and this Congress say we've got to get to work. But last week, last Friday we spent an entire day on a welfare- for-wild-horses bill. There's an old Garth Brooks song that says, wild horses keep dragging me away. And, apparently, wild horses keep dragging this Congress away from actually creating an environment where jobs can be created. And this health care bill goes the wrong direction.

Madam Speaker, pursuant to clause 2(a)(1) of rule IX, I hereby notify the House of my intention to offer a resolution as a question of the privileges of the House.

The form of my resolution is as follows:

Whereas, The Hill reported that a prominent lobbying firm,

founded by Mr. Paul Magliocchetti and the subject of a

``federal investigation into potentially corrupt political

contributions,'' has given $3.4 million in political

donations to no less than 284 members of Congress.

Whereas, the New York Times noted that Mr. Magliocchetti

``set up shop at the busy intersection between political

fund-raising and taxpayer spending, directing tens of

millions of dollars in contributions to lawmakers while

steering hundreds of millions of dollars in earmarks

contracts back to his clients.''

Whereas, a guest columnist recently highlighted in Roll

Call that ``. . . what [the firm's] example reveals most

clearly is the potentially corrupting link between campaign

contributions and earmarks. Even the most ardent earmarkers

should want to avoid the appearance of such a pay-to-play

system.''

Whereas, multiple press reports have noted questions

related to campaign contributions made by or on behalf of the

firm; including questions related to ``straw man''

contributions, the reimbursement of employees for political

giving, pressure on clients to give, a suspicious pattern of

giving, and the timing of donations relative to legislative

activity.

Whereas, Roll Call has taken note of the timing of

contributions from employees the firm and its clients when it

reported that they ``have provided thousands of dollars worth

of campaign contributions to key Members in close proximity

to legislative activity, such as the deadline for earmark

request letters or passage of a spending bill.''

Whereas, the Associated Press highlighted the ``huge

amounts of political donations'' from the firm and its

clients to select members and noted that ``those political

donations have followed a distinct pattern: The giving is

especially heavy in March, which is prime time for submitting

written earmark requests.''

Whereas, clients of the firm received at least three

hundred million dollars worth of earmarks in fiscal year 2009

appropriations legislation, including several that were

approved even after news of the FBI raid of the firm's

offices and Justice Department investigation into the firm

was well known.

Whereas, after a cursory review, the fiscal year 2010

defense appropriations earmark list recently made available

includes at least seventy earmarks worth hundreds of millions

of dollars for former PMA clients.

Whereas, the Associated Press reported that ``the FBI says

the investigation is continuing, highlighting the close ties

between special-interest spending provisions known as

earmarks and the raising of campaign cash.''

Whereas, the persistent media attention focused on

questions about the nature and timing of campaign

contributions related to the firm, as well as reports of the

Justice Department conducting research on earmarks and

campaign contributions, raise concern about the integrity of

Congressional proceedings and the dignity of the institution.

Now, therefore, be it: Resolved, That the Committee on

Standards of Official Conduct shall immediately establish an

investigative subcommittee and begin an investigation into

the relationship between the source and timing of past

campaign contributions to Members of the House related to the

raided firm and earmark requests made by Members of the House

on behalf of clients of the raided firm.

Madam 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 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).

I rise today once again to plead with the majority party to lift the legislative version of martial law that's been imposed on appropriation bills this year.

We're more than halfway through the season and so far we've had, for appropriation bills, more than 700 amendments have been filed with the Rules Committee. Only 119, or less than 20 percent, have been made in order. Roughly a quarter of them that have been made in order have been my earmark amendments, which I'm pleased for. Don't get me wrong. I'm grateful they're made in order.

But these earmarks, this is about the only vetting, as shallow is it may be, on the floor of the House that these earmarks get, because they're certainly not getting the vetting they deserve in the Appropriations Committee. But this is insufficient.

It's not right to have a legislative version of martial law on appropriation bills and to bring up the issue of timing, to say, We don't have time to deal with all the amendments that have been offered, as was demonstrated yesterday when I asked unanimous consent five times--five times--to simply swap out an amendment that was not ruled in order by the Rules Committee--that was germane, just not ruled in order--for one of mine that would have been given.

It wouldn't have taken any extra time. We would have been under the same time constraints of the bill. So we would be living within the time constraints that the majority party has laid down.

But the majority party simply wouldn't allow it, because this isn't about time. We adjourned or we were finished with legislative business by around four o'clock yesterday. We were finished with amendments by five o'clock. Members were free to go after the last amendment votes around four o'clock.

This isn't an issue of time. But say that it was. If it was an issue of time, then allowing amendments to be swapped and substituted or amendments to be modified within the time limit should be allowed.

But instead, the majority party simply doesn't want to deal with certain amendments. They don't want their members to vote on certain amendments. That's what is at issue here.

As a result, the votes on amendments on these appropriation bills have all the excitement and anticipation of a Cuban election. You know the result. It's going to be lopsided or it's agreed to in advance.

That may be efficient. The trains may run on time. But it isn't the legislative process that we're used to here. Traditionally, appropriation bills have been brought to the floor under an open rule. That's always been important.

It's become even more important over the last several years when we placed in those bills literally thousands and thousands and thousands of appropriation requests by individual Members, many of them no-bid contracts--Members awarding no-bid contracts to private companies and, in many cases, their campaign contributors, with virtually no vetting in the Appropriations Committee.

So the only opportunity we have to vet those is here on the House floor, and then Members are denied the opportunity in many cases to bring those amendments to the floor. That simply is not right.

Let me take the bill that we will be dealing with today and give a few examples. In the Rules Committee under this rule that we're dealing with now, many amendments were offered, as I mentioned, and they were submitted as requested by the Rules Committee, pre-submitted, which we didn't even used to have to do with appropriation bills, but we can accept that. These were submitted--and many of these were turned down.

For example, one was to make in order to provide the appropriate waivers for amendment 87 offered by Representative Boehner, the minority leader, which would ensure that low-income D.C. students are able to receive a scholarship through the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program by removing the requirement that students must be OSP recipients during the 2009-2010 school year.

This would simply allow the D.C. voucher program--the highly popular D.C. voucher program--to continue. This is not something that is not germane. It is germane. This is the bill that deals with D.C. appropriations. But the majority party simply didn't want to vote on that. And so they rejected it, and it's out.

Later today, I will be asking for unanimous consent to substitute this amendment for one of mine that I have been fortunate enough to have made in order. It won't take any additional time.

So time is not an issue. It's simply saying that we should be able to vote on amendments that Members want to vote on, not just those amendments that the majority leadership wants us to vote on; to lift martial law on appropriation bills, if only for a brief window, for the appropriation bills that we have still to consider.

Another amendment--I see Mr. Walden here--that he has offered. The Walden-Pence amendment would prohibit funds from being available in the act from being used to implement the fairness doctrine and certain broadcast localism regulations.

I'd like to yield to the gentleman from Oregon to speak on that.

I thank the gentleman.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, yes, this isn't about unfunded mandates. Unfortunately, it's about the only opportunity we have to stand up, and we'll stand up later when the rule is discussed, but I'm here because the Rules Committee would not make in order the amendments that Members wanted to offer on an appropriations bill.

These are bills that are brought to the floor under open rules, traditionally, to allow Members the opportunity to represent their constituencies; but here we're being gagged and told we can't do that because we're only going to allow the amendments that we want to hear, the ones that are noncontroversial, the ones that we have debated before and that we know won't impact negatively on us. That's not any way to run this body.

I yield to the gentleman from Oregon.

Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

I have 3 minutes. I'd like to, if I can, on my time, engage the gentleman in a colloquy about the rule. I was told earlier that I was discussing an amendment, I'm sorry, a point of order on unfunded mandates so we couldn't really talk about the rule. But now we are talking about the rule, so I'd like to have some kind of window into the mind of the Rules Committee as to why certain amendments were allowed on an appropriation bill and certain amendments weren't. If I could engage the Member in a colloquy, I'd enjoy that.

I don't blame the Member for not wanting to talk about this. And I really feel for members of the Rules Committee that are forced to carry out the bidding of the leadership, because this clearly, this clearly is a decision from the top, this year, to declare martial law on appropriation bills and not allow Members of Congress to bring amendments to the floor under an open rule that we have traditionally, and this has been the hallmark of this institution-- openness.

The gentleman from Ohio (Mr. LaTourette) mentioned that he'd been in the Chair in previous years where, for 3 days we debated amendments to the Interior bill. Many of those amendments were amendments that I offered, some of which were uncomfortable to people on that side and on this side, earmark amendments or others. Yet, we did it for 3 days.

This party has said, the majority party now has said we can't take 3 days on that bill. Okay, then let's limit the time. So we agreed here; we have time limits already set for the Financial Services bill. I have 11 amendments that were made in order. I'll be asking unanimous consent later, when I offer my amendments, to swap a few of those amendments out to modify them to reflect the amendments that were offered by Members and were not allowed by the Rules Committee.

So it's not going to be an issue of time. We've settled the issue of time. It will tell us whether or not the majority party simply wants to muscle, not just this side of the aisle, but certain of their Members as well.

The gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Stupak) stood up to oppose the rule because the amendment with regard to Federal funding for abortion was not allowed. That is one amendment that I will try to modify instead of one of mine, or have mine modified to reflect that amendment.

Again, it won't be an issue of time. The question will be, can or will--they can--will the majority allow that modification and allow that amendment to be offered. Under rules of unanimous consent, or under the rules of this body, under unanimous consent the majority party can agree to modify any amendment that is offered by a Member. And so it's not a question if they can. The question is if they will.

Parliamentary inquiry, Mr. Chairman.

I plan to ask for unanimous consent to modify my amendment to reflect some of the amendments throughout this process that were not made in order by the Rules Committee. What I want to know is, is it in order, if the other side agrees with the unanimous consent request, and is it possible for them to do so and allow these other amendments to be offered?

The inquiry is, under unanimous consent, can the majority party agree to modify my amendment?

Yes, I do.

I ask unanimous consent that my amendment be modified to the form I have at the desk.

I thank the Chair.

What I wanted to establish is that by unanimous consent the majority party could agree for me to modify my amendment. Now, I was allowed for 11 amendments under this rule to strike earmarks from the bill. Unfortunately, numerous Members, dozens of Members, were denied the ability to offer any amendments on this bill. It seems the majority party only wants to deal

with those amendments that they know they could win.

Now, under tradition, this House has brought appropriations bills of the House to the floor under an open rule. We've broken with tradition this year. There is a headline on AP wire right now that says, ``House Democrats muzzle GOP on sensitive issues.'' That's a pretty accurate headline. That's exactly what's happening here.

Now, we were told that it was a time constraint issue, that we simply couldn't finish all of the appropriations bills under a certain amount of time so we had to restrict the number of amendments. That's what the world was told here, the country was told. We find out that's not the case at all. We have a time limit under this bill. I have 11 amendments. I'm willing to modify my amendments to reflect some of those that were denied, amendments that were germane.

The first one that I have at the desk is one that would protect broadcaster freedom. This is an amendment that was offered last year in the appropriation bill. It was germane, and it received 309 votes from this Chamber, but the majority leadership doesn't want to vote on that, and so they've denied the authors of that amendment the ability to come to the floor and offer it. And so I'm willing to substitute that for one of mine under unanimous consent, but the gentleman objected twice, so we won't be able to do that.

So I just want to say it on the record--and I will say it again and again--this process is not right. We know this isn't the way it should be done. House Democrats are muzzling the GOP on sensitive issues, just like the headlines now read. It's not an issue of time. We're under time constraints already. We're willing to simply substitute time for time, but the majority party simply will not allow it.

Now to the merits of this amendment.

I'm seeking to strike funding, $100,000 for funding a small business incubator at the University of West Georgia. This would reduce the overall cost of the bill by a commensurate amount. This is money that's going to a business incubator. You will see that theme throughout a lot of these amendments, whether they're at a university or under some other umbrella. We're taking money from the Treasury here, money that we have to borrow, and funding business incubators.

Now a business incubator, that's a bit of a nebulous term and I haven't quite figured out what it is. It means different things in different places. But apparently here it's simply to offer counseling, resource information exchange, and distance-learning opportunities for entrepreneurs and small business ventures. That kind of thing is done all the time in every State, everywhere. But not everybody gets a Federal earmark to do that and it's not fair to do it here. People that get this kind of money should have to compete for it if that money is available at all.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

I thank the Chair and I thank the gentleman for his kind words. I think I'm the most commended Member in this body who never wins an amendment. Nevertheless, I think when you look at what's being funded here, these are activities that go on all over the country, whether they're sponsored by universities, whether they're sponsored by business groups, chambers of commerce, other associations. And to single one out and say that the University of West Georgia is deserving of a Federal earmark for their project, for their business incubator simply doesn't make sense.

We have a deficit this year that will approach $2 trillion by the time we finish the fiscal year. We are borrowing money from the taxpayers all over this country, or actually borrowing it from foreign countries, and we're asking the taxpayers and future generations of taxpayers to pay for it because we don't have the money to fund these programs.

This bill increases spending in the Financial Services appropriations bill, I think, $1.6 billion or so increase over last year. Yet we're funding projects as if we have no problem at all, as if money grows on trees here. And it doesn't. At some point I think we have to step back and say, We can't continue to do business this way. At some point we have to say, We're going to strike an earmark, or we're going to save some money somewhere. I would suggest that now is the time. If we're not going to do it now, I don't know when we're going to do it.

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

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent that my amendment be modified to the form I have at the desk.

That didn't sound like the Clerk, so I guess we've been objected to again.

Again what I am trying to do here is modify my amendment to reflect one of the amendments that was rejected by the Rules Committee. This particular amendment would keep in place the restrictions that have been in place for a long, long time against using taxpayer money to fund abortion services.

The sponsors of this amendment, on both sides of the aisle, felt so strongly about it that many of them on the other side of the aisle voted against the rule. So when time expired just about an hour or so ago to vote on the rule for this bill, it was about 10 votes short of passing because more than 30 Democrats voted against the rule. Now the vote was held open for an inordinate amount of time so that leadership could twist some arms and change some votes to get this rule to pass. You had Members on both sides of the aisle feel that strongly about bringing an amendment to the floor, but the majority party leadership decided, no, that we should be muzzled, not just on this side but Members on that side of the aisle as well.

Mr. Chairman, that's just not right, but that's what happens when you declare martial law on appropriations bills and say to the world, We can't do it because time does not allow. And then when somebody here asks for unanimous consent to simply substitute time for time, one amendment that wasn't allowed in order for one amendment that was, the majority stands up and says, I object.

So let's get rid of the fiction once and for all that this is an issue of time. What it's an issue of, the majority leadership does not want Members to have the ability to offer the amendments they would like to. We had the gentleman stand up in the last hour who presided a couple of years ago over the Interior appropriation bill. He noted that he sat in the Chair for over 3 days to listen to amendments come up on the Interior appropriation bill. I remember that time. I offered many of those amendments. There were many amendments that people on both sides of the aisle offered that the leadership on both sides of the aisle was uncomfortable with. But they allowed it to occur, because that's the way it should work here.

Under this martial law rule, we have a structured rule and the majority leadership picks which amendments can be offered and which ones cannot. That is simply not right, Mr. Chairman.

Now in terms of this amendment, this amendment would prohibit $200,000 from funding the Arkansas Commercial Driving Training Institute, and it would lower the cost of the bill by a commensurate amount. The recipient of this earmark is Arkansas State University. It's had a truck driving institute for more than 20 years. I am all for driver safety, particularly big 18-wheelers that are on the road, but I'm not sure why the Federal Government is funding this particular driving program. Nor do I understand why this institute is receiving another earmark, having received nearly a quarter of a million dollars in earmark funds in the omnibus bill that we passed just a few short months ago.

In fact, it appears that this institute was established and built in part with taxpayer dollars, Federal taxpayer dollars, thanks to a nearly $350,000 earmark it received in the fiscal 2008 transportation spending bill.

A quick search on the Internet shows there are dozens and dozens and dozens of commercial driving training schools all over the country. None of them have received this kind of Federal largesse. Why do we continue to fund institutes like this? Aren't some of the others just as deserving? Or is it just because we have Members in a position to do it?

If you look at this chart, you'll get the answer there. This is the Financial Services bill that we're dealing with now. Sixty percent of the earmarks in this bill are going to just 24 percent of the body. That represents appropriators, chairmen, ranking minority members, so- called powerful Members. Sixty percent. If you look at the dollar value of the earmark, that goes up to 70 percent. Seventy percent of the earmark dollars in this bill are going to less than 24 percent of the body.

Now you'll hear a lot of high-minded rhetoric about we can't let those faceless bureaucrats in the bureaucracy decide where the money goes. Well, most of the Members in this body would do better with faceless bureaucrats than with the Appropriations Committee, because time and time again, and this is a trend that we've seen throughout the appropriation bills this year, a small number of Members get a big chunk of the cash. And this is going to some organizations that have gotten earmarks year after year after year after year.

I reserve the balance of my time.

I urge support of the amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

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

Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent that my amendment be modified in the form I have at the desk.

I'd like to engage on my time a colloquy with the gentleman, the chair of the relevant subcommittee, if I could.

I'm just wondering why the majority doesn't want to consider these amendments that weren't made in order.

I thank the gentleman. He makes an important point. We have traditions in this House that we ought to uphold--and one tradition is appropriation bills being brought to the floor under an open rule. And we shouldn't be able to change that just because we feel like.

What I'm trying to do is return to the traditions of the House and allow Members to bring the amendments that they would like to offer; that their constituents, with their voice in Washington, would like them to be able to offer. But we're not allowed to. As the headline out there right now reads, ``House Democrats muzzle GOP on sensitive issues.''

Now this amendment that I would like to have offered instead of mine would allow the School Choice Initiative in Washington, D.C., to continue. Funding will go away for everyone except those who are currently in the program.

Over the past several years, thousands of residents of D.C. schools have been able to go to the schools of their choice. Now, because of this bill being passed today, unless an amendment is accepted otherwise, those children will be denied that choice.

Now that is an amendment that has support on this side of the aisle and the other side of the aisle. It was an amendment that was offered at the Rules Committee that was fully germane. It was in order to be considered. It was simply rejected because the majority leadership did not want this body to vote on it. I don't know why. We will have to all speculate.

But the fact is that we're taking the time that could have been offered for this amendment and allowing that one to be offered instead. So we're not increasing the time for these appropriation bills. The majority party is still objecting to that unanimous consent request.

Now, with regard to this amendment, this amendment would prohibit $285,000 from going to Idaho TechConnect, Inc., for the Proof of Concept Center, and reduce the overall cost of the bill by a commensurate amount. This Idaho TechConnect accelerates Idaho's innovation-based economy by connecting people, resources, and ideas.

Here's another one that's pretty much indistinguishable, I think, from the last one. It's a business incubator of some type that a group here, Idaho TechConnect, seems to think is worthy of Federal largess or an earmark. It doesn't want to compete for dollars that might be in an account that Congress, through its role under article I, has instructed the agency to set up. No. It attempts to earmark dollars beyond that.

The last gentleman mentioned that Congress has the power to appropriate. It certainly does. That's what we do here. That's the most important part of what we do here. And we tell the agencies what they can fund and what they can't, and we provide the money for them to do so.

We will often tell them to set up a program by which individuals and organizations around the country can compete for Federal dollars. But instead, here what Congress is doing is saying, We don't like what you've set up so we're going to run a parallel program, we're going to earmark dollars for these programs, because if the organization in my district had to compete for those dollars, they may not get them. There's only a 98 percent chance that they would get them. I want to make sure they do. Or, there's a 5 percent chance they would get it. I want

to make sure that they get those monies. And so we run a parallel track here.

I would say that I can't find the word bureaucrat in the Constitution, nor can I find the word earmark. Congress has the power to appropriate. But we authorize, we appropriate, and we have oversight functions. And we're circumventing that process when we earmark in this fashion.

I reserve the balance of my time.

I thank the gentleman and the gentleman's comments, the minority leader. We ought to allow substitution of this amendment. There's no reason, other than the majority party simply doesn't want to have the debate or have the vote.

With that, I urge support of this amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

I have an amendment at the desk.

I ask unanimous consent that my amendment be modified to the form I have at the desk.

This amendment that I had hoped to substitute was an amendment offered by the gentleman, Mr. Gingrey of Georgia, which would simply have prohibited union activity on government time. Apparently, it's an amendment that the majority leadership did not want--it's a debate that they didn't want this body to have. It's an amendment they didn't want this body to vote on.

Now, it's a shame because it would be a 5-minute time limit, or 5 minutes per side, just the same as this amendment. This isn't an issue of time. There were a lot of amendments submitted to the Rules Committee. Far fewer were made in order, but now we have the time established and we're simply wanting to substitute one germane amendment for another germane amendment, but the majority party is objecting once again. So I think that the headline that was just out-- House Democrats muzzle GOP on sensitive issues--is completely correct, and it is a shame, Mr. Chairman.

This amendment would prohibit $200,000 in funding for the Northeast Entrepreneur Fund, and it would reduce the cost of the bill by a commensurate amount.

According to the sponsor's Web site, the Northeast Entrepreneur Fund has helped start, stabilize or expand more than 1,100 local businesses and helped train or retain more than 3,000 jobs.

The certification letter indicated the funding for the Greenstone Group would strengthen 500 entrepreneurs in the region through group- based learning, peer support and access to various business services.

Again, here we have another business incubator. This is something that private-sector organizations, chambers of commerce, trade associations, and other businesses offer and do all over this country-- hundreds in every State. Yet here we are singling one out and are saying this one is worthy of a Federal earmark, and we're going to give $200,000 to it. That's not right, Mr. Chairman. We can't continue to spend money this way.

Every dime that we are spending over and above what we spent last year, and a lot of what we spent last year is borrowed. When will we decide enough is enough and that we can't continue to do business as usual and fund earmarks in this fashion?

I reserve the balance of my time.

I thank the Chair.

I would yield to the gentleman just 30 seconds for him to explain whether there is any time in the foreseeable future that he believes the entity will not be reliant, or dependent, on Federal funds.

I thank the gentleman. I thank him for that clarification.

Mr. Chairman, no Member of Congress will ever say that, in his district, there is full employment and that there is no need for outside assistance. This particular entity isn't just receiving this earmark. It received an earmark for nearly $250,000 in the FY09 omnibus bill that we passed just a few months ago. So we have last year's bill, this year's bill and likely next year's bill.

There are organizations all over the country that would like, one, to compete for SBA funds on merit rather than on earmark, and there are private-sector organizations that would like to provide this assistance, but they're competing with government entities that are providing some of the same services, a lot of these services that are indicated here--strengthening entrepreneurs, group-based learning, peer support, access to various business services. These are services provided by the private sector all over the place as well, but these private-sector organizations now have to compete with government organizations to survive. In some cases, it is no wonder there aren't private-sector organizations. They're crowded out by their government counterparts.

So, rather than continuing to fund entities that have received earmarks year after year and that have no real prospect of not being reliant on Federal Government funding in the future, we've got to say enough is enough. We can't continue to spend money this way when we're running a deficit that might approach $2 trillion this year.

With that, I urge support of the amendment, and 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. 11.

Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent that my amendment be modified to the form I have at the desk.

I'm just proud of myself for getting those words out before the objection came.

Again, I would have substituted, this time, the Broadcaster Freedom Act amendment, which would have been the same amendment we passed last year, which needs to be passed every year to prohibit the FCC from bringing back the so-called Fairness Doctrine, which would muzzle or gag, much like we're being muzzled or gagged on this side during this debate. It would muzzle or gag, particularly, conservative talk radio. That is the purpose that has been raised in the past, and there are fears and, certainly, some support among certain powerful Members of this body to reinstate the so-called Fairness Doctrine.

This would prohibit the FCC from spending any money to implement that Fairness Doctrine. Again, first we're being told that we don't have time to consider this amendment. We know that's not the case. So the real reason is the majority leadership does not want this amendment to be considered. They don't want the debate to happen. They don't want a vote to happen. They don't want to put their Members on record. They simply don't want to prohibit funding for that purpose. It is too bad, Mr. Chairman. I would hope that we could return to the traditions of this House, have open appropriations bills and have an open debate.

This amendment would remove $150,000 in funding for the Montgomery County Green Business Incubator, and it would reduce the cost of the bill by a commensurate amount. The recipient of this earmark is the Montgomery County Department of Economic Development. Now, I should say I don't know how many counties there are around this country. States like Arizona have large counties. A few States in the Midwest and in the South have literally hundreds of counties. In just about every county in the country there is a Department of Economic Development. Cities have them. States have them. There are literally thousands across this country, but we're singling out one here, the Montgomery County Department of Economic Development.

We're saying, You don't have to compete with everybody else for any dollars that the SBA has to send out, because we're going to earmark those dollars, and you're going to get them regardless of the merit of your program. It may be good; it may not be, but it doesn't matter because a powerful Member of Congress can simply say you're going to get that money, and that's what's happening here.

Again, these are business incubators, which is a pretty broad topic, providing services that a lot of private-sector organizations across this country already provide.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, how much time is remaining?

And I have the right to close?

I will reserve the balance of my time.

The gentleman who spoke earlier mentioned that this was in the top 10 of something. I know that Montgomery County beat out eight competing counties to house the Maryland Clean Energy Center, which is the State's first clearinghouse to drive clean energy and technologies. So we have an organization here, a county that is beating out competition. That's a good thing. But we're telling them, because you're beating out that competition, we're going to give you an earmark so you won't have to compete anymore. I mentioned that there are literally thousands of county Departments of Economic Development around the country who would like a shot at these funds, I'm quite sure. But when they apply for these funds at the SBA, they're probably being told, Sorry. That account is oversubscribed. There are too many earmarks in it so you won't be able to compete because a particular powerful Member of Congress simply siphoned off the funding so that an organization or institution in his or her district could receive those funds without competing for them. Just remember, what earmarks really are are no-bid contracts. It's basically an acknowledgement that you don't want the organization or institution in your district or elsewhere to compete for the funding, so you are going to ensure that they get it. And when you look at a chart like this, it's particularly pernicious when 60 percent of the share of earmarks are associated with appropriators, leadership, committee Chairs or ranking minority members, who comprise just 24 percent of this body, and 70 percent of the dollar value is associated with that group. And so you have a spoils system that decides where this money goes. Remember, Congress has the power to appropriate; and what we should do is first authorize, then appropriate and then conduct proper oversight but not circumvent that process by saying, We're just going to run a parallel program over here in Congress and earmark the dollars.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

I thank the Chair.

The argument we're hearing is akin to saying--you know this whole college bowl system that we have, the BCS? That's good. But we think the University of Maryland or Arizona State University or BYU or another organization, we think they're better. So we're just going to award them the national championship. They shouldn't even have to compete in the BCS or anywhere else because we think they're better. And because we can, we're going to do that. That's one of the problems with the contemporary practice of earmarking. And for that, I hope that we will object this amendment and at some point say that we can't continue to spend money in this way.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent that my amendment be modified in the form I have at the desk.

I thank the chairman.

It's unfortunate that it's been objected to again. Again, this amendment that I would have substituted is one that had bipartisan support, many Democrats, many Republicans, that would simply keep in place the restrictions that have been in place for years with regard to taxpayer-funded abortion. This is one that the rule for this bill just narrowly passed after the vote was held open for longer than it was supposed to so that a few arms could be twisted to make the rule pass because so many Members wanted this amendment to be considered. But yet the leadership on the majority side has said, We don't want to have a debate on this. We don't want to have a vote on this.

Now it doesn't matter which side you're on on this issue. I think everyone should agree that we should have a vote on it. This is the people's House. People should have the opportunity to vote on issues like this. It is not increasing the time for debate. It's simply substituting one amendment for another. It is unfortunate we won't be able to do that.

This amendment would remove $100,000 in funding for the Florida Institute of Technology in Melbourne, Florida, to be used for, quote, activity-based total accountability. According to the earmark sponsor's Web site, he requested just short of $1 million to ``create a national government services standards program to provide guidelines for which the efficiency of government services can be compared.''

I reserve the balance of my time.

I thank the gentleman from Texas for his comments. I think if we could bottle up all the shared zeal to cut spending, then maybe we could pass one of these amendments to cut spending.

The gentleman points out that we are not cutting it, and that year after year, when those of us who want to come down here and strike funding for earmarks want to do it, we receive objection from those on the Appropriations Committee to say, well, you're not really saving anything because it will go right back into there.

But you can go and lower the 301(b)s and (a)s, and you can do it the way you want to, but maybe, just maybe the reason the Appropriations Committee, on both sides of the aisle, unfortunately, and it pains me to say this as a Republican, but part of the reason you don't see the Appropriations Committee very anxious to cut spending is because of this. When you look at 70 percent of the dollar value of the earmarks being associated with Members who make up less than 24 percent of the body, if you take the Appropriations Committee, it is less than 14 percent of the body, and more than half of the dollar value of earmarks goes to just 14 percent of the body.

So I have to take with a rather large grain of salt the lamenting year after year after year by appropriators on both sides of the aisle that we can't cut this earmark spending because that darn money will just go right back into the system. So we can change any time we want.

I should say, also, this amendment made in order here will cut the funding and reduce it in the bill by the same amount. And to hear the excuse that we simply can't do that--and also this is something called activity-based total accountability, and the sponsor says that the purpose of the earmark is so that we can have more transparency in our funding structures at the State and local level. I find it ironic that we are using the least accountable system for distributing funds in order to increase transparency somewhere else.

At some point, we are all going to scratch our heads and say, wouldn't it be better when we are running at what could be a $2 trillion deficit this year to actually save the money and not spend it and concede to the taxpayers we can't continue to go on this way? But simply to say we can't cut these earmarks because, oh, that money will just go somewhere else, really, is a bit, it is just----

For 15 seconds. I think I have heard this before.

Reclaiming my time, we were in control for 6 years while I have been in this Congress, and we didn't make any effort to do that. That is the unfortunate thing. And we haven't done any better under the current leadership. But, unfortunately, we didn't send a very good example when we were in charge because we could have, at any time, ensured that the money went back to the taxpayer. But we didn't.

With that, I urge adoption of the amendment.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent that my amendment be modified in the form I have at the desk.

Is the gentleman sure he doesn't want to just reserve the right to object until he hears which amendment I have?

All right. This amendment, I would submit, the modification would be to allow the school choice initiative to continue in D.C., again, a bipartisan amendment offered to the Rules Committee, rejected by the Rules Committee, because the Democratic leadership decided that this House should not debate the topic nor vote on it.

We have the time. It is not an issue of time. I'm willing to forgo one of my amendments to allow this one to be offered. But, again, the House leadership has decided they don't want to debate nor vote on this amendment, and so we are not allowed to.

We are breaking tradition that has held for decades and decades and decades in this House in order to simply shield Members or shield parties or whatever from votes that might be taken in the body. And that is unfortunate.

This amendment would prohibit $90,000 in funding for the Commercial Kitchen Business Incubator in Watsonville, California, and would lower the overall cost of the bill by a commensurate amount. According to the sponsor, the funding would be used for a small business incubator for food service microenterprise. Specifically it would be used to purchase industrial kitchen equipment.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

I thank the gentleman. I respect the gentleman from California. He and I have worked together on a lot of legislation.

But in this case, I would simply say there are a lot of areas in the country that are hurting. In California, El Centro has an unemployment rate of 27 percent. Just across the California border in Arizona, Yuma has an unemployment rate of 20 percent. There are a lot of people hurting in a lot of places. But when I hear the gentleman say this is going to be a one-time expenditure, we have heard that before. We have heard that many, many times before. I'm sure some of the earmarks that we talked about earlier, the first year the Member got the earmark, he would have said, this is going to be a one-time expenditure. And yet year after year after year, we are funding the same earmark.

These business incubators are particularly prone to repetitive earmarks over the years. We seem to keep funding them again and again.

Again, let me say that there are a lot of business incubator services provided by chambers of commerce, trade associations and private sector organizations just wishing to supply services and to make a dollar. And yet now they are going to be asked to compete with a government entity that is receiving Federal largesse. And it simply doesn't work very well. We know we don't have sufficient money to spread around to everybody who wants it. We are running a deficit that could approach $2 trillion. So we have to prioritize here. I would suggest it is time to say that we can no longer fund these business incubators that have kind of a nebulous mission that is provided by a lot of private sector organizations around there.

I reserve the balance of my time.

I thank the gentleman. I hope I have the opportunity, because I will offer an amendment to the Defense Appropriations bill to stop funding the F-22. The gentleman has a good point. But we should also make the point that we cannot continue to pick and choose winners and losers here. What we are doing is borrowing money from our kids and our grandkids all around the country. We are borrowing money from small businesses and others because we simply don't have the money here. We are running a deficit.

So what we are doing is selling bonds to finance the deficit that is going to have to be paid back at some time. We are saying, Mr. Small Businessman or Mrs. Small Businesswoman, we are going to take money from you now because we think we know how to spend it better on that business over there or on that incubator over there.

I would submit that that simply is not the most efficient use of resources. The market would tell us that is the most inefficient way to allocate money. Government doesn't do a particularly good job of allocating money, allocating money to startup businesses or anything else. So we have got to say ``stop'' somewhere.

I will be glad to support some of the programs that the gentleman has, some of the amendments to cut big items of spending from our entitlement programs and elsewhere. But we have got to do that, and we have got to do this. We can't let any program go and simply say that we are not going to cut spending when we have a deficit of nearly $2 trillion.

With that, Mr. Chairman, 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.

Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent that my amendment be modified in the form that I have at the desk.

I thought the seventh time might be the charm, but apparently not. Apparently, the majority party is insistent that it only hear the amendments that it wants to have debated and that it wants to vote on, rather than the amendments that the Members here decide what they want to debate and vote on.

It is unfortunate. I would have substituted the amendment that would prohibit union activity on government time. It seems to be a simple concept, not controversial. But it is apparently one that the leadership did not want to debate nor to vote on. It is not an issue of time. Time constraints are already here.

The only issue is the majority leadership decided they don't want to debate or have a vote on this issue.

This amendment would prohibit $125,000 from going to the Economic Growth Connection of Westmoreland in Greensburg, Pennsylvania, and reduce the overall cost of the bill by a commensurate amount. This funding would go toward the EGC's defense procurement and assistance program to, according to the sponsor, provide small and medium-sized business with additional support for all phases of the government contracting and acquisition process.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, to be honest, I'm not sure how much more help southwestern Pennsylvania needs in the way of defense procurement assistance. And I'm not sure how much more the taxpayers in this body can actually afford.

According to usaspending.gov, the district in which the Economic Growth Connection of Westmoreland appears to reside has benefited from nearly $1.4 billion in Federal contracts from 2004 to 2009, hardly the poorest of the poor. The Army, Navy, Air Force and Defense Logistics Agency make up four of the top 10 contracting agencies, and more than 60 percent of these funds were not subject to full and open competition.

Similarly, usaspending.gov indicates that the district of the sponsor of this earmark has benefited from more than a billion dollars in Federal contracts from 2004 to 2009, with less than half available for everyone to compete for.

Among the list of contractors receiving these funds, according to usaspending.gov, are many that we've come to know very well, all too well: Kuchera Defense Systems, Argon ST, KDH Defense, and Concurrent Technologies. Kuchera Defense Systems. That is a defense contractor for whom the sponsor of this earmark requested funding over the past 2 years, was raided by the FBI in January, suspended by the Navy, reported for ``alleged fraud,'' including multiple instances of incorrect charges, along with allegations of defective pricing and ethical violations.

Argon ST has been in the news lately because it purchased Coherent Systems International in 2007. It has been reported that the former head of Coherent Systems pled guilty in Federal Court Tuesday, just this last Tuesday, to a kickback scheme and defrauding the U.S. Air Force.

KDH Defense also made headlines when Roll Call reported that the bulletproof vest company received millions of taxpayer dollars to build a sonar system that it had no experience to design.

Concurrent Technologies has long been the focus of defense earmark critics. For example, at the end of 2007 the Washington Post highlighted that the National Defense Center For Environmental Excellence that was managed by Concurrent had received more than $600 million in funding, and that little of the center's work had been useful to the Department of Defense.

How long can we continue to provide defense-related procurement dollars for an area with so many organizations that have been associated with conduct that I think people in this body would say are certainly not deserving of more earmarks? Yet we're doing it here again.

How much longer are we going to do this, Mr. Chairman?

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

It shouldn't surprise anybody that several of these companies in this area were clients of the PMA Group, a now defunct lobbying firm that specialized in obtaining defense earmarks for its clients. Since PMA was raided by the FBI and closed its doors, multiple press reports have noted questions related to campaign contributions made on or behalf of the firm, including questions related to straw man contributions, reimbursement of employees for political giving, pressure on clients to give, suspicious pattern of giving, and the timing of donations related to legislative activity. So here we are, yet again, with another defense-related earmark for an area that has received billions in defense spending that has previously been associated with contractors that have run into trouble, and a lobbying group that has cast a long shadow over this House.

I urge my colleagues, if we're going to step up at any time, and say, enough is enough, let's step up here. For an earmark for $125,000 to going to help in defense procurement for an area that receives billions and billions of dollars in defense procurement.

When is enough enough, Mr. Chairman?

I ask for support of the amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

I have an amendment at the desk designated as No. 15.

Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent that my amendment be modified in the form I have at the desk.

This is, I believe, number 8 times the majority has objected to simply substituting an amendment that was not ruled in order by the Rules Committee, an amendment that was germane. This particular amendment was one that would have protected broadcaster freedom to make sure that talk radio stations around the country and other media organizations would not be subjected to new regulations which would try to control their content. This amendment passed last year by a margin, I think, 309 votes in favor. Yet, it's one that the majority party did not want to hear debated, or did not want to see a vote on, and despite the fact that it has bipartisan support.

Again, Mr. Chairman, we can't continue to go down this road, having martial law on appropriation bills and simply saying that we're going to decide, as a majority party, the majority leadership, which amendments can be offered, which ones can be debated.

This particular amendment would prohibit $100,000 from being used to expand the Myrtle Beach International Trade and Conference Center in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. It would reduce the overall cost of the bill by a commensurate amount.

According to the Myrtle Beach Area Chamber of Commerce, the Myrtle Beach Convention Center hosted over 500 groups in 2008, has an economic impact of more than $55 million per year. It was the host site of the 2008 South Carolina GOP Presidential candidates debate. It draws a large number of civic and public events.

Why in the world are we spending another $100,000, when we have nearly a $2 trillion deficit, for a convention center, convention and conference center? There are convention and conference centers all over the country. There are many in my home State of Arizona. Why we should choose one and say they're worthy of an earmark and the other one isn't, and saying that they shouldn't compete for dollars, we're just going to hand them out.

I reserve the balance of my time.

If the gentleman would continue in that vein, I would give him more time. I even got a bit of whiplash here. I thought the gentleman was arguing to not spend another $100,000 on Myrtle Beach, the convention center attached to the Myrtle Beach hotel, the Sheraton.

If the gentleman is in support of the amendment, I would yield. If not, please don't say any more.

My frustration was we were in the majority for the first 6 years I was here. There were a lot of the same Members of the same appropriations committee. We could have cut the 302(a)s, but we didn't. And now we have appropriators now in the minority party blaming the appropriators in the majority party for doing what we should have done a few years ago.

So it all seems to me to make sense when you see a chart like this, that explains the spoils system that earmarks really are, when 70 percent of the dollar value of earmarks go to just 24 percent of the House, and when less than 14 percent of the House gets well over 50 percent of the dollar value overall of earmarks.

So I have to say we have to start somewhere, and if we can't start by saving $100,000 for the Myrtle Beach conference center, I don't know where we can start. I really, really don't.

So I would just urge my colleagues, if we say that we're fiscally responsible, then show it instead of standing up and saying, Hey, we need to cut spending, but first before we cut spending we've got to spend another $100,000 on the Myrtle Beach Convention Center. I think the taxpayers have heard that for far too long, when we were in the majority and now with the new majority. At some point, we're going to have to say we're not going to do this anymore. That's what we're attempting to do with this amendment. I would urge support of it.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

I have an amendment at the desk designated No. 16.

Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent that my amendment be modified in the form that I have at the desk.

For the purpose--the gentleman has time, I believe.

I will yield the gentleman 30 seconds.

I have said from the beginning I'm grateful for the amendments I get. But the vote on my amendments typically has all of the excitement and drama of a Cuban election where we know the outcome, unfortunately, and it serves as a useful purpose for the majority party.

I'm grateful for the amendments I get. I guess you have to be grateful and express gratitude for the benevolence of the majority party for granting me a few amendments on a bill that has traditionally come to the Congress under an open rule.

If that's what we've come to in this House, to just express gratitude for the crumbs that fall from the table in terms of being allowed to offer amendments on appropriation bills, I hope we haven't come to that but, Mr. Chairman, I'm starting to wonder.

I would like to have offered an amendment in substitute for one of mine that would--again, this would be for the D.C. School Choice Initiative, to allow it to continue, to allow students to have the choice of where they go to school, but we're denied once again.

This amendment would remove $100,000 in funding for the Pittsburgh Life Sciences Greenhouse, Tech Belt Biosciences Initiative and reduce the cost of the bill by the commensurate amount.

This earmark states that the funding will be used for the creation of a Biosciences Tech Belt, and I am anxious to learn what that is.

I would reserve the balance of my time.

Well, that was an interesting recitation of western history, I will tell you that, but this tech belt was created 2 years ago. The CEO of Pittsburgh Life Sciences Greenhouse and the CEO of BioEnterprise, Cleveland, decided to collaborate and leverage the existing resources in Pittsburgh and Cleveland, and this tech belt initiative was born.

But this is an interesting quote. I want everyone to hear this. John Manzetti, the CEO of Pittsburgh Life Sciences Greenhouse said the objective of the tech belt was to ``create some excitement and get funding from the Federal Government'' to build up their regions. It's been successful at that. Believe me. There's a lot of money that has gone in Federal earmark money, that's for sure.

According to the press release of the sponsor of this earmark, in this year's omnibus appropriation act alone, his district received $55 million in Federal funding from earmarks. That's just in the omnibus bill itself.

May I inquire as to how much time is remaining?

I will yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania. The gentleman from Pennsylvania wanted to speak on a previous earmark, and I will yield him the last minute I have here.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

I have an amendment at the desk, No. 17, my final amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent, for the 11th time, that my amendment be modified in the form at the desk.

I wish we could have modified the amendment. I would have, again, submitted the Broadcaster Freedom Act to allow us to limit funding to the FCC so that they wouldn't be able to restrict broadcaster freedom across this country, but I wasn't allowed one more time.

I'd like to yield 1 minute to the gentleman from California (Mr. Daniel E. Lungren).

I yield the gentleman an additional 15 seconds.

This amendment would strike $900,000 in funding for the City of Loma Linda, California, and the City of Grand Terrace, California, for an infrastructure expansion project to promote small business and reduce the overall cost of the bill by a commensurate amount.

The sponsor of this earmark states on his Web site these funds would be used to establish a fiber optic infrastructure expansion pilot program between the City of Loma Linda and the City of the Grand Terrace's new business park. The pilot program would demonstrate how updated and expanded Internet access can promote

small business, create jobs, enhance local competitiveness, on and on and on.

The sponsor says that this is needed because private loans are unavailable as a result of the credit crunch and this region would benefit from the use of Federal dollars as an initial investment for future expansions. Well, we have heard that song before. There is a credit crunch out there. No doubt every business across the country will tell you about it, but not every business can say I am going to grab $900,000 in funding. Yet that's what we're doing here.

We're picking and choosing which cities and municipalities and which organizations can get these dollars rather than say, you know, Mr. Taxpayer, maybe you ought to keep that money and spend it yourself. We're going to have to increase taxes at some point to pay for this, and we're telling everybody out there just to live with it because we make better decisions here on business investments in the U.S. House than you do as a small businessman.

That's, in essence, what we're saying, and it's time that we stop that, Mr. Chairman. We can't continue to go on, and if we can't strike $900,000 in funding for a project like this, then I don't know where we start. I really don't.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, we passed a milestone that probably we shouldn't be proud of. Just last week, I think, the Webster dictionary finally put the definition of ``earmark'' in its dictionary, not the traditional definition that I was used to as a kid on a ranch where you mark cattle, but rather, earmark as a designation of dollars from the Congress by a particular Congressman.

When we passed that milestone, I think we've probably gone too far. When it's in the lexicon so frequently that the dictionaries are now picking it up, the appropriators have been trying to find earmark in the Constitution for years without success. At least they will find it now in the dictionary. That's not something we should be proud of.

At some point we do have to stand up and say we've got to stop this when we have thousands and thousands and thousands of earmarks in appropriation bills over the year and we can't seem to cut funding for one of them here. I don't know when we're going to cut funding. I don't know when we're going to get a hold of this deficit that we have unless we start somewhere, and I would suggest that we start here on this amendment.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

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 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, we are going through an appropriations process. We will do two bills this week. Traditionally, appropriations bills have been open rules. They come to the floor. Members are allowed to offer as many amendments as they wish--striking funding, moving funding around, making a policy point. That has been the tradition of this House.

It is sometimes pointed out that it hasn't always been this way, that the appropriations bills haven't always been open, and that there is no reason why they should be. Yet I would remind the House, Mr. Speaker, that, over the past 20 years, we've gotten into a practice of loading up and larding up these appropriations bills with all kinds of congressionally directed spending.

The chairman of the Appropriations Committee likes to say that, when he chaired the Appropriations Committee in 1992, when the Labor-HHS bill came through, there was not one congressional earmark, not one. That's less than 20 years ago. There was not one congressional earmark. I think, in the past couple of years, there have been upwards of 2,500 earmarks in that bill. In the bill that we'll address today, the energy and water bill, there are literally hundreds of earmarks.

Now, one would like to think that the Appropriations Committee would vet these earmarks, would actually check them out to see if they're meeting Federal purpose, if money is being wasted, if it, maybe, looks bad and looks like it's tied to campaign contributions or whatever, but they don't. They don't have the time or the resources or, perhaps, the inclination to do so, so all we have is this forum here on the floor. When you bring an appropriations bill to the floor under a closed rule or a restricted rule--a structured rule--and deny Members the ability to offer amendments, then you've shut down this place in a way that is simply not right.

For this bill, there were 103 amendments submitted. Now, because you have to pre-file your amendments, a lot of Members will submit more amendments than they intend to offer on the floor just to protect their place. So the majority party knows that we would never have offered 103 amendments on the floor. We won't have time to do it. We have done it in years past, but only 21 of these remained in order--78 Republican amendments were submitted, and only 14 were made in order.

The gentleman from Georgia, to whom I will yield 3 minutes, has been offering a number of amendments, and has not been able to have them made in order.

I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia.

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

May I inquire as to the time remaining?

Mr. Speaker, I realize that this is an unfunded mandates point of order that has been raised. This is not unfunded mandates we're talking about here. Unfortunately, this is about the only way we can get time to actually talk about this rule at sufficient length.

As to the way that these appropriations bills are being shut down for Members and when the gentlelady said that this bill should be voted on according to its merits, the problem is there were dozens and dozens of meritorious amendments that were submitted to the Rules Committee. The fact that they actually had to be submitted tells us we've got some problems here because, as I mentioned, appropriations bills have traditionally been open, but meritorious amendments have been submitted, and only a few have been allowed.

Now, I happen to have six, I believe, allowed in this bill, and I know full well the game here. I offer limitation amendments on earmarks. The majority party knows full well that earmarking is a bipartisan addiction and that the process of logrolling takes effect and that my amendments are defeated routinely. So they can throw me a bone here and there, and that's fine. I understand that. Still, we need to raise these issues. Let me tell you why.

This was in the Washington Post today, and you can look yesterday in Roll Call or in The Hill from the day before. Virtually every day there is a news story about earmarks having gone awry. This one in particular talks about defense earmarks, that there are some individuals in the lobbying community and in the defense community who have pled guilty to taking earmarks from this body and to spreading them around to several contractors who didn't do the work that they promised to do. Some actually took kickbacks for the earmark money they distributed. These were earmarks that were supposedly vetted by the Appropriations Committee, but we know that the Appropriations Committee doesn't have the time or resources to vet these earmarks.

We're going to be doing a defense appropriations bill in just a couple of weeks. We've allowed one day for that bill to be on the floor, and if history holds, only a couple of amendments will be allowed, particularly amendments to strike earmarks. If on this floor we are not going challenge these earmarks, where are we going to do it?

They're not doing it in the Appropriations Committee. From sad experience, we know that. Over the past several years, the chairman of the Appropriations Committee has said they

don't have the time or the resources to adequately vet these earmarks, so we have two choices. We ought to have two choices. Either strike the earmarks and not bring the bill to the floor with congressional earmarks in there or have proper time to vet them on the floor. Or simply say that we're not going to allow them at all until we get this process fixed. Instead, what we've chosen to do is to cover up the process and to pretend that there is no problem here and to simply limit the number of amendments that can be offered on the floor and hope that nobody notices, that nobody sees.

What happens when nobody sees--last year, for example, we weren't allowed to offer any amendments on the floor. The defense appropriations bill was offered as part of a ``minibus'', and no amendments were offered at all. Then we get stories like this. Let me just quote one paragraph from this story:

It really puts a fine point on the murky unaccountable web that exists around earmarks, said Steve Ellis of the watchdog group Taxpayers for Common Sense. These earmarks, because there is very little accountability, provide a petri dish for corruption.

Certainly, that is what we've seen over the past several years, but we are not allowing adequate time on the floor to vet what will be likely over 1,000 earmarks or close to it--if there are not 1,000, there will be several hundred--in the defense bill that's going to be coming up.

What is worse is that hundreds of these earmarks that will be in the defense bill will be given to companies whose executives will turn around and will write large campaign contributions to the sponsor of the earmark in the bill. So, essentially, we are earmarking for our campaign contributors.

I think we should all agree that, if there are earmarks in this body, they certainly shouldn't be going to those who can turn around and can then make a campaign contribution directly back to them. To give a Federal appropriation a no-bid contract--and that's what earmarks are, particularly in the defense bill, no-bid contracts--to somebody who can turn around and write a campaign contribution right back to you is wrong.

What makes it doubly wrong is that now, in the House, we are going to tell Members you can't even challenge those earmarks on the floor because we're going to limit you to three or four amendments. Choose them. That's it. That, Mr. Speaker, is wrong. We can't continue to do that. People say that, outside of the Beltway, nobody cares about process. That may be true, but take it from somebody who was in the majority and who is now in the minority, who is squarely in the minority: Bad process yields bad results, and it will catch up to you sooner or later. What is worse is that what we're doing, particularly with earmarks in the defense bill, reflects poorly on this House.

The cloud that hangs over this body rains on Republicans and Democrats alike; and we ought to stand up to the institution and say, We think more of this institution than that to have this cloud out there. So I would plead with everyone, Mr. Speaker, to not proceed with bills like this which don't allow Members to offer amendments on the floor, the amendments that are meritorious, that are not trying to slow down the process. They are simply trying to improve the bill.

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

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

Mr. Chairman, before proceeding with the time constraints here, I would ask unanimous consent that my amendment be modified to the form I have placed at the desk.

May I inquire of the gentleman from Arizona why he objects? We were told that this appropriations process, particularly today's bill, was under a modified structured rule simply because of time constraints. I am simply offering to modify my amendment to reflect an amendment that was offered but not accepted by the committee so that no more time would be consumed. This is an amendment that is in order, and it is germane.

I would just ask the gentleman why the objection is being heard.

Announcement by the Acting Chair

I would ask the Chair to ask the gentleman.

I would yield to the gentleman for a response if the gentleman from Arizona would respond to why he is objecting to this unanimous consent request.

I will have to go back to my original amendment. Let me just make a point, and I will be making it frequently coming up, so the gentleman or others may want to consult with the Rules Committee.

We were told at the beginning of this process that we were going to be restricted in terms of what we could offer simply because of time, that we could not have so many amendments that would take so much time. There were 108 amendments offered. We would never be able to get them done, we were told. So here we have a bill. The time constraints are set. We are told that some 20 amendments are going to be offered. We are simply asking to swap out amendments.

The Appropriations chairman said, We have an obligation to get our work done, so what Mr. Hoyer and I did was offer the minority leader an opportunity from a compressed number of amendments to select their own amendments, any amendments they wanted, but they did not want to limit the number of time.

Here we are saying we will agree to the time, and we are simply asking for unanimous consent to allow us to offer the amendments we would like to offer, and they're objecting. So, Mr. Chairman, all you can conclude, again, is that the majority simply doesn't want to take votes on these amendments. For the first time in years, in decades, we are shutting down an appropriations process, and saying, You can't offer the amendments you want. You only offer the amendments we want. Now, that is simply wrong. I just want to make that point, and I'll be making it again and again.

So I don't blame the gentleman from Arizona. He is not authorized here, but his party has told us that we are only compressing and having, basically, martial law in terms of appropriations bills because of compressed time. We are agreeing to the compressed time. We are simply saying allow us to offer the amendments that are germane that

we want to offer. We are being told, no, you only offer the amendments we want to hear.

That's what we're being told here, and I just want to register an objection to that because we ought to have the freedom to offer the amendments that we have offered like we've been able to do for decades in this House.

With that, let me get to the substance of the amendment.

This amendment would simply strike $1.5 million for the MARET Center at Crowder College in Missouri.

May I ask as to the time remaining?

I thank the Chair.

According to the Web site, the MARET Center is also known as the Missouri Alternative Renewable Energy Technology Center. It has been around since 1992. It has been funded several times, I believe, with earmarks. It has received, I think, $3 million in earmarks. When we have a deficit nearing $2 trillion this year, I think it behooves us to find areas where we can save. This is an earmark that goes to a college to study renewable energy when we are doing that all over in the budget--in this bill and in others. I think it behooves us to save the money where we can. This amendment would strike that funding, and would save it in the bill.

I reserve the balance of my time.

May I inquire as to the time remaining?

I thank the gentleman.

Mr. Chairman, this sounds like a great program. There are many great programs all over the country. Why do we need to earmark money for this one? There are a lot of other universities that would love to compete for these dollars and for this kind of funding.

That is the problem with the earmarking process that we have. Members of Congress are able to pick and choose. We typically take from those accounts where we have money set aside for competition, where people can, based on merit rather than on political designation, compete for these funds. So, with that, I would ask for support for the amendment.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Before proceeding with my amendment, Mr. Chairman, and so I won't gobble up my time, I would move that the Committee rise so that the whole House may entertain the unanimous consent request to modify my amendment.

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

Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent that my amendment be modified to the form I have placed at the desk.

I want to make the point again here. I offered a unanimous consent request to stick within the time frames that we've been given by the majority party. The majority party said to us, Mr. Obey, said, We have an obligation to get our work done, so what Mr. Hoyer and I did was to offer the minority leader the opportunity, from a compressed number of amendments, to select their own amendments, any amendments they wanted, but they don't want to be limited by number of time. I don't fault them for that. I'm simply stating the facts.

Well, here we are with the facts. We're willing to be limited by time. We have the constraints. All we want to do is have the ability to offer our own amendments, and we're not being given that ability. The majority party has objected to a unanimous consent request, not to offer an amendment that is not germane or that would not be made in order. It's just an amendment that they don't want to vote on.

So this is the second time. It will probably happen again and again and again. I don't fault the gentleman from Arizona. He is carrying out the wishes of the leadership.

I want people to recognize what is happening here. We have what amounts to martial law on appropriations bills this year for no reason other than the majority party wants to select the amendments that they want to vote on, not because of time constraints. We are living within the time constraints. We are okay with the time constraints. We are simply being objected to here, and are not allowed to offer the amendments that we want to offer.

With regard to this amendment, this amendment would remove $3 million for the Consortium for Plant Biotechnology Research and would reduce the overall cost of the bill by a commensurate amount.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, may I ask the time remaining?

I thank the Chair.

One of the 11 sponsors of this earmark describe this organization to receive it as a ``nonprofit organization.'' A quick glance at its membership roster shows that in addition to 45 well-endowed university members, 46 for-profit corporations also partner in this consortium. Among them are Procter & Gamble and MeadWestvaco. There is a lot of private money for this institution as well. Here again we have a deficit of nearly $2 trillion, and yet we're spending $3 million on an earmark for a Consortium for Plant Biotechnology Research that already receives funding from a lot of private sector organizations, and we're simply adding on with another earmark. Again, it's the case here that when you earmark dollars, in this case you are removing dollars from the account that universities and other organizations can compete for. Over at the Federal agencies, we have a mandate that they compete out these kinds of projects. People compete on the basis of merit, yet here when we skim money off the top and earmark it for certain organizations, there is less money for other colleges, organizations and universities to compete for; and that's simply not right. As we've said over and over again, it amounts to quite a spoils system because just a relatively few people in the House get the bulk of the dollars that actually go toward earmarks. So, Mr. Chairman, I would ask for a favorable vote on this amendment. We simply need to save money where we can when we're running nearly a $2 trillion deficit by the time we get to the end of the fiscal year.

When I came to Congress just 8 years ago, I think our total Federal budget was just north of $2 trillion. Our deficit this year will reach nearly that amount. And still we're earmarking dollars right and left to universities or other organizations that have big endowments already or have private sector partners who already contribute money, and still we're saying they need more. Where does it end? When do we say enough is enough? I would submit that we should say it right here on this

earmark, and I urge support for 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, part C.

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

You know, I thought the third time might be the charm, but apparently not. Let me just make the case again. The reason that we have martial law this year on appropriations bills is because we were told we needed to stay within the time structure. Now that excuse, I have to say, Mr. Chairman, was a bit suspect to start with. We are finished with voting today. We finished I think just before 4 o'clock. We'll be finished with these amendments and be out of here by 5 p.m. That's 2 o'clock on the west coast. Done for the night. And we don't have time to make in order a few other amendments? But here if that were the

case, okay. We're accepting the time constraints. We accept that the majority party believes we should be done at 3 o'clock or 4 o'clock today. So we'll just say, Let's just substitute one of the amendments that we would like to offer for one of the ones that we had made in order under the rule. Yet the majority party says, No, we only want to vote on the amendments that we want to vote on, not the ones you want to offer.

So let's get rid of, once and for all, the excuse that this is a matter of time, that the minority party simply won't agree to live within the time strictures. That is simply untrue. We are agreeing here to live within the time constraints, unreasonable though they may be, from the majority party as long as we can offer the amendments that we would like to offer, but we're not being allowed that. We've asked for three unanimous consent requests, each have been objected to.

Mr. Chairman, this amendment would strike $500,000 in funding for ethanol from agriculture at Arkansas State University, and it would reduce the overall cost of the bill by a commensurate amount.

Mr. Chairman, again, we see what we know is probably best referred to as a spoils system. One appropriator approached me the other day and said, ``I wish you wouldn't use that term. It's pejorative.'' I don't know if there's a less pejorative term that can be used. But here's the case: So far the earmark dollars that have flown out with the appropriations bills thus far, powerful Members of Congress--these are the appropriators and those who are chairmen or ranking minority members--they represent about 24 percent of this body. Yet when you look at the earmark dollars in CJS, 58 percent went to just 24 percent of the body; Homeland Security, 68 percent; Interior, 64 percent; Agriculture, 67 percent; MILCON-VA, 52 percent; Energy and Water--this bill that we're discussing today--58 percent of the earmark dollars go to just 24 percent of this body. It's a spoils system. I don't know of any less pejorative term to use. To the victors go the spoils, I guess. But that's another problem with earmarking. It's not just that dollars are wasted or that dollars in defense bills are basically given out as no-bid contracts. It's that just a small number of people in this body control too many of the dollars, and we're told that we shouldn't let some faceless bureaucrat over in some agency decide where to spend the money because it's our role under the Constitution here in Congress. But if you accept that, you have to accept the fact that every Member of Congress knows their district better than some faceless bureaucrat, as it's always said. But if that's the case, why do appropriators and other Members in leadership know their districts so much better than everybody else around here?

So it seems to be a bit of a spoils system, Mr. Chairman. I have to say, on this earmark with ethanol, we're spending a lot of money on ethanol. When you take the farm bill into account, when you take just about everything else we are doing into account with the energy bills that have been passed, it's not as if we are starving this beast. There is a lot of money going in here. Again, we're sending $500,000 more when we have a deficit nearing $2 trillion.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

May I inquire as to the time remaining.

We spend upwards, in cumulative subsidies, of about $420 billion at an average of $28 billion annually and climbing on ethanol. We keep hearing year after year after year, we just need to seed corn here, if you will, we just need it to prime the pump, and it will take care of itself later. And 30 years later, we are still subsidizing at about $28 billion annually. And then we have to mandate use for it.

The truth is, we all know you can turn ethanol out of an old boot if you expend enough energy doing it. At some point, you have to question are we doing the right thing here with our dollars. When we are already spending $28 billion annually, does it make sense to throw in another $500,000 to Arkansas State University? Are they going to discover something that $28 billion annually for about 30 years has not discovered?

At some point, we have to say we have a $2 trillion deficit and we have priorities here. So, Mr. Chairman, I would suggest we have to start somewhere. Please, with this program, let's save some money.

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. 5 in part C.

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

Let the record state, four times now, four times asking unanimous consent to simply swap for an amendment that we would like to offer rather than one that the majority party would like to hear. But again, it has been rejected. So I will go on.

This amendment would prohibit $2 million for funding for the Fort Mason Center Pier 2 earmark and reduce overall cost of the bill a commensurate amount.

According to the sponsor, and I don't see the sponsor here today, the Fort Mason Center operates the retired U.S. Army West Coast Port of Embarkation as a ``national standard for historic preservation, urban planning, sustainable business practices, nonprofit support and incubation'' and on and on.

According to a 2001 press release, this is not the first earmark for the Fort Mason Center by the same sponsor. That year, the sponsor directed a $13 million earmark to the center for seismic upgrades. According to the sponsor, this year's earmark was requested for costs associated with ``repairs related to sustainability and energy efficiency, as well as seismic safety and patron access.''

According to its Web site, the center ``embodies the essence of San Francisco, nearness to nature, combined with novel architecture, a nod to the past, and a dose of the different'' and boasts 300,000 square feet of space for 17 venues and on and on. This center hosts a lot of events annually. I suspect that more than a few of the attendees made their way also to the center's Cowell Theater last year, which is on the same premises, I believe.

Now, I don't know why in the world we keep earmarking dollars for centers like this. They clearly are in areas, in this case, San Francisco, where there is other funding or other funding is already used. But in this case we have a particularly powerful individual who requested the earmark who is able to get it time and time again, and so we are seeing this earmark funded.

At what point do we say we have to make priorities here? When you have a deficit that may hit $2 trillion this year, at what point do we say we can't spend another $2 million for the Fort Mason Center Pier 2 earmark?

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

I inquire as to the time remaining.

I would yield to the gentleman from Arizona if he would indicate whose earmark this is.

I believe that is the Speaker of the House.

Now, I mentioned before that the center contains a theater called the Cowell Theater. Last year the earmark sponsor went on a 12-city tour with her new book, ``Know Your Power: A Message to America's Daughters.'' I think that the Member who requested this earmark certainly knows her power. That is part of the problem with this earmark process.

Again, let me point out, in this piece of legislation, the Energy and Water bill, 58 percent of the funding is going to just 24 percent of the body, people who know their power and know that they can get earmarks. And we hear a lot of high-minded rhetoric about earmarks, that we are doing it because we know our districts better than those bureaucrats, and these bureaucrats shouldn't be able to choose because I know my district better. But apparently just a quarter of the Members of this body seem to know their district better than everybody else because they keep getting all of the earmark dollars.

So, when you strip it all away, we are earmarking dollars because we can here and sometimes to the same organizations or institutions that get it year after year after year. And when we are running a deficit that may hit $2 trillion, I would think that we ought to say enough is enough. The sponsor of this earmark appears to be associated with, either is a lone sponsor or in collaboration with other Members, more than $87 million worth of earmarks last year and more than $94 million the year before. So knowing your power certainly helps around here.

At some point, this body has to stand up and say we can't continue to do this. We have to be stewards of the taxpayer money. And I would submit that when we are running a $2 trillion deficit this year, we may hit that coming up, then now is the time to say we can't continue to fund earmarks like this.

I would ask for support of the amendment.

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. 10 in part C.

Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent that my amendment be modified in the manner designated at desk.

I can't say that I'm shocked by now. This is the fifth time, I guess, but be it noted it is the fifth time we have asked for unanimous consent to offer the amendments that we would like to offer on this side of the aisle. But, again, this request has been rejected, not because of time constraints. We are living within the time constraints. It is because the majority party seems to only want to entertain amendments that they know they can defeat. They don't want anything controversial on the floor, and so we are breaking with tradition that has held for decades and decades, if not a century in this House, that we have open appropriations bills. Instead, we have a sort of a martial law with appropriations bills where they come under a modified rule that only allows the amendment that the majority chooses to hear, not the ones that Members want to offer.

That simply disenfranchises most of the Members of this body, I should say on both sides of the aisle. Many amendments that were bipartisan amendments or amendments offered by Democrats were rejected as well, because the leadership of this body and the majority party simply didn't want to hear those amendments.

This amendment would prevent $300,000 in funding for the Wentworth University for STEM equipment and to reduce the cost of the bill by a commensurate amount. STEM in this case stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Math. Wentworth University is a private residential liberal arts institution. The STEM equipment provided by this earmark would be located in Wentworth's University Center for Applied Health Sciences.

Now I can't imagine that any university in the United States would not want Federal funding to increase student capacity at their institution. In fact, I doubt these universities would even be picky about the field to which the money was designated.

But simply wanting Federal money does not equate or merit getting the money. You simply ought to have--to the extent that we provide Federal dollars for institutions of higher learning, they ought to be distributed on a competitive basis, not on a spoils system, not because one Member can designate here or there.

We tell the agencies you have to set up a program by which people can compete for grants like this, but then we tell them, All right, but not for this pot of money. We're just going to designate it, and for the rest of the money in the account, then let people compete for that. But I'm going to get mine for my university, or she's going to get hers for her university, or they're going to get theirs for their university. That's simply not right.

If we don't like the way the Federal agencies are distributing the money, then, by golly, we ought to change the way it is set up. And, by the way, they distribute that money, but we shouldn't run a parallel system where we say, We don't like the way you are distributing money so you simply will have to wait and watch while we distribute off the top.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

May I inquire as to the time remaining?

Let me just say again, here we have a private university. I'm sure that it's a great university. I'm sure this is a great program that it has, but we have private and public universities all over the country that are hurting badly and would like to receive funding like this and would like to be able to compete for funding like this under a program where they're on equal footing, where the money is not earmarked or cut off the top and just awarded to individual organizations or institutions. That's the problem with this process. It's one of the problems of this process. And so I would urge adoption of the resolution.

And, again, let me just go back to the request for unanimous consent to modify the amendment.

Again, going back to what the appropriations chairman said the other day to the majority leader or said with the majority leader, We did offer the minority leader the opportunity in the

compressed number of amendments to select their own amendment, any amendments they wanted, but they did not want to be limited in number or time.

Here we're saying we will be limited to number and time. We simply would like to select the amendments that we would like to offer, but we're being denied that opportunity. Five times. Five requests for unanimous consent. Five denials to simply offer the amendments that we would like to offer.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. Chairman, this amendment would prohibit $1.6 million from funding the Boston Architectural College Urban Sustainability Project.

I appreciate the fact that Boston Architectural College is interested in urban sustainability and green innovation. According to the college, they're hopeful that that project will serve as a model for densely built areas, such as Boston's Back Bay historic district. In fact, the Green Alley funding for this earmark would be constructed in one of Back Bay's public alleys. For those unfamiliar with Boston, Back Bay is a residential, retail, and commercial office district. It's considered to be one of Boston's most--in one of Boston's most high-rent neighborhoods.

While the construction of the project may be carried out by the Boston Architectural College, it will benefit an apparently affluent neighborhood.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

The gentleman is correct. This goes to the Boston Architectural College. The Sustainable Design Program is an online program. It allows students from all over the country to enroll in classes and complete a certificate without even stepping onto the campus. Who then will be carrying out the project?

I just wonder how the residents of Chicago, for example, whose alleyways have to outnumber just about every city in the world, feel about this earmark. In 2006, Chicago created its own Green Alley Initiative, one of the most ambitious public street makeover plans in the U.S. However, instead of relying on Federal funds, Chicago used its own resources and relied on the Chicago Department of Transportation to implement the program.

If the Boston Architectural College is trying to be an example in urban sustainability, maybe they should be, and we all should be, looking to Chicago for that. Not only has Chicago implemented several green initiatives on a much wider scale, but it does not appear to rely on an earmark to do it.

We simply can't afford to continue to earmark dollars for this program or others when we're running a deficit that could approach $2 trillion this year. I don't know how many times we have to say it or how many times we have to be voted down on the floor on these before we recognize we have to change things here.

We are on a path, fiscally, that is unsustainable. And when we continue to have bills like this that earmark hundreds of millions of dollars not on a competitive basis--remember, earmarks aren't competitive. Earmarks mean that you forego the competitive process. You circumvent it. You tell those that are competing for moneys like this, You will have to take a backseat because we're going to take that money that you could have competed for and we are going to give it to somebody else.

So perhaps this program is worthy of Federal money. Perhaps it isn't. It should have to compete for it. If we don't like the way the Federal agencies have set up the programs for competition, we should change them. We should instruct them to change it. That's part of the process of authorizing, appropriating, and then exercising appropriate oversight.

But instead, here we're saying we don't like the way you do it over there so we're going to create a parallel system and we are going to do it ourselves, and that's simply not right. It's done. It amounts to a spoils system, as I mentioned here in Congress, where few powerful Members tend to get the bulk of the dollars and amounts to something, in the Defense bill, where you are giving a no-bid contract to private companies. And that's simply not right.

We tell the Federal agencies you have to set up a program for competition, but then we do something else, and it's not right, Mr. Chairman.

And I would urge support for the amendment and yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

I just want to welcome the gentleman from the Northern Marianas to this Chamber, and it's great to have him here. This is something that we have wanted for a long time, to have this territory represented here in the U.S. Congress.

This is a good bill. It's a bill that some of us have worked on for years to ensure that the submerged lands are where they belong, that the ownership is there, and that the rights that accrue to that attain to the Northern Marianas.

So I just stand in support of this legislation. Again, welcome, the gentleman from the Northern Marianas. We're glad he's here in Congress where he belongs.

Mr. Speaker, I raise a point of order against H. Res. 622 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, there may well be unfunded mandates in this bill, but that's not why I rise today. I rise because it's about the only mechanism we have to talk about the fact that we are bringing appropriation bills to the floor under closed or structured rules, which violates basically every precept we've had in this House about openness and transparency on appropriation bills.

For years--and decades--appropriation bills have been brought to the floor under an open rule, allowing Members to offer amendments to various sections of the bill and not be precluded from that. But these bills are being brought to the floor all year under closed or structured rules, allowing very, very few amendments. Let me tell you why that's important.

Here, in the past, when Republicans were in the majority, we were lacking a lot of transparency on earmarks. I would come to the floor and offer sometimes a dozen earmark amendments on the floor to strike earmarks, and I had no idea most times when I would come to the floor whose earmark I was challenging. I would simply come and challenge it. And sometimes the sponsor of the earmark would come down to the

floor to defend it, sometimes they wouldn't; but at least I had the opportunity to come down and challenge the earmark and there was some type of back and forth and discussion of it. Now we have some transparency rules, which is good. Some of us have pushed for these transparency rules for a while. Now we know whose earmark we're challenging on the floor. Now we know because there is a name next to it, and Members are required to fill out a certification letter stating that they have no financial interest in the earmark that they are sponsoring.

Those are good reforms; I'm glad we have them. The Speaker of the House said during the campaign a couple of years ago that we were going to drain the swamp, referring to some of the corruption that had gone on, much of it due to earmarking. And I am pleased that some of these transparency rules have come into being. It's a good thing. The problem is we have not drained the swamp; we simply know how deep the mud is. We know that we have a problem, but we have not done much to correct that problem. Let me give you an example. And this is the case here with this rule and the rules on other appropriation bills this year.

Now we know whose earmarks are in the bills, and we know that some of them raise questions, particularly in the Defense bill that is upcoming later this month. There are numerous investigations going on by the Department of Justice right now examining the relationship between earmarks and campaign contributions. Our own Ethics Committee issues guidance that says if you receive a campaign contribution in close proximity to an earmark that you've sponsored, that doesn't necessarily constitute financial interest; in other words, go ahead and do it. And we have many examples of earmarks going out and campaign contributions flowing in to the sponsor of the earmark. We may not see that as a problem here, but clearly the Justice Department seems to see there is a problem with that.

And so what do we do here in the House? Instead of allowing Members to come to the floor during debate and saying, what about this earmark, what about the campaign contributions that seem to have been received as soon as that earmark was sponsored, as soon as that report came to the floor saying that that earmark was in the bill, why did campaign contributions flow in response to that--instead of being able to examine those things, we've decided to cut off debate.

And so we have transparency rules where we now know whose earmark is in the bill, but we've prohibited Members from actually coming to the floor to examine that. So you have some more transparency, but you've cut out accountability.

Now, we've done a number of appropriation bills, and some amendments have been allowed--very few. I think in one bill there were more than 100 amendments that were prefiled and only maybe 20 or so were allowed. I myself have submitted, in one of the latest bills, about a dozen amendments and was only allowed to offer three on the floor. My guess is that these are going to be narrowed further and further until we get to the Defense bill later this month, which we have allowed only one day of debate for. Keep in mind, this is going to be a bill that will have, likely, if tradition holds, more than 1,000 House earmarks in it, several hundred of which will constitute no-bid contracts for private companies, nearly all of which there will be a pattern of campaign contributions flowing back to the Member who sponsored that earmark.

Now, I am not a fan of public funding of campaigns. That's not the direction we should go. And campaign contributions typically flow to Members who share the philosophy of the person who is making the contribution. But when you have a pattern, as the press has duly noted, accurately noted, that as soon as an earmark is sponsored, often there are campaign checks that come directly to that Member who sponsored the earmarks. There is an appearance of impropriety that we simply have to take account of here in the House.

Our role here in the House and the role of the Ethics Committee is to make sure that we uphold the dignity of this institution, and we simply can't do that when you have the appearance of impropriety. And when you give a no-bid contract to a private company whose executives turn around and make large campaign contributions back to that Member who sponsored the no-bid contract to them, you have the appearance of impropriety. And it is simply wrong for us now to shut down debate on that and to say, all right, now we used to allow Members to challenge these things on the floor, but now that we know that there's an appearance of impropriety, we're simply going to shut down debate, we're not going to talk about it, we're not going to allow that debate to occur on the House floor.

Now, I would hope that these earmarks would be talked about and discussed and vetted in the Appropriations Committee, but clearly that is not the case. If it were the case, if these were properly vetted in the Appropriations Committee, we wouldn't see the scandals that we've seen. We wouldn't have Members of Congress behind bars right now for sponsoring earmarks and taking money for them.

Now, I'm not saying that that's occurring now, but that has in the past. And when we clearly haven't vetted these properly--and we don't do this body any service by cutting off debate on the House floor and saying we're just going to turn a blind eye because there might be a problem, and if we stand on the floor and debate these things, then people might see that there is a problem.

So it's good to have transparency rules. That's wonderful. But once you do have transparency, you need accountability. And when you cut off debate and cut off amendments coming to the floor and bring appropriation bills under closed rules in violation of every tradition we've had in this House, then we've got a problem.

It is said that people outside of the beltway don't care about process, and that may be true. It's tough to make political points about process because it's tough to understand the process of this institution. But bad process always yields bad results and bad policy. It happened when we were in the majority, when we held votes open for 3 hours to allow leadership and others to twist arms. That violated every tradition of the House where you're supposed to only hold votes open for 15 minutes or slightly longer. There's a problem with that. People may not understand that outside, but it leads to bad results. And I would submit that if you shut down appropriation bills, if you shut down the process allowing Members to offer amendments on the floor and just turn a blind eye to what might be occurring, then you're going to have a problem, and you're going to increase the cynicism, rightfully, that people have about this institution.

I have served in the House of Representatives for 9 years. This is a wonderful institution, it really is; and we owe this body much more than we're giving it. And I would hope that the leadership here would exhibit maybe more of a vested interest in upholding the dignity of this institution instead of sweeping these things under the rug and saying let's just not have debate on the House floor because people might see what is occurring.

Mr. Speaker, I hope that, particularly when we get to the Defense bill later, where there are going to be hundreds and hundreds of earmarks that represent no-bid contracts to private companies, that we allow amendments to come to the floor to examine some of these instead of sweeping the process under the rug and hoping that nobody pays attention.

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

Will the gentlewoman yield?

I appreciate that. I'm not going to call a vote on this. I'm not trying to delay the process. We're just given so little time to speak because we're not allowed to bring amendments to the floor that we have to take every opportunity that we can.

I appreciate your yielding.

Madam Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.

Madam Chairman, this amendment would simply strike funding for all of the Member-requested earmarks for military construction projects and would return the money to the various accounts.

I am not here to dispute the merits of any of the earmarks in this account. I have no doubt that each of these projects will vastly improve the quality of life for military servicemembers and for their families, but that is not the issue here. I am here to draw attention to what we have talked about before, and that is the spoils system that these earmarks represent.

There are 109 Member-requested earmarks in the bill; 43 of them are going to powerful Members of Congress who serve in leadership or as appropriators, committee chairs, or ranking members. That represents about 40 percent of the share of earmarks being taken by less than 24 percent of the Members of the House.

I am sure my colleagues will tell me that these projects are sorely needed at the military bases they are earmarked for and that servicemembers will suffer without them, but what about the many installations that don't receive Member-requested earmarks in the bill and the servicemembers stationed there?

Neither Camp Lejeune nor Camp Pendleton received any Member-requested earmarks in the bill. Each of these camps houses a Marine Expeditionary Force comprised of tens of thousands of marines who deploy with great frequency. I am willing to bet that each of these installations have suggestions for new structures to build. Why haven't they received any earmarks in this bill? The answer is pretty simple: Neither of them resides in a district represented by a powerful Member of Congress.

The earmarks in this bill total more than $578 million. That is just a little bit less than the earmark totals for the CJS and Ag bills put together. Of that dollar amount, more than $240 million are being taken home by powerful Members of Congress. That is nearly 41 percent. When you take into account earmark dollars secured by rank-and-file Members in conjunction with powerful Members, that number jumps to more than $300 million, or 52 percent.

So just to reiterate, the earmarks in this bill favor powerful Members by a ratio of 2 to 1. One-quarter of the Members of this House are associated with more than half of the earmark dollars in this bill.

I wish I could say that this is an anomaly, but this is pretty consistent with the rest of the appropriation bills we have considered so far this year, and I have a chart that demonstrates that.

Earmark dollars associated with powerful Members of Congress. Again, those are committee chairs, leadership, or those on the Appropriations Committee, representing 24 percent of the Members in this body. In the CJS bill that we considered earlier, 58 percent of the earmarked dollars went to just 24 percent of the Members.

In the Homeland Security bill, 68 percent of the earmarked dollars went to just 24 percent of the Members of the House.

In the Interior bill, 64 percent of the earmarked dollars went to just 24 percent of the Members of the House.

In the Agriculture bill, 67 percent of the earmarked dollars go to just 24 percent of the Members of the House.

And in this bill, 52 percent of the earmarked dollars go to just 24 percent of the Members of this House. That is a pretty stark pattern.

There are different types of earmarks, obviously. There are those that are simply wasteful. We see those for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and whatever else that is easy to laugh at. Sometimes it is small amounts of money and sometimes it is a lot larger.

And then there are those, particularly in defense bills, where you are giving no-bid contracts to private companies. There is often a pattern of campaign contributions coming back to Members who secure no- bid contracts in private companies. That does not describe what is going on here.

These earmarks, as I mentioned, I have no doubt that they are for a legitimate purpose. But here is another problem with earmarking: It represents a spoils system where rank-and-file Members of the House are not given access to those that others are.

In the Homeland Security bill, it was particularly stark. As I mentioned, a huge percentage, nearly 70 percent, went to just 24 percent of the body. In fact, more than 50 percent went to just 14 percent, those represented on the Appropriations Committee, and these were for predisaster mitigation programs, flood control districts and the like. I don't think Mother Nature decides, I'm going to hit those districts represented by appropriators more than I am going to hit other districts. It is just because they are able to do it, and so they do it. So the rest of the country that competes for these grants on a competitive basis has, at least in that case, 25 percent of that account is earmarked before they can even compete for the rest of the grants that are given out on a competitive basis. Madam Chair, that is just not fair. That is just not the way we should do this. I think we ought to rethink this and we ought to strike that funding in this bill.

Will the gentleman yield for a 15-second clarification?

I thank the gentleman.

The gentleman mentioned that this would cut several programs. This does not cut one dollar. It simply returns the money to the account and the military services would decide where to best----

Madam Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk designated as No. 3 in part B.

Mr. Chairman, on page 128 of the report accompanying this legislation it states, Neither the bill nor this report contain any congressional earmarks. I would have to disagree. The legislation will provide $8 million for the ``one-time special educational, professional, and cultural exchange grant program'' begun in fiscal year 2008. These one-time grants can go for up to a half-million dollars, and the Department of State is to award these proposals on a competitive basis.

Now, I have been a long supporter of cultural exchange programs, both having Americans go overseas and foreigners to come here. I am also supportive of these grants being awarded on a competitive basis. The problem here is the fact that the report also says, The Secretary is encouraged to consider the following proposals for this competitive program, and then it lists several specific exchange programs.

The recommendations of funding for these 12 specific programs certainly look like earmarks to me and certainly look like earmarks to a handful of Members who requested them, so much so that they actually listed the earmark requests on their Web sites--a number of them did. So to them it looked like an earmark; they're putting it in the report.

This year, the Appropriations Committee is telling us that earmarks aren't really earmarks; they're just suggestions to the agencies who are under no obligation to fund them. So my question would be, what is the difference here? And why, if in other bills there are disclosure requirements--certification letters, put your name next to the earmark, other things that we have to do, if those are mere suggestions to the agencies--a ``look see'' we are told by the Appropriations Committee-- what is the difference here where we list several programs that the Secretary should consider?

Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time and hope to be illuminated on this question.

The gentlelady mentioned FY 2008, mentioned there were some 36 listed. Only 24 of those 36 were actually eligible for funding. Half of

those that were eligible for funding did receive the funding, which took over half of the funding that was eligible to be dispersed. And so there is quite an uncanny alignment between what is put out there and what is actually then awarded.

And my question is, with the rest of our appropriations this year, if, as we are told, simply giving the agencies a list of recommendations or a ``look see,'' why is it that the so-called ``hard earmarks'' in other bills require a certification letter, require transparency, and other things, and these soft earmarks here, which act pretty much the same way, require no such disclosure or no such transparency? That's my concern here. And it's long been the concern of many with these soft earmarks.

The agencies have told us that their hands are sometimes too much tied by the soft earmarks. They have programs, and then Members of Congress will say, Oh, yes, we're appropriating money, but it needs to be spent here, here and here. And we all know that the agency knows who butters their bread, who appropriates their money. And they're inclined, particularly when it's the case of a powerful Member, to go along with the recommendations made.

So that's the question I have. It is more of transparency here; why are these earmarks treated differently than earmarks in other legislation?

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

May I inquire as to the time remaining?

I thank the gentlelady.

I have to say, when we debated the Homeland Security bill just a few days ago, I challenged an earmark for a for-profit company, Global Solar.

I was told, no. Even though in the report language it says that the money is to go to Global Solar and there was a certification letter filled out by the Member saying the money is to go to Global Solar at this address, we were told there, well, no, it's going to be competitively bid, so don't worry about that language. It really doesn't mean anything.

So I just don't know what to believe here, if we are told that, well, this isn't like a hard earmark in other bills, and that's what I am being told now, but then I was told on the other bills, well, this isn't really a hard earmark either, but we did have the disclosure requirements there and we don't have them here. So I think it behooves us, until we can figure that out, until we can figure out are these hard earmarks or are they soft earmarks? Are they to be treated differently? Certainly the Members who requested them who actually listed them on their Web site as appropriation requests, they see them as earmarks. So I would think that we need to be careful here.

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

I would ask the gentlewoman, if that's the case, why list them? If they have to compete competitively, why do we list them? Why do we say to the agencies, well, you have a competitive program but we want you to look at these programs, we want you to look at this exchange program, this sister city program, and we're going to list it here in the report? If it's not an earmark, then don't list it and simply have those organizations compete like everyone else does.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in protest of the way we're handling appropriation bills this year.

Traditionally, appropriation bills have come to the floor under an open rule, allowing Members to offer as many amendments as they would like as long as they give notice of such amendments. Now we have this year a process of closed rules, where appropriation bills are brought to the floor under structured rules. Members are limited in the number of amendments they can bring forward. And we're told that we need to do this because Members will offer so many amendments that it will slow the process down.

But when you have bills come to the floor with literally in some cases more than a thousand earmarks that have not been vetted by anybody, and obviously the Appropriations Committee is not vetting these earmarks, then we should have a process where people on the floor can at least see what's in these bills. We're not allowed to do that. We are bringing a bill to the floor today with just a few amendments that will be allowed to be offered.

Mr. Speaker, we cannot continue to do this. We are told that people don't care about process. Perhaps they don't. But bad process leads to bad policy.

I thank the gentlelady for yielding. I rise in opposition to this rule. I submitted a very noncontroversial amendment to the Rules Committee that would have prevented congressional earmarking to any of the funds appropriated to the Federal agencies while carrying out these programs.

My amendment was germane. It would have been in order, had they simply ruled it in order. This same amendment has been added several times both by voice vote and by roll call vote to several other pieces of legislation. So there's no controversy here. But I have to wonder why they wouldn't allow this amendment. And let me just speculate for a minute.

Under this program, which continues to grow, according to CRS, the SBIR awarded $45 million for nearly 700 projects in 1983--the year it was established. By the time we reached fiscal year 2006, more than $1.8 billion was awarded to almost 6,000 projects.

Now these are projects that are awarded by the SBA based on merit, for the most part, I guess. That's the way the program is set up, as it should be if you're going to have a program like this. I can't pretend to be a fan of this program, but if you are, you allow the projects to be distributed--the money for projects, based on merit.

The problem is, as we have discovered here in Congress, one way to ingratiate yourselves to your constituents and to win reelection is to earmark those kind of funds for projects in your home district and to circumvent the process of merit that should go on with the Federal agencies. That's what we have done in program after program after program after program.

We were told, for example, when we had the Homeland Security Department established, and we started appropriating money to it, We will never earmark these funds. Don't worry, we're not going to earmark it. Well, guess what? We're already earmarking. The last bill that came to the floor, the Homeland Security Bill, had hundreds of earmarks in it.

For example, there's a program called the pre-disaster mitigation program. It's supposed to be for Homeland Security to award grants to help communities prepare for disasters.

Well, guess what? Already a quarter of those funds are lopped off the top, earmarked, mostly by appropriators and powerful committee chairs, to their districts. In fact, I think the last figures were 70 percent of the money that was earmarked was earmarked by fewer than 25 percent of this body. So it's a spoils system.

Now this, when you're awarding money to 6,000 projects, this is simply irresistible to Members of Congress who seek to earmark. Mark my words, if we don't put protections in here, these funds are going to be earmarked.

And so the failure to allow the amendment to stipulate that none of these funds should be earmarked should be taken as notice that we're going to start earmarking these funds. And that is unfortunate.

It's part of a pattern, though, that we've seen this year. We are actually

bringing appropriation bills to the floor under rules, under a structured or closed rule, where very few amendments are allowed to even be offered.

We will be considering the agriculture bill. There are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of earmarks in that bill. We will have amendments to strike maybe a half dozen. That's not transparency and accountability. What good is transparency if you can't actually challenge a number of these earmarks?

The real purpose of all this narrowing down the number of amendments that can be offered, believe me, is that we will be appropriating for the Department of Defense later this month. There will be more than a thousand----

There will be well over a thousand, if history proves correct here, over a thousand earmarks in the Defense bill, most of which will be earmarks to private companies, most of which will be in proximity to campaign contributions that will be returned--the circular fundraising that has become a fixture over the past couple of years under Republicans and Democrats in this House.

The purpose of narrowing the amendments that can be offered is so we won't have to face those kind of questions on the House floor. Is this money being appropriated for this company? Is this company or their executives contributing back to the Member who secured the earmark?

People don't want those questions being asked on this floor. That's why you're seeing amendments that won't be allowed in order here. That's what this is about. And it's a shame. We should do better than that. We owe this institution better than that.

With that, I urge opposition to the rule.

Will the gentleman yield?

I thank the gentlelady for yielding. I thank the gentleman from Oregon for clarifying that. All my amendment would do is say that this program should continue to be based on merit rather than be subject to congressional earmarking.

I appreciate what the gentleman has said. Unfortunately, we have seen program after program after program that started off as a merit-based program all of a sudden be earmarked later. All this amendment would have done is what we have done in many other bills by voice vote and roll call, to simply stipulate that in future, or for the life of this authorization, those moneys that are meant for merit-based programs are not earmarked by Congress.

And so I thank the gentleman for clearing that up. I just wish we would have made this in order. The fact that we didn't worries me because this becomes irresistible to Republicans and Democrats alike to start earmarking these funds.

Mr. Speaker, I raise a point of order against H. Res. 609 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).

I thank the Chair.

Mr. Speaker, I raise this point of order not necessarily out of concern for unfunded mandates, although there are likely some in here. I raise a point of order because it's the only vehicle we've got to actually talk about this rule and this bill and how we are being denied the ability to actually offer the amendments that we would like to, to illuminate what's actually in this bill and how this is a break again from the hallmark and tradition of this House, which is to allow open debate on appropriation bills.

We've heard a lot about the sweeping reforms, particularly on earmarks, since 2007. Some of these reforms are good. Some of them-- like requiring Members to put their names next to earmarks, requiring them to sign a certification letter that they have no financial interest in the earmark--are good reforms. They are reforms that many of us in this body have wanted for a long time. But we haven't drained the swamp. All we've done is we now know the depth of the mud that we're wading in, and we're simply not able to hold those accountable who should be held accountable. We have the transparency that we need, some of it, most of it; but with that transparency should come accountability. When you're denied the ability to offer amendments on the floor or are restricted in the number that you can offer, then you aren't able to use that transparency to any good effect.

In fiscal year 2007 during the appropriations process, I was able to offer 40 earmark limitation amendments. These were bipartisan, including eight to the Agriculture appropriations bill. In fiscal year 2008 I offered nearly 50 bipartisan amendments, including five to the Ag appropriations bill. Now last year only one appropriations bill even moved through the House under regular order, the Military Construction- VA appropriations bill. This bill was jammed together with a so-called mini-bus with the Homeland Security bill and the Defense bill. This came to the House under a closed rule. There were no amendments allowed at all. The remaining bills were jammed into a must-pass omnibus bill earlier this year. Only a handful of those were even reported out of committee. That meant that there were over 7,000 earmarks worth more than $8 billion air-dropped into this bill and not one limitation amendment, not one striking amendment, really not any amendments of any kind were even allowed on that bill. So we went through a whole year basically with virtually no amendments offered at all where these bills, these appropriations bills weren't even vetted.

So now we come to this year, and we're told we're going to get back to regular order, we're going to move appropriations bills one at a time and give Members the opportunity to offer limitation amendments. And what do we do? We close them down. The Rules Committee says, Okay, you've offered 12 amendments, maybe you can offer three of those amendments--you choose--on the floor. That's not real accountability. That's not the tradition of this House. That's not an open rule.

And when you see things like this--this is in Roll Call today--The Justice Department this week filed criminal charges against a defense contractor who has received millions of dollars worth of earmarks. Today's Roll Call. Today's Hill--Kickback charges against a defense contractor are putting people in this body, organizations here, in a hard position on whether to return campaign contributions back to the contractor charged with accepting kickbacks in return for earmarked dollars. And yet we're going to be considering the Defense appropriation bill later this month that will contain probably more than 1,000 earmarks from this body, most of them earmarks to for-profit companies, most of which will have executives who turn around and make campaign contributions to the Members who secured the earmarks for them.

Yet I would submit that the purpose of what we're going through now through these appropriation bills is to basically ready this body for the Defense appropriation bill, where people will be used to not offering amendments. Then where we would be able to illuminate a little bit on the floor at least where these earmarks are going, is it proper for this earmark to go to a for-profit company whose executives turn around and make campaign contributions to the Member who secured that earmark for them? Basically Members getting earmarks for their campaign contributors. Instead of being able to stand up and illuminate that, we'll likely be restricted to one or two amendments, or maybe none. That's what we're going through right now, and that's what it's going to lead to.

Now people say that nobody pays attention to process outside of this body or outside of this town. That's largely true. It's tough to score political points saying, The majority party simply won't allow amendments offered on the floor. People typically don't pay attention to bad process. But bad process always begets bad results or bad policy. We learned it on this side. When you hold a vote open for 3 hours--like we did the prescription drug bill vote--

and twist arms, you get a bad result. We added about $11 trillion in unfunded liabilities for future generations. We had several of those, which I think on this side we're probably not proud of. But I can tell you, we always held appropriation bills up, though, and allowed open rules and allowed Members to offer amendments even though it might have been uncomfortable for Members to hear what was being brought to the floor. A departure from that means that we're going to have bad results. We've seen that in the last year or so. When we've restricted the ability of Members to actually offer results, then we have Justice Department investigations because the proper vetting was not done.

Now I would wish--I think all of us would wish--that some vetting would be done in the Appropriations Committee, but sadly it hasn't been done. The chairman of the committee has said many times that they simply don't have the time nor the resources to vet all of these earmark requests, and I believe them. But if that is the case, the answer isn't to shut the process down. The answer is, don't bring the bill to the floor with so many earmarks in it. But here instead of doing that, we're saying, ``All right, we can't vet these earmarks, so we're simply going to close our eyes and pretend that these earmarks aren't there and not allow anybody to tell anybody that they're there. Let's not allow anybody to come to the floor and offer them.'' That is a bad process which leads to bad results.

Now make no mistake, as I mentioned, what we're going through now--I don't think the majority party or the minority party is so much concerned about how many amendments are offered to the Agriculture bill as they are about setting a precedent for what might come later with the Defense appropriation bill. Remember, that is the important one with regard to earmarks for campaign contributors. If we allow a process to develop here where we shield Members and shield earmarks by not allowing Members to challenge them on the floor, then we will get more headlines like this one in the paper today, headlines that we see over and over and over again which have led to investigations by the Justice Department, which have led finally to our own Ethics Committee, finally, hopefully having launched its own investigation. It is unbelievable to me that we have this going on on the outside, and yet we will still go through a process where we allow Members of Congress here to earmark for their campaign contributors. And instead of allowing Members to come to the floor and actually challenge some of those, we shut down the process so they can't. We close the rule so very few earmark amendments, limitation amendments, are even allowed.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

May I inquire as to the time remaining.

I thank the gentleman. I will talk specifically about the Ag appropriations bill. This bill has hundreds and hundreds of earmarks in it. I think there are maybe half a dozen total earmark limitation amendments that are allowed under this rule. That's simply not sufficient, Mr. Speaker. That's not sufficient. We should be allowing more. I understand the other side wants to hide the fact that 64 percent of the earmarks in this legislation are going to just 25 percent of the body, that the Appropriations Committee, which makes up just under 14 percent of this body, actually comes away with 56 percent of the earmarks.

I understand that those who are in charge of this legislation don't want that to be known, but it's still not right to limit the number of amendments that can be offered and to limit the time. So I would plead to not go forward with consideration of this bill under this rule.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

I have an amendment at the desk.

I thank the Chair.

Mr. Chairman, I know that it's a custom to address the Chair. I see the Speaker of the House is in the Chamber. If I could address her directly, what I would implore her to do is to--when we have the defense bill on the floor later this month, please make an open rule. Allow us the opportunity to challenge earmarks in the defense bill and then not limit us to just one or two or three. That defense bill will include literally hundreds and hundreds of earmarks that are no-bid contracts to private companies. And unless we have the ability to challenge them, they will go virtually unvetted because we know from sad experience they have not been vetted by the Appropriations Committee in the past.

I will just draw your attention to a headline in today's Roll Call, ``Justice Department this week filed criminal charges against a defense contractor who has received millions of dollars worth of earmarks.'' There will be another headline tomorrow and likely again the following day. We have investigations swirling outside. We have to be able to challenge these earmarks and to point out why it's wrong for this body to allow Members to earmark to their campaign contributors.

So while the Speaker is in the Chamber, I would just implore her--if I could speak to her directly--to allow an open rule, allow more debate on this subject.

But to the merits of the challenge to this earmark, this amendment would remove $638,000 in funding for the Beltsville, Maryland, Agricultural Research Center and reduce the overall cost of the bill by a commensurate amount.

According to the report accompanying this bill, this earmark is described as the, quote, Foundry Sand By-Products Utilization in Beltsville, Maryland.'' But if you look at the table that is in the report for this bill, it says that that research project that is going to the Foundry Sand By-Product Utilization is actually completed. So

it's a bit confusing as to what this earmark is actually for. There is a little different language in the certification letter and in the table that accompanies this bill. So I would ask the sponsor of this earmark to explain why we're earmarking funds seemingly for a project that has already been completed.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

The gentlelady mentioned that these are Federal employees in a Federal institution and a Federal facility that would be receiving these earmarks and has great trust that they will do the right thing in executing this earmark. I just find that curious that the main reason that we have earmarks, supposedly--we continually are told--is because we're not going to let these faceless bureaucrats at Federal agencies decide where to spend our money. Yet we're saying that they can't make those decisions but they can carry out the earmark. I can tell you why it's done and why you will have both the minority and the majority in this House today on the Appropriations Committee oppose this amendment. It's because if you look in the ag amendments this year, 64 percent of the money, of the share of earmarks, 67 percent of the dollar value are going to either appropriators or powerful Members, either chairmen or ranking minority members of committees.

This is fairly consistent across all the appropriations bills we will do this year. It is a spoils system. That may be a pejorative way to say it, but I don't know how else to say it when 64 percent of the earmarks in this legislation will go to about 24 percent of the Members in this body. We continually say, like I said, that these faceless bureaucrats shouldn't be deciding where our money goes. If you are a rank-and-file Member in this House, I would take my chances with a faceless bureaucrat because you would probably fare better than you would before the Appropriations Committee. And this is how it is year after year after year.

Gratefully, we know it now because we have enough transparency where we know who is requesting the earmark. But this isn't right, and there are other worthy projects that might deserve this funding, but because a powerful Member is able to request it, then it goes there. And this is, I think, the fourth time that money has been appropriated for this project, which, according to the Web site of the requesting Member, the project has been completed. So I'm not sure exactly where the money is going if the project has been already completed. I guess it is starting again.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

I agree with the gentlelady when she says there is more transparency in the system now. That is true. That is a good thing. But we haven't drained the swamp. We simply know how deep the mud we are now in is. That is the problem. And the problem is when we trust the Federal agencies to carry out an earmark like this but we don't trust them to direct it.

We should set parameters. We should tell the Federal agencies, Here is how you should distribute the money, instead of saying, All right, I'm a powerful member of the Appropriations Committee or of leadership and I'm going to direct that money to my district.

I urge support of the amendment, and I yield back.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. Chairman, this amendment would remove $1 million from the University of Georgia's Agricultural Energy Innovation Center, located in Tifton, Georgia, and reduce the overall cost of the legislation by a commensurate amount. According to the sponsor's Web site, this funding would be used to advance farm efficiencies by coupling advanced information communication and control technologies with improved plant materials, byproducts use and energy capture and conversion techniques.

That sounds pretty impressive. I'm sure a lot of that is going on. The sponsor states this earmark is a good use of taxpayer dollars because the research and the demonstration project will facilitate the rapid advancement of new tools to increase the net production of energy from agriculture.

There is a lot of this going on around the country. We have appropriated a lot of money in a lot of bills to do this kind of thing, and it just strikes me as folly to, in a bill like this, just to be able to direct money for a Member to say, All right, the university in my district is going to get this research money. They won't have to compete for it on merit. They won't have to compete for it because I'm going to earmark it, and they are going to get it when maybe a university elsewhere, the University of Nebraska, the University of Minnesota or University of Arizona, might want to compete for that project but they can't because the money is earmarked and it goes specifically to this university.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

According to the Georgia Department of Economic Development, Georgia currently has over $2 billion worth of active renewable energy-related products and is a leader in the bioenergy revolution. I have no doubt that that is true. And because that is true and because if this Agriculture Energy Innovation Center truly has merit, then they should be able to compete for these grants with other land grant colleges, with other universities, and with other organizations that are doing this same research.

My question is why, if you have such a deserving, respectable program like this, why do we need to earmark these dollars at all? Surely they can compete for it and do well. But why do we circumvent the process of competition simply because we are on the committee or we are a powerful chairman or a ranking minority member or somebody who can get this funding and earmark it so that nobody else can compete for it? That simply doesn't make sense.

If we don't like the way that the agencies are disbursing this money, then, by golly, we ought to address it. That is our job as Members of Congress. We have the power of the purse. But, instead, to say we don't like how that faceless bureaucrat is going to direct the spending so we are going to create a parallel process in Congress where we can just circumvent the process and earmark that money for our own university, that is simply not right, and it has gotten out of hand in this Congress.

Some people will point out that this year earmarks are down in this bill. That is a great thing, but they are not down far enough. We need a process that is competitive, that is based on merit and not based on the spoils system.

Again, I repeat, in this bill, 24 percent of the Members of this body will control more than two-thirds of the money that is directed through earmarks. Now, that is not because there is more merit in those programs. It is because we have powerful Members in those positions. And you can't make the argument that, oh, this is a land grant college or this is a deserving institution. If they were, they could compete for those dollars. But instead, we are circumventing that process of competition and awarding by earmark through the political process. Particularly when we have the kind of deficit that we have today, this legislation would strike this funding and reduce the cost of the bill by a commensurate amount.

How can any fiscal conservative say that we don't want to do that in this year when we are running a deficit that could reach $2 trillion? I would say it is time. And if we can't do it here, where will we do it?

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

May I inquire as to the time remaining.

I am glad to hear the gentleman is introducing an amendment later that will save $400 million. I will gladly vote for the gentleman's amendment. I hope we will vote for mine.

We need to not only save $400 million; we need to save another million here. Why not, if it will reduce the cost of the bill by a commensurate amount, why wouldn't we take every opportunity to lower the deficit that we have and to pay down the debt?

We are in an awful fix here, and we are digging deeper and deeper with a bill like this that increases the overall spending by, I think, 12 percent from last year to this. Why not take every opportunity to cut the spending.

This is an opportunity. I plan to vote for every amendment that will cut any funding from this bill. But, please, if we have an opportunity here to cut $1 million, I would hope that we would do so.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

I have an amendment at the desk designated as part D No. 12.

This amendment would remove slightly more than $1 million for potato research in Idaho, Oregon, Washington, and it would reduce the overall cost of the bill by a consistent amount.

Now, if you like earmarks, then this spud's for you, I guess. But if you don't, and if you think that we need to save some money somewhere, then I would urge support for this amendment.

According to one of the sponsors of the earmark, the potato industry generates about $3.4 billion throughout the State of Washington. In Idaho, the potato industry contributes nearly half a billion dollars in wages. Potato sales equal about $7 billion annually.

According to the USDA, last year potato farmers received nearly $3.9 billion for their crop. Now, how is it that this industry that receives billions of dollars a year isn't expected to invest in its own research? I know that it does some, but why are the taxpayers year after year ponying up more money to a $7 billion industry? This is a drop in the bucket to the industry, but a million dollars is a lot of money to the average American family.

According to one of the sponsors' Web sites, every dollar invested in potato research yields a $39 return. I would submit that for those of us who believe in the free market, that any dollar invested that yields a $39 return, then private industry will do well investing in its own research. We don't have to ask the taxpayer to pile on.

Potatoes were first introduced in the United States in the 1600s. They are now the fourth largest food crop in the world. They have sustained nations in time of famine due to their ability to survive in many climates, and they are inexpensive to harvest. Seventy-nine percent of U.S. households consume potatoes at least 1.8 times a week. I am included in that number.

I just don't know why we are asking, again, the taxpayer, to fund research over and over and over again for an industry that can clearly support itself here.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

My issue is with overall spending, one; two, is with the need to earmark. If this funding is receiving earmarks, basically, about a million dollars a year, when clearly you have an industry that is capable of funding its own research, now, I agree with the gentleman's point about this isn't one of the program crops; it's not wheat not corn. It's not a crop that gets massive subsidies under the farm bill. We shouldn't be doing those subsidies.

But two wrongs don't make a right. We shouldn't say, well, hey, we are subsidizing those, so we ought to bring some subsidy over here as well. The truth is we can't afford either of them now. We have a deficit of nearly $2 trillion this year. When I came to this institution just 8 years ago, our entire Federal budget was just around $2 trillion. Now we are going to have a deficit that equals that amount.

Can't we in this year at least say, you know, maybe we ought to cut back on potato research just a little. Maybe we ought to cut back on other earmarks in this bill because we are simply adding to the debt, adding to the deficit more than we can take.

So it's not just that I have an issue with agricultural research spending, but I do have an issue with the way it's allocated. Because, as I have already demonstrated, this is awarded based on a spoils system.

When just 14 percent of the Members in this body, those who are represented on the Appropriations Committee, direct more than half of the earmark spending in this bill, you have got a spoils system. I don't know what else to call it.

And that's one issue with this bill and why I am offering these amendments. And, two, if we don't like the way the Federal agencies are doing it, then we should direct them to do it differently. We should set parameters, but we shouldn't set up a parallel system and say, you award it that way, but we are going to direct ours this way.

I reserve the balance of my time.

I find it a curious assumption that the free market will not invest in research when one of the sponsors' Web sites, as I mentioned, states that every dollar invested in potato research results in a $39 return.

Now, any, any hedge fund, any investor of any type.

You bet, sure.

I don't understand. I am sorry. If the return on investment, if the potato industry gets a return on an investment of $39 for every dollar returned, then it does reap some of the benefits. Yes, that potato is a public good, but it's also a private profit, unless we have socialized potato farming here, and I don't think we have.

I urge support of the amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.