Floor Statements

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I call attention to this earmark today because there is so little information available about its purpose. It appears inconsistent with the program that would fund it.

The committee report lists this earmark, for the Science Museum of Virginia, in the Biological and Environmental Research program.

My amendment would prevent funding for this purpose.

I know that some museums do scientific research, but the background research on this earmark turned up very little by the way of research being done by the Science Museum of Virginia.

As an aside, I would note that the museum will soon open a traveling exhibit on candy, sponsored by the Jelly Belly Candy Company. It does not sound like much research to me.

I know that the Science Museum of Virginia was created by State law, and I have a basic understanding of the mission of the museum, and the intentions are certainly worthy.

The museum says it is currently raising funds to restore and remodel parts of the building; to add classrooms, meeting facilities, a library, a cafeteria, and office space; for new landscaping, new parking facilities, and exhibits.

But why are Federal funds being used for these projects? It just isn't clear to me how the museum serves a Federal function when it comes to biological and environmental research.

Again, that is the program through which we are funding this museum. I am sure that the museum is funded in part by admission fees and also by State tax funds. I would think there are also private donors who fund it. Again, what is the Federal purpose being served by funding this earmark? How should we explain this one to the taxpayers of Arizona or California or Iowa or Michigan or anywhere else outside the State of Virginia?

I am afraid that fiscal discipline and transparency is such a thing of the past that we will begin to see museum exhibits about it.

I just don't see why we are doing this, why we are funding this type of museum out of a program that is supposed to be for scientific research.

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield such time as he may consume to the sponsor of the earmark, Mr. Scott, and I would just like to ask him what kind of oversight is offered. Is there a reporting requirement? How do we know the museum is actually spending the money for scientific research rather than having the traveling exhibits from the Jelly Belly Candy Company?

Mr. Chairman, I simply think this is a great example of the problem with having so many earmarks, over 10,000 earmarks in any given year, in all appropriation bills. As the minority leader mentioned yesterday, we simply don't have the staff or the resources to police these earmarks to know if they are going for the intended purpose and for oversight.

When we try to figure out which of the hundreds of earmarks to actually bring up here, we will often try to find out about the earmark. Sometimes the only information we have is from the press release that the Member who requested the earmark put out. The Federal agencies have nothing. Perhaps we can go to a Web site for the recipient of the earmark.

But in terms of oversight, there is virtually nothing. We are just approving $100,000 here, $200,000 here, $5 million there, until it adds up to hundreds of millions of dollars with virtually no oversight; nobody to check back. Then, when we try to actually conduct proper oversight of Federal agencies, it is almost a laughing matter because we have already stipulated that they spend funds for a museum. In one case last year, it was money for a museum in the Defense appropriations bill, and there are several museums in this piece of legislation.

I would submit that we have got to get a handle on this. We have to change the process. That is why we are here today, because I have exhausted every other avenue privately. This is the only place we can actually exercise any oversight, right here, in 5 minutes, to look at this earmark and look at the millions of dollars that are spent elsewhere.

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

Mr. Chairman, can I yield to the ranking minority member and ask: Has there been any hearings on this project, the Virginia Science Museum?

Okay. Does anyone know? Have there been any hearings, or has this ever been authorized?

All right. Thank you.

Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

This is an earmark for the Mystic Aquarium and Institute for Exploration. These are divisions of the Sea Research Foundation, which is a nonprofit institution. According to the Foundation, its mission is to inspire people everywhere to care about and protect our oceans by exploring and sharing their biological, ecological and cultural treasures.

According to its Web site, the Mystic Aquarium is a nonprofit organization whose donations and revenue from admissions go to the development and execution of educational programs, marine research, marine animal rescue and deep sea expeditions.

This is a good thing. I am sure it is a great museum. Corporate membership in the aquarium includes Foxwoods Resort Casino, American Laboratory Trading, CL&P, Coca-Cola, the Kraft Corporation, Hubbell Manufacturing, Monsanto and Pfizer, to name a few. Donations from these entities pay for some wonderful things. The aquarium is a recognized leader in aquatic animals and archeological exhibits and also a recognized leader in oceanic research.

Let me say again, Mr. Chairman, these are very good things. This is wonderful that they are doing these things. But with all the groundbreaking research and programs at the aquarium, why is it then that the taxpayer should fund $400,000 for this research and environmental center at the Mystic Aquarium? Where is the Federal nexus?

With so many private partners and local funding sources, why do we involve ourselves? There are aquariums all over the country. If we decided that we were going to give an earmark for every one, how would we fund it? How do we pick and choose between this one and that one or this one and that one?

I would submit that we simply can't, and we shouldn't. We ought to have a process that doesn't allow individual members to say, I think I need that money for my project in my district. When we do that, we simply get away from what we are all about here. We have a process, authorization, appropriation, oversight, and we seem to have ignored the end of each of that, the authorization and the oversight, and we just do the appropriations.

When we do that, we get ourselves in trouble. We embarrass ourselves with some of the earmarks that we do.

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I would simply say again there have been no hearings on this project. There will be no oversight hearings to see if the money is spent properly, and it is an earmark, so it is not authorized. So we have circumvented the process again. When we do that, when we circumvent the process and we do not have direct oversight, we diminish our ability to offer credible oversight.

Again, when we tell the Federal agencies, the Department of Defense, for example, you ought to be spending more money on body armor, they come back and tell us, hey, we cannot because you stipulated that we spend a million dollars in our defense budget for a museum in New York.

It is like that in bill after bill after bill. And those who say these earmarks do not cost any money, if it is not spent here it will be spent somewhere else, don't tell the full story. We are often earmarking accounts that we have not earmarked in the past. Those accounts are for maintenance, say the FAA to maintain runways and towers. Well, they will come back to us next year and say you earmarked our accounts for maintenance, so you have to backfill this account. So we have to appropriate more. So these do cost.

If we just got rid of these earmarks, we could lower our allocation in this committee and let us spend it on defense or give it back to the taxpayers. Let's do something else. So the notion that we heard a lot of yesterday that this will not save any money to knock out earmarks is simply wrong.

If the Appropriations Committee would say they are not going to do earmarks this year, they could lower their allocation by the total amount of earmarks. In the bill yesterday, it was about $500 million.

This is the only forum we have to stand up for 5 minutes on some of the amendments that we choose to highlight to say this process has gone awry and we need to change it.

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

At what point do we admit we are out of control with earmarks? Would it have been at 5,000 earmarks a year? 6,000? 8,000? 9,000? 10,000? We are well above that. We have grown in the past decade. I think it has been an 872 percent increase in the number of earmarks. The dollar value has increased substantially as well.

Yesterday, we had the ranking minority member concede we have no idea, and it is ``grotesquely out of control'' were his words. We have that concession on that side.

On this side we are saying that as well. We do not have a way to police these earmarks or to provide oversight. At what point do we say we need to sit back and go through the regular authorization appropriation process in Congress?

Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

This earmark provides close to $2 million in Federal funding for a publicly traded natural gas corporation to do research and development on an air conditioning system that uses natural gas instead of electricity, a so-called GEDAC.

I am not disputing the potential benefits of GEDAC technology for consumers and natural gas companies. Homeowners are demanding year- round comfort in their homes, particularly in Arizona, wanting to stay cool on hot days and keep warm on cool days at an affordable cost.

GEDAC use in the Southwestern United States has the potential to save significant electrical power and reduce water usage. The gas industry has long sought to sell more natural gas for cooling during the summer months. However, I cannot see the role of the Federal Government in sponsoring corporate research and development that would seek to give one industry a leg up over another. How can we pick winners and losers?

The Southwest Gas Corporation boasts more than a million customers, many of whom are in my State. They want more customers, as they should. This earmark seeks to subsidize natural gas technology with Federal money at the expense of other industry sectors.

According to the most recent quarterly report, Southwest Gas Corporation reported more than $3 billion in assets and after-tax income of over $48 million for last year. Beyond that, the defense authorization that was recently reported out of committee includes more than $6 million for GEDAC demonstration projects.

Not only are the American taxpayers supposed to help develop the technology to expand the gas company's market share, but we are footing the bill for road testing it as well. We have to be careful, I believe, when we have earmarks for nonprofit corporations and others. I think we have to be doubly careful when we are actually funding a for-profit corporation and just handing them a check and saying do some research. How do we choose that company over another?

I happen to know the people at Southwest Gas. They are fine people and have a fine company, but why are we saying we are going to give them an earmark and not others?

Another problem here, the earmark we have chosen to highlight here is $2 million in Federal funding. This is in Nevada. We found out only after offering the amendment there is an additional earmark for this same company. It is on another page and it simply doesn't say Southwest Gas. I think it is for another $3 million. So there is some $4.8 million that is being spent to subsidize a private company. I would submit that is not our role.

We get in the business of doing this, spending the taxpayers' money this way, and also picking winners and losers in the economy. It is something that we should not be doing.

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

We are told that the only decision is to either spend it ourselves or leave it to those amorphous bureaucrats in Washington. How about leaving it to the market? That is where things like this are developed. Why are we choosing one? And I would have to dispute the characterization of this money going to Oak Ridge Laboratory.

If this money went straight to Oak Ridge Laboratory, I believe it would say that in the earmark. All we have to go on is what we have here, and that is part of this process, why it is so bad. We have not had any hearings on this subject. There is no other documentation than the committee report; and the committee report, like I said, we only found out later that there were actually two earmarks because one of them did not say the company, but the company says to Southwest Gas.

Is the gentlewoman saying that the money is not going to Southwest Gas, that none of the earmarked funds go directly to Southwest Gas?

Mr. Chairman, I would say to the gentlewoman that all we have to go on is the language in the committee report.

That is part of what is wrong with this process. We have no oversight. The Federal agencies don't know what is going on. We heard this story about an earmark that worked. We always hear those when we are doing these earmarks. We never hear about the massive failures that go on as well or the massive waste that goes on.

We have no idea how, if that money had not been spent by us, by Congress or the bureaucrats, how, if companies would have been able to keep more of their tax dollars, they might have done something even better or even faster. We just don't hear that.

So it is simply a false argument to say that the font of all knowledge is here in Congress, and we can outguess the market. We can do better than that simply by saying I know my district, and I am going to put that money there. That is a good company. I like them.

Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

When I first saw this earmark, this is for Center for End-of-Life Electronics in West Virginia, I thought that it might have something to do with improving treatment technology for terminally ill patients. It is not.

This earmark is about the end of life for electronics, that is, computers, televisions, cell phones, et cetera. This earmark intends to help a single organization that is in the business of recovering the components of electric devices that can be recycled or that could be environmentally hazardous.

My amendment would simply prevent funding for this purpose. As with many of the earmarks I pointed out recently, there is simply no explanation or justification in the bill or the committee report. My staff, trying to find out where this earmark came from or what it is to do, had to finally look at a press release that mentions other funding secured for this organization. So I assume it is for the same purpose. We simply do not know.

Again, no hearings, no authorization, no method of oversight here. Evidently, the program has received $3 million in the past. Now it needs another $600,000.

I would ask the gentleman from Ohio, Mr. Hobson, what oversight has been exercised over this program up until this point, if he knows. Public institutions and private groups in Davisville, West Virginia, have partnered and established A Center for

End-of-Life Electronics to seek solutions for electronic waste.

What Federal role does this particular center fill? How should we explain this one to the taxpayers of Missouri or Connecticut or Arizona or any other State outside of West Virginia? I welcome the justification for a Federal function in this case. But then I ask, why are we picking winners and losers throughout the earmarking process?

Again, we are choosing one organization. If this recycling operation and others like it or any organization or business wants to exceed and excel, we should let them compete freely in the marketplace. Let's keep Congress out of it.

I am sure there are many other electronics recycling operations throughout the country, but we are favoring just one of them with this earmark. I don't think that the Congress ought to be making calls like this. I am certainly not capable.

I know my district pretty well, but I don't think and I wouldn't presume to say that a center in my district is the best in the world in end-of-life electronics. That is simply a call that we shouldn't be making. Rather than seeking to salvage electronic components, Congress should be intent on salvaging the process by which we spend tax dollars.

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Let's get back to this specific earmark. I would like to know, like I said, all we know is what we gleaned from the press release, because there is no other information available at all. But the press release indicated that there was just the latest traunch of funding that had already gone to this project.

Would the ranking minority member happen to know if any oversight has been conducted on funds that have already been provided to this project?

I yield to the gentleman from Indiana.

Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, I take it I am not going to get an answer to this. All we know is from a press release, and we know that this is simply the latest traunch in other funding that has been provided.

What I hear, and I guess the author is not here of the amendment or, I am sorry, the author of the earmark, the sponsor of the earmark, that no oversight has been conducted.

Do we feel comfortable going ahead and appropriating more when no oversight has been conducted at all on what has already been expended?

I yield to the gentleman from Indiana.

Yes.

I am very concerned about the lack of oversight on an annual basis for, say, tax provisions in this country.

Ninety-six percent of the earmarks that we passed last year were in conference reports that were just spending construction to the agencies. The agencies have very little knowledge that the funding is even there, yes.

The problem is, if you want little oversight on your earmark, if you want it to continue without scrutiny, it pays to be vague about your earmark, vague about its goals, vague about any benchmarks that there might be. Because as soon as you spell it out and leave a paper trail, you are subject to an amendment. If you don't, it might be ruled out of order.

Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Chairman, this is $750,000 for the Missouri Forest Foundation. This foundation has been funded for at least 3 years, and is funded through the Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Program earmark section of the bill. The section of the bill includes more than $50 million in congressionally directed research earmarks. According to CRS, earmarks in the appropriations for the Renewable Energy program have tripled in the past 3 years.

According to the Office of the President and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, this level of earmarking hampers the program from being able to achieve its research goals. Let me say that again: According to the Office of the President and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, this level of earmarking hampers the program from being able to achieve its research goals.

It was these kinds of earmarks in the fiscal year 2006 appropriations that the National Renewable Energy Laboratory said caused a $28 million shortfall and forced them to lay off 32 positions. While these positions were ultimately restored, this shows the downside of earmarks and how they can wreak havoc on the administrative agencies.

The Missouri Forest Foundation, an education and research foundation of the forest industry, supports the research and implementation of a program that would utilize wood biomass to produce energy. The task force mission is to develop a program where wood products from Missouri are fully utilized, solving forest health problems and current energy issues.

Bioenergy ranks second to hydropower in renewable U.S. primary energy production and accounts for 3 percent of the primary energy production in the United States. While I support a diverse energy sector, I cannot see the benefit of earmarking a program to the point of ineffectiveness.

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Chairman, before yielding 1 minute to the gentleman from Texas, let me just say that we are again faced with a false choice here. The notion is, should we spend it, or should the administration spend it? Perhaps it shouldn't be spent at all.

I would submit, if we are spending $700,000 or so for the end-of-life electronics project in West Virginia, we are spending too much money, the government is as a whole, whether it is us or whether it is the administration.

So the choice isn't, should we spend it or should they? Maybe we should just have a smaller budget.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Hensarling).

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, again, I thank the gentleman from Texas for his comments. It couldn't be more true. At what point, where do we say, let's stop? We have grown earmarks in the past decade 872 percent. When is it enough? Do we earmark every account in the

Federal Government? Do we look at those agencies and say, we know better than you do?

What about the maintenance accounts that they have? What about other things that they come back to us the next year and say, you shorted us? You earmarked this account. Now we still have to maintain this runway or this tower or perform this maintenance, and then we have to up the funding again.

I will say again, my colleague in the Senate described earmarks as ``the gateway drug to spending addiction.'' Once we start with earmarks, we just can't stop spending in other areas.

I would submit that if you look at the Federal budget growth over the past several years, a lot of it is due to earmarks, simply because you get earmarks and they leverage higher spending everywhere else.

You look at how few votes there are against these appropriation bills in the end when you know more people are opposed to much more in the provisions. It is because they have earmarks, and they have to support it.

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Chairman, this will be my final amendment, at the risk of hearing cheers from the gentleman from Idaho.

Mr. Chairman, this is $1 million for the Juniata locomotive shop. I believe that it goes to a locomotive shop owned by Norfolk Southern. I can't know for sure, because there is no description of the earmark anywhere in the bill.

Let me read a quote from Norfolk Southern Chairman David Goode in 2005: ``Thinking back to the beginning of my rail career in the late 1960s and early 1970s, rail systems were failing badly. There were strongly held beliefs that we were headed for a failed and nationalized system. In that context, you began to realize the strength of an industry that rebuilt itself, albeit with a lot of government policy help, although essentially no government money.''

But now it seems that we are giving them money as well.

Again, here is a situation where we know so little about this earmark, and this seems to be the only forum where we can find out about it. When we come and debate it on the floor, we might get a little window into the process and see what this is about: Has this been authorized? What is the process of oversight? That is what we are here for.

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Chairman, let me just make the point that why would we assist only the locomotive sector? What about construction vehicles, highway vehicles? Again, we are picking and choosing, just based on our decisions. We are not the font of all knowledge.

And if we decide that we are just going to direct every bit of spending and that we are not going to have oversight because we have directed it and therefore we need no oversight, and all we have in terms of oversight is this 5 minutes that we have really never exercised before to question an earmark when it comes to the House floor, Mr. Chairman, I would submit that we have a broken process here. It is simply wrong. We cannot be doing this.

Again, let me just simply say, when do we concede that we are out of control? It was 5,000. We are up to over 10,000 earmarks a year. When it is too much?

In 1987, President Reagan vetoed the highway bill because there were 152 earmarks. The last highway bill we passed last year had over 6,000. Other bills have had similar increases in earmarks. And yet we say it is not enough.

If we know our own districts and we know how to direct spending, then why not direct it all? Why not earmark every account?

Again, we have demonstrated again and again, some of the authors of these amendments have not even shown up to defend them. We do not even know if there is any oversight for previous earmarks or for the ones that are here now. Yet we just blindly just say, all right, if a Member wants it, let's approve it.

I would simply submit that we have got to stop that. We have got to stop that. We are out of control. We have a fiscal train wreck coming up when it comes to entitlement spending and discretionary spending.

And this notion again that cutting those earmarks is not going to save money because it will simply be spent by the government agency is simply not true. All the committee had to do was the 302 allocations, and then they can simply say let's designate that for war funding. We know we are going to spend that money. You can reallocate before you report the bill out of committee.

So this notion that, okay, we are here, we might as well spend it or the administration will, that is simply a false choice. We are here as legislators. Again, as I said yesterday, we are not potted plants. I think taxpayers expect us to make hard choices, and we are not making them.

We are basically saying, if you can justify a project in your district, if you think it is a good idea, then we ought to fund it, by golly, and there ought to be very little oversight, because you know what is best for your district.

That is not the best way to go. We are not the font of all knowledge. We cannot outguess the market. We try and try and we will come up with an example of where this earmark led to this discovery or that, and we ignore that when we take money from the taxpayers and spend it on a teapot museum or on the Punxsutawney Weather Museum in Pennsylvania or on the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame or on the Baseball Hall of Fame, then we are taking money we should not take from the taxpayers at all.

Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding and for his leadership on this issue.

I would like to respond to Mr. Frank of Massachusetts about whether or not Republicans are free market oriented or not. I would like to respond, but I cannot. I honestly have no response to that. I honestly cannot understand how we, as Republicans, can pretend to be in favor of free market economics and still support this kind of program. I do not know how long we can do it and still say that we are free market oriented.

I think it was said best by former Senator Phil Gramm a while ago when he was asked about farm policy and these types of subsidies. He said our farm policy would make a Russian commissar puke. I do not know how to improve on that. You just look at these programs and say, how can we do this year after year after year?

It is said that this does not cost anything, that this is a no-cost program. Well, the sugar program and its price supports, its import quotas and production allotments is not no-cost.

According to the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development, monetary transfers to producers from consumers and taxpayers as a result of government policy amounted to over half their gross receipts in 2002-2004. Half of the gross receipts from these sugar producers came from either consumers or taxpayers because of government policy regulating the price.

In the year 2000, a GAO study estimated the cost to consumers in 1998 was $1.9 billion. No cost? It is nearly $2 billion of cost.

It is a benefit to producers of about $1 billion and a net loss to the U.S. economy of $900 million. The sugar program is a classic example of the principle of concentrated benefits and diffuse costs.

Nobody is going come here and lobby to Congress because a candy bar costs a cent more or two cents or five cents more, but sugar producers are sure going to lobby when they reap huge benefits.

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding. Let me just talk about some of the groups outside that are supporting this amendment.

This is the Consumer Federation of America: ``American consumers pay almost $1 billion per year for sugar and products containing sugar than they would if the U.S. market for sugar were fully competitive.''

The National Taxpayers Union: ``Sugar interests like to make the claim that the Federal sugar program is run at no cost to the taxpayer, yet they conveniently ignore the cost of staffing and operating the bureaucracy necessary to run this monstrous program.''

Also, we talked about the cost to the consumer that is borne, about $1 billion dollars a year.

Consumers for World Trade: ``The U.S. sugar program is an outdated entitlement program that props up uncompetitive farmers at the expense of American consumers.''

The sugar program is making it increasingly difficult to have real free trade agreements because it is impacting on the Doha round, and any other round we have on trade negotiations it makes it more difficult because of trade distorting practices like our sugar program.

The Competitive Enterprise Institute said: ``How can a domestic program that raises a family's cost, harms the environment, and hurts poor farmers in developing countries be justified?''

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Before addressing this particular earmark, let me make a few general comments about what we are going to do today.

Today we will engage in a debate that has been a long time in coming. I plan to offer several amendments to this bill to block funding for a series of Member earmarks that are contained in the committee report that accompanies the bill.

Let me point out that the House has already voted in the lobby reform bill a few weeks ago to require that Members attach their names to their earmarks; yet this committee report has come to the floor with more than 400 earmarks and not one name. They are not required to do so until the bill passes both Chambers, but it would be nice to have the names attached.

Let me state from the outset I am under no illusion that I can block funding for any of these earmarks we will discuss. I am well acquainted with the process of log rolling where one Member agrees to support another Member's earmarks if that Member will agree to do the same. I suspect that log rolling will prevail here today.

But it is about time that we provide a little window into the process. Is it the Federal Government's responsibility to recruit dairy farmers from other regions to move to northeast Iowa, as one of the earmarks we will discuss today purports to do?

Is the need so great this year to fund the National Grape and Wine Initiative that we should add $100,000 in debt owed by future generations?

Since our responsibility as Members of Congress is to prioritize limited resources, do we really want to tell taxpayers that we believe that spending $180,000 on hydroponic tomato production is more pressing than other issues?

I expect that a few of the amendments I will offer today will be successfully blocked because of a point of order. The reason: because we have no documentation that a Federal agency that will fund the project knows anything about the project that is to be funded.

To successfully challenge the earmark requires an assumption that the agency is familiar with the project. Otherwise, we might be legislating on an appropriation bill, a violation of our rules. The incentive, therefore, for Members looking to protect their earmarks, is to be either vague or silent about the project's goals and its oversight.

Let us think about that for a minute. How are we supposed to exercise oversight for these earmarked projects? Who is to be held accountable? Not the government agency. By upholding the point of order, we are stipulating that the agency might as well not even know that the project exists.

In the end, since rank-and-file Members can't even challenge those earmarks without being subject to a point of order and the agencies don't know

anything about them and since we don't even know who requested the earmark in the first place, the only individuals who have any oversight function are selected members of the Appropriations Committee or their staff.

Mr. Chairman, it does not speak well for us as legislators when the first and last documentation of these earmarks is found in Members' press releases. I would like to think that we can do better than that. I think that all of us were elected to this august body with higher aspirations than to grovel for crumbs that might fall from appropriators' tables.

We need to reform the process. We need to get back to the process of authorization, appropriation and oversight. That is what this branch of government is supposed to do. We diminish ourselves at our office when we stray from that course.

This particular earmark or this particular amendment seeks to strike funding for an earmark to provide $229,000 to retain and grow the business of existing dairies and recruit dairy farmers from other regions to northeast Iowa. What business is it of the Federal Government to recruit dairy farmers to move from other regions to northeast Iowa?

This work is to be carried out primarily at the Northeast Iowa Community College Dairy Center, and it is funded through the Cooperative State Research, Education and Extension Services Extension Activities. The agricultural appropriation bill for fiscal year 2007 includes more than $750 million for extension activities, which is more than $5 million last year and $26 million over the President's request. I should point out, funding for this program was not included in the President's request.

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time.

The only reason we limit it to dairy education in Iowa is to ensure that our amendment was made in order. Believe me, if there were dairy education for Arizona, I would strike that as well. We simply shouldn't have programs like this.

Let me just say, according to the Iowa State Dairy Association, the Iowa State dairy industry contributes more than $1.5 billion to the economy and provides more than 26,000 jobs. I would submit that spending $229,000 isn't going to do much to change that trend one way or another. It is simply something we shouldn't do.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

The committee has provided $350,000 for providing analysis of the impacts of trade, environmental, monetary, and other policies on the Nation's fruit and vegetable industry to stakeholders. This research is to be carried out by Arizona State University and the University of Missouri. I should note that Arizona State University has a campus in my district.

The original goal of the research was to respond in a timely manner to requests for policy-relevant information from congressional Members and their staffs on a wide variety of topics that impact the fruit and vegetable industry and consumers. The project also develops 10-year baseline projections on production, prices, consumption and trade for the fruit and vegetable sector. The funding is through the Cooperative

State Research, Education and Extension Service's Special Research grants, which are congressionally directed and noncompetitive research earmarks awarded to universities. Again, these are noncompetitive research earmarks awarded to universities.

The agriculture appropriations for fiscal year 2007 includes more than $100 million in these earmarks, many that have persisted for years and can only be terminated by Congress.

The Fruit and Vegetable Market Analysis has been receiving Federal funds since 2002 and has received more than $1.3 million in appropriations. This earmark, again, was not included in the President's request and this project has no formal evaluation. There is no expected completion date with this analysis, and it is expected to be ongoing.

Here is another example: There are so few opportunities for oversight here. When you contact the Federal agencies, it is difficult to even determine if they know that these projects exist. Who is supposed to be providing oversight here? In Congress, we are not, certainly. I mean, a lot of these programs, some of the earmarks that we will discuss today were expected to be 2-year programs. They have gone on for over a decade. When do we say, enough is enough? Where is the oversight? If the Federal agency is not providing the oversight, if they do not even know of the program, and Congress is not providing the oversight, how do we know that we are getting our bang for the buck?

These are pork barrel projects. We should not be funding them.

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 2 minutes.

It strikes me as odd that the Appropriations Committee claims that this is money that is going to be spent anyway. We have no control. This is money, if we knock it out of here, it will just be spent elsewhere.

What are we here for? Are we potted plants, just here to watch money go out the door?

We are here to prioritize. We are here to say, this ought to be funded, that should not be funded.

Last Friday, we had a great discussion about the Military Quality of Life bill, where there was funding in there that was put in emergency category. Surely the Appropriations Committee or the House as a whole can say this $500 million that we are doing in earmarks here in the agriculture bill perhaps could go to Military Quality of Life. Why can we not do that?

This notion that we have no control and we cannot move money from one account to another is simply absurd. We can. We are Members of Congress. That is what we are here to do, to prioritize. So I completely reject the notion that we cannot do this.

Also, on the subject of earmarks versus entitlements, I think my colleague in the Senate said it well: Earmarks are the gateway drug to spending addiction. Once you get earmarks, then it is much easier to get other spending as well. A lot of the entitlement programs that we have expanded, the prescription drug benefit, for example, was made possible because of so many earmarks on other bills.

Earmarks are a problem. It does add up to real money. I believe the transportation bill last year was some $27 billion in earmarks. That is not chump change. And I think that Americans all over are concerned about this and rightly so.

Also, when you have a process here where there are no names attached to the earmarks, we do not know how to find out about these programs.

We simply don't know. We contact the Federal agencies. Half the time they don't know about the programs. Where are we to provide oversight? That is one of our responsibilities, and we are not doing it here.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, in this 30 seconds, let me explain that the Appropriations Committee, all they have to do is tell the Budget Committee we would like a lower 302(b) allocation. The Budget Committee, believe me, will be glad to do that.

I am offering 11 amendments today. The FY 07 agriculture appropriations bill has more than 450 amendments; 450. That is nearly identical to the 10-year average, according to CRS.

Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Chairman, this amendment for the Food Marketing Policy Center is a Connecticut earmark. The committee has provided $579,000 for a center that analyzes strategies and public policies

that impact the marketing of food as well as food safety marketing.

I would ask again, what business is it of the Federal Government, with far higher priorities, to fund an earmark like this? I would say again to those who say, well, if you strike funding for this, the funding will simply go to the agencies and they will spend it on their own, we can instruct the Budget Committee, again, to say please lower the allocations. Let's spend less on earmarks and spend more on body armor or something else. We have the power to make those priorities, yet we are not.

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume to ask the gentlewoman if she would engage in a colloquy on this.

May I ask how long this program has been in existence?

Approximately is fine.

Has there been a marked improvement in the way we have studied these issues? Didn't we get along just fine before this program existed?

Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, should we not have similar programs for other industries, perhaps have other earmarks to help us analyze the cost of computers?

Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, I thank the gentlewoman. It makes the point why we have over the past decade increased the number of earmarks by, I believe it is, 872 percent. That is not something as a Republican that I am proud of at all. We had just under 15,000 earmarks in all appropriation bills last year. Who knows where it will go, unless we get a handle on this process.

It simply is wrong for Members of Congress to be able to take an amount of money and designate it for one particular group with no real oversight. As I mentioned, too few of these earmarks can even be challenged like we are challenging these today because you might be ruled out of order because the Federal agency has no record or no idea what the earmark is actually doing. We have a process that is out of control.

Let me mention, as well, we haven't mentioned the other side of earmarks. We have one of our former Members in jail right now for basically selling earmarks. Jack Abramoff reportedly referred to the Appropriations Committee as an ``earmark favor factory.'' Those are his words, not mine.

We have a process that is out of control, nearly 15,000 earmarks. When you have that many, with very little oversight, it is ripe for abuse; and we simply have to change the direction we are going. That is the larger point.

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

Mr. Chairman, may I inquire as to how much time there is remaining?

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, at no time have I tried to associate anyone here with the actions of the former Member. At no time have I done so. And I apologies if that inference was gained.

But we have a process here that is bad, that there are too few controls. That particular Member was able to get his earmarks through the entire process without being challenged, without one person being able to stand up and say, you know, are those earmarks going for the right purpose, or are they going off for some other purpose?

That is what this earmark battle is about. And I agree with virtually every word said by the gentleman from Wisconsin, and I want to work with him on systemic reform. We got some of that in the lobby reform bill that we passed a few weeks ago. We need far more of it. We need far more than just transparency.

Mr. Chairman, you have got to have accountability as well. This is one part. Being able to challenge earmarks. No Member ought to assume that they can get a project for their district and not ever be challenged on it, to explain what it is about. That is what this debate is about.

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Chairman, this earmark is a greenhouse nurseries earmark, $726,000 for greenhouse nurseries in Ohio, an increase of $5,000 over last year. This was described as intended to develop marketing plans to showcase this industry that has branded itself as the Maumee Valley Growers.

Mr. Chairman, let me just make the point again. I do not know what else to do here. I have been screaming for 5 years that earmarks are out of control. Yet in that same 5 years, we have doubled, probably quadrupled the number of earmarks that this body has in the appropriations bills every year. I do not know what else will work, what other avenue do rank-and-file Members who are not on the Appropriations Committee have to point out the absurdity of funding some of these items, only to be told, well, do not take this opportunity, challenge it another way.

I would like to see, where? Where do we have the opportunity? Why should we not have the opportunity to stand in this body and challenge the earmarks that Members get? Why should any Member have the opportunity to earmark a certain amount of money for his or her district, or for a particular company or non-profit organization or group of individuals, without being challenged on it?

Where is that right or so-called right that we have to do so? I simply do not see it. And I have looked, believe me, for years for opportunities to say, we are out of control. The gentleman from Wisconsin mentioned, I thank him for doing it. He says we are out of control. There is no way we can police the number of earmarks. There is no way that we can actually have real oversight here.

But if I cannot stand up and challenge these earmarks, what am I to do? What are other rank-and-file Members to do? Where is the forum if not here on the floor of the House?

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Chairman, I would simply point out that one of the amendments I offered is actually to cut funding that goes to my State. I would simply point out again, last year there were more than 10,000 earmarks worth $29 billion. I would say, again, to the average American, that may not seem like much to us, but it seems like a lot to them. It is a lot to all of us.

And as mentioned before, earmarks are the gateway drug to spending addiction. When we get earmarks, it is much easier to vote for other things as well. The gentleman asked why we do not attack some of the other spending and look to entitlement spending.

Twenty-five Republicans voted against the prescription drug benefit. We have worked to limit that program to where we can afford it. We added more unfunded liabilities to Medicare than exist in all of Social Security with that single bill. We voted against it.

We offered alternative legislation. We tried to rally our colleagues to vote against it. What else are we supposed to do there? Here, with these earmarks, what other forum do we have to say, let us cut back somewhere, somewhere. On the road to 10,000 earmarks, cannot we just say, we have gone too far? Can we change this process?

If we are funding, I would submit, greenhouse nursery earmarks, $726,000, we have not scrubbed this bug well enough. And the notion, again, that if we do not spend this money here, it will just get spent elsewhere demeans us as legislators, because it is our duty to actually police how this money is spent. And if it is not going to be spent here, then, again, let's go to the Budget Committee and say, we do not need this big of an allocation.

Let's put it to the war effort. Put it to pay down the debt, somewhere else. But this process, it ought to be authorization, appropriation, oversight. And somehow we have neglected the first two, authorization and oversight. And all we do is appropriate. And then these earmarks, very few of them actually have any oversight, these special research grants, there is some kind of reporting there. But in most of the earmarks, there are not.

As I mentioned, most of the agencies do not even know that these are being funded, or do not even know what the program is, they simply fund them. They do not have the opportunity to exercise oversight there. And we do not certainly exercise the oversight here.

Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Chairman, the goal of this project, the aquaculture in Ohio earmark, is to foster the development of a statewide aquaculture industry in Ohio.

Again, I have to ask the threshold question here: Where is the Federal nexus? Why are we taking taxpayer funds from someone in Maine and putting it here in aquaculture in Ohio? How do we make that leap that it is our responsibility as legislators to do that?

Again, we can save this money. This money does not have to be spent. All we have to do is say change our allocation. Give less money. We can take some $400 million we are spending in Member earmarks and pay down the debt, fund the war effort, anything else but these earmarks, I would submit.

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I thank the gentleman for making those points. They are good ones. We have failed in our oversight function. But I would submit it is very difficult to criticize the Department of Defense for not buying sufficient body armor, for example, when we have instructed them with an earmark to spend more than a million dollars on a museum in New York with a congressional earmark, with a Member earmark. So we demean our role in oversight of the Federal agencies when we have instructed and stipulated that spending be on aquaculture in Ohio.

It is very difficult to, with a straight face, tell the agencies you are misspending the taxpayers money when we are doing this. So we have a process that is a great process. This was set up right in this country. Authorization, appropriations, oversight. If we do not like the way the President is submitting his budgets or his recommendations, then in authorizing bills, let's say don't do that; these are the only programs that we are going to authorize.

The trailers that ended up in Arkansas, I could not agree more. That was our mistake for giving $12 billion up front to FEMA. We should have said, let's have smaller trounces. Come every week and justify what you have done. Some of us recommended doing that. But it was not accepted, and we ended up with trailers in fields that are still in Arkansas. So we have a process. We need to follow it. We need to get back to it. That is what we are recommending here.

Some people point out that earmarks have been around as long as Congress has, and I suppose that is true to some extent. But everyone knows, over the last decade in particular, we have simply gone hog wild with earmarks. We simply have to get this process under control.

As the gentleman from Wisconsin pointed out again, we simply do not have enough staff to police this. We are out of control and if not to stand up here and challenge earmarks, I am at my wits' end. I do not know what else to do. I am frustrated. I am frustrated. I think a lot of us are. I know the taxpayers are. So that is why we are going through this process today.

Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I thank the Chair for his and this body's indulgence.

This is a hydroponic tomato production earmark that we are challenging here. Again, let me make the broader point, what business is it of the Federal Government to pick winners and losers in the economy, to decide that

we ought to be promoting hydroponic tomato production earmarks instead of promoting the cherry tomato or grape tomato or others out there that any Member could get an earmark for? Why is it this is important and the others are not?

We as legislators have to decide how we are going to husband the Nation's resources. I would submit that when we have 10,000 earmarks a year or more and when we are growing it at a rate of 872 percent over the last 10 years, at some point, I do not know where that point is, maybe it is with hydroponic tomatoes, some point we have got to take a stand and say enough is enough. We simply cannot continue spending money like this.

Again, let me just point out the notion that we cannot cut spending, that this money if it is not going to be spent here it will just be spent somewhere else by the administration is false. We can spend less. We can cut our own spending. We can cut our own allocations and say we simply do not need to spend this much money.

Again, we are not potted plants here. We are legislators. We are here to make these decisions. I would submit that when we are spending $180,000 on hydroponic tomatoes that something has gone awry and we have lost our focus. That is what this debate is about.

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Chairman, in response I would simply say I reject the premise that we cannot cut spending. This notion again that we will not save anybody by getting rid of earmarks. It is valid. This isn't a debate in a vacuum that really does not matter. If we reform the way we do earmarks, we will save significant money. I do not know about you, but $29 billion seems like a lot to me, $29 billion last year in appropriation earmarks. That is a lot of money. It adds up. A billion here and a billion there, soon enough you have got real money.

So this notion that we cannot save and we are just throwing out a couple of names here, I would like to bring all 450 Member earmarks to the floor that were in this bill. Simply we do not have the time and we do not have the patience and I understand that. But how else can we highlight this? What other forum do we have? Believe me, if it is there we have used it. We have got to start somewhere. I think we have got to make a stand.

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

To the gentlewoman's points, we do in Arizona get subsidies. We should not, particularly with cotton. Cotton is very water intensive. We receive subsidies in cotton in many ways, particularly through the farm bill. I would ask you, please join me in opposing the farm bill next year. We will have an extension of the farm bill perhaps this year. Please join me in opposing it for subsidizing far too much as well.

We are spending too much money. It is not just in earmarks here, but it is other areas as well, but if we say we are not going to cut it in earmarks or other ways, where do we cut it? That is why our budget is simply growing and growing.

I yield to the gentlewoman from Ohio.

Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, I thank the gentlewoman for that point.

We do have a problem entering into free trade agreements because we subsidize our agriculture so much. It is complicating the Doha round right now. We are limiting the markets that we can sell into because of our own subsidies.

The country of New Zealand a few years ago thought they could never get away from agriculture subsidies. They just up and said one day, we are not going to do it anymore; we cannot afford to anymore. People predicted that their agriculture would drop considerably. It has not. They have thrived. If we simply trust in the market here and let the market take over, we would be far better off.

But in this point, again, I would make the point, we can save money here. Earmarks are costing us a whale of a lot of money, not just because of the money in the earmarks themselves, but in the amount of funding that they leverage elsewhere because when you have an earmark in an appropriations bill, you had better not vote against that appropriations bill or you might see your earmark vanish. So it is not just the money in the earmarks, it is the money that is leveraged.

Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Chairman, the bill that you mention is a perfect example. We do not need earmarks like this. We knocked all the earmarks out. We survived just fine. Members survived just fine. They were reelected. They came back. That was the only Labor-HHS bill I have ever voted for because it did not have earmarks. We finally got it right. We ought to continue it.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. Chairman, the committee has provided $6,371,000 to provide science that addresses problems with harvesting, transportation, manufacturing and marketing of economical forest products. For all the talk about, we are cutting too much timber and we are doing too much of this, to provide this kind of subsidy for research on how to do it just seems to me out of line.

Let me just point out, some of these earmarks we have been talking about have been just a few hundred thousand dollars, not that that is small money, but this one is $6 million. If we looked since 1985, this program is the wood utilization program that received Federal funds in excess of $86 million. So it goes on and on and on.

This earmark was not included in the President's request. The United States is the world's largest producer of lumber and wood products used in residential construction and in commercial wood products such as furniture and containers. The United States is also the leader in the pulp and paper business, producing about 34 percent of the world's pulp and 29 percent of the world's output in paper and paper board.

The forest products industries is a strong contributor to the Nation's economy, employing close to 1.3 million people in all regions of the country, ranking among the top 10 manufacturing industries in 46 States. Why in the world do we need to be spending over $6 million a year to talk about wood utilization? Again, let me repeat: The United States is the leader in pulp and paper business, producing 34 percent of the world's pulp, 29 percent of the world's output in paper and paper board, employs more than 1.3 million in all regions of the country, among the top 10 manufacturing industries in 46 States. Yet, we need a program that one of its goals is funding also goes towards educating graduate students to be knowledgeable in wood as a renewable resource?

Now, we have been doing this program since 1985. I think wood has been around a lot longer than that. I think people know what a valuable resource it is. I do not think we need to be spending $6 million more in taxpayer money again this year to educate graduate students in wood as a renewable research.

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute of my time to the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur).

Mr. Chairman, I want to just say to the gentleman from Idaho that I appreciate working with him in this process to reform the earmark process. His insights as a member of the Appropriation Committee have been valuable, and he has agreed that it is a good thing to have Members' names attached to these earmarks.

When people wonder why we are seeking this process now and how we

are to provide oversight, I can tell you that with 450 earmarks in this bill, not one name was attached. That is why it has been a great process here today to see some of the authors, the sponsors of the earmarks come to the floor; otherwise, we wouldn't have known, unless you can find it in a press release somewhere, that they sponsored this legislation.

We are looking for sunlight here. We would like to provide oversight, but it is difficult when we don't even know. We got the report last week. How are we supposed to scrub this?

Let me also say that the executive branch doesn't always spend it wisely. All you have to do is drive through the fields of Arkansas and see those trailers and realize they bungle it often. What I am saying is that we diminish our credibility as those conducting oversight when we insert stipulations like this, when we say you have got to spend money on the Punxsutawney Weather Museum in Pennsylvania, or we have to spend $6 million on wood utilization that we have been doing for almost 20 years and we never seem to get out of.

We diminish our role as the conductors of oversight when we so trivialize this process and ignore the authorization and the oversight function.

Mr. Chairman, I yield back.

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Again, this is another example of the Federal Government funding a program that can and is funded by the private sector. I should note here the vision of the initiative says: ``By 2020, the American grape and wine industry will triple its economic impact and become the undisputed world leader in consumer value and sustainability. The target is an economic impact of $150 billion within 16 years. This is based on a conservative estimate of current annual impact of approximately $50 billion a year.''

I would submit that if an industry out there has a $50 billion-a-year impact on the economy, $50 billion, then the Congress need not spend $250,000 for strategic research and a plan to enhance the grape industry's competitiveness and contribution to the U.S. economy.

I can tell you what the contribution is to the U.S. economy. We have been told. It is about $50 billion a year. Yet here we are spending $250,000 for strategic research to enhance the grape industry's competitiveness and contribution.

Again, if we are going to get control on spending, we have to start somewhere. I would submit this is a great place to start.

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

Mr. Chairman, I would simply make the point again: a $50 billion industry I think probably has the means at its disposal to fund this kind of research that we are talking about and could perhaps fill the void.

A $50 billion industry could fill the void of $250,000 that is given back to the taxpayers or spent in another area. If you can find a definition of corporate welfare in the dictionary, this would probably be it. A $50 billion industry, and yet we are giving them $250,000 to have research carried out to enhance the industry's competitiveness and contribution to the U.S. economy.

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time.

I want to thank Members for their indulgence. I know it is not easy to sit through so many amendments in a row. I appreciated this process, for one actually to see and hear people defend their earmark on the floor. That is something which has been missing. As I mentioned, you see 415 projects in the report; no description really of them, and no Members' name attached. You could not call them and ask, what is this about? So the only way you can do that is come to the floor and do what we just did.

I would submit that we need to do a lot more of it, and we need to get back to authorization, appropriation and oversight. Let me say again, when we are spending money like this, then we seem to have money to throw around, and I would submit that the average taxpayer in California or Oregon or Arizona or anywhere would look at this and say, why are we taking my hard-earned money and spending it to give $250,000 to the grape and wine industry that means about $50 billion to the U.S. economy? That is not a prudent use of taxpayer resources.

Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

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

I rise in support of the gentleman from Texas' (Mr. Hensarling) point of order. If you look at the description of the bill here, you have a couple of pages. The first page has to do with what is being termed ``emergency spending.'' Let me simply note that these are items that the President has requested.

Now, I have often and all of us have been critical of the White House at times for designating emergency spending when it really is not an emergency. They did not designate one of these items. There are 20 spending items here, mostly facilities and barracks. Not one of them was listed by the White House as emergency. Yet they have been listed here as an emergency and I would submit simply to make room for other projects.

If you look at some other projects that are being funded that are not emergency, tell me if you can see a difference. Number one, there is an item that is an emergency, $18.1 million for bachelor-enlisted quarters at Camp Pendleton. All right. That is one that is an emergency.

Here is one that is not an emergency, $6.7 million for a special weapons assessment facility in Crane, Illinois. How can you designate one as an emergency and not another?

Here is another example: $3.5 million for a block and brace facility at Blue Grass Depot, Kentucky. That is an emergency apparently.

Second, $8.7 million for replacing a troop facility training facility in Savannah, Georgia, that is not an emergency. Tell me where the difference is.

Let me go on: $102 million for a brigade complex in Fort Lewis, Washington. That is an emergency.

There is another $18 million for a maintenance hangar in Fort Hood, Texas. That is not an emergency.

I yield to the gentleman from New York.

Let me just go on. That is $508 million we set aside as a down payment on the supplemental, the war supplement coming up. We are simply taking from that, and that will be money that will not be spent in the supplemental later on or should be designated for the supplemental later on, but we have designated it saying it is emergency when there is really no difference between the categories here.

I would submit that if you really want to fund, as we are adding here $16.5 million for a rotary wing hangar in Qatar, then perhaps you ought to cut out $2 million for a child care center which is funded here in the bill that is not being challenged here in Redstone Arsenal, Alabama, or you could take out $9.8 million for an educational center complex in Little Rock, Arkansas, if you truly need to spend money, as we say we do, for Predator various facilities at Indian Springs, Nevada.

Now let me just give one more example: $9.7 million for an indoor wash rack in Washington. Perhaps you could take money from that and spend it, if we really do need it, on $3.1 million for shoot houses in Korea.

What I am saying is there ought to be integrity in the budget process. We did pass a budget. The ink is not even dry and here we are using a means to evade it, to actually get some head room up here so we can spend money on other priorities and earmarks.

I do not think it is lost on anyone that the earmark total in the bill is nearly $500 million, almost the same total here that was added as head room, so that we can spend these other dollars.

So I hope that the point of order on all of these is sustained. Let us bring some integrity back to the budget process.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.

I rise in support of the rule and the underlying bill. The Forest Emergency Recovery and Research Act is a great piece of legislation. Not only is it going to be good for our forests and for our environment, it saves the taxpayers money as well.

This will reduce spending by about $21 million from 2007 to 2011 and $23 million from 2007 through 2016. In addition, the CBO has stated that over $122 million in additional receipts will be generated by the agencies. This is money that will then be available for restoration, reforestation and additional research.

As a result of catastrophic events and natural disasters, there are over 1 million acres of public land in need of reforestation. My home State of Arizona had a devastating fire a couple of years ago, burning over 400,000 acres. Much of that acreage is in Arizona.

I happened to drive over the weekend to my hometown of Snowflake and to see the forest that was devastated by that fire or those fires that is still yet to recover at all because we have not had people go in and actually manage the forests as it ought to be managed.

This legislation will help cut through that red tape. It will save agency money. It will save the taxpayers money, and with $21 million in savings over 5 years, the opportunity to restore thousands more acres, this is the answer to what we have been looking for.

I urge my colleagues to support the rule and the underlying bill.

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding. I want to commend the gentleman from Texas for putting this budget forward and for working so hard on it.

It is simple to support this budget. This budget balances the budget within 5 years without tax increases. That is what we ought to support. Anything less is not doing justice for the generations to come who are going to be saddled with this debt unless we take bold action like this alternative budget. With that, I urge my colleagues to support it.

Madam Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Madam Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Madam Chairman, in 2005, the Ports of New York and New Jersey received $6.7 million for port security. Seattle-Tacoma received $7.3 million, and the State of California received $33 million.

The Long Beach-L.A. port received $24.2 million alone from Homeland Security. All of these came from Homeland Security grants. These funds are also in addition to the funds raised by security fees charged by these ports on shipping to pay for port homeland security costs.

This is a mechanism that the ports can use to cover their costs if they need additional money. No major U.S. shipping port is not in compliance with Coast Guard security requirements.

If $400 million is not to get them in compliance, I think we really need to ask, what is it for? Now, the White House has some ideas on this. They just released the ``Statement of Administration Policy.'' And the White House says: ``Given the significant resources dedicated to port security today, and requested in the budget, the administration believes that a new grant authorization would duplicate existing authorities and may inhibit the administration's ability to target resources most effectively to the sectors of the Nation's infrastructure that face the highest risk.''

Rather than creating a new Federal homeland security grant program, we need to first get control over the grant programs that we have. The gentleman from New York (Mr. Weiner) just listed some of the grants that have been issued.

And it is simply appalling to see how this money is often being spent. In Kentucky, an anti-terror grant was awarded to the State to probe bingo halls. Over $500,000 was spent so that the Town of North Pole, Alaska, could get security rescue and communications equipment.

In my home State of Arizona, the town of Peoria got a homeland security grant to buy a tactical robot. In my own district, the City of Apache Junction received nearly $300,000 for 19 traffic preemption devices which are remote controls that change a street light from green to red or red to green.

Madam Chairman, I am not saying that these things are not needed, but I am saying that we ought to question whether it is the Federal Government's responsibility to fund them or if this money ought to be spent in areas with a greater threat.

I would submit that if we create this new program without first getting ahold on the grant programs that we have, we are going to see the same problems in port security. We are going to see grants frittered away on things that we do not need, rather than things that are truly a threat.

I simply do not believe there has been a clear case made as to why the taxpayers should pay $400,000 for this new program given the existence of all of the other programs as well.

Let me just restate. All major ports are in compliance with Coast Guard security requirements. The President says that it is duplicative and unnecessary and that $173 million has yet to be awarded from 2006 grants. The fiscal year 2007 budget includes $600 million for targeted infrastructure protection grants which include ports.

Also I point out again that ports charge fees to the shippers. If they believe and if they need to increase their security to come into compliance, they can charge extra fees, as it should be. Then the users are actually paying rather than the taxpayers as a whole and the money will be far better spent.

Madam Chairman, I believe that we need this amendment. We ought to have this amendment to have a little fiscal responsibility. Some may say, this is just an authorization. It is not saying that we will appropriate it. But as soon as we authorize it, then if we do not fully appropriate for it, then we are accused of not fully funding the program.

We are bitten by that all the time. I would say, let's step back now and say, let's be as fiscally responsible as we can.

Madam Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Chairman, in response to that, the Long Beach Port received $24.2 million, I believe, the following year from the Federal Government. This is in addition to the moneys that they receive by charging a fee on shipping.

The money that the Federal Government pays is minuscule compared to that amount that comes charged by fee. What this amendment is about is saying that as the President has said, as the White House has said, let us target our homeland security money where it is actually needed.

When we continue to dole out money, these kinds of grants, the kind of formula grants that we have, we continue to see the money spent in ways like buying fitness facilities for fire departments or whatever else.

We simply have higher priorities. And heaven knows, we have got a tight budget and we ought to prioritize here.

Madam Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Chairman, I like sunsets, everybody in Arizona likes sunsets; but if we truly believe that this is really going to be sunsetted,

then we are kidding ourselves, and if we spend $400 million on a grant program that the President even says that we do not need here, then the sun has set on fiscal responsibility.

Madam Chairman, I yield back.

Mr. Chairman, I commend the leadership for bringing this bill forward. We can beat up on lobbyists all day long. It is an easy thing to do. There has been a lot of it going on; and, in the end, it is neither here nor there, in my view.

What is important is what we do to reform this institution and our own behavior. Part of our behavior that needs reforming is earmarks. Over the past 10 years, we have seen earmarks explode from some 2,000 in all appropriations bills to more than 15,000 today. That is simply, simply unacceptable.

What this legislation does is put a Member's name next to every earmark and ensures that anyone in the House can challenge that earmark at any point in the process. That is real reform because what we need is accountability and transparency. This bill goes a long way toward doing that.

Could it go further in certain areas? Sure it could. We will see some of those in the amendment process. But it is a start, and it is something positive, and we ought to take it in particular regard to earmark reform.

Again, I commend the leadership for bringing it forward and plan to vote for it. I urge all Members to do so as well.

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

This amendment would simply clarify the application of criminal bribery and illegal gratuities statutes with regard to earmarks. Specifically, this amendment would bolster the bribery statute in the criminal code by adding earmarks, as defined by this bill, to the statute. This is the first time we have ever defined earmark in this bill, and so I think it is appropriate to ensure that we add it to the bribery statute.

This will mean that the law would prohibit a person from, directly or indirectly, corruptly giving, offering, or promising anything of value to any public official with the intent to influence any official act relating to an earmark.

The amendment would also prohibit a public official from corruptly demanding, seeking, receiving, accepting, or agreeing to receive anything of value in return for influence in the performance of an official act related to an earmark.

Recent bribery scandals have brought to light something that fiscal conservatives on both sides of the aisle have been talking about for years, that the number and dollar value of earmarks are out of control. Lobbyists, Members, earmarks, and campaign contributions have, unfortunately, been inextricably linked in the Duke Cunningham scandal. It was reported that Mr. Cunningham actually had a bribe menu on his congressional letterhead, that he actually offered earmarks in exchange for money. How many more stories are we likely to see unless Members realize that this is a serious matter?

It is my hope this amendment will bring more attention to this ongoing problem by adding earmarks to the bribery statute. I believe that this will bolster the already meaningful earmark reform in the underlying bill.

Again, I thank the Speaker, the majority leader, the chairman, and Chairman Sensenbrenner, also, in the Judiciary Committee for help with this amendment.

I yield to the gentleman from California.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from California (Mr. Dreier).

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I would just point out, Mr. Chairman, there is nothing wrong with redundancy, but this is more than that. This is the first time that we have actually defined earmark in this underlying bill, and it is appropriate when we have defined earmark to then apply a criminal statute to it, and that is what this is an attempt to do.

The point was made about Duke Cunningham. As I mentioned, he reportedly had a bribe menu on his congressional letterhead. My guess is that if there was a statute like this and earmarks defined like this that it would have given him second thoughts before he went down this road. I hope that is the case. That is the purpose of this amendment, and I am pleased there seems to be broad acceptance of it.

Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, will the gentlewoman yield?

Mr. Chairman, I would just point out that had any of us known Mr. Cunningham had been bribed for the earmarks he got, it is still unlikely we would have been able to go and challenge those earmarks. The underlying bill will at least make that possible, where his name would have been next to it and we would have had an opportunity during the House consideration of the bill and even perhaps in the conference process.

I thank the gentlewoman for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, this isn't the first time the Congress has debated the effects of public campaign discourse. Let me take you back to 1798, when about 20 or so independent newspapers aligned with Thomas Jefferson started openly criticizing the policies of John Adams, the President. Adams used his power and influence to have Congress pass the Alien and Sedition Acts, which declared that the publication of false, scandalous, and malicious writing was punishable by fine and imprisonment. By virtue of this legislation, 25 editors were arrested and their newspapers were forced to shut down.

The first amendment was established to ensure that citizens are able to protect themselves from government, not so that government can protect itself from the people. If this bill passes, we will be standing here having the same debate in a couple of years on how to regulate 501(c)4 organizations. 501(c)4s require no disclosure and have no contribution limits. They will surely become the 527s of 2008 if this legislation passes.

This legislation, H.R. 513, simply compounds an existing problem. Loopholes will always exist, because there will always be money in politics. Instead of stifling speech and forcing it to go underground, we ought to be lifting up other players in the political system and provide more freedoms with greater transparency and more accountability.

Where will this lead? That is the question. If Republicans happen to lose in November, lose the majority, what happens when Democrats try to level the playing field by applying the so-called fairness doctrine to radio talk shows? Surely the Democrats will make the same arguments about Rush Limbaugh that Republicans are making about George Soros.

Back to the implications of the Alien and Sedition Acts. Americans were smart enough to realize what President Adams was using. He was using the powers of government to stifle free speech and they reacted accordingly. Public opposition to the Alien and Sedition Acts was so great that was a large reason Adams was defeated by Thomas Jefferson a few years later. This is history worth remembering, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, as Members of the House of Representatives, we are aware of the awesome power that we have to make laws under which

we all are governed, but we are also uniquely acquainted with our own limitations. Polls may indeed show that a majority of our constituents today would simply like to see our current immigration laws enforced, but we are in a position to know that such is unreasonable.

Deciding whether our role is to lead or to follow is not a new conundrum. During the Constitutional Convention in 1787, George Washington counseled: ``If to please the people we do what we ourselves disprove, how can we afterwards defend our work?'' It might be comfortable in an election year to warm ourselves by the populist fire that we ourselves have stoked, but it is not leadership.

Leaders appeal to the better angels of our nature rather than bow to the manifestations of our baser instincts. The standard bearer of the modern conservative movement, Ronald Reagan, understood this very well when he talked about the shining city on the hill. In his farewell address he described this, ``a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity, and if there had to be city walls,'' he said, ``the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will to enter.''

I hope that that is how we see it today.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to comment on section 302 of the Children's Safety and Violent Crime Reduction Act of 2006. This section is based on an amendment that I offered, and that was accepted by voice vote, to H.R. 3132, a predecessor version of the Children's Safety and Violent Crime Reduction Act, on September 14 of last year.

Section 302 is named after Kenneth Wrede, a young man who served as a police officer in West Covina, California. On August 31, 1983, Officer Wrede responded to a call about a man behaving strangely in a residential neighborhood. Wrede confronted the man, who became abusive and tried to hit Wrede with an 8-foot tree spike. Wrede could have shot the man, but instead attempted to defuse the situation. The man then reached into Wrede's patrol car and ripped the shotgun and rack from the dashboard. Wrede drew his gun and tried to persuade the man to lay down the shotgun. The man did so, but when Wrede lowered his revolver, the man picked up the shotgun again and shot Wrede in the head. Officer Wrede was killed instantly. He was 26 years old.

Officer Wrede's killer was sentenced to death in 1984, and that conviction was affirmed by the California Supreme Court in 1989. Then in 2000--17 years after Ken Wrede's murder--a divided panel of the Federal Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reversed the killer's death sentence. The Ninth Circuit found that the killer's lawyer provided ineffective assistance of counsel at the sentencing phase of the trial because he did not present additional evidence of the killer's abusive childhood and chronic use of PCP.

When the Ninth Circuit handed down its ruling, Officer Wrede's mother simply noted that, ``We thought we finally were close to getting this behind us. And now this.'' (Gordon Dillow, Long Wait for Justice Gets Worse, The Orange County Reg., May 11, 2000, at B01.) A California Deputy Attorney General denounced the court's action, commenting that ``it can always be suggested a jury should have heard something else in the penalty phase of a death penalty case.'' (Richard Winton, Reversal of Death Penalty in Officer's Killing Decried Courts, L.A. Times, May 10, 2000, at B3.) West Covina Corporal Robert Tibbets, the original investigator at the scene of Wrede's murder, described the Ninth Circuit's decision as a ``miscarriage of justice.'' (Id.) He had promised Officer Wrede's parents that he would accompany them to every court hearing for their son's killer. He made good on his promise. Nineteen years later, in 2002, Corporal Tibbets was there with the Wredes when their son's killer was given a second sentencing trial and was again sentenced to death.

But the Wredes now face yet another round of state-court appeals for their son's killer, and that litigation will be followed by a new a battery of federal habeas appeals. At the 2002 retrial, Ken's father noted that ``my family and I had endured 19 years of trial, appeals, delays, causing us to relive the trauma of Kenny's death over and over again.'' The trial judge noted the absurdity of this system. He stated, ``It is an obscenity to put anyone through this needlessly for 19 years. It is inexcusable for us in the system that we need to look at this case for 19 years to get it resolved. The system at some point in the line has become clogged and broken.'' (Larry Welborn, 19 Years and No Resolution For Parents, The Orange County Reg., Sept. 21, 2002.)

My amendment will prevent injustices such as the one inflicted on the Wredes. It will guarantee that federal jurisdiction will not be used to reverse criminal sentences and force a repeat of the litigation years after the crime has occurred, the trial has been completed, and state appeals have been exhausted--all because of an error that was already judged harmless in state proceedings, or that was never presented at all on earlier review.

It is simply ridiculous that, 17 years after a police officer was murdered, federal courts would prolong the litigation of the case of the officer's killer for this kind of reason. The error identified by the Ninth Circuit in the Wrede case had nothing to do with the reliability or fairness of the jury's conclusion that the defendant had murdered Officer Wrede. Instead, the Ninth Circuit invalidated the sentence because it thought that the trial attorney could have introduced additional evidence of the killer's use of phencyclidine. (Trial counsel already had introduced considerable evidence of such drug use during the guilt phase of the trial.) Frankly, I do not see how the fact that a defendant regularly used a dangerous drug could mitigate his criminal conduct at all. The jury in the Wrede case did not think so, nor did the state appeals courts think that additional evidence of the defendant's PCP use could reasonably have affected the jury's decision to sentence the defendant to death. The Ninth Circuit's conclusion that such an error could have made a difference in the sentencing decision obviously is a highly subjective judgment. It is not really a judgment of law, so much as a question of personal opinion and popular psychology. Such unstable judgments, at least with respect to sentencing errors that are properly subject to harmlessness review, should not be a basis for overriding duly entered state criminal sentences many years after the fact.

My amendment to this bill builds on an amendment that I filed earlier in this Congress and which has been enacted as section 507 of the USA Patriot Improvement and Reauthorization Act. That amendment guarantees that states such as Arizona and California will be given an objective evaluation of their eligibility for the streamlined and expedited habeas corpus procedures in chapter 154 of title 28. That chapter sets strict time deadlines for federal judicial action on capital habeas- corpus petitions in qualifying states, restricts amendments, and eliminates ping-pong litigation between state and federal courts over unexhausted claims. By unlocking states' access to chapter 154, my previous amendment will ensure that cases such as that of Kenneth Wrede's killer--or the infamous Christy Ann Fornoff case in Arizona-- will be resolved much more quickly. My current amendment to the Children's Safety and Violent Crime Reduction Act will ensure that these types of cases are not reversed on account of claims of minor and highly subjective sentencing errors. Allegations of such errors do not relate to the defendant's culpability for the underlying offense, and they do not merit the use of federal judicial resources at this late stage of the criminal-litigation process.

My amendment is based on a legislative proposal that is part of the habeas corpus reform bill introduced by Senator Kyl and Congressman Lungren. That broader bill has been the subject of four hearings in this Congress: two before the House Judiciary Committee's Crime Subcommittee on June 30 and November 10, and two before the Senate Judiciary Committee on July 13 and November 16.

Between its evolution from the Kyl/Lungren bill to my amendment, and again from my original amendment to the provision in the current Children's Safety and Violent Crime Reduction Act, section 302 has been modified somewhat. First, it has been expanded to also apply to those sentencing claims that the habeas applicant procedurally defaulted in the state courts. It would make no sense to limit federal review for a habeas petitioner who presented his sentencing claim in state court in a timely manner, where the error had been found harmless, but to afford unrestricted habeas review to a petitioner who did not timely and properly present his claim in state proceedings. The purpose of the procedural-default doctrine is to encourage state prisoners to abide by state procedural rules. That purpose would be undercut if the applicant presenting a defaulted sentencing claim were afforded more liberal access to federal court than the applicant who had properly presented his claim during state review.

Also, allowing defaulted sentencing claims to be heard for the first time in a federal application inevitably disrupts the federal proceedings. A defaulted claim generally will not have been considered on the merits in state court, and therefore there is no evidentiary record on which to evaluate the claim in federal court. And allowing the applicant to obtain relief on a defaulted claim in federal habeas inevitably prejudices the state. As the Supreme Court has noted, forcing prisoners to

timely present their claims in state court ``affords the state courts the opportunity to resolve the issue shortly after trial, while evidence is still available both to assess the defendant's claim and to retry the defendant effectively if he prevails in his appeal.'' Murray v. Carrier, 477 U.S. 478 (1986). But when a federal habeas court orders a sentencing retrial on the basis of a claim that was never presented to the state courts, it often will have been many years since the original trial and the crime occurred. (In the Wrede case, the Ninth Circuit's reversal of the killer's sentence came 17 years after the crime had been committed.) During this time, witnesses often will die or disappear or their memories will fade and other evidence will become unavailable. If defaulted claims were exempted from my amendment, not only would habeas petitioners presenting such claims have better access to the federal courts than would those who followed state rules; the relief that the defaulting petitioner obtains would be more likely to mean not just a second chance to try the sentencing case, but rather would amount to a permanent bar on the state's imposition of a capital or other sentence.

Finally, I would like to respond briefly to those critics who argue that any tailoring or limits on federal habeas-corpus review constitute an unconstitutional ``suspension'' of the Great Writ. I would note that federal courts rejected this argument when it was made by critics of the 1996 reforms. The courts noted that Congress has the power both to expand and to retract the scope of federal collateral review of state criminal convictions. In Felker v. Turpin, 518 U.S. 651 (1996), the U.S. Supreme Court highlighted the utter lack of basis for the view that Congress is required to grant lower federal courts unrestricted power over state criminal convictions:

``The first Congress made the writ of habeas corpus

available only to prisoners confined under the authority of

the United States, not under state authority. It was not

until 1867 that Congress made the writ generally available in

`all cases where any person may be restrained of his or her

liberty in violation of [federal law]. ' And it was not

until well into this century that this Court interpreted

that provision to allow a final judgment of conviction to

be collaterally attacked on habeas.''

The Supreme Court concluded: ``We have long recognized that the power to award the writ by any of the courts of the United States, must be given by written law, and we have likewise recognized that judgments about the proper scope of the writ are normally for Congress to make.''

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit elaborated on this point in Lindh v. Murphy, 96 F.3d 856 (rev'd on other grounds, 521 U.S. 320), and explained the nature of the constitutional habeas right:

``The writ known in 1789 was the pre-trial contest to the

executive's power to hold a person captive, the device that

prevents arbitrary detention without trial. The power thus

enshrined did not include the ability to reexamine judgments

rendered by courts possessing jurisdiction. Under the

original practice, ``a judgment of conviction rendered by a

court of general criminal jurisdiction was conclusive proof

that confinement was legal * * * [and] prevented issuance of

a writ.'' The founding-era historical evidence suggests a

prevailing view that state courts were adequate fora for

protecting federal rights. Based on this assumption, there

was (and is) no constitutionally enshrined right to mount a

collateral attack on a state court's judgment in the inferior

Article III courts and, a fortiori, no mandate that state

court judgments embracing questionable (or even erroneous)

interpretations of the federal Constitution be reviewed by

the inferior Article III courts.''

The Seventh Circuit concluded: ``Any suggestion that the [Constitution] forbids every contraction of the [federal habeas] power bestowed by Congress in 1885, and expanded by the 1948 and 1966 amendments, is untenable.''

My amendment is a necessary and appropriate adjustment to the federal jurisdiction over state criminal convictions. I am pleased to see that it is part of the Children's Safety and Violent Crime Reduction Act.

Offered By: Mr. Flake

Amendment No. 24: Page 79, beginning on line 22, strike

section 3007.

Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Madam Speaker, I would like to comment on section 507 of today's PATRIOT Act conference report, which authorizes the U.S. Attorney General to certify whether a state has qualified for the expedited habeas corpus procedures in chapter 154 of title 28 of the U.S. Code. Section 507 is of particular importance to my home State of Arizona, which for many years has satisfied the post-conviction counsel requirements of chapter 154, but which has been unfairly denied the procedural benefits of that chapter by the Ninth Circuit.

Section 507 is similar to a section of the Streamlined Procedures Act, a general habeas corpus reform bill that was introduced earlier this year in the House by Mr. Lungren of California, and in the Senate by my Home state colleague, Senator Kyl. Section 507 is also virtually identical to an amendment that I filed and sought to offer last month to H.R. 1751, the Secure Access to Justice and Court Security Act of 2005. My amendment had been made in order by the Rules Committee and was listed in House Report 109-279. At the last minute, however, various political objections were made to my amendment and Chairman Sensenbrenner asked me not to offer it to H.R. 1751. The Chairman assured me that he would accommodate me with regard to this matter on some other legislation. I am pleased to see that he was able to do so on the PATRIOT Act, which now appears that it will be enacted into law sooner than H.R. 1751.

My amendment is designed to give States a real incentive to provide quality counsel to death row prisoners in State habeas proceedings. It is also designed to keep a bargain that the Federal Government made with the States in 1996. The amendment assigns the U.S. Attorney General to evaluate whether a State is providing qualified counsel to capital prisoners in State habeas proceedings, a condition for receiving the benefits of the expedited habeas procedures of chapter 154 of the U.S. Code. The amendment thus gives States a real chance to qualify for chapter 154 treatment. By ensuring that States will receive streamlined proceedings in Federal court if they provide quality counsel in State habeas court, the amendment will reduce delays in death penalty appeals.

This is a goal that everyone, left and right, should agree with. Even those who passionately oppose the death penalty should want the system to be fair to victims. No one should support a system that routinely forces the family of a murder victim to endure 10, 15, or even 20 years of appeals. Yet in too many cases, that is exactly how our current system works even in cases where there is no real dispute over guilt. In my home State of Arizona, over two-thirds of death row prisoners have finished all of their State appeals and are engaged in Federal habeas litigation. Most of these cases have now been in the Federal courts for five years or more. Ten cases have been in Federal court for 8 years or more, and 5 cases have been in Federal court for more than 15 years. And this is all on top of the time that it takes to complete all state appeals, which usually requires 5 or 6 years.

Under the current system, victims' families are forced to repeatedly relive an awful event throughout the progress of this lengthy litigation. During that process, they must wonder if they will be forced to appear at another hearing, if there will be another trial, or if the person who killed their son or daughter will even be released. They literally are denied closure, the right to forget about the person who killed their loved one and to move on with their lives. And this frequently goes on for more than 15 years. A system that treats crime victims this way is intolerable.

The amendment that I offer today is particularly important to my home State of Arizona. Arizona is both a State that has experienced extreme delays in Federal-court review of capital cases, and a State that has acted to provide quality counsel in state habeas proceeding in response to the offer that the congress made in 1996. The habeas reform of that year created chapter 154 of title 28. This chapter told the States that, if they provide qualified state habeas counsel to capital defendants, the Federal government would streamline Federal court review of capital cases. In Federal court, chapter 154 would limit the claims that defendants could raise, barring virtually all claims that were not properly raised and addressed on the merits in state court. Chapter 154 would apply strict deadlines to Federal court review, requiring the district court to decide the case in 6 months and the court of appeals to rule in 4 months.

Shortly after the 1996 reforms were enacted, the Arizona legislature and the State supreme court implemented a system that would allow the State to opt in to chapter 154. The State created mandatory competency standards for capital post-conviction counsel, and provided funds to attract good lawyers and allow them to hire necessary experts. The State now spends a lot of money on post-conviction representation for death-row inmates--the median case costs the State $64,000, while one case cost $138,000. Again, this is just for State habeas review. It does not include the State's expenses to provide counsel at trial or on direct appeal from the trial. For example, Arizona also guarantees a capital defendant two highly qualified attorneys at trial.

One might think that, in light of all that the State of Arizona has done to provide high-quality counsel to capital defendants, surely it must have qualified for chapter 154 by now and must be enjoying the benefits of that chapter. But that is not what has happened. The problem is simple: under current law, the local Federal court of appeals decides whether a State has opted in to chapter 154. In Arizona, the Ninth Circuit has refused to grant Arizona the benefits of chapter 154. Even though Arizona has lived up to its end of the bargain, the Ninth Circuit refuses to allow the Federal government to abide by its end of the deal.

A case that illustrates the problem is the Ninth Circuit's extraordinary decision in Spears v. Stewart, 283 F.3d 992 (2002). The three-judge panel in Spears found that Arizona's system for providing post-conviction counsel complied with chapter 154. The court concluded that Arizona's system sets mandatory and binding competency standards for counsel, provides reasonable compensation to counsel, pays reasonable litigation expenses, and offers such counsel to all capital defendants. The court nevertheless managed to find that Arizona could not receive the benefits of chapter 154 because of a delay in appointing counsel. Defense lawyers initially had boycotted this system, and in some cases this resulted in delays. The defendant in Spears did not even allege that this delay prejudiced his case. But the Ninth Circuit found this delay a sufficient excuse to deny Arizona the benefit of chapter 154, even though Arizona's system complied with that chapter.

The decision of the Spears three-judge panel alone is troubling. The chapter 154 qualification decision is supposed to be a one-time decision. Once a State's system qualifies, the issue is not supposed to be litigated again on a case-by-case basis. Even more disturbing than the three-judge panel's decision, however, is a dissent from the full court's refusal to rehear the case that was signed by 11 active judges of the Ninth Circuit. These 11 judges stated that the panel's decision that Arizona's system qualifies for chapter 154 is merely dicta and not binding in future cases. Although the issue of Arizona's 154 status was squarely before the three-judge panel and was decided by that panel, this gang of 11 judges declared that they would not follow that decision in future cases. As they said: ``To put it bluntly, neither we, nor any other court is bound by the panel's advisory declarations in this case.'' Spears, 283 F.3d at 998 (Reinhardt, J., dissenting from denial of rehearing).

A statement by 11 judges that they will refuse to follow their own court's final decision itself is extraordinary, as several other judges noted in Spears a concurrence to the denial of rehearing. If a court refuses to abide by its own precedents, litigants can have no way of knowing what the law is and how they should

arrange their affairs. Such behavior does substantial damage to the rule of law.

What such behavior also demonstrates is a refusal to enforce the laws enacted by Congress. It shows that chapter 154 will remain a dead letter so long as the obligation to enforce it remains in the hands of courts such as the Ninth Circuit. It is clear that, if any two of the 11 judges who joined the Spears rehearing dissent are assigned to a future Arizona 154 case, they will not feel obligated to follow Spears and the State will be relitigating the issue of its 154 status from scratch. Indeed, portions of the Spears dissent argue that Arizona's ``statutory scheme did not comply with Chapter 154's requirements.'' Spears, 283 F.3d at 1002 (Reinhardt, J., dissenting from denial of rehearing). The tone of the 11-judge dissent also betrays an open hostility to the chapter 154 system.

The trouble with chapter 154 is that the courts assigned to decide when it applies are the same courts that would be bound by the chapter's strict deadlines if a State is found to qualify. Simply put, the regional courts of appeals have a conflict of interest. They decide whether the States are entitled to a benefit which places a burden on the courts themselves. Some prosecutors also believe that refusal to enforce chapter 154 also reflects a hostility to the death penalty-- that some judges are ignoring the law because they do not want to see death sentences carried out. If this is true, it is absolutely unacceptable. A judge has an obligation to uphold and enforce a valid law, whether or not he agrees with it.

My amendment makes several changes to chapter 154 to ensure that it provides real and meaningful benefits to States that provide quality post-conviction counsel. First and most importantly, it assigns the 154 certification decision to the U.S. Attorney General and the DC Circuit, rather than the local courts of appeals that have an interest in the case. The Attorney General receives no benefits from chapter 154, and he has expertise in evaluating State criminal justice systems. Just last year, for example, Congress assigned the Attorney General to evaluate State DNA testing and capital counsel systems in the Justice for All Act. Review of the Attorney General's decision in the DC Circuit also is appropriate. Because there is no Federal habeas review of criminal convictions in the District of Columbia, the DC Circuit also has no stake in whether or not a State qualifies for chapter 154.

My amendment, like subsection (d) of section 507, also makes clear that a determination that a State has satisfied the chapter 154 standard as of a particular date will apply retroactively to all pending habeas cases for which the prisoner received State habeas after the certified date. This will ensure that a State will receive all of the procedural and litigation benefits that it should have received had the Federal habeas claim been governed by chapter 154 from the day that it was filed, as it should have been. The proposed paragraph 28 U.S.C. 2265(a)(2) in my amendment makes clear that, once the Attorney General determines that a State established a post-conviction capital-counsel system by a particular date, the chapter 154 eligibility certification shall be effective as of that date. Thus, if a capital prisoner received State habeas counsel after that effective date, the case is governed by chapter 154 in Federal proceedings.

However, some courts might construe 2265(a)(2) to mean that while the chapter 154 system thereafter governs Federal habeas applications that have already been filed, the actual procedural benefits of that chapter--especially the claims limitations and amendment limits would only apply on a going-forward basis--i.e., only to claims or amendments filed after the date of enactment of this law. Thus when I added a few other provisions to the amendment, I also inserted subsection (g), which is the same as subsection (d) of section 507. This subsection, by explicitly applying section 507 and the changes that it makes to all qualified pending Federal habeas cases, should make clear that when Congress says that it wants the new law to apply retroactively, it means that the law will apply retroactively--that it will govern new claims as if it had been in effect as of the effective date of the chapter 154 certification.

Any non-retroactive application of chapter 154 would be fundamentally unfair to States such as Arizona, which has been providing post- conviction counsel to State prisoners for nearly a decade but has been inappropriately denied the benefits of chapter 154 for some cases that already have progressed to Federal habeas. In the Spears case, for example, the Ninth Circuit even found that Arizona's counsel system met chapter 154 standards, but the court nevertheless came up with an excuse for refusing to apply chapter 154 to that case. If the Attorney General and the DC Circuit conclude that Arizona met chapter 154 standards prior to Spears's receipt of counsel, as I am confident that they will, Arizona should receive all of the benefits of chapter 154 for that case and subsequent cases, as if chapter 154 had governed the Federal petition as of the day it had been filed (as it should have). Chapter 154, for example, does not allow cases to be remanded to State court to exhaust new claims (a considerable source of delay on Federal habeas), and it places very sharp limits on amendment to petitions. Arizona should not be forced to litigate claims in Spears's petition that were defaulted, that were unexhausted and sent back to State court, or that otherwise were not addressed by State courts when Spears first filed the petition (unless those claims meet the narrow exceptions in subsection 2264(a)). Nor should the State be forced to litigate claims that were added to the petition in amendments that do not satisfy chapter 154's limits on amendments.

Applying chapter 154 retroactively may seem harsh, but it is important to recall that any prisoner whose Federal petition will be governed by 154 necessarily received counsel in State post-conviction proceedings. Unlike the typical uncounseled State habeas petitioner, who may not have been aware of State procedural rules or of all the potential legal claims available to him, a chapter 154 habeas petitioner will have no excuse for not making sure that all of his claims were addressed on the merits in State court. (Or rather, any excuse will be limited to those authorized in 28 U.S.C. 2264(a).) I believe that, given the resources Arizona has devoted to providing post-conviction counsel, the State should easily qualify for chapter 154. The Ninth Circuit has treated Arizona unfairly by denying it chapter 154 status. If the U.S. Attorney General and DC Circuit agree that Arizona should have been 154-certified when Spears filed his Federal petition, Arizona should be placed in the same position that it would be in today had the Spears case proceeded under chapter 154 from the beginning.

My amendment also extends the time for a district court to rule on a 154 petition from 6 months to 15 months. I have been informed that the bill that became the 1996 Act originally adopted 6 months as the limit as an initial bargaining position. The intention had been to eventually extend this to 12 months, but because of the politics of the enactment of AEDPA, it was not possible to change this deadline later in the legislative process. My amendment is even more generous than the original authors' intention, giving the district courts 15 months, in recognition of their burdensome caseloads and the fact that they do the real work in Federal habeas cases--they are the courts that hold hearings, if necessary, to identify the truth of a case. This same change was included in subsection (e) of section 507.

Subsection (f) of section 507 is the same as a provision in subsection (e) of my amendment. This subsection codifies the rule of McFarland v. Scott, 512 U.S. 849 (1994), which allows a stay to issue on the basis of an application for appointment of Federal habeas counsel (without the actual filing of a petition), but it limits such stays to a reasonable period after counsel is actually appointed or the application for appointment of counsel is withdrawn or denied.