Floor Statements

Madam Chairman, I offer an amendment.

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

I would like the House and certainly the esteemed chairman of the Appropriations Committee, the gentleman from Wisconsin, to know that this amendment is essentially identical to the amendment you just offered and proffered, and it is my intention to ask unanimous consent to withdraw this amendment. However, I would like the opportunity to talk about my rationale behind it.

I would be happy to yield to the gentleman from Wisconsin.

We drafted it with that intention, and it is my intention and expectation that it does.

Madam Chairman, we already had a debate and discussion about whether there should be earmarks and whether there should not be earmarks. And let me just say that as much as I think there are many inappropriate earmarks, I don't think there have to be no earmarks, but I do think that the process under which we do these earmarks now is still flawed.

Now, admittedly, it is frankly, more open than it was last year. But it is still not as transparent and still not as accountable as it should be. And I offered a few suggestions which I will run through quickly, and then I would like to yield to the gentleman from Arizona, as to things that I think we could do in this House in order to make earmarks completely transparent and completely accountable so that this House is not embarrassed by them because, frankly, we have been embarrassed by them in the past, and there are ones I believe that are embarrassing this House that are presently involved in this bill and some other bills and will be in the future.

So my suggestions are simple. First, disclose all the earmark requests. Why should we not do that? When we enter a bill, it is disclosed. It is public knowledge that this is something we are trying to make a change on. If any Member wants to spend the taxpayers' money on something and they want to do an official form where they sign that says they have no financial interest, then why shouldn't that be made public?

Let's put every earmark in the text of the bill. As I believe the gentleman from Wisconsin knows, it is very difficult to write amendments to take all the earmarks out of the bill because they are not actually written in the bill. So let's write them in the bill so that we do that.

And the bill should fully disclose all earmarks with the requesting Member, the amounts, recipients, and the purpose at least a week before we bring them to the floor. We got the certifications less than 24 hours, I think it was only about 12 hours, before we started debate on the last bill. And that is just not enough time to review or make clear what these amendments are.

All earmarks should be available for discussion and open congressional hearing. If there are earmarks in a bill, there should be a congressional hearing on those earmarks. Now, that doesn't mean that if there are 200 that you are going to discuss every one, but certainly every one would be available for discussion at that point.

All earmark programs should be previously authorized by Congress. If not, why do we even have an authorization process? If we are not going to follow it, if you are just going to be able to earmark anything you want, then why do we have an authorization process? And that is what I think is a lot of what has gone wrong with this process.

They should serve a Federal interest or have some Federal nexus. The Federal Government does not, should not, cannot, will not fund every single need and every single desire of every Member and every person in this country. There are lots of things which are properly left to State and local governments and charitable organizations. So we should make it clear that we only spend Federal money on those things with a Federal nexus.

No earmarks outside of a Member's own State. If the point of this is just to do things for your constituency, make sure you are doing things for your constituency.

No earmarks for private entities without some kind of a competitive bid process. I will tell you a story of a defense contractor in my district who came to me and showed me this fine device, and I said, That's great, but how do I know it works? And if I knew it works, how do I know you are the best source for that? And if I knew you were the best source for that, how would I know that this is the right price for that? The answer is I don't think Members can know those things. So if it is a private entity, let's competitively bid it.

Nine, no earmark can be added or increased in conference committee. That is a way to go around all of this. Let's make it that you take the Senate version or the House version but you don't make up a new one.

And, finally, that the dollar amount of any earmark that is reduced by an amendment, that money should be saved to the taxpayer. It should go to debt reduction. It should go to deficit reduction. Congressman Culberson had a proposal in the Appropriations Committee, which was defeated, to do exactly that. And why shouldn't we do that? If there is money in a bill and we are not going to spend it on that, let's save it for the taxpayers. That is one of the ways we can reduce this deficit.

So those are some thoughts that I have as to how this process can be improved.

How much time do I have remaining, Madam Chairman?

Madam Chairman, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Flake).

Madam Chairman, how much time do I have remaining now?

Madam Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Hensarling).

Madam Chairman, I intend to support the gentleman from Wisconsin's amendment. But I do believe, and I hope the gentleman from Wisconsin can hear me, that there is an alternative. There is something between the current very flawed process and no earmarks. I hope that we can engage in a discussion about this. I realize it is too late for it in this appropriations cycle but to discuss in the next appropriations cycle.

Madam Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to withdraw my amendment since it is virtually identical to what the chairman has offered.

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

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

This particular amendment would eliminate all the earmarks in the bill, all 800 of them, all $1.1 billion of them.

Now, I have two confessions to make about this amendment before I proceed

here. Confession number one is that the amendment is rather inartfully drafted. And the way it is drafted, it may actually catch some things, some elements of spending, that were not technically part of the 800 earmarks in the bill. But the reason for that is that the 800 earmarks are not actually in the bill. Something I would like to address later. But the amendment is drafted the only way it can be drafted under the current situation, under the current process, to eliminate all of these 800 earmarks and $1.1 billion.

The second confession I would like to make is that one of those 800 earmarks that is in the bill is one I requested. Now, I believe a couple other Members requested it as well, but it is definitely one that I requested.

So you may be asking why would I be proposing an amendment to eliminate an earmark that I requested. Do I suddenly believe that the earmark that I requested is somehow not valid or somehow not appropriate? No. Had I believed it was not valid or not appropriate when I requested it some months ago, I would not have requested it.

But the fact is, Mr. Chairman, that the process by which these earmarks happen stinks. And I believe that this process is terrible and that until we reform this process, we should eliminate all earmarks.

And that, Mr. Chairman, is why I offer this amendment to you today. It is not because I think that necessarily all 800 earmarks, including my own, in this bill are inappropriate. I do think $1.1 billion is more money than I would like to see relative to this or any earmarks. But it is because until we reform this process and have a process that works, I don't think we should do any earmarks at all.

The earmark process has, I believe, actually hurt not just Republicans and Democrats and not just taxpayers, but I believe it has hurt this institution. And I believe that is why Chairman Obey, the gentleman from Wisconsin, has expressed his own distaste for earmarks and the earmark process.

So let me make a few suggestions, 10 of them precisely, if I may, as to how this process might be reformed, how we might get it right.

First, put the earmarks in the bill. The reason we have had to draft this amendment so oddly is because the earmarks are not actually written in the text of the bill. If we are going to spend the taxpayers' money as Members of Congress on specific things, those specific things we are spending it on should be in the language of the bill that appropriates those expenditures.

Second, let's have full disclosure of all the earmarks in the bill and let's have it at least a week before the vote. I think we got the list of these earmarks last, I think it was, Thursday or Friday, and here we are debating these today. There are 800 earmarks in this bill. It is a little tough for us or anyone else to go through 800 earmarks in just a couple of days.

Third, let's have full disclosure of all earmark requests. Every earmark in this bill in theory has a certification from the Member who requested it claiming what they have requested and why and also claiming that they have no financial interest in that earmark. Let's make those public. Those were turned in, I can't remember exactly whether it was February or March. I think it was March. Why should those be under some secrecy? Why should all those earmark requests not be available to the public? And when we have full disclosure of earmarks, let's have real disclosure of earmarks. The disclosure that we got last week was one list that has the earmark amount and the project and another list that has the project and the Member requesting. So if you want to take the Member requesting and match it up with the amount, you have to match up the two lists somehow. Now, if there are only 10 earmarks, you could do that. But with 800 it is really hard to do, and not in a searchable database. In fact, in a few cases where we were able to get disclosure of the actual earmark request, which only happened yesterday afternoon, the description of the project in the earmark request is not the same as the description of the project on the earmark list. So what we have now is an attempt at some late partial disclosure. It is not full disclosure in any way, shape, or form of earmarks or earmark requests.

Mr. Obey has suggested that Members often feel like they are ATMs. That is what this earmark process does. It diminishes, I think, the value of all of us that serve in this institution. We are here to make public policy. We are not ATMs. I was stunned when, in my first few months as a Member of this House, 70 different people came into my office not asking for a certain element of public policy, not encouraging me to support this or that or the other, but asking for money, asking for earmarks, because they saw Members of Congress as an

Mr. Chairman, I would like to yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Flake).

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

Mr. Chairman, Mr. Flake said it very well. This House can do better than this earmark process. We can do better than what is going on. Their earmarks have led to some of our colleagues who are now in jail. It has led to other problems with other colleagues. Let's reform it or get rid of it.

This amendment is the beginning of that process. And Mr. Chairman, I would urge Members, even if they have earmarks in this bill, to support the beginning of reform or elimination of what has hurt this institution and has hurt taxpayers so much.

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

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Offered By Mr. Campbell of California

Amendment No. 7: At the end of the bill (before the short

title), insert the following new section:

Offered By: Mr. Campbell of California

Amendment No. 40: At the end of the bill (before the short

title), insert the following:

None of the funds in this Act may be used for the

following:

Children Uniting Nations, Los Angeles, CA;

Crisis Nursery of the Ozarks, Springfield, MO;

Jefferson County, Golden, CO for child abuse prevention and

treatment programs;

New York Center for Children, New York, NY;

Shelter for Abused Women, Winchester, VA;

Arrowhead Economic Opportunity Agency, Virginia, MN;

Beth El House, Alexandria, VA;

Children's Home Society of South Dakota, Sioux Falls, SD;

Christian Outreach of Lutherans, Waukegan, IL;

Individual Development Account, City of Detroit, MI;

Early childhood resource centers, City of Fort Worth, TX;

Services for New Americans program, City of San Jose, CA;

Cliff Hagan Boys and Girls Club--Mike Horn Unit, Owensboro,

Offered By: Mr. Campbell of California

Amendment No. 61: At the end of the bill (before the short

title), insert the following:

Offered By: Mr. Campbell of California

Amendment No. 62: At the end of the bill (before the short

title), insert the following:

Offered By: Mr. Campbell of California

Amendment No. 63: At the end of the bill (before the short

title), insert the following new section:

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding.

I just wanted to bring to the chairman's attention a situation with HUD financing that kind of makes no sense to me, and a specific situation which I'm aware of involves the Villa Nueva Apartments, which are in San Ysidro in the San Diego area of California, where the owner of this multi-family, affordable housing project wants to sell it. The buyer wants to keep it as an affordable housing project. He's committed to keep the rents unchanged, but yet since it is HUD financed, under current, I guess, rulings or something that HUD is making, that 100 percent of the proceeds of this project would actually not be available to the seller. I don't know why someone who owns something would want to sell it if they couldn't have any of the proceeds. So, as a result, the seller may not sell this project. They may hold on to it for a couple of years, and then the restrictions will expire and then they could sell it for something else.

So it seems to me that HUD's procedures on this are actually standing in the way of affordable housing companies acquiring and continuing affordable housing multi-unit projects.

I yield to the gentleman from Massachusetts.

Thank you.

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. Chairman, this amendment would prohibit funds from being used for the Abraham Lincoln National Airport Commission in Illinois.

The committee report says that this earmark is providing $231,000 for this local project. According to the committee report in the letter requesting the earmark, the earmark has been requested by Congressman Jackson of Illinois for the purpose of ``minority and small business development and procurement opportunities.''

According to the Web site for this organization, the organization was established by Congressman Jackson, and the executive director currently is a gentleman by the name of Richard Bryant. Richard Bryant is apparently on the staff of Congressman Jackson and is his deputy district administrator, according to records. Mr. Bryant has stated this week that he is not paid in his position as executive director of the airport commission and that he is there because of efforts to build a third airport in the Chicago area that is strongly supported by Congressman Jackson. He also said that the money from the earmark would be used to study ways to make sure that local workers and minorities are hired when and if a new airport is actually built.

Also, Mr. Chairman, according to Mr. Jackson's Web site, this organization exists to try to promote a third airport in the Chicago area and that last year many of its activities were related to advertising on behalf of that airport. To quote directly from the Web site, and this is from an article published in April of 2006: ``Last month the commission called on the south suburbs to donate a total of $250,000 towards the advertising campaign scheduled to begin June 1.'' It goes on to say that about $40,000 is budgeted for billboards. The remaining funds would pay for direct mailings to voters in the region and radio commercials and for yard signs closer to election day.

So it would appear that the activities at least last year of this commission were related to trying to drum up support or actually lobbying on behalf of, or certainly advocating on behalf of, getting public support and, I presume, elected representative support for this airport.

I would also like to point out that there is a press release from Congressman Jackson dated November 16, 2006, in which he says: ``So even with the change of leadership in Congress, I won't pursue Federal funds for the Abraham Lincoln National Airport. Chicago's share of Federal dollars are already committed to O'Hare modernization.''

Mr. Chairman, I would like to suggest that this earmark does not appear appropriate; that a Member of Congress directs money to an organization they set up, run by someone who is an employee of the office of that Congressman, and whose purpose appears to be to advocate on behalf of an airport that does not currently exist. If the airport does currently exist or whatever, also, it appears to be in contradiction to the Congressman's own statement as of November of 2006 that he would not pursue Federal funds for this airport in the future.

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

Mr. Chairman, I fully understand the gentleman's desire to close, and I am happy to do that. But I believe that he should at least state some of the reasons that he believes this earmark is justified so I can at least have the opportunity to rebut those before he closes. But I am perfectly willing to allow him to have the last word.

I suppose I will anticipate, perhaps, what the gentleman is going to say. I understand that the gentleman from Illinois may suggest that the Ethics Committee has approved that his district employee be the executive director of this commission, and I would take him at his word and assume that is the case.

I don't think that is the issue here. We are talking about over $200,000 of taxpayers' funds here, and I think the question at issue is whether or not that is an appropriate use of Federal funds and what these Federal funds are going to be used for. If he is suggesting, as some of these reports indicated, that these are going to be spent on minority and business development procurement opportunities for an airport that doesn't yet exist, my question would be how can you have hiring or whatever opportunities for an airport that doesn't exist yet and won't exist even if it were approved today for some number of years?

Is the gentleman willing to say that there will be no further advertising, no further lobbying, no further expenditures of that sort?

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. Chairman, this amendment would prohibit funds in the bill from being used for the Wittenberg University East Asian Study Center. The committee report provides there will be $500,000 spent on this local project.

Now, Wittenberg University is a private college. On all these earmark things that I am bringing up and that the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Flake) has brought up, it is not an issue of whether this is a good university, I am sure it is a great university; or whether this is a worthy, charitable endeavor, I am sure it is a worthy, charitable endeavor. It is a question of whether or not it is appropriate for taxpayers' funds.

On the last amendment that I had talked about, the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Jackson) made a very eloquent report of why he believes there should be a third airport in Illinois. But that really wasn't the point, as to whether there should be a third. I am not qualified. I don't know whether there should be a third airport in Chicago or not.

The point was, is it appropriate to use Federal taxpayer funds to fund an organization that you set up that is for the purpose of basically applying political pressure to create this airport when it doesn't exist. I think that is clearly not appropriate.

In this case here, this is to be used ``for the development of an undergraduate interdisciplinary program in international business, with a focus on the field of experience in Asia.''

According to the Web site, this East Asian Studies Journal has existed for 27 years. This is the 27th consecutive annual edition of this particular publication. So this center, it would appear, has existed for 27 years in this university.

Again, Mr. Chairman, this is actually a Lutheran university. I am on the board of advisors of a Lutheran university in my district. I think they do very fine things. I just don't think it is appropriate to use taxpayer money.

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

Mr. Chairman, I will just say that the certification actually says the funding will be used for the establishment of a center. Perhaps that is in error.

It says for the establishment of a center. Whether it is the establishment or the expansion, I just respectfully suggest that this is more in the nature of support for a university rather, than support for a project which has a Federal nexus and requires Federal tax dollars.

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

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I am very pleased to see the distinguished chairman of the Appropriations Committee, Mr. Obey, here, because this is an amendment that he suggested right here on the floor of the House on June 13, earlier this month.

During debate that evening, which was the evening in which it was decided that we would make earmarks public and that they would be included in the bill, Mr. Obey said, ``I want to make clear, I hate the earmarking process. I absolutely detest it.''

Further on in his comments, the gentleman from Wisconsin said, ``And I am going to be very interested in seeing which Members vote for the amendment that I intend to attach to every appropriations bill which would call for a total elimination on earmarks. I want to see how many of you actually vote for it.'' Well, I want the chairman of the Appropriations Committee to know that I agree with his comments.

In the previous bill that we had before this House yesterday, the Interior bill, this amendment did not show up. So I took it upon myself to offer this amendment, which the chairman of the Appropriations Committee had suggested that he was going to offer on every appropriations bill. So that is, in fact, the amendment that I have offered.

What this amendment would do, Mr. Chairman, is it would strike all 148 earmarks that are currently in this bill from the bill, and thereby would save $33.71 million of taxpayer money.

I hope that the chairman will support me in this effort. Obviously I am offering this amendment. I intend to vote for this amendment, and I hope the good chairman of the Appropriations Committee would join me in this offering and in voting for it as well.

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

Mr. Chairman, how much time do I have remaining?

Mr. Chairman, we did fight hard for this transparency, and I am glad we have this transparency. But the reason we have it is not simply to rubber-stamp every earmark that the Chairs of committees decide in their judgment to put in.

Let me quote again the chairman of the Appropriations Committee, Mr. Obey, on June 13, 2007. He said, ``The reason I hate earmarks is because they suck everybody in. They suck them into the idea that we have to be ATM machines for our districts.''

Mr. Chairman, I don't think we want to be ATM machines for our districts. This amendment which has been suggested by Mr. Obey, I don't believe he or certainly I necessarily think that all 148 of these are bad. However, if the chairman of the Appropriations Committee believes as he said, ``I hate the earmarking process, I absolutely detest it,'' then maybe we should start to reform it. This is a way to reform it. This is a way to change it. Let's just take them all out for now, and let's talk about a way that perhaps something can be done in a way in which we are not ATM machines for our districts.

By the way, by doing that, we will save the taxpayers $33.7 million, which I would imagine they will be able to use in their pockets in their districts as they want to and I would argue in a better, more effective way than we will, even though we represent them.

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

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from Georgia for yielding.

As I listened to the arguments, what arguments that are presented, from the majority Democrats, I hear some things that don't quite ring true. They talk a lot about their pay-as-you-go rules and that their great fiscal accomplishment of this Congress is that they are going to pay for spending as you go. Yet this bill increases spending by $1.2 billion, and it is not paid for. There is no $1.2 billion cut somewhere else. They are simply going to increase the deficit by $1.2 billion more because they have decided they want to spend it.

They say that they are not raising taxes. But yet their budget increases spending every single year for 5 years and then miraculously says they are going to balance the budget. How do they do that? Because they did have in their budget the largest tax increase in American history.

You just heard them recently just decry the former deficits. Oh, my gosh, Republicans drove up these deficits. And, in fact, we did. And we agree that that was not the right thing to do. So what is their response? Make the deficits bigger. Take the spending that we had while we were in charge and increase it by more.

And then they have one other thing they continue to do which is to call something like this bill a ``cut.'' You heard the gentleman from Washington on the last proposal say that it was a devastating cut, when in fact all this does, as the gentleman from Georgia pointed out, is take what's already a 4.5 percent increase and reduce it.

Now, what I want to do is, since they're having a hard time understanding this, I want to put this up graphically so that maybe they will understand better.

Now, Mr. Chairman, here are 100 donkeys. I figured that donkeys were

something that Democrats would be able to relate to. So we have 100 donkeys here. Imagine that this is 100 donkeys of spending. Here's what this bill will do. There, Mr. Chairman, are 99 donkeys; 100 donkeys here, 99 donkeys there. Probably having a hard time, I would imagine, Mr. Chairman, people in the gallery are probably having a hard time telling the difference. That's because there isn't much difference. That's because it isn't a big cut, it isn't a big reduction. If you have a million-dollar program, all we're asking is for that program to get by on $90,000. If it's $100 million, we're asking them to get by on a mere $99 million. If it's a billion-dollar program, do you think that some government agencies can squeak by on $990 million rather than a billion?

But here's the big point: It doesn't look like a lot of difference in donkeys, but if we do that, if we spend the 99 instead of 100 on every single government program, we save $30 billion. That is real money. And this is how you save it: a little bit at a time. Ask a million-dollar program to get by on $990,000, ask a billion-dollar program to get by on 1 percent less. And when you do that with every single program in government, you save $30 billion a year. That, Mr. Chairman, is how we can get to a balanced budget without not only the largest tax increase in American history, without raising taxes on the hardworking people in America at all simply by asking government day by day, get by on 1 percent less. I think we can do it. I think we should vote for this amendment.

I thank the gentlelady from Colorado.

You know, we have heard a lot today from the majority party whenever we talk about this amendment, this bill, this spending, they want to bring up last year's bills, last year's spending. We acknowledge, last year's spending was too much. Last year's bills were too much. That's not what we're talking about. It's like the baseball team wanting to play last year's season again. Look what we did last year. Look what happened last year. No, we're in the middle of this year. We're in the middle of this season. It doesn't matter who won the World Series last year. It matters who's in first place this year. What matters is this year. How much are we going to spend this year? That's what we're voting on. How much are we going to increase the deficit this year? How much further are we going to raid the Social Security surplus this year? That's the question before us. And we think we ought to have the deficit increase a little less and that we should raid the Social Security surplus a little less and that we shouldn't set up a situation where you're going to raise taxes on all of the American people.

The previous amendment, I showed a couple of charts. The previous amendment was to reduce spending by 1 percent. I tried to point out to the majority that it's like this. Here are 100 donkeys, something they can understand. If we reduce that by 1 percent, we have 99 donkeys. Not that big a difference in donkeys. And so we proposed an amendment last time, which the majority party defeated on voice vote, will undoubtedly defeat later, that said, let's just get by on 99 donkeys, money, instead of 100 donkeys, money. Well, they said they couldn't do it.

So the gentlelady from Colorado offers an alternative, which is get by on 99\1/2\ donkeys. If I had a half donkey, I would stick it up there. You can pick whichever end of the donkey you want, but put another half a donkey on that chart. And so we're saying rather than 100 donkeys, get by with 99\1/2\. It's just saying if you have a million-dollar program, we said, well, get by on 999,000. They're saying, no. Okay. How about $999,500? If you have a $100 million program, we're saying can you get by on $99 million. They said, no. We're saying, okay, how about $99\1/2\ million.

That's what this argument is about. Just asking for a half a percent, each government agency, each government program to deal with a half a percent less. People at home make these kinds of decisions with way bigger percentages than that all the time, Mr. Chairman. And if we do it, if we reduce it by 1 percent, we would save $30 billion if we did every program every year. If it's a half a percent, it's still $15 billion. That is real money, Mr. Chairman. Real money no matter how you cut it. And that is the way we can balance this budget without raising taxes.

There, Mr. Chairman, is the big difference between the majority Democratic Party and the Republican Party. We're saying, get by on 99 donkeys or 99\1/2\ donkeys instead of 100. Tell government bureaucrats that we can balance this budget without raising taxes. They, however, want to give the bureaucrats 100 donkeys of spending every time and raise taxes on the American people to make up the difference. That's what we're talking about here. That's the difference in this debate. That's the difference between these parties.

Mr. Chairman, I would urge all Members to vote to make government bureaucrats deal with a tiny bit less and let people save and keep their own money.

Offered By: Mr. Campbell of California

Amendment No. 41: At the end of the bill (before the short

title), insert the following:

None of the funds in this Act to the Small Business

Administration may be used for the Wittenberg University East

Asian Study Center.

Offered By: Mr. Campbell of California

Amendment No. 42: At the end of the bill (before the short

title), insert the following:

None of the funds in this Act may be used for the

following:

Abraham Lincoln National Airport Commission.

Adelante Development Center.

Advantage West Economic Development Group.

Alleghany Highlands Economic Development Corporation.

ARISE Foundation.

Career Center for the Northeast Central Ohio Bioscience

Consortium.

Barracks Row.

Barry University for the Institute for Community and

Economic Development.

Ben Franklin Technology Partners.

Boston Chinatown Neighborhood Center Workforce Development

Initiative.

Bridgeport Regional Business Council.

Bright Beginnings, Inc.

Bronx Councii on the Arts.

Brooklyn College's Entrepreneurial Center.

Buffalo Niagara International Trade Foundation.

California State University, Pasadena Biotech Training

Facility.

Caribbean American Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

Catalyst, Washington, DC.

Center for Economic Growth, Greene County, NY.

Center for Inspired Teaching.

Center for Women and Enterprise

Belvedere Business Park Project, City of Charlotte, NC.

Angela Rudolph, Assistant to the Mayor, Chicago, IL.

Grow Inglewood, City of Inglewood, CA.

Adams-LaBrea Retail Project, City of Los Angeles, CA.

Colorado State University, Sustainable Biofuels Development

Center.

Columbus College of Art and Design.

Community College of Philadelphia.

Connected Technologies Corridor.

Cuyahoga Community College.

Dartmouth Regional Technology Center.

Detroit Economic Growth Corporation.

Detroit Renaissance.

DuPage Technology Park.

Earth Conservation Corps.

Eastern Market, Washington, DC.

Economic Development Coalition of Southeast Michigan.

Entrpreneurial Development Center, Inc., Cedar Rapids, IA.

Everybody Wins!.

Excel Institute.

Purdue Technology Center of Northwest Indiana.

Experience Works, Inc., Richmond VA.

Experience Works, Arlington, VA.

Fairplex Trade and Conference Center.

Federal HUBZne Incubator, Elizabeth City, NC.

Friends of the Big South Fork.

Greater Harlem Chamber of Commerce.

Greater North Louisiana Community Development Corporation.

Greystone Foundation.

Hispanic Information and Telecommunications Network.

Historic Congressional Cemetery.

Valley Economic Development Center.

Howard University College of Dentistry.

Hudson Alpha Institute.

Illinois Institute of Technology.

Indiana State University, Center for New Business

Development.

Inquilinos Boricuas en Accion.

Institute for Advanced Learning and Research.

International Youth Service and Development Corps.

John C. Calhoun Community College.

Johnson and Wales University.

Johnstown Area Regional Industries Incubator and Workforce

Development.

Kulanu Vocational Education Program.

LaGuardia Community College.

Lewis and Clark State College.

Lorain County Community College.

Louisiana Small Business Development Center.

Louisville Medical Center Development Corporation.

Macomb County Department of Planning and Economic

Development.

Marshalltown Community College.

Office of Workforce Development, Medina County, OH.

MenzFit, Washington DC.

Mifflin Country Industrial Development Corporation.

Mississippi State Unversity.

Mitchell County Development Foundation, Inc.

Montana State Univrsity.

Montana World Trade Center.

Montgomery College.

National Association of Development Organizations.

National Federation of the Blind.

New College Institute.

North Carolina Rural Economic Development Center.

North Dakota State College of Science, Nanotechnology

Applied Science Laboratory.

North Iowa Area Community College North Side Industrial

Development Company.

Northeast Entrepreneur Fund.

Northwest Agriculture Business Center.

Northwestern University.

Ohio University.

Oil Region Alliance of Business.

Operation New Hope, Florida.

Peoria NEXT Innovation Center.

Phoenix House.

Portland State University.

Ready to Work, Ohio.

Rio Hondo College.

Rochester Tooling and Machining Association.

Rock Valley College.

Rockford Area Ventures Small Business Incubator and

Technology Commercialization Center.

Rockland Small Business Development Center.

Rowan University.

San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association.

Sandoval County New Mexico.

Seedco Financial Services Alabama Minority and Women-owned

Business Enterprises.

Southern and Eastern Kentucky Tourism Development

Association.

Sephardic Angel Fund, Brooklyn, NY.

SER-Jobs for Progress National.

Shawnee State University.

Sierra College.

Sitar Arts Center.

Soundview Community in Action.

South Dakota School of Mines.

South Side Innovation Center.

Southeastern University.

Spanish American Merchants Association.

St. Jerome's Church Community Center.

STEEED Youth Program.

University of Northern Iowa.

TechRanch Technology Venture Center.

Enterprise Center, Tennessee.

Illinois Institute of Technology.

University of Texas, San Antonio.

Thomas More College.

Thurgood Marshall College Fund.

University of Connecticut, Avery Point.

University of Maryland.

University of Missouri, Kansas City.

University of Notre Dame, Robinson Enterprises Community

Learning Center.

University of Pittsburgh.

University of South Florida.

University of Southern Maine.

Lewiston-Auburn College.

University of Texas, Brownsville International Trade

Center.

Urban League of Rochester.

USS Saratoga Museum Foundation.

Valley Economic Development Center.

Vermont Small Business Development Center.

Wallace State Community College.

Department of Public Services, Wayne County, MI.

Wayne County, New York.

West Virginia University Research Corporation.

Western Massachusetts Enterprise Fund.

Williamsburg County, SC.

Wittenberg University.

Workforce Initiative Asociation, Canton, OH.

Youngstown Edison Incubator Corporation.

Youngstown Central Area Community Improvement Corps.

Youngstown Warren Relational Chamber.

Offered By: Mr. Campbell of California

Amendment No. 43: At the end of the bill (before the short

title), insert the following:

None of the funds in this Act to the Small Business

Administration may be used for the Abraham Lincoln National

Airport Commission.

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. Chairman, this amendment is dealing with an earmark for $140,000 for the Wetzel County Courthouse in New Martinsville, West Virginia.

Now, Mr. Chairman, I actually looked up on a Web site to see the Wetzel County Courthouse, and it is a building that was built sometime between 1900 and 1902, and it looks like a very fine historic building. I actually am personally into historic preservation. I personally support, through charitable contributions, the preservation of various historic buildings around California, actually, and around the Nation.

I believe that we ought to keep our historic buildings and keep them up and appreciate them and treasure that history that we, as a fairly young country, are just beginning to build. So that's not why I am proposing to strike this earmark from this bill.

It's not that this isn't a historic building; it clearly is. It's not that perhaps it requires some renovation; I don't know, but perhaps it does. But the question is, is this really the sort of thing upon which we should be spending our scarce Federal tax dollars?

Let me point out again that this is a county courthouse. It's not a Federal courthouse; it is a county courthouse in West Virginia. Now, I'm sure that there are taxes, property taxes, whatever, in that county, and perhaps those tax dollars, if the local magistrates felt it was appropriate, could be used for this, or perhaps city dollars in that city or that area, or perhaps State dollars, or perhaps charitable dollars, a preservation society is set up or becomes set up, or whatever, to support this courthouse.

But it just seems completely inappropriate to me, Mr. Chairman, that we are spending scarce Federal dollars on this sort of thing. Now, I have a county courthouse in my county; it was built around the same time. It's old also. I'm sure we could use $140,000 for it. I'm sure we could use $140,000 for any number of county courthouses that are old and historic across this country. Are we going to fund them all? Is it the Federal taxpayers' responsibility to restore them all or to make some contribution to them all? I really don't think so.

And it's not, as I say, that perhaps this isn't a need, but I just don't think it's appropriate to spend Federal tax dollars on this sort of very local objective and local project that has no Federal nexus.

Now, my friends on the other side of the aisle spent a lot of time the last few days talking about PAYGO. But one of the things to point out is that this bill is not subject, the entire bill basically, all of the spending in the budget is not subject to PAYGO because there is a 4.5 percent increase in total spending in this appropriations bill that we're debating tonight. And there is no offset for that 4.5 percent. There is no other spending that is reduced by 4.5 percent. So every dollar we spend on this bill tonight is a dollar that adds to the deficit. Every single dollar contributes to further raiding the Social Security surplus.

So the question is, is this $140,000 that we believe we should increase the Federal deficit by $140,000 for this courthouse, should we raid the Social Security surplus by an additional $140,000 for this courthouse, or should we not spend the taxpayers' money on something like this local project?

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

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

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

If I may continue, then. I appreciate the comments from the gentleman from West Virginia. And I frankly don't dispute or have any basis upon which to dispute anything the gentleman said, but that wasn't my point. My point was that it is not appropriate to use Federal funds for this sort of thing, regardless of how great the local community may find this to be a local need.

The Federal tax dollars cannot support every little local project, every local need, every historic building everywhere that we need.

To close, I would like to quote, if I could, Mr. Chairman, Thomas Jefferson, just to let people know that this is not a new issue. And he said, ``Have you considered all the consequences of our proposition respecting post roads? I view it as a source of boundless patronage to the executive, jobbing to Members of Congress and their friends, and a bottomless abyss of public money. You will begin by only appropriating the surplus of post office revenues, but other revenues will soon be called into their aid. And it will be a scene of eternal scramble among the Members as to who can get the most money wasted in their State. And they will always get the most who are the meanest.''

Thomas Jefferson is right. I would ask you to support this amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

What this amendment proposes to do is basically to strike $150,000 of an earmark that is in the bill to provide equipment for the anadromous fish research in Falls Turner, Massachusetts.

Now, again, I did look up, even though I didn't look up the pronunciation, I did look up enough to know that anadromous fish spend their lives in salt water but migrate to fresh water to reproduce, like salmon. And I'm sure that studying their habits, or whatever this is going to study, is a worthy, I'm going to presume, at least, that it is a worthy intellectual exercise and that perhaps it has value for researchers or people studying fish or whatever it is. And again, like in the last amendment that I offered, that is not my point in proposing that we not use tax dollars to fund this.

But my point instead is with limited tax dollars, limited to $3 trillion, but limited nonetheless, of Federal tax dollars, with a deficit that we have that all of these appropriations bills will increase, not decrease, with the fact that we are still raiding Social Security surplus, is buying equipment for this study in this place something that should command $150,000 of taxpayers' money?

Again, as I mentioned before, I have heard Members on the other side of the aisle constantly refer to their PAYGO as how they are attempting to be fiscally responsible. But yet this bill increases spending by 4.5 percent over last year. There is no PAYGO there. There is no other appropriations bill that is reduced by 4.5 percent to save this money. There are no structural reforms in the entitlement programs, which we all know are scheduled for disaster, to save this money.

So this $150,000 is not just an amorphous $150,000 in a gigantic budget that means nothing. It is a real $150,000 that is using taxpayers' money but will increase the deficit and further raid the Social Security surplus by $150,000.

So the question before the body is not whether this research is interesting, or even whether it is useful to some people. But the question is, is it worth increasing the deficit by $150,000 to fund this? Is this sort of research the sort of thing the Federal Government should be involved in? If we are involved in this, why are we not involved in many, many other forms of research that are going on in my district or the district of every other Member who is here? The reason is because we can't afford to do that.

So I would respectfully suggest that we strike this money.

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

Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the gentleman from Massachusetts' reasoned defense of this. We are just going to have to disagree. He said in part of his comments that this is something which is of great interest to commercial fishermen and sports fishermen, so it begs the question of, is that what we are in the business of doing with Federal tax dollars, in increasing the deficit, et cetera, in order to provide research and information for sports fishermen and commercial fishermen? I happen to think we are not.

Mr. Chairman, I yield the balance of my time, except for 15 seconds, to my friend the gentleman from California (Mr. Daniel E. Lungren).

Reclaiming my time, I guess perhaps Silvio Conte might have said this same thing, but in 1822, President James Monroe said that Federal money should be limited to ``great national works only, since if it were unlimited, it would be liable to abuse and might be productive of evil.''

Mr. Chairman, I would ask for support of this amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

The Acting Chairman. Pursuant to clause 6 of rule XVIII, further proceedings on the amendment offered by the gentleman from California will be postponed.

I thank the gentleman from South Carolina.

Mr. Chairman, let's be clear what we are doing here: we are not cutting anything. We are proposing to do less of an increase in this bill than what has been proposed by the majority party.

Just to illustrate, as I have done before, what I will do again, because I keep hearing talk about cuts: one equals one; two is more than one, even if you want three. This bill, what we have proposed is to have two, is to spend more than the one that was spent before, to spend two. There are some people who would like to spend three. We think that's too much.

We think that we have a deficit. We think that we have seen the majority party propose to increase taxes by however much money they happen to spend. We think they should spend less. We think government should spend less so that the taxpayers can keep more of their own money that they earned.

Mr. Chairman, we can get this budget under control. We can get this deficit under control without cutting spending and without raising taxes, if we just

control how much we increase the spending by.

Instead of increasing it by 7 or 8 or 9 or 10 percent, 9, over 9 percent, which overall has been proposed in this budget, if, instead, we only increase it by 6, not a bad increase, but just increase it by 6, and we do that year after year, we will eliminate this deficit without digging more into the taxpayers' pockets, because we already dig into their pockets too much.

So that's what this whole debate, that's what the amendment of the gentleman from South Carolina is about, just controlling the growth of spending to something that is reasonable but manageable and will enable people to keep their own money and this government to return to a fiscal responsibility position without deficits.