Jeff Flake: “For the record, I believe this is the Speaker's earmark. It would have been nice to have a colloquy like we were having…”

“For the record, I believe this is the Speaker's earmark. It would have been nice to have a colloquy like we were having on this earmark with the sponsor of the earmark. That is what would be nice about this process, if we could actually have the sponsor of the earmark come and explain it. I would like to know, for example, taking the example that the gentleman gave that I seem to be willing to let the Federal Government, the agencies, go ahead and spend this money, I would be upset if the Federal agencies designated this themselves. They shouldn't give out money like this. If the Federal agencies responsible for disbursing this kind of money gave money to the Goldwater Institute, I would expect the gentleman and everybody else to say that is not a proper use of money. I would do that if it was put in by a Member as well. It is not who spends the money; it is whether this money should be spent by the Federal Government. I am not defending the Bush administration's spending of money that is earmarked. I have noted many times that much of the money in the Homeland Security bill that is spent in my district is not a wise use of Federal taxpayer dollars. It shouldn't be spent. The question is not who spends it. We shouldn't use that as an excuse saying that the Federal agencies will misspend the money, so we have a right to do that as well. We have a right to misspend that money and designate think tanks who should receive it just because they might do the same thing over there.”