Jeff Flake: “I would submit that it's unacceptable. The reason we have this transparency, where we have letters actually requesting…”

“I would submit that it's unacceptable. The reason we have this transparency, where we have letters actually requesting the earmark, indicating the entity that it goes to, the specific purpose for the earmark, is so that we make informed judgments here on floor. If all we can do is have one staff member go in, they have to wait while meetings are held, they can't go in certain rooms, they are told that they can only read from the list and take notes, not make copies. The practice in the past has been, and I am not saying that this is more a problem with the majority than it was with the previous majority, we had trouble then. But if we're going to have an open, transparent process, it would be nice to have, to actually think that you want this information out rather than holding it back as long as you can.”