Jeff Flake: “I would simply submit that every Member of Congress in 435 districts around the country can point to at least pockets in…”

“I would simply submit that every Member of Congress in 435 districts around the country can point to at least pockets in his or her district that need help, where there is high jobless rates or where there is high crime. But where does it end? Where do we say, all right, we simply can't pass out earmarks like this and circumvent the normal authorization, appropriation, and oversight process? When does it become our job to say, all right, we are not going to go through that process and authorize these programs, appropriate and then have oversight. Instead, we are just going to slip an earmark in that we don't even know who sponsored until we offer it on the floor today. And if nobody was standing up here, we still wouldn't know. There are hundreds and hundreds of earmarks in this bill that we wouldn't even know who is offering them or what they are for because the descriptions are often so vague as to what the earmark is supposed to fund. So where does it end? Why can't every Member stand up and say, I have pockets in my district, if not my entire district, that need workforce development, that need facilities? He mentioned my district has grown 40 percent in the past couple of years. It has. It has tremendous infrastructure needs. But if I were to come and say we need all the lists that he rattled off there, then the Treasury simply couldn't handle it.…”