Jeff Flake: “But still senior members of the Appropriations Committee were given up to $150 million in earmarks when other…”

“But still senior members of the Appropriations Committee were given up to $150 million in earmarks when other rank-and-file Members got maybe a million or 2. Are there more needs in certain districts? Is it spread out? How does that process go? What confidence should we have as Members voting to fund these earmarks that it is on some kind of basis that bears any relationship to what the Defense Department needs rather than political calculation? But let me just say, with regard to the Doyle Center, I would have hoped that the sponsor of the earmark would come and talk about it. But here is another example, as I mentioned, of an earmark incubator where an earmark creates an organization, in this case, named after one of our own, and the same one who it is named after gets more earmarks year after year for the same center to get more earmarks and more Federal contracts. We simply can't sustain that. The notion that that is what the Defense Department needs simply doesn't hold water. With that, I urge adoption of the amendment.”