Jeff Flake: “This is a rather large earmark, $720,000. It's for Federal funding for meteorological equipment at Valparaiso University…”

“This is a rather large earmark, $720,000. It's for Federal funding for meteorological equipment at Valparaiso University in Valparaiso, Indiana. Growing up, I was told the best way to tell the weather was to stick your arm out the window of the vehicle as we were going down a farm road. This seems to me to be Congress's way of sticking their arm into taxpayers' back pocket and getting their wallet. The earmark description in the certification letter submitted said the earmark would fund the equipment as a teaching tool for the university's meteorology department and provide weather information to entities in northwestern Indiana and surrounding areas. This university is a coed, 4-year, private university located, as I said, in northwestern Indiana. It's ranked by the U.S. News and World Report as one of the top universities in the Midwest. Its endowment is in excess of $143 million. Again, why do we fund earmarks for institutions that are as flush as this one? Why do we dole out any Federal money to any private institution such as this, with a generous endowment already there? When we approve earmarks like this, we as an institution are bypassing the competitive grant process that already exists for funding educational and research institutions.”