Jeff Flake: “I would like to bring another aspect for sustaining the President's veto that hasn't been talked about yet. When this…”

“I would like to bring another aspect for sustaining the President's veto that hasn't been talked about yet. When this bill was brought to the floor initially, there were some 26 earmarks in the legislation. First we were told there are no earmarks. Then we had kind of a wild goose chase up in the intelligence room to find if there were. We found out there actually were. Then we finally got a list, belatedly. We got the list of earmarks, I think, about 5 hours after the deadline for us to submit a list of earmarks that we wanted to challenge. How convenient was that? And we were told, No, it is just procedural, but too late. You won't be able to offer any amendments. We were told at the beginning of the process this year that every earmark that was offered in a piece of legislation in a conference report, in a committee report would be able to be challenged on the House floor. That wasn't the case here. We had 20-some earmarks worth about $80 million that were never challenged that still, to this day, cannot, have not, will not be challenged by this House. So that, for the process alone, we shouldn't go forward with this piece of legislation. These weren't just any earmarks. One, $80 million worth; and, two, there were big earmarks like $23 million for the National Drug Intelligence Center. This is a center that the President has been trying to shut down for years because it doesn't coordinate efforts as it should.”