Jeff Flake: “I didn't plan to speak on the bill itself. I already spoke on the rule. But I have been hearing some of the conversation…”

“I didn't plan to speak on the bill itself. I already spoke on the rule. But I have been hearing some of the conversation in my office and felt I had to come down. The honorable majority leader mentioned that there are things in this bill we have seen before. That's not entirely true. There are literally hundreds and hundreds of earmarks that we have not seen before. Now, some of them are part of the bills that passed without earmarks, MilCon or homeland security. But in the case of homeland security, we were told we could do that because that's not a bill that is traditionally earmarked. It hasn't been. Well, it is now. There are more than 100 earmarks there. And the gentleman from Wisconsin mentioned that in Labor-HHS, there were only earmarks added for new Members who are coming because they are entitled to representation. I would suggest that nobody is entitled to get earmarks. You're entitled here, as a Member of Congress, to exercise oversight in how the Federal agencies spend money. It doesn't entitle you to get earmarks. And, also, on that same point, we have the Energy and Water bill that we did consider, and there were hundreds, if not, I think, close to 1,000 earmarks there. Well, we added 34 more. I will just highlight one of them. There's one for the Northwest Regional Planning Commission manufacturing conversion for energy efficiency, a $5 million earmark.”