Jeff Flake: “The gentleman correctly stated that Concurrent has been given some Federal contracts. Then, why in the world did they…”

“The gentleman correctly stated that Concurrent has been given some Federal contracts. Then, why in the world did they need this earmark? If they are getting Federal contracts through some kind of bidding process, then why do they need continued earmarks? Which, as I mentioned, are by their very definition sole-source contracts, no-bid contracts, where we are specifying an individual firm, a business in this case, that hires a lobbyist, $820,000 paid to a lobbyist to get more Federal funds. Where does it end? Is this any kind of process or system that we can be proud of, with these earmark incubators that survive just by getting more earmarks? I mean, how can we do that? If every district in this country had those kinds of earmark incubators, every account in the U.S. Federal Government would be earmarked, I would venture to say. So I would say we simply have to stop this somewhere. I urge support for the amendment.”