Jeff Flake: “nobody is suggesting that it is a crime to support this kind of earmark, nor would it be a crime to actually deny…”

“nobody is suggesting that it is a crime to support this kind of earmark, nor would it be a crime to actually deny funding for it. That's what the process is about. My complaint, and nobody has suggested either, that there's this pure process at the Federal agency level. It's dysfunctional. We haven't provided the type of oversight that we need to. The fact that there is an account over there to actually fund economic development projects suggests to me that it's out of control, that that's what we are about, what we should be about. We control the Federal purse strings. It should be in our interest actually to rein in spending over there rather than trying to compete with it and say if they do effect spending on this project or that, whomever has the district, that we shouldn't compete with that here and say, well, we can do one, one-up them with the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. If they had funded another hall of fame, we should say, is it the Federal Government's role to fund these? That's what I am questioning here. If we can fund teapot museums and mule museums and hunting and fishing museums, what is off limits? What would come here that we could say we are not going to fund that? We could fund a mule museum. How about a donkey museum. Is that out of line? Where do we say enough is enough, and where do we say let's give the taxpayer a break? Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.”