Jeff Flake: “I rise today out of a concern for what earmarks are doing to this body. Those of us on the Republican side understand…”

“I rise today out of a concern for what earmarks are doing to this body. Those of us on the Republican side understand very well the perils of unfettered earmarks. It's part of the reason we're squarely in the minority today. But there are greater concerns than which party is in the majority. I hope that each of us, Republicans and Democrats, would recognize this. Proponents of earmarking defend the practice by noting that Article I of the Constitution gives Congress the power of the purse, and that earmarking is consistent with that responsibility. It is true that Congress has the power of the purse. But the contemporary practice of earmarking circumvents, rather than enhances, the careful execution of our responsibility as stewards of the public purse. Take the Labor-HHS bill that will be coming up later today; it contains 1,300 earmarks. Are we to assume that each of these 1,300 has been properly vetted and scrubbed? No way. I suspect that, just as the distinguished chairman of the Appropriations Committee noted a couple of weeks ago, there is no way to adequately screen these earmarks given the tight appropriations schedule. The question needs to be asked, why are we so bent on moving forward with 1,300 earmarks? I should note that last year there were no House earmarks in the Labor-HHS bill. The world didn't come crashing to a halt.”