Jeff Flake

This gives voice to Saint Augustine's lament: Give me sobriety, but not yet.

I think it's incumbent on us in Congress to take better care here. I have been simply amazed at how jealous we guard our spending prerogatives here in the House, rightly so, but then when it came to TARP, we simply let them run with…

Again, the President's directive doesn't relate to report language in general, it's simply the earmark. Now I just have to say, 500 earmarks in this bill. There will be more than 2,000 when the appropriation bill comes to the floor, if…

Well, then there's no need to earmark it this way if it's authorized. There's no reason to put it in committee or conference report language and not have it in the bill. I think what the President has rightly recognized is that when it's…

I would like to see it. My information was that it was not in the House bill; and, that if it was in the Senate, it was considerably different than what came over here. But I think one thing we know is it was not appropriately vetted…

That is not the information that I had. And the point that I made with regard to the scoring by CBO stands. If you use an earlier baseline, it affects it tremendously. If you use the baseline that we should be using under the budget rules…

In my very short time remaining, let me simply say that we have a huge problem with entitlements in this country, one of which is the entitlement, direct payment system for farmers. This is not serious reform, when you are still paying…

With this legislation, a farm couple earning $2.5 million in combined on-farm and off-farm income is still eligible for hundreds of thousands of dollars in farm payments. Yet an urban couple earning a little more than $17,800 or owning…

The gentleman mentioned the National Marine Fishery Service earmark. It was added at the last minute. It may have been in a 2006 bill, but it wasn't in this bill until it was air dropped into the conference report. Now $170 million, that…

I should note, as I did before, this is not below the baseline. There is only room because we're going well above the baseline. We're actually charging fees or doing some other things to free up offset money to actually pay for the…

Reclaiming my time, we heard some of these same arguments in 2002, that we had tightened things up, and that we wouldn't have the ability to game the system. Yet I mentioned the shuttle disaster as one of the more egregious examples. There…

Well, I'd just like to ask the gentleman. In 2002 didn't we hear exactly what we're hearing today, that if we include a permanent disaster title, that there will be no more need for disaster relief beyond this year?

Again, this amendment is simply to preserve the bill as it is, to make sure that Members don't meddle in it. It is there to protect the waters and the beaches, not protect incumbents for reelection. That is what this is about.

But, Mr. Speaker, these were earmarks that were added in addition to what was there before. They were air-dropped. They are earmarks that we haven't seen before that we do not have an opportunity here to strike or even debate. I mean…

Let me just make one point with regard to special interests, that they have been removed from this process. Because we were trying to get copies of this legislation and couldn't yesterday, we couldn't get it from the majority, so many of…

In January when we passed transparency rules on earmarks, I was the first one to compliment the majority on what they had done. We put some decent rules into play. But rules are only as good as your willingness to enforce them. And we have…

This is not a parliamentary ruse here. This is a response to a parliamentary ruse. The parliamentary ruse is air-dropping earmarks into a bill and then waiving all points of order against or waiving all points of order against that bill so…

As I mentioned before, I originally had an amendment that I would have liked to have offered which would simply say that we would add the following: ``Nothing in this act shall relieve a Native Hawaiian governing authority from complying…

Does the gentleman presume to know more about this specific subject and know of a reason why this should remain in effect when the administration is saying that it should be shut down because it is duplicative and wasteful?

I would simply reiterate what we are talking about here. This is a charter school that, although it has been spoken of as serving military families, it has no more of a mission to serve military families, I would suggest, than the school…

Nobody is trying to deny anybody any water, certainly not somebody from Arizona. But the question remains, was this a program of memorandum? Is it on any unfunded requirement list? Does any operator in the field say that we need this…

Nobody here is questioning the need for research. Every industry does it. Every industry has to do it to survive because of competition. What I question here is why the taxpayer is spending $6 million every year on this same earmark for a…

I have noted before I have been beaten like a rented mule here quite a bit. But I must say the majority of Democrats did join me in actually striking an earmark a couple of weeks ago... I would suggest, when you have 410 earmarks in one…

Let me just say, nobody questions the validity or the importance of research. Every industry needs to do it, and do a lot of it. But we have a lot of high-tech industries that are vital to this country. Why aren't we funding a company like…

I should note, with this legislation, in the middle of the night last night we did the equivalent of earmarking on an authorization bill. We, in the middle of the night, designated some 25 hospitals, giving them a different designation…