On the recordJune 15, 2016
I stand, once again, today to offer an amendment with my fellow Californian, Tom McClintock, and I have to say this is a deja vu moment. Just last year, Mr. McClintock and I worked together, on a bipartisan basis, to finally strike a wasteful provision that was in the 2016 Defense Appropriations Act and had been in many previous Defense Appropriations Acts. Our amendment, which passed overwhelmingly in this House, would save taxpayers millions of dollars by ending an outdated earmark mandating that the Defense Department ship coal from a certain part of Pennsylvania, 4,000 miles across the planet, to American bases in Germany. Somehow, this zombie provision from the deepest days of the cold war and the golden era of congressional earmarks, when you could go into a bill like this and arrange a sweetheart deal for a certain district and a certain coal company, somehow that provision was snuck back into this year's bill. It just won't die. Now, for years, the Department of Defense and the President's annual budget has urged Congress to get rid of this provision, to allow the use of cheaper fuels to power its military bases in Germany. But because of certain special interests, the provision has persisted. It is a terrible deal for the American taxpayers, for the environment, but it has persisted. Now that finally changed last year, and our amendment not only passed this House but it passed by a vote of 252-179. In this House, that is what we call a home run.…
