Jared Huffman: “Each year, the Department of Defense ships coal from Tamaqua, Pennsylvania, about 3,000 miles away to an Air Force base…”

“Each year, the Department of Defense ships coal from Tamaqua, Pennsylvania, about 3,000 miles away to an Air Force base in Germany, costing taxpayers millions of dollars more than if we simply treated this particular base like every other military base in the world. Why do we do this? Since 1972, each Defense Appropriations act has included an earmark requiring that the Pentagon purchase anthracite coal from Pennsylvania to heat this base in Kaiserslautern, Germany. This is wasteful spending, pure and simple. My bipartisan amendment, which I am offering with my colleague Tom McClintock, would finally remove this zombie earmark and save taxpayers millions of dollars each year. At its peak, this earmark mandated that the government purchase more than a million tons of anthracite coal each year to power overseas bases and installations, but today, the Department of Defense purchases only about 5,000 to 9,000 tons of coal annually, and it is to meet the requirements of this specific base in Kaiserslautern. It costs taxpayers millions of dollars each time. According to the last study we did on this, which was way back in 1989, the Department of Defense, the State Department, and the Department of Commerce jointly concluded that these mandates had cost U.S. taxpayers $1.1 billion, and that was 26 years ago, so it is a lot more since then.…”