Chris Van Hollen: “we submitted an amendment to the Rules Committee for its consideration. I am sorry that the chairman decided not to take…”

“we submitted an amendment to the Rules Committee for its consideration. I am sorry that the chairman decided not to take up the amendment, but what the amendment did was outline the very simple prohibitions that we talked about, to prohibit us from steering Federal taxpayers' dollars to organizations that employed family members, that employed former staff members, or where monies were steered through lobbyists and lobbyist organizations that employed spouses or family members or former staff members. The key issue here is trying to end the sort of inside dealing and sweetheart deals that have rocked this town. We have not done that. What worries me about this piece of legislation is that people are going to pass it and they are going to go home to their congressional districts and they are going to tell people: We have cleaned up Washington; that we have stopped the abuses, that we have done something about the nexus between lobbying problems and the earmark process, when in fact we haven't done it. The earmarks have skyrocketed since the Republicans took control of Congress, and yet they have also refused to adopt a rule that we proposed for a pay-as-you-go budget. The President and others complain about earmarks, but he hasn't vetoed a single bill except the stem cell bill. We keep hearing about the problems on the spending side, and yet every one of the bills that has gone through this Congress has been signed by the President.…”