Norman D. Dicks: “I rise in strong opposition to this bill. It is my judgment that--and I listened to the statement made by the…”

“I rise in strong opposition to this bill. It is my judgment that--and I listened to the statement made by the distinguished chairman of the Appropriations Committee, Mr. Rogers from Kentucky, that this is unwarranted, especially now that Congress has decided, at least for the time being, that we're not going to do earmarks. This would get down to a situation where if, on the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, we added money for additional predator ISR vehicles, the President can as I understand it, take it right back down to his budget request. We've had a lot of experience, many Members of the Appropriations Committee, Mr. Young and I, have been here over 30 years and served on this committee over 30 years, and a lot of positive things have happened where Congress makes increases or decreases. Now, if you're going to give the President the authority to send up a bill undoing our work, especially after it's been voted on, the Appropriations Committee has gone through all these things. I just think it's wrong. In fact, on the earmark issue, I frankly think the solution that the Democrats had when we were in the majority was appropriate where we said you can't have earmarks for private companies unless it's competitively awarded, and then we took that away, but you still can help your schools. {time} 1500 You can still help your local governments. You can still help your universities, your NGOs that are doing work on meth for example--rather important issues.…”