Scott Walker: “Mr. Chairman, the language is in the bill for a very specific reason. One of the most disturbing processes that…”

“Mr. Chairman, the language is in the bill for a very specific reason. One of the most disturbing processes that characterized Congresses of the past was the fact that we had a lot of earmarked science, money that showed up out of nowhere in conference committees that just suddenly appeared as spending that we ought to be doing because somebody thought it was a good thing. There was never peer review, never showed up on the House floor or Senate floor for debate. It just emerged out of a conference committee out of nowhere and so on, a specific earmark for a specific university or for a specific program. So what we have decided to do is try to eliminate some of those programs and say to them, ``Compete with the rest of us.'' If this program is as good as the gentlewoman tells us it is, it ought to be very competitive. It ought to be able to go in and offer its credentials with everybody else, be peer reviewed by people who have knowledge about the programs and survive and be funded. They did not want to do that. They did an end run, got somebody to offer an earmark, got somebody to practice a little pork-barreling for them and throw it in the bill. What we are going to do is we are going to stop that practice. Where we have projects that are on the dole because of some earmark along the way, we are going to divest them. We are not making a judgment about those programs.”