Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act, 2008
Floor Speech
DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2008 -- (House of Representatives - June 13, 2007)
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Mr. KLINE of Minnesota. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.
I want to commend my colleagues for their activities over the last day. Many of my colleagues on this side of the aisle have come to the floor and offered amendments, in some cases, to do something, perhaps small but something to try to control the explosion of spending that we're seeing come forward through this budget and through this appropriations process. And so I want to commend my colleagues from North Carolina, Mr. McHenry, whose amendment we are debating now, which is a secondary amendment to our colleague, Ms. Foxx from North Carolina. I know it's a little confusing sometimes. These are efforts to try to control runaway spending, billions and billions of dollars, to be paid for, as we have heard in this debate, by the largest tax increase in American history. I applaud the efforts of my colleagues to try to do something to get our arms around that spending.
But there is another reason why we have been coming to the floor, and that is to shed some light into a horribly flawed process of earmarks. One of our colleagues, the gentleman from New York, I believe, earlier came down and said, ``Why are we talking about earmarks? There aren't any earmarks in this bill.'' Well, you see, that's the point. We don't know if there are earmarks in this bill. We don't know if there will be earmarks in this bill, but frankly the suspicion that we have is that sometime in July, or perhaps August, we will find out that indeed there are going to be earmarks in this bill and we, Members of this House, are not going to have a chance to challenge those earmarks on this floor, and that is simply unacceptable.
Now, there has been a great deal of media interest to bring focus to this. In fact, in this morning's paper, a local paper here, Roll Call, there is an editorial called Pork Rules that ought to underscore the very problem. I am just going to quote a couple of paragraphs from that story, because I think it does underscore the very issue that we're talking about on the floor of this House.
It says:
``Under furious attack from editorial writers and Republicans, House Appropriations Chairman David Obey (D-Wis.) has come up with a new disclosure policy on earmarks. It's better than his previous one, the airdrop policy, but it's a far cry from full transparency.'' It's that transparency issue that we've been trying to get at.
Continuing the quote:
``In a remarkable press conference Monday in which he read nearly every word of a 14-page earmark policy declaration before taking questions, Obey pledged that Democrats would fully disclose every earmark and its sponsor by the end of July.''
I would say to my colleagues, that is well past the proposed date that we are supposed to be voting on this and every appropriations bill in this House. So we will know every earmark and its sponsor by the end of July, at which point we can do absolutely nothing about it.
Continuing the quote:
``That kind of disclosure would be only partially in keeping with the earmark rules Republicans put into place in September, after they got into no end of political trouble for corrupt, opaque special-interest pork trading. But the GOP rule made it possible for earmarks to be individually challenged in debate on appropriations bills.'' And that's the point.
We heard the debate last night repeatedly that went something like this: Well, you Republicans put in earmarks, thousands of earmarks, and you airdropped earmarks into bills in conference, and so you did it, we're going to do it. But we're going to do it better because we're going to post a list sometime in July or August, at which time nobody will be able to vote on it.
Mr. Chairman and my colleagues, the earmark process in this body, in this Congress, on both sides of this Capitol, has been broken for years. There is no question about it. There is a reason why many of us have decided that the process is so broken that we won't participate in it. So claiming that you were bad and, therefore, we can do it, strikes me as a very hollow and weak argument. I hope my colleagues would agree with me on that. Just because somebody made a mistake doesn't mean that we are then authorized to make a mistake. We are seeking transparency. That was the promise made to us and the American people, that we would be able to look at these earmarks and be able to debate them on this floor and be able to vote on them on this floor, not have them given to us, pulled from what has been called a secret slush fund. Frankly, I don't know what else to call it. Because in this very bill that we are debating today, we simply don't know where that money is and where it's going.
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Mr. KLINE of Minnesota. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.
Mr. Chairman, this has been a fascinating debate. I have heard, unfortunately, some language that I certainly find offensive, that we are dishonoring, for example, those who have died in this country. I certainly don't believe that is the case. I don't understand how our insistence on making sure that we are appropriating the taxpayers' dollars responsibly dishonors anyone.
Repeatedly I have heard that in this bill there are no earmarks. Again, I would reiterate, that is the point. We simply don't know if that is the case. The gentleman from Texas just stood down here and said he has requests for two earmarks in this bill. I don't know how many earmarks will end up at the end of the process, and, frankly, none of us do, because there is no transparency and we do not have visibility into this very, very flawed system for Members' projects for earmarks.
Mr. Chairman, I know that my dear friend and colleague from North Carolina would like the opportunity to talk about his amendment and this process once again, so I would be happy to yield the remainder of my time to the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. McHenry).
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