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. WHITFIELD. Mr. Chairman, I want to first of all thank the chairman of the subcommittee on the Democratic side and also on the Republican side for the hard work that they have shown in establishing this appropriation bill for Homeland Security.

Last night I was reading a poll, and I noticed that Congress, as an institution, has an approval rating of less than 30 percent. That certainly is not caused by the leadership of the Democratic Party, because when the Republicans were in control a few months ago, Congress had an approval rating of less than 30 percent also.

But I think it reflects the frustration of the American people about the institution of Congress and how Congress works. I welcome this debate on the earmarks, because I do not view this as a delaying tactic, but I think this is an issue that is even deeper than earmarks and the way that they're handled by the Appropriations Committee.

I am speaking specifically of the fact that the chairman of the Appropriations Committee yesterday mentioned that there was something like 32,000 earmark requests, and that there was not ample time to get through these appropriations bills. Yet every year Congress is consumed by the appropriations process, and every year it takes more and more time, and every year, frequently, we do not even pass all the appropriations bills in the House and the Senate, and we do continuing resolutions, and then we do omnibus bills. The omnibus bills come to the floor, and sometimes they are 8 or 9,000 pages and Members don't even know what's in there, and we are voting on those.

I would remind the Members that about 6 years ago we introduced legislation that would ask the House to go to a 2-year budget and 2-year appropriations process. That bill received over 200 votes in support of it, because I think all of us recognize that this appropriations process and budget process that we now operate under is broken. It simply does not work.

One of the frustrations, I will be very honest about it, on the earmarks is that there is a perception among Members who are not on the Appropriations Committee that the vast majority of earmarks go to the appropriators.

Yet all of us represent the same number of people, all of us represent taxpayers, and all of us are entitled to earmarks.

But it's an unfair process.

I know, from discussions that I have had with a lot of Members, I know appropriators get upset with authorizers and say authorizers are not doing their job, and authorizers get upset with appropriators in saying appropriators are authorizing on appropriations bills when they want to.

So I think what this institution needs to do is go to a 2-year budget process, a 2-year appropriations process so that one year we can sit here and argue about money, but the next year we can argue about authorization and reforming education and health care and some of the substantive problems that the American people face instead of every year being totally consumed by the appropriation process.

To me, that's the problem we have today.

Mr. Chairman, I yield to the gentlelady from North Carolina.

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