Departments Of Labor, Health And Human Services, And Education, And Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2008
Floor Speech
DEPARTMENTS OF LABOR, HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES, AND EDUCATION, AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2008 -- (House of Representatives - July 19, 2007)
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Mr. FLAKE. I thank the Chair.
Before talking about this amendment, there wasn't time for me to speak on the last one, I just want to say that I don't think it is the road that we want to go down to start naming facilities or programs after ourselves. I think that the rules may be a bit vague, but they seem clear enough that we shouldn't do that. The dialogue that I heard was, Are you worthy to have something named after you if you have just been here a few years? Does it take 38 years? What does it take?
Frankly, I think it would take a lot more than $2 million to get any college or university in my district to name something the "Flake Center,'' for a myriad of reasons. But, having said that, I just don't think it is a road that we should go down. So that is why I supported the gentleman's amendment. I hope others as they come to the floor will, as well.
This amendment would prohibit $200,000 in Federal funds from being used for the American Jazz Museum in Kansas City, Missouri, for exhibits, education programs, and for an archival project. It reduces the cost of the bill by a consistent amount. I couldn't think of any jazzy line here, but I will just say that earmarks like this probably give taxpayers all over the blues.
This earmark would come out of the Institute of Museum and Library Services account, or the IMLS. The IMLS administers a competitive grant program for museums, libraries and zoos. This committee has recommended this program be funded with nearly $18 million.
Here is part of the problem, I think, with earmarks, particularly in this bill. We are often earmarking funds that are in programs at the agencies that are already designated to be awarded on a competitively bid process. This jazz museum, I am sure, has submitted applications. Perhaps they have won grants over the years. But maybe this year they didn't. So what earmarks typically do are circumvent the process that we have mandated to be established with these agencies.
We often complain about Federal agencies not listening to us and going out and spending willy-nilly. That is often the case, certainly. It is our job, then, to call them in and say, we want to change your program. We want to have you competitively bid projects.
I should point out that much of what we criticize the agencies for we are doing here in spades. Earmarks are, by their very definition, no-bid contracts. We are saying to people out there, if you can't get your grant through the competitively bid process, come to us anyway, and we will earmark those funds for you. So there is no concept, no discussion of merit.
Try as they might, I am sure the Appropriations Committee is not in a position to adequately scrub and vet all of these earmark requests. That is simply not their role and shouldn't be their role. We shouldn't put that burden on the Appropriations Committee.
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Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Chairman, I have a great deal of respect for the gentleman whose earmark this is. I believe he knows that. I commend him for earlier than just about anybody putting his earmarks on his Web site. Certainly, this has been a good reform. I have been complimentary, and I remain so, of the majority party's willingness in January to go down this road and actually require this much. It follows some of what we did in the fall as Republicans. Frankly, in some areas, I think it did better than we did.
This isn't a case of something looks untoward in this earmark, or somebody is trying to get some private gain. It doesn't seem to me to be that at all. It is simply a question of, is this a proper priority? Should Members of Congress be able to designate money like this, particularly in this case, when we have a Federal agency with a program to award grants and an account with $16 million that we appropriate every year to award grants under this program? That is my question here.
I think that certainly, as mentioned, jazz is uniquely American. I can't imagine them submitting a proposal that would not be granted. It seems like a great place. It seems to be appropriate. What is at question here is, should the Congress be doing this? That is where I am.
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Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding.
It was brought up before that we're not talking about what the Federal agencies do. We talk a lot about what Congress does with earmarking, but there's an area of complaint I've heard about what the Federal agencies are doing. Well, this is the time to have that discussion. Right now.
We're looking to reduce the amount spent, the amount that we appropriate to the Federal agencies. Yes, they waste money, a tremendous amount of money. They waste money in my own district. This is the time that we say, hey, hold back a little, reprioritize, don't spend as much, and yet we're not doing it.
Instead, we say, well, you're misspending money and so we're going to misspend some money with earmarking. We don't like the way you have prioritized, so we're not going to actually go in and provide oversight and say, all right, stop spending money this way or that way. We're just going to add to it with our own priorities.
Let me just give an example. It's often said we don't ever give examples of specific programs. I'll give you one. I believe it was last year or maybe the year before GAO came out with a study saying that the DARE program was a waste of money, basically, or we weren't getting the bang for the buck that we should. What did we do? We increased funding for it. Instead of saying, you know, maybe it's not run as it should be, maybe we should scale back on it, force them to change it or scrap it altogether, but instead we increased funding for it.
That goes on across the board. GAO studies that we often commission are always followed by, well, they must need more money. Not the money's being misspent. They just need more of it.
That's what this amendment is all about to say, hey, Federal agencies you're misspending money; you're spending too much; it's time to scale back, and by the way, we can scale back on our own as far as earmarking as well.
So we never hear about the Federal agencies misspending. Here's one saying they do. They do in your district; they do in my district. This is the opportunity to say enough is enough. Let's cut back. Let's have some fiscal responsibility here.
So I commend the gentleman for his amendment, and I urge everyone to support it.
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