Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Act Of 2009

Floor Speech

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Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Chairman, I have offered different iterations of this noncontroversial amendment many times during this Congress and the last. This particular amendment was offered last June to the TSA Authorization Act when it was adopted by voice vote.

H.R. 2868 establishes a new Worker Training Grants program that seeks to provide grants to nonprofit organizations with demonstrated experience in implementing and operating successful worker or first responder health and safety training programs. This amendment would simply prohibit the Worker Training Grants program from being earmarked by Members for pet projects or favored entities back home. This amendment also establishes that it is the presumption of Congress that these grants would be awarded competitively based on merit.

I am often asked why I offer this. These are set up to be programs that are competitively awarded, but sometimes it's explicitly stated, sometimes it's not. In either case, sometimes when it is explicitly stated--and when it's not--these grant programs are sometimes just earmarked, all of them. All of the money in some of these accounts, if you take, for example, some of the programs in the Homeland Security bill, nearly 100 percent of the funds in one particular grant program were earmarked in the most recent Homeland Security spending bill.

So what we are seeking to do is make sure that people who want to apply for these grants are able to, and that Members aren't able to simply earmark that money for people in their district or favored entities.

Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. FLAKE. I thank the chairman. And would that all chairmen shared your view on earmarks and programs of this type. I am glad the chairman has agreed to accept this amendment, and I urge its adoption.

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