House proceeding 07-15-08 0:00:00 to 0:14:32

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House proceeding 07-15-08 0:00:00 to 0:14:32 of 0:14:32

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the bottom up. . host: thank you for joining us this morning. see you tomorrow morning. the speaker pro tempore: the house will be in order. the chair lays before the house a communication from

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Speech By: Earl Blumenauer

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Earl Blumenauer:the speaker. the clerk: the speaker's room, washington, d.c.. july 15, 2008. i hereby appoint the honorable michael r. mcnulty to act as speaker pro tempore on this day . signed, nancy pelosi,

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Earl Blumenauer:speaker of the house of representatives. the speaker pro tempore: pursuant to the order of the house of january 4, 2007, the chair will now recognize members from listed submitted by the

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Earl Blumenauer:majority and minority leaders for morning hour debate. the chair will alternate recognition between the parties with each party limited to 25 minutes and each member other than the majority

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Earl Blumenauer:and minority leaders and my neither whip be limited to five minutes each. the chair now recognizes the gentleman from oregon, mr. blumenauer, for five minutes. mr. blumenauer: thank you,

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Earl Blumenauer:mr. speaker. people are right to be concerned about the impact of high gas prices, diesel fuel. and even though it is summer, soon we will have to be concerned about home heating prices as

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Earl Blumenauer:well. this is hurting everyone from truck drivers to nonprofits like meals on wheels who are seeing fewer volunteers because they can't afford the gasoline. it's clear that americans are

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Earl Blumenauer:struggling because of this administration's failed energy policies. they need help from their political leaders, but most importantly, they need to be treated honestly. groups talk about opening up

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Earl Blumenauer:the arctic for drilling, it fails the more fundamental test of making a difference for our families today. or at least this year. it will take 10 to 20 years before the oil begins to flow

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Earl Blumenauer:from a place like the arctic, and the benefits will not necessarily be noticed by families even then as we are in the vast global oil market. we hear now that there's a lack of commitment, materials

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Earl Blumenauer:and workers that compounds the problems of getting that oil to flow even if we move forward. expanding oil drilling as an answer to the current problems is a hoax because it won't make

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Earl Blumenauer:any difference for years. and even then it will have so small an impact as to not even being noticed by many people. 20 cents a gallon is little sol is for people seeing gas rising 10 cents

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Earl Blumenauer:in one day. it's a cruel hoax because there are things that can be done now. an example of something we can do tomorrow and make a difference immediately would be to rlease even a small fraction

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Earl Blumenauer:of the oil stored in the strategic oil petroleum reserve. this would squeeze dollars out of the speculative part of the price of oil today. the money from the proceeds of selling this oil

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Earl Blumenauer:could be used to finances badly needed energy -- finance badly needed energy and alternatives and we would still have money left over that we can continue to fill the reserve with less expensive

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Earl Blumenauer:oil over time. there are a series of initiatives that are being examined by the house this week that would rein in oil speculators. we don't know if it $5 a barrel. there are conflicts but it is

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Earl Blumenauer:clear there are some impact. if we stop wasting taxpayer dollar and eliminated the hummer loophole and instead use that money to make investments that will help families now. we can help immediately

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Earl Blumenauer:by leveling the tax and policy playing field to give families more choices about how they get around and how they spend their money on their transportation needs. that's why i've introduced

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Earl Blumenauer:legislation, the transportation and housing choices for gas relief act that recognizes while there's no single solution to complex energy situation we are facing, we can immediately reduce

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Earl Blumenauer:the impact of high gas prices on consumers by providing them with real options. it would expand the safe routes for school program so children can get to school on their own burning calories

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Earl Blumenauer:instead of fossil fuel. it would allow self-employed small business people to get for the first time transit commuting benefits currently enjoyed by other employees of large corporations.

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Earl Blumenauer:this legislation wouldn't force commuters into a one-size-fits-all solution for their transportation benefits. instead would level the playing field so they can access what works for them. the

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Earl Blumenauer:bill recognizes that the housing choices that reduce commuting costs sometimes may be a little more expensive but result in legitimate savings in terms of their ability to purchase a house

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Earl Blumenauer:and that should be reflected in policy. it promotes telecommuting and uses current resources better to give people more choices designed for them. all of these will make lives beer for americans

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Earl Blumenauer:today, this year, in 2008, not waiting until 2028. congress should not spend an energy fantasy but deal with things that we can do today to deal with today's energy realities. and i urge my

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Earl Blumenauer:colleagues to look at examples like this. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman yields back the balance of his time. the chair now recognizes the gentleman from arizona, mr. flake, for five

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Jeff Flake:minutes. mr. flake: i thank the speaker. i'll speak to a minute and then refer to a few charts. today, mr. speaker, i rise to draw attentiono earmarks contained in the homeland security appropriation

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Jeff Flake:bill. you know, we may not even have any appropriation bills on the floor this year. what may happen is we do a continuing resolution in september and then sometime in january do a big omnibus bill

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Jeff Flake:and all the earmarks, the thousands and thousands and thousands of earmarks that have been put into the bills through the appropriations process but have never been to the floor will simply be approved

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Jeff Flake:with one vote. so it behooves us to do what we can to highlight what some of these earmarks are. now, we know some of the earmarks that are in the homeland security bill, that will come to the

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Jeff Flake:floor, but it won't, so we'll talk about them here. mr. speaker, there is in the homeland security bill something called the predisaster mitigation program. now, this is not traditionally

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Jeff Flake:been earmarked in the homeland security bill. it only started last year. last year and this year we've earmarked some $75 million total for this account. now, this -- in this account some $500,000

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Jeff Flake:were earmarked for westchester and rockland counties in new york for predisaster mitigation earmarks. this comes on the heels of the same counties getting about $1 million last year.

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Jeff Flake:now new york state has its shares of disasters. i think there were 21 presidential declaration disasters in the past 10 years. but there were the same in many states. grants were awarded on

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Jeff Flake:the basis of merit rather than on the basis of, do we have an appropriator, do we have a high level member of leadership that can get us an earmark for some of these programs? parts of oklahoma,

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Jeff Flake:they had 20 disaster areas declared in the last 10 years, yet oklahoma hasn't received a dime in earmark funding in this bill. they must not have an appropriator here. now, we often hear, endlessly

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Jeff Flake:hear that members of congress know their districts better than some faceless bureaucrat. that's why they have to earmark. let mesk, does a member of the appropriations committee or a member

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Jeff Flake:of leadership know their district better than a rank and file member? because the former are getting most of the earmarks at the expense of the latter. let me refer to this chart. in this

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Jeff Flake:chart in the last few years for predisaster mitigation earmarks in the homeland security bill, rank and file members get about 37% of the earmarks. here, appropriators and other highly ranked

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Jeff Flake:members, 63%. of the $75 million total, 63% of the earmarks are received by just 27% of the members in this body. now, again, do those 27% know their districts better than others? i would

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Jeff Flake:suggest not. it's just that they're in a position to get these earmarks. so all this haifa luten language about, we know our districts means just this. i'm in a position to get money from

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Jeff Flake:my district at the expense of others. whether or not there's a federal nexus, whether there's a real need, let me point out in terms of westchester and rockland counties, only 11 counties

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Jeff Flake:of all the thousands, in the area, only a few were wealthiest than westchester county in new york. does westchester county really need $500,000 in predisaster mitigation earmarks at the expense

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Jeff Flake:of some poor county somewhere else in the country? this -- this earmarking, as we all know, has gotten completely, completely out of control. let me just go to a couple other charts. one

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Jeff Flake:of the other -- one of the other justification for earmarks is that we as the -- we as the legislative branch, we have the power of the purse. article 1 gives us the power of the purse. that

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Jeff Flake:is certainly true. that is often taken as justification for doing the earmarking that we currently do for the contemporary practice of earmarking. well, let me show. at my request i ask for c.r.s.

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Jeff Flake:to look and see what the appropriations committee has been doing over the past several years as the practice of earmarking has really grown. as you can see from the 104th congress to the

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Jeff Flake:109th congress this is a line here, this is earmarking. we've gone from about 1,500 earmarks up to nearly 10,000 just on this chart. but when you look at the number of witnesses called before

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Jeff Flake:the appropriations committee for a hearing to look at what we're spending, that line goes down. that line is in the blue. so what we're seeing is that as earmarking has grown, real oversight

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Jeff Flake:has declined. anyway you look at it. if you want to look at numbers of witnesses, some people will say, well, that's not -- you can't tell everything from that. i can see that. so let's

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Jeff Flake:look at the number of days of hearings. here in the blue from the 104th congress to the 109th, we've had a decline in the number of days of hearings, yet a huge increase in earmarking. keep

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Jeff Flake:in mind, another justification for earmarking is people will say, well, that only represents about 2% of the federal budget. we ought to really worry about the rest of the budget, not just

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earmarking. well, that's true. we should worry about the rest of the budget, but because of earmarking we simply aren't. now, i would suggest that the reason that there are fewe days of hearings,

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reason that the number of witnesses has declined and also the number of surveyed investigation staff reports has declined as earmarks have grown is we simply don't have the time or the resources

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Jeff Flake:or the inclination, frankly, in the appropriations committee to actually do real oversight. and so for getting just a couple of percentage points of all of the federal spending designated

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Jeff Flake:to earmarks, we really give up the power of the purse that we have. that's why we've seen other spending, all discretionary spending grow by leaps and bounds as we've had earmarking go

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Jeff Flake:up. it's because we simply don't look at the rest of the spending. so earmarking, we all know, that the party that is now in the majority made a lot of hay over the past couple of years that

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Jeff Flake:this congress had become -- had grown into -- there was a culture of corruption here. earmarks were the currency of corruption. and that continues. it is -- it's simply opening up too many

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Jeff Flake:opportunities where members of congress can without real oversight write checks to people from home. either campaign contributors or to constituent groups or to anybody. unless we really come

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Jeff Flake:on the floor and do real oversight, this is going to happen. and when you have a process like it looks like we're going to have this year where we don't even have appropriation bills on

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Jeff Flake:the floor where we can challenge these earmarks, these earmarks go unchallenged. that, mr. speaker, i think is certainly unacceptable. this body deserves better. we have a great and storied institution

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Jeff Flake:here. and we have a time-honored process of authorization, appropriation and oversight. we have skirted that for the past several years. those in power now might point out 104th congress to the 109th,

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