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FLOOR STATEMENT BY SENATOR JOHN McCAIN ON AMENDMENT NUMBER 4697, THE EARMARK MORATORIUM

November 29, 2010

“Mr. President, I thank Senator Coburn. I also express my appreciation to Senator McCaskill and Senator Udall for joining in this very important amendment. As the Senator from Oklahoma mentioned, this issue has been debated many times on the floor of the Senate. There have been efforts to repeal certain most egregious earmarks. A ‘bridge to nowhere’ in Alaska was one of those that became more famous than others.

“I have to say to my colleagues that I have seen with my own eyes – and I say this with great regret – the influence of money and contributions in the shaping of legislation. I have seen that come in the form of earmarks. One of the individuals I admired a great deal, a former Member of the House of Representatives, now resides in federal prison because of earmarking. Another Member of Congress recently got out of prison. It was earmarking. We just saw that the former majority leader of the U.S. House of Representatives was convicted in court in Texas, and earmarking played a major role. The system of rewards for campaign contributions was an important factor in that conviction.

“So for many years I have been coming to this floor to express my frustration with this corrupt practice. It has been a lonely fight and hasn't won me many friends in this body. I understand that. But I also want to point out that my criticisms have not been directed just from the other side of the aisle. Earmarking is a bipartisan disease, and it requires a bipartisan cure. After so many years in the trenches to eliminate this practice, I am pleased the American people are demanding that they stop this practice.

“As my colleagues know, earlier this month the Senate Republican caucus unanimously adopted a nonbinding resolution to put into place a 2-year earmark moratorium. I applaud my fellow Republicans in the Senate for joining our Republican colleagues in the House in sending a message to the American people that we heard them loud and clear in the election on November 2nd that we will get spending under control and we will start by eliminating the corrupt practice of earmarking.

“Mr. President, I have had a lot of communications and relations with and even attended tea party rallies across my state. There is very little doubt that a real revolt is going on out there. I can't call it a revolution because I don't know how long it is going to last. I don't know how it is going to be channeled. I don't know exactly where this movement will go. But I do know it involved millions of Americans who had never been involved in the political process before because of their anger and frustration over our practices here, and they believe earmarking is a corrupt practice. They believe their tax dollars should not be earmarked in the middle of the night, without any authorization, without hearings.

“The Senator from Oklahoma just pointed out $380 billion in earmarks. Some of those earmarks are worthy. If they are worthy, then they should be authorized. So what has happened? What we have seen in the last 30 years or so is an incredible shift from the hands of many to the decisions of a few. We don't do authorization bills anymore. We don't do an authorization bill for foreign operations. We don't do an authorization bill for all of these other functions of government for which there are requirements because, what do we do? We stuff them all into the appropriations bills. Then the members of the Appropriations Committee make decisions that are far-reaching in their consequences, with incredibly billions of dollars, without the authorizing committees carrying out their proper role of examination, scrutiny, and approval.

“The way the system is supposed to work – and did for a couple hundred years – is that projects, programs, whatever they are, are authorized, and then the appropriators appropriate the certain dollars they feel necessary to make this authorization most effective and efficient. So we don't authorize anymore. We only appropriate. That is wrong. That really puts so much power in the hands of a very few Members of this body and, inevitably, it leads to corruption – inevitably.

“The Heritage Foundation wrote a report I urge my colleagues to read. It is entitled ‘Why Earmarks Matter.’  The first point they make is this:  They invite corruption. Congress does have a proper role in determining the rules, eligibility and benefit criteria for federal grant programs. However, allowing lawmakers to select exactly who receives government grants invites corruption. Instead of entering a competitive application process within a federal agency, grant-seekers now often have to hire a lobbyist to win the earmark auction. Encouraged by lobbyists who saw a growth industry in the making, local governments have become hooked on the earmark process for funding improvement projects.

“There are small towns in my state that feel obligated to hire a lobbyist to get an earmark here through the Appropriations Committee. They should not have to do that. They should not be spending thousands and thousands or tens of thousands of dollars for a lobbyist to come here to get an earmark. They should have their desires and their needs and their requirements considered on an equal basis with everybody else's, not only in their State but in this country. But now they believe the only way they will get their pork or their project done is through the hiring of a lobbyist.

“The Heritage Foundation goes on:  ‘They encourage spending. While there may not be a causal relationship between the two, the number of earmarks approved each year tracks closely with growth in federal spending.’

“Then the Heritage Foundation says:  ‘They distort priorities. Many earmarks do not add new spending by themselves, but instead redirect funds already slated to be spent through competitive grant programs or by states into specific projects favored by an individual member.  So, for example, if a member of the Nevada delegation succeeded in getting a $2 million earmark to build a bicycle trail in Elko in 2005, then that $2 million would be taken out of the $254 million allocated to the Nevada Department of Transportation for that year. So if Nevada had wanted to spend that money fixing a highway in rapidly expanding Las Vegas, thanks to the earmark, they would now be out of luck.’

“So what we do is deprive the governors and the legislators from setting the priorities they feel are the priorities for their states. And all too often, the earmark is not what the State or the local citizenry or town or county needs as their priorities because they are decided with the influence of lobbyists in Washington. I say, with all due respect to the appropriators, they don't know the needs of my state like I know the needs of my state, and not nearly as much as the mayor, the city council, the governor, and the legislature. Let them make the decision where these moneys should be spent, and not on a bike path instead of improving a highway.

“Mr. President, I could go on and on. I come down here year after year and look at the pork-barrel projects and earmarks, and we discuss the ones that are the most egregious and then I am amused and entertained by members who come down and defend many of these absolutely unneeded and unnecessary projects. I will not go into many of my favorites at this time. I know my colleagues are waiting to speak.

“I ask my colleagues to understand the voice of the people of this country. I just read today that more seats were gained by the Republican Party than in any election since 1938. Since 1938, there has not been such a political upheaval in this country. That is not because our constituents have now fallen in love with Republicans. That is not the case. The message is that all of our constituents are tired of the way both Republicans and Democrats conduct their business in Washington, frivolously and outrageously spending their hard-earned tax dollars. They believe we are not doing right by them, that we are not careful stewards of their tax dollars, that we are engaging in practices that need to stop which has disconnected us from the American people. We need to connect again with the American people.

“I am going to hear the arguments that it is only a few dollars, not much money, and we don't trust the federal government to do it. I have heard all of those arguments year after year. I have watched year after year the earmarks go up and up. I have seen the corruption. Senator Dorgan and I had hearings in the Indian Affairs Committee about a guy named Jack Abramoff. We saw firsthand the effects of unscrupulous lobbyists and the millions and millions of dollars they got in earmarks as a result of their corrupt influence. There are many Jack Abramoffs in this town; they just haven't gotten famous.

“Mr. President, again, I thank Senators Coburn, Udall, McCaskill, and others who support this amendment.  As I said 20-some years ago, we will keep coming back and back and back to the floor of this body until we clean up this practice and restore the confidence and faith of the American people – the people who send us here to do their work, not our work.

“Mr. President, I yield the floor.”

 

 

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November 2010 Floor Statements