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Pork Barrel Spending
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STATEMENT BY SENATOR JOHN MCCAIN ON THE CONFERENCE REPORT FOR H.R. 2996, THE FY2010 INTERIOR APPROPRIATIONS BILL

October 30, 2009

“Mr. President, today the Senate is considering the conference agreement for the Fiscal Year 2010 Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Appropriations bill.  This bill provides approximately $32.2 billion in discretionary spending – a whopping 17 percent increase over FY09 levels which is $4.66 billion more – for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Indian Health Service, the Forest Service, the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities, and most Interior Department agencies.  This increase comes after $10.95 billion was appropriated to these accounts in the Stimulus Bill passed by Congress in March.  

“Unfortunately, this conference agreement funds 542 earmarks totaling $341.3 million.  As far as I know, few if any of these earmarks were requested by the Administration, authorized or competitively bid in any way.  No hearing was held to judge whether or not these were national priorities worthy of scarce taxpayer’s dollars. 

“The federal deficit now stands at $1.4 trillion – an all time high.  Americans are losing their jobs and their homes at record rates.  We must ask ourselves: what kind of message are we sending to taxpayers about our spending priorities?  Let’s take a look at some of the earmarks in this bill that are posing as ‘national priorities:’”

  • $500,000 for a tropical botanical garden in Hawaii.  While Americans are losing their homes across the country, residents of Hawaii get a new garden.
  • $150,000 to renovate an Opera House in Connecticut.  This is an absolute abuse of taxpayers’ hard earned dollars when so many Americans have so little to sing about these days with layoffs, furloughs and foreclosures.
  • $500,000 for a Native Hawaiian arts program in Hawaii. 
  • $1 million for improvements to the Sewall-Belmont House in Washington, DC.  The Sewall-Belmont House enjoys a rather cozy relationship with Congress – literally – the  house sits next door to the Senate Hart Office Building.  There is absolutely no reason this museum could not raise private funds for these improvements. 
  • $2 million for an interpretive center at the California National Historic Trail in Nevada and another $100,000 for the Tahoe Rim Trail in Nevada to build a 15-mile hiking trail from Reno, Nevada, to the Mt. Rose Ski Resort near Lake Tahoe. 
  • $1.2 million for rat eradication at the Palmyra Atoll National Wildlife Refuge.  Let me be clear: this earmark is for $1.2 million dollars worth of rat traps.   Mr. President, these $1.2 million dollars of rat traps are for a 5-square mile island U.S. territory that is not occupied except for a few scientists from the Nature Conservancy studying the island’s coral reef, according to the Interior Department. 
  • $750,000 for a Conservation Training Center in West Virginia.
  • $200,000 for historic preservation of the Richardson-Olmsted Complex in Buffalo, NY.  The Richardson-Olmsted Complex is actually the former Buffalo State Insane Asylum which was decommissioned in the 1970s.  According to Richardson Center Corporation, a non-profit managing the Complex for historic preservation, this funding would go towards maintaining the former hospital’s landscape as, ‘an example of the humane treatment of the mentally ill.’” 
  • $750,000 to the ‘Hudson Quadricentennial Commission’ in New York to celebrate the 400th Anniversary of the Dutch explorer Henry Hudson sailing the Hudson River. 
  • $500,000 to the ‘Vermont Wood Products Collaborative,’ which provides grants to promote the development and marketing of wood products businesses in the State of Vermont.  According to the Office of Management and Budget, Vermont Wood Products Collaborative is a continuing earmark that’s received over $780,000 from Congress over the past four years.

“Mr. President, while some of these earmarks may have merit, and several of my colleagues will be quick to defend them, this is not the way to fund them.  Each of these should be considered by the authorizing committee members in an open hearing and authorized when and if they are seen as spending priorities.  The practice of earmarking is how appropriators steer taxpayer dollars to pet projects that likely wouldn’t otherwise pass a prioritization formula.   

“Take for example the Environmental Protection Agency’s State and Tribal Assistance Grants (STAG) program, which funds wastewater and drinking water infrastructure projects throughout the country.  Local communities that request assistance under STAG must do so under Federal and State systems for prioritizing the most important projects from a health and environmental standpoint.  But all it takes to sidestep the entire process is for a Member slip an earmark into an appropriations bill that benefits a special interest in their home State.  Inevitably, communities worthy of EPA’s help are left empty handed simply because they weren’t ‘connected’ enough in Washington.  

“The President’s FY2010 Budget calls for terminating all STAG earmarks, which conferees ignored.  In the Administration’s budget submission, it stated that these earmarks are ‘duplicative’ and, ‘not subject to the State priority-setting process, which typically funds cost-effective and higher priority activities first.’   Moreover, the Administration points out that these earmarks ‘single out projects and communities for a greater subsidy than otherwise available through existing programs,’ and that ‘these types of projects require more oversight and assistance than standard grants because many of the recipients are unprepared to spend or manage such funds.’  In other words, Mr. President, some communities are receiving earmarks so large that they don’t know how to handle them. 

“Let’s look at just a few of these STAG water infrastructure earmarks:

  • $2.5 million is earmarked to the Town of Moorefield, WV, for a wastewater treatment plant.  The Town of Moorefield has a population of just 2,375 – that’s a subsidy of over $1,000 per person.
  • $6 million goes to construct a drinking water reservoir in Fayette County, Alabama.  Estimated population of Fayette County: 18,000.  
  • $1.2 million for sewer system improvements in Plattsmouth, Nebraska.  Population: 6,900.
  • Finally, $15 million is for water infrastructure in remote Alaska Native Villages, which exceeds the Administration’s request by $5 million. In its budget submission, the Administration proposed reducing spending for Alaska Native Villages to $10 million because, ‘audits conducted by the EPA Office of the Inspector General identified several financial management problems, including improperly charging labor costs to grants and disbursing funds that were not tied to the actual project costs.’” 

 “Mr. President, let me be clear that I’m all for helping our neediest and most rural communities.  Some of these projects may be truly needed.  But again, it’s the casual disregard for Senate procedure and the laws that govern these programs that concerns me.   

“For these reasons, I raise a point of order under Rule 28 to ensure that this bloated legislation is not permitted to proceed to full consideration by the Senate.  Specifically, Rule 28 precludes conference reports from including policy provisions that were not related to either the House or the Senate version of the legislation as sent to conference.  This $32.2 billion dollar legislation was bloated enough; however, conferees took this opportunity to ‘air drop’ into the bill’s conference report a ‘Continuing Resolution’ to continue funding the operations of the Federal government through December 18th.   

“Just last month, House and Senate Democratic leadership ‘air dropped’ a Continuing Resolution into the Legislative Branch Appropriations bill to keep the government running until this Sunday.  This is not the way to do business in Washington.  There is nothing that prohibits the Majority Leader from calling up a Continuing Resolution as a stand-alone piece of legislation.  The Majority Leader and others simply want to put pressure on legislators to vote for this costly Interior Appropriations bill that should not be passed, and instead should be sent back to the conferees to strip the billions of wasteful spending.  If this bill does pass the Senate, just as it did the House earlier today, I urge the President to veto it and send a message to Congress that this is not how business should be done in Washington.

“I urge my colleagues to support the Point of Order I intend to raise and send this bill back to conferees for further consideration.” 

 

 

 






October 2009 Speeches