House Proceeding on Oct 8th, 2009 :: 1:03:50 to 1:06:35
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1:03:46 to 1:04:06( Edit History Discussion )

Jeff Flake: their service dogs and their quality of life. i urge my colleagues to support this measure, th report and the rule, and i yield backhe balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the the gentleman from florida. mr. diaz-balart: mr. speaker, i yield two minutes to the gentleman from arizona, mr. flake. the speaker pro tempore: the

1:03:50 to 1:06:35( Edit History Discussion )
Speech By: Jeff Flake

1:04:07 to 1:04:27( Edit History Discussion )

Jeff Flake: gentleman is recognized for two minutes. mr. flake: i thank the gentleman for yielding. i do not support the rule or the underlying legislation. i have some of the concerns that were raised earlier by adding items that do not belong in a defense bill. i do rise in support of a provision that is contained in the defense authorization conference report that will hopefully shed some light by

1:04:28 to 1:04:49( Edit History Discussion )

Jeff Flake: which earmarks are competitively awarded by the department of defense. section 1062 of the report represents a compromise between language in the sate's version of the bill and an amendment dealing with earmarks th i w able to successfuy offer in the house bill. the practice of earmarking, as we all know, has come under significant scrutiny in the media with the advent of the p.m.a. gup scandal when it

1:04:50 to 1:05:10( Edit History Discussion )

Jeff Flake: was revealed earlier this year. yet, since that time congress has taken very little action to actually deal with the root cause of this problem. the defense authorization bill, the defense appropriation bill each contained hundreds, in one case, more than 1,000 individual earmarks many of which -- in fact, in the defense appropriation bill,

1:05:11 to 1:05:31( Edit History Discussion )

Jeff Flake: more than half of the earmarks are going to for-profit enties. and we simply cannot continue too that. no member of congress should have the ability to provide a sole source or no-bid contract to their campaign contributors. and until we address that -- the root of that problem, we're going to have problems like

1:05:32 to 1:05:52( Edit History Discussion )

Jeff Flake: this. a lot -- i worked with the department of defense, in fact, i've been working them for several months now to try to see where these earmarks are going and to see which process they have by which they are competitively bid. i am skeptical that this language will do very much good because the department of defense tells us now that they

1:05:53 to 1:06:14( Edit History Discussion )

Jeff Flake: follow a process by which earmarks are competively bid. yet, by providing the department with a subset of roughly 160 earmarks in the f.y. 2008 legislation and asked for information regarding the competitive practices used to award these earmarks, after an initial review, they

1:06:15 to 1:06:37( Edit History Discussion )

Jeff Flake: consistent with the requiremen -- the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman's time has expired. mr. flake: another 20 seconds. mr. diaz-balart: 20 seconds. mr. flake: it had uncanny alignment as these earmarks actually went to their intended recipients. so we have much more work to do here, and i hope in the coming months we can fix this problem completely. members of congress shouldn't