Pork-Barrel Spending
PORK-BARREL SPENDING -- (House of Representatives - May 14, 2008)
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Ms. FOXX. Thank you, Congressman Hensarling. I appreciate very much the leadership that you have provided to do this special order tonight.
As you've said, the system is broken. The earmark and pork barrel system is broken. And we have to do something about it.
I will have to confess that in my first 2 years in Congress, I did ask for earmarks. And my earmarks were very transparent. I felt that every project I asked for was very valid and very worthy. They were all designed to help with economic development in my district. The requests came from county commissioners, airport commissions and economic development groups. They all came very legitimately and very openly from the people in the counties that I represented in the Fifth District of North Carolina. And I have no problem at all defending those.
However, what I learned in the process is that this earmark system is badly broken. Not everybody who was requesting special funding was being as transparent as I was being. And I have come to the conclusion that we must have a moratorium on earmarks until we can fix the system.
I believe the American people have become very, very cynical about the Congress and about Washington in general. And I didn't come here to feed that cynicism. I came to Washington because I believe that I have a limited amount of talents that I can use on behalf of the people of my district and on behalf of the people of the United States of America.
And I want to do that. I am very much in love with this country and with what we stand for. And I want to make sure that I have done everything that I can to help this country succeed. It is the greatest country in the world. I have no doubt about that. And we have done enormously good things in the little over 200 years that this country has been formed.
And it is my goal to keep us as a beacon of hope for the world, to keep us as the beacon of freedom for the world, and to do everything that we can to keep the government going in a positive way.
But as I said, we have made mistakes. Democrats and Republicans have made mistakes. But I will have to say that Republicans never promised to make the kinds of reforms that the Democrats promised to make. The Democrats said in 2006 a lot of things to get elected and to take over the majority.
We have all kinds of charts to show they made many, many promises which they have not kept. But I think this one, this promise about earmarks and pork barrel spending, and they are broken promises related to that, has made the American people even more cynical about Washington and about elected officials than they were before. And I frankly don't want to be a part of that.
If we are going to maintain our freedom, if we are going to maintain the type of country that we want, we have to get people engaged in our political process. We have to have people who want to run for office, who want to get out and vote and who want to make sure that we can continue this republic in all the positive ways that it has existed. And frankly, we can't do that as long as we allow people to use the money paid into the Treasury by hardworking Americans for projects that they deem are important.
I don't believe that any Member of Congress should ever be able to appropriate money to have any kind of facility, road or anything named for him or her. That, to me, is one of the worst things that can be done, because it is not our money. It is the money of the hardworking taxpayers. And we have no right to take that money and use it, particularly, again, in these very, very difficult times, as my colleague from Texas said, when gas prices are going up, grocery prices are going up, and the hardworking American families are really struggling to make ends meet.
We came up with a phrase for what the Democrats have done since they got elected in 2006: The House of Hypocrisy. Some of my colleagues are uncomfortable with that because it is a blotch on the House of Representatives which most of us love dearly. But they have turned it into the House of Hypocrisy because they have not kept the promises that they made.
They made lots of promises. And again, I am going to quote some of them because I think we need to do that over and over and over again.
Speaker Pelosi, then Minority Leader Pelosi: ``We pledge to make this the most honest, ethical and open Congress in history,'' Christian Science Monitor, 11/14/2006.
``We will bring transparency and openness to the budget process and to the use of earmarks, and we will give the American people the leadership they deserve.'' This was in a press release issued by Speaker Pelosi 12/11/2006.
Minority Whip Steny Hoyer said, ``We are going to adopt rules that make the system of legislation transparent so that we don't legislate in the dark of night, and the public and other Members can see what is being done,'' the Washington Times, 11/25/2006.
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