FDA Food Safety Modernization Act

Floor Speech

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Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I rise today to discuss the amendment offered by the senator from Oklahoma that would prohibit congressionally designated spending items from being included in any authorization, appropriations, or other bill for 3 years.

I firmly believe the appropriations process needs to be changed. I have supported strong reforms to increase transparency and accountability, and have pushed hard for these necessary reforms while ensuring that my State of Minnesota is not put at a competitive disadvantage.

In fact, before being sworn in as a U.S. Senator, I promised Minnesotans that I would fight to fund their priorities in an open manner and pledged to include these requests on my official Web site. At that point in time, the posting of requests online was not a rule of U.S. Senate.

Since arriving in the Senate, I have supported several important reforms to how Congress directs spending. I have voted for limitations on earmarks, including voting to ensure that American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds would be competitively bid. I also voted to rescind funds directed to certain transportation projects that have not been spent.

Clearly, there is more we can do to improve this process and I will continue to push for necessary reforms.

However, I believe that congressional appropriations help provide much-needed resources for important programs and projects across my State. All of the projects I sponsor are based on Minnesota constituent requests and are available for the public to review.

Many of the requests I receive come from my visits to all 87 counties in Minnesota every year. A local mayor will show me a busy road that children in the community must cross many times a day to reach their school and baseball fields. And the mayor will ask me to request funds to help build an underpass that will allow these kids to safely get to school and their games.

Or a sheriff will show me how the local law enforcement's outdated communications equipment interferes with emergency response and endangers lives. And the sheriff will ask me to earmark funds to upgrade the department's radios.

In my State of Minnesota, we remember all too well how on August 1, 2007, the I-35W bridge across the Mississippi River in Minneapolis collapsed without warning. After we mourned the loss of 13 lives and the shock of the disaster had subsided, we got to work with enormous task of constructing a new bridge.

I worked hard with my colleagues in the Senate, especially Majority Whip Dick Durbin, Transportation Appropriations Chairman Patty Murray and Senator Norm Coleman, to provide up to $195 million in funds to help with the cost of constructing a new bridge. Under Senator Coburn's amendment, this funding would be considered an earmark, and Minnesota would have been left looking for other ways to recover from this tragic event.

Earmarks have done more than build bridges in Minnesota. Earmarks have provided critical funding to the Minnesota National Guard's groundbreaking ``Beyond the Yellow Ribbon Program,'' which is nationally recognized for the assistance it provides our service men and women who bravely served our nation and are now transitioning to civilian life.

Congressionally directed projects protect communities against annual flooding across my State from Roseau in the north to Moorhead in the west to Owatonna in the south. And congressionally initiated spending funds an innovative program in Stearns County, Minnesota to help protect women and children who have been the victims of domestic violence, provides much-needed resources to improve law enforcement communication and interoperability, and is building a new highway interchange in Blue Earth County, MN, that will improve safety and ease congestion while helping generate economic development.

Congressionally initiated spending cannot be discussed without also considering the grave financial situation we face as a nation. It is clear that we will need to make very tough decisions in the coming years to restore fiscal responsibility and get our nation on a path towards strong growth. Yet the Coburn amendment would not direct any savings from the elimination of earmarks to be used for deficit reduction.

We need a serious commitment to deficit reduction, and I believe we need real reforms. I look forward to the report by the President's National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform and others who are taking a comprehensive look at government spending. It is my hope that we can come together to consider these recommendations carefully and reduce our nation's debt.

I am committed to serious fiscal discipline, and will continue to support real reforms to increase transparency to the appropriations process.

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