Congressman Jeb Hensarling Radio Address
June 15, 2007

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Transcript:

Howdy, this is Congressman Jeb Hensarling of the 5th Congressional District of Texas.

Today I want to talk about earmarks. We have a large battle going on in Washington DC. Now you know what earmarks are. They are things like the bridge to nowhere, the teapot museum, the indoor rainforest. Although there are good earmarks out there, all too often they can represent a waste of your money.

Now in the last Congress, Republicans woke up. We tried to reform this process. We wanted to bring transparency and accountability into this process that too often has seen individual pork projects come out of your smokehouse.

Democrats campaigned as part of the '06 election on the fact that they would somehow clean up this process. They promised to have the most open and transparent process, and instead they have come up with the most secretive and untransparent process. What they are going to do now is they are going to take these earmarks and they are going to give one person, one person, Chairman David Obey of Wisconsin, the power to decide whether or not your hard earned money ought to be used on these congressional earmarks. He's the one who is going to decide whether they pass the smell test, the laugh test, much less the fiscal accountability test. That is just wrong. That is arrogant. That is completely contrary to what the Democrats told the American people.

What Republicans want to do is bring in the disinfectant of sunshine. We want the American people to know about these earmark requests. We want your elected representatives to have the opportunity to challenge these in floor debate in the House of Representatives. We want your elected representative to have the opportunity to strike these earmarks from pieces of legislation on the House floor. And that's what the fight is all about in Washington DC.

Now although earmarks may be a small portion of the federal budget, many of us believe that, unfortunately, they are a large portion of the culture of spending that takes place in Washington DC. Republicans want to try to protect the family budget from the federal budget and that's why we are fighting hard against the Democrats this week; to make sure that when it comes to the spending of your hard earned money that we have transparency and accountability in the earmark process.

It is especially important that we reform this earmark process right on the heels of the Democrats enacting the single largest tax increase in American history. I mean, what it appears they are doing is, they are using the single largest tax increase in history to fund secret earmark slush funds that are now going to be hidden from you, hidden from Members of Congress, hidden from the media with no accountability. Already the Democrats just coming into office in 6 months have added an additional 6 billion dollars to what we call an omnibus bill. They put in 17 billion dollars of things like peanuts and spinach to a war supplemental bill meant to support our troops and now they are increasing our non-defense spending 23 billion dollars above what was spent last year. Tax and spend, tax and spend. The more things change, the more they stay the same. And that's why it's critical that Republicans manage to win this battle to bring transparency and accountability to the earmark process.

This is Congressman Jeb Hensarling of the 5th District of Texas. Thanks for listening.