He is not embarrassed about it and angry about the label thats associated with it and he said, these were federal tax dollars that came from my constituency and we decided to get how to spend them. Now, in my district, thats close to 400 and we have to sort that out. I will end with this, mr. Chairman, i dont like the translation, those folks ought to be in jail, if they are doing something they are proud, they ought to be on tv. We talk about spending as itas exploded inhe modern age. What has exploded is the ability to help hold members of congress and administrations accountable. Theres not a member in the room who has seen pork barrel because it didnt originate in 1990s or 1970s or 1950s. We have had the challenge since 19th century and the earliest days of the institution. I would like to believe that with your leadership where we have been challenged but i but to mr. Sullivans point of low e Approval Ratings, i dont want the suggestion to be made that folks, that anyone wants to see bad behavior in the United States, no one on the left and the right, but how to serve our constituents best whether thats defining the narrowly tailored provision, more defining that from right here where we sit or whether its complete and total transparency, its been subject of hearing and subject of examination, wherever that balance lies, mr. Chair, the board and 35 members of the institution, i dont know one of them who is up to no good to folks back home, its struggle to do their best and i wanted to have tt on the record. It was noted that colleagues were eagle scouts which got them affection. I was in rochester, new york. [laughter] theres no doubt about it, mr. Grumet, youre the best. To your question did you see the smile . I got it. I had that, i was traumatized. I had the line ready to go. [laughter] on the serious question, though of reform, theres a place where theres unanimity and thats the prior system was poor use of system and i think the tension between steve and i have Great Respect is whether the system can be reformed and process undermining this body that theres no way to reform it, im of the other view. I think you could we are not going to have 30,000 projects. You could limit the projects that members have. If you require the projects to be part of the actual legislation, i think we should probably have more attention towards earmarks. So i believe it could be reformed. We get reform, when first got here, all you had to do is ask me, chair, when i got here, i think i got the smallest public works project that the United States has ever done. Weve got a tunnel under a very dangerous road, relevation about 45 . Where School Children had to cross from one side and the other and trucks couldnt stop and we got a tunnel into the road. Im really proud of the things that was able to do. Its much easier we did reform it, i think in a good way. One thing, we decided we could not involve ourselves to profit groups. It was simply that we should not be doing, not involved in. Confined to whatever municipalities and we also wrote a letter to the chair certifying that neither member or member spouse benefited financially in any way from earmark. That should be expanded to include family, period, because i came out of the new York State Legislature and i know how that worked. So it would i think children should be included in that, or the family members. But to do that, theres more reformhat can b done, im not really aware of what it is, you ve something specifically in mind . Yeah, certainly. I think its important to focus on what congress did in 2006 and 2007. Well, the democrats were in charge. Bipartisan policy center, congresswoman. I understand, im not. I understand. Principal bipartisanship. A number of earmarks over the few following years came about 40 but theres a lot more that could be done. One of the problems was that the house and senate rules were not exactly the same so i dont believe the senate had the same restriction on any kind of earmark. No, it was just house reform. What was missing was the actual legislative process. What was missing was requiring that the proposals be part of subcommittee process and markup. What was missing was the obligation that they be in legislative language and whether they could be amended in reports whacker was missing the fact that you could submit earmark in management amendment and appropriations bill to get a vote. That certainly has to go. I think there are a dozen ideas that could be considered which i think probably would make the process a wonderful thing but, you know, we will try to figure that out together. We need to be fair and you are available to help with that . , thats developing questions, rob, louis, all these questions that come to mind, im not trying to take my time, would it be part of the behavior that you cannot take part in the picking of the vender . Because ive never done that, had nothing to do after we got it. Had no clue, no part of the process, thats what just came out of me, mr. Chairman. Well, dont doubt that. I knew the state of texas was 635, huge area that had to be redope, i got it. But thats part of the reform that you dont take part of picking the vendor. I regret i missed your testimony. Congress is trying to do the right thing and i want to thank you, mr. Chairman, for holding this hearing. I know that it brings considerable amount of people being critical of it to some degree. I think you are helping the institution a great deal and i think you, gentlemen, are doing theamn where you dont disagree its important toav the debate. As an appropriator, let me just point out for the record, a bridge to nowhere, it was clearly injection of an individual point of view and piece of legislation, i think back when i first got here and i was not on Appropriation Committee in the year that we had earmarks, i was on other committees about the things that i was able to secure by that tool, and they never came at the expense of additional money in the budget. That was within appropriated level was, it was simply to be able to focus on a particular problem. And i come we have testimony submitted, wonderful guy, great United States senator in my view, certainly a great member of the house of representatives but that was an area that we disagreed on but he came to have a different point of view and i respect that. But in my district, you know, they were always things like, youve heard here today, i had one where my state Highway Department came and requested, look, we built a bypass around a small community. People are coming around there about 60, 70 miles an hour, theres no overpass, we want to do a match, we will do our match part, but we need this, five people have died in the highway in the last 15 months and that never caught anybodys attention in bureaucracy but go to mia and get attention immediately. I recall newspaper publisher wrote a wonderful column praising my friend senator, david, this is in oklahoma, you remember the commit on highway 9 where you had back up because theres an indian casino and theres an artery through multiple states including my own and he said, yeah, that was an earmark, he said, you remember when norman was divided by a train line, hospitals on one side, there was no underpass or no overpass and we would have emergency vehicles, law enforcement, fire, obviously ambulances caught on one side. The town came up to 10 million and underpass cost 20. I was lucky senator was chairman of transportation and asked to possibly get some help, policemen problem settled, we dont have that problem anymore. Research on weather at the university of oklahoma. Yeah, thats great. Raised the alert time from 5 to 10 to 20 minutes. Thats life and death in a place like oklahoma. I said that was an earmark, he said, those were great projects. Bingo, thats the point. 95 of these things, any member who dealt with them can get up and deafen, not of getting extra money but making sure that a particular local problem got solved and the idea that theres no that all the decisions made in the bureaucracy or any administration of either party are somehow nonpolitical an somehow theres no preference expressed, i have been around government to know thats not true. Whoever is making decision brings some set of values, some set of criteria, sometimes its objectively, honestly sometimes its not. In the case, seems they are much more transparent. I supported the reforms they instituted. They were wise reform and try to regain confidence in the system and i think hopefully i was but even i actually agree with my friends who got rid of earmarks for private entities, but most people dont recall why we had the predator drone, which is the most effective single win because it began by jerry lewis. When a bunch of pilots are making the decision, understandable. So, again, nothing wrong with those things and those things are all transparent, so i would, you know, ill just hope at the end of the day, i dont again, some of my friend disagree about the spending part of this, because in many what the spending problem is its not callediscretionary spending, this is a minuscule part of the budget within the budget. I mean, within whatever congress has decided. Again, i regret that people went to prison for abuse, i guess i dont regret they went to prison because they deserved to go to prison but its pretty easy to seize on the ones that are out of power and i actually think its a good thing and frankly as a body to discipline our member that is abuse this process first by not allowing somebody like that to go through and make it totally transparent. Whether we get there or not, i will tell you as appropriator, this is in on doorstep, in some cases legitimately so, we can still do 99 of what we could ever do, the idea that this is somehow, you know, Appropriations Committee, as a matter of fact, i would argue in some cases because you cant deal with individual problem, you try to do problematically, but if they all get down to transparency and accountability in the end and the members and the body and the majority and the minority having enough restraint to discipline themselves and frankly enough balance. It cant be when we are in the majority all the spending goes to republican, my friend from georgia suggested which you saw d described really well, these are really local problems. This is where federal resources are headed in this general area anyway, you happen to have a unique perspective because, again, you know, we all come from somewhere and we know that place very, very well, you know who is coming to you with a legitimate request and who is not and how to vet it. I think its been one of the great frustrations members have had that theyve not been able to address legitimate problems that their constituents come to them with within the confines of the budget and put these things up, you know, there are a lot more requests for earmarks even during the era that they exploded and its not like there was no discipline or thought in this, but you also make good point, some of the things are political. I have seen that happen myself and how you guard for that, i dont know other than exposure, i think, sunshine is the best disinfectant of really good ideas. I dont have a lot of questions because i have strong opinions on it, but i respect that other people have different opinions and i think, again, legitimately so, you cant cover up when somebody goes to jail and somebody commits fraud. I mean, that tells you there was something wrong with the system and that legitimately it needed more sunshine, it needed more enforcement, it needed, frankly, a chairman loong at requests and going, really, a little out of line here or, you know, start asking questions, i dont know if we could use somebody like go help us evaluate these sorts of things. Its not just a political set of eyeballs but literally this actually theres a limited amount of money for intersections and by any criteria this may not be the number one but this would be a worthy this passes the professional smell test on this, this is not in the middle of nowhere, we need to be very aggressive and about prosecuting people who went over the line on this, but again, i want to thank you, chairman, i want to thank our witnesses, extremely helpful when you wrestle with these kinds of note issues to have people that have looked at them, i have seen them from the inside of the system. I didnt know anything about them until i got here. I had never heard of this stuff before until i watched out how they worked and frankly saw cases where abuses cud, unquestionably occurred and at least congress tried to get better at this and finally said, we are going to swear this off. One of the difficult challenges here, i think, is for our newer members because they havent seen any system at all. If you arrived after 2010 election, the majority of our conferences never seen a congress where earmark was there, i think thats probably there of our friends as well at this point. So i actually think the decisive decisionmaks will actually never had any experience in this but will listen to the debate an the discussn ande will listen to constuents too and you get both side on this because somehow most people can hold in their mind, well, you need to help us with this bridge but im not for earmarks, okay, we will be you end up, if you dont think the executive branch lets lobbied over these things, as one of my friend who was a lobbyist, i get to know everybody thats a decisionmaker over there, they certainly have protections, im not suggesting everybody is doing something unethical but having somebody make your case because theyll be a bureaucratic process but theres still a lobbying process woven. I have gone a long time, if you want to make additional comment, im more than happy to do that, so thank you mr. Ellis. Thank you, congressman. A couple of things, one thing that i want to clarify that the ban on earmarks to private companies was supposed to go into effect for fy11 which was the last reform that the democrats did when they were in majority, when you look at the, for instance, you mentioned the predator drone, there were funding going to uavs, it wasnt going to general atomics who was drones. We had dozen of earmarks that would go through department of defense. While it was going through department of navy, in the lawmakers request letter that was public, you would see that its intent was to go to make 12 widjet, i want to clarify when the change occurred. And then you mentioned, you know, some of the things that you mentioned like the number of deaths, five deaths in the previous month, tragic, but its a metric, its something that you could target funding toward places where theres larger fatalities, crossings, other things on those lines, also you mentioned that senator inhofe, you know, if he hadnt been chairman of dpw, you wouldnt have been able to necessarily jump that hoop and be able to take vapg advantage of that relationship or seniority. One of the things thats different about lobbying the administration, i understand, one thing you dont have there is pay to play because those are Campaign Contributions. I think those are legitimate points. Just for the record, i never secured earmark for any private entity, but i think thats probably one of the reasons my friends on the other side instituted as one of the reforms and i give them credit for that because we ended up with people in jail, the only difference is they put it in pocket instead of campaign but the practice youre talking about, i would consider that abusive practice as well. So, again, maybe if we go down this road and i think thats a very open question because people are rightly distrustful and worried. No cause for dispute there but those would be important kinds of reforms to include. So i appreciate your bringing it up. I think that the part of the frustration that many folks said was lack of transparency, the team of senior review officials or the call different agencies that are making decisions or members of Congress Sitting in a back room putting postit notes on the bill report like Hillary Clinton allegedly did. Both are equally bad. I think that the voteers affect decision and hearing like this, in a room like this where the projects are brought forward and debated because youre right, all of the things, very few items reviewing the work of my friends and colleagues, very few of them sound horrible, most of them you can make a rational case for but there are scarce resources and scarce dollars, having the public debate where all members can weigh through which today is the most important and then give the 300 million americans who also have discreet bits of knowledge and information and expertise to bring to bear through letters, emails an testimony, that should be tabbed. Rather than it happening on cured behind a curtain, all of these things should be happening in greater sunlight. I couldnt agree more. Thats why we are having a public hearing and why the chairman made this available because i dont think its about going back to a system, its about moving to something more effective. We know what we had before, had these abuses available and and much more common than they should have been, we also now have listed lived under regime where we see pressing needs where we think could get solved and we dont have ability to do that. It does make a difference, im sure, if youre a democrat calling a Republican Administration calling for Something Like that or a republican calling for a democratic administration. Again, the idea, we certainly still go request things from the administration, probably more successful if it happens to be an administration aligned with your political point of view. Theres actually, i think, more of a sense of rough justice within the body itself. You get the know the members and you do hear the arguments and there is even in great partisanship and polarization, theres a common understanding, ive got it. You have a hospital on the wrong side of the railroad track, people stacking up there in emergency situations, you know, its not the federal highway project. Not in federal highway system, they havent been able to get this fixed. Youre working on it. Yes, we can help you. I know i have been in plenty of disaster situations, in oklahoma, tornadoes and we have gotten the help we needed from everybody help, democrat and republican alikes, i try to do that with my friends with n the same situation with sandy and over time thats where you end up, you develop human dimension here and you learn hard lessons about that, but, again, if we go forward with this, i think theres probably a bipartisan determination that number one youre on probation. They better not happen again and number two, we want to see it. I think all of you, thats one common theme i hear and i think its a very valuable one, everything needs to be transparent, everythi