Power of the Purse

Floor Speech

Mr. CLEAVER. Mr. Speaker, later today, the WRRDA bill will come before this body. I intend to vote against it. The reason is that there are 23 earmarks in it. I support all of those projects, but I don't have an earmark in it--and I want one.

I am not one of those people who is going to pretend to the public, as many of us have, that earmarks cost the budget any more money than they do. They do not. We go around and talk about the ``bridge to nowhere.'' There is a bridge. It is called the Gravina Island Bridge.

The worse thing about this is that, constitutionally, we have the power of the purse. We have given it to the administration. So they put 23 projects out here and said, Well, they used to be earmarks. That is like cutting off the tail of an alligator and putting some little ears on him and saying, It used to be a dog.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is wrong. The public needs to understand that this earmark business is damaging the Constitution because it is our job to spend the purse.

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