By Clare Venegas Pork-lovers beware: Rep. Jeff Flake is watching.
Should a fellow Congressman decide to slip an earmark into a spending bill, Rep. Flake might call them to the floor to publicly defend it during "The Flake Hour," the time after every spending bill that Flake calls on earmark sponsors to justify the waste of taxpayer dollars.
Or they might find their pet project the subject of Flake's Friday email blast for the "egregious earmark of the week," which always concludes with a humorous quotation. Case in point: Flake said, of a $13.4 million earmark compensating Suffolk County, Massachusetts fishermen for "economic losses" from "fishing limitations": "Give a man an earmark and you have fed him for today."
He and Rep. John Campbell (CA-48) have led the way speaking out against Democrat Charlie Rangel's nearly $3 million earmark to build his "Monument to Me" on the City College of New York campus.
Flake's courageously public fight against earmarks apparently angered his colleagues so much that he was pulled from the Judiciary Committee in 2007 for "bad behavior." One source said the decision was influenced by Appropriations Committee members who resented Flake's outspoken opposition to earmarks. If speaking out against earmarks is "bad behavior," then Republicans everywhere should call their congressmen to behave even worse.
In January, Flake wrote a letter to House Republican Leader Rep. John Boehner requesting to be assigned to one of 29 Republican seats on the Appropriations Committee. Flake asks the simple question, "Wouldn't it make sense to have at least one Republican member of the Appropriations committee who doesn't earmark?"
Boehner should answer with a resounding YES. But if he and other Republican leaders ignore reform-minded members like Flake, then it's time to change leadership and Flake's name should be on the short list.
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