EXCERPT:
COONS: “Well, Joe, I voted for the omnibus and I’m proud to support it, but I don’t like the process. A bipartisan group of senators on the floor of the Senate were talking about how we can change this process going forward because frankly, as you said, when it comes to the floor the last few days and the last few hours, that doesn’t give us enough time to fully scrub and understand what other members have put in it. I understand that I am responsible, and so is my colleagues, the congressional delegation for the congressionally directed spending for Delaware, but I don’t know exactly what every other member of the Senate has put in the bill. So, frankly, it’s important for us to change the timing to get back to following what’s in the law in terms of having open hearings early in the year, not late in the year. One of the things about these earmarks or congressionally directed spending, the current process requires every single one of them to be transparent, to be assigned to a specific member, we have to sign off on them. And as you just heard in the introduction there, we have to have them supported by a municipal government or a nonprofit. They cannot in any way benefit a donor. Those were some of the excesses from 20 years ago that led to earmarks being eliminated.”