Lawmaker’s mission: Put a bug in their earmarks

washington -- When Rep. Jeff Flake rises to speak in the House of Representatives, his colleagues grimace.

Usually, the Arizona Republican is out to shame them over earmarking money for pet projects that have little to do with federal priorities.

The House’s No. 1 earmark-hater spares no one: not fellow Republicans, not committee chairs, not Arizona colleagues, not even Punxsutawney Phil.

A $100,000 earmark for the Punxsutawney Weather Discovery Center in Pennsylvania, home of the celebrated weather-predicting groundhog, was among the scores of projects Flake has derided as pork.

Flake is one of a handful of lawmakers -- including Sen. John McCain, a presidential candidate and fellow Arizona Republican -- who rail against pork-barrel spending. But Flake is perhaps the peskiest.

Repeatedly, he has tried to kill projects. And always, he failed -- until recently.

Flake finally notched his first kill: a $129,000 earmark for the Home of the Perfect Christmas Tree, a North Carolina program that creates jobs for artisans. “I am prepared after this amendment to answer to the name Grinch,” he said.

Yet his victory was almost undetectable.

Thousands of earmarks worth millions of dollars still cling to this year’s spending bills like barnacles. But partly as a result of Flake’s relentless nagging -- not to mention recent earmarking scandals -- congressional leaders have pledged to reduce the number of earmarks and open the process to more public scrutiny.

Flake’s gripe is that projects are slipped into bills, often at a lobbyist’s behest, without much, if any, public justification. “The earmarking process is fraught with a lack of transparency, fiscal responsibility and equity for taxpayers,” he said, “all too often rewarding the districts of powerful members of Congress in the Appropriations Committee at the expense of the rest of the body.”

Flake’s persistence may be starting to pay off.

Last year, his amendments to strike earmarks drew an average of 68 votes. This year, the average rose to 85 votes.

“A lot of people are really sick of this game,” Flake said. “They had higher aspirations than to beg for crumbs that fall from appropriators’ tables.”

First elected to the House in 2000, Flake is a blond 44-year-old with a Beach Boys look. One of 11 children, he was raised on a ranch in the Arizona town of Snowflake (named in part after his great-great-grandfather, one of two founders). He jokes that he went into politics “to get off the farm, quit milking cows.”

He served as a Mormon missionary in Africa and was executive director of the Goldwater Institute, a Phoenix think tank, where he said he worked to promote a philosophy of less government and more individual responsibility.

The conservative’s campaign against earmarks is typical of his independent streak. He was among a handful of Republicans who voted against the No Child Left Behind education measure and the Medicare prescription drug benefit, which President Bush counts among his proudest achievements. Flake pushed to replace Tom DeLay as House majority leader early last year after the Texas Republican was indicted. And he broke with his party’s leadership to push for an overhaul of immigration laws.

Budget watchdogs consider him a hero. “At the very least, there is a scrutiny of the budget process that wasn’t there before,” said Stephen Slivinski, director of budget studies at the libertarian Cato Institute.

Flake’s colleagues consider him a nuisance. They say he wants to take away their power to determine what’s best for their districts and let nonelected Washington bureaucrats decide. John Feehery, a former House GOP leadership aide, said Flake “tends to rub people the wrong way,” but has forced lawmakers to reflect on their earmarks.

“He’s not running for Mr. Congeniality. He’s running for Mr. Crank. And he’s winning the title.”

Flake believes his criticism of his party cost him a seat on the House Judiciary Committee. But his colleagues also pay him grudging respect because his attacks aren’t personal or partisan -- and because he doesn’t seek his own earmarks.

“He’s taken a small issue and made it into an issue of national debate,” Rep. Patrick T. McHenry (R-N.C.) said, even after Flake’s amendment killed his earmark for the Home of the Perfect Christmas Tree. “He’s moving the debate in his direction.”

Flake blames his party’s recent loss of its congressional majority on the explosion of earmarks in spending bills, which exploded from 1,439 in 1995 to nearly 14,000 in 2005, according to Citizens Against Government Waste.

“This process is out of control,” Flake said during a recent debate. “I think Democrats are as much to blame probably as Republicans are. The difference is, as Republicans, we pretend to stand for limited government.”

Flake’s cause gained prominence after earmark scandals sent former Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham (R-Rancho Santa Fe) and ex-lobbyist Jack Abramoff to prison, and attention was drawn to such projects as the $223-million “bridge to nowhere” linking Ketchikan, Alaska, to an island with an airport and 50 people.

In response, Congress voted this year to require lawmakers to publicly disclose their earmarks. “But in order to cut the number, you’ve got to have some shame,” Flake said, “and we haven’t got there yet.”

Flake’s method of trying to induce that shame tends to feature pun-laced mockery.

On a $50,000 earmark to help build a National Mule and Packers Museum in Bishop, Calif., he said: “It is time for the American taxpayer to say, ‘Whoa.’ ” Concerning a $150,000 earmark for the American Ballet Theatre in New York City, he said: “We could be facing the music if taxpayers learn that we are dancing with their hard-earned money.”

Flake often tinges his attacks with sarcasm, as he did in recently targeting a $628,843 earmark for grape genetics research in upstate New York. “What mechanism is there to stop Congress from funding mold research on gourmet cheese, or soil research for truffle farming? Where does it stop?” he asked.

Reactions to his efforts vary.

“I got more publicity in my district,” said Rep. David L. Hobson (R-Ohio), a senior appropriator. “They don’t think it’s pork.”

Rep. John E. Peterson (R-Pa.), sponsor of the earmark for the Punxsutawney weather center, brought Phil, the forecasting groundhog, to Washington to defend the spending as a way to promote tourism in an economically hard-hit area. Flake is from an affluent district that does not need federal help, Peterson said; but he credited the Arizonan’s approach as “more gentlemanly, less shrill, which I appreciate.”

Occasionally, colleagues do snap back. Freshman Rep. Michael A. Arcuri (D-N.Y.), responding to Flake’s challenge to grape research in his district, said: “It has become overwhelmingly clear to me that some of my colleagues are more concerned with establishing a reputation than addressing the needs of the American people.”

Flake’s goal is to force colleagues to publicly defend their projects, as happened recently when he challenged the earmark for the mule museum.

Rep. Howard P. “Buck” McKeon (R-Santa Clarita), in whose district the project would be located, said the museum is crucial to the economy of the tourism-dependent town. “One thing that I think we forget is that the people in Bishop pay taxes, and I guarantee you . . . they have gotten very little back from the federal government for the taxes that they have sent here to Washington,” McKeon said.

Flake’s campaign appears to be increasingly irritating both parties’ senior members of the House Appropriations Committee.

Committee Chairman David R. Obey (D-Wis.) recently reached his boiling point when Flake dared to challenge a $400,000 earmark in the chairman’s home state. “I think it comes with considerable ill grace,” Obey fumed.

Rep. Jerry Lewis of Redlands, the committee’s top Republican, recently told Flake that he was doing a disservice in attempting to portray Republicans as fiscally undisciplined.

“The gentleman is wrong,” he said.

Flake’s critics say that he is wasting time focusing on tiny appropriations rather than taking aim at serious spending issues, such as controlling Medicare costs.

“There are federal programs -- one or two programs -- that waste more money than all of the earmarks combined,” Peterson said.

Back home, Flake has been criticized for depriving his district of money for projects. But, he said, “for everybody who comes to me and says, ‘Hey, you should be getting earmarks,’ I have a hundred who say, ‘Atta boy, keep up what you’re doing.’ ”

Earmark-funded projects are often named for their congressional benefactors -- dozens of projects in West Virginia have been named after for Democratic Sen. Robert C. Byrd, a master of pork-barrel politics.

There’s no Flake Center for Cactus Research. And that’s fine with him.

“If I have something named after me when I leave Congress,” he said, “I’ll consider my time here a failure.”

richard.simon@latimes.com

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Rep. Jeff Flake

Age: 44

Birthplace: Snowflake, Ariz.

Home: Mesa, Ariz.

Party: Republican

Education: Brigham Young University, B.A. in international relations, 1986; M.A. in political science, 1987.

Professional career: Public affairs executive, Shipley, Smoak & Henry in Washington, D.C., 1987-89; executive director, Foundation for Democracy in Namibia, 1989-90; owner, Interface Public Affairs in Washington, D.C., 1990-92; executive director, the Goldwater Institute in Phoenix, 1992-99.

Political career: Elected to the House of Representatives in 2000 to represent Arizona’s 6th District, which is east of Phoenix and includes parts of Mesa and Chandler and all of Gilbert, Queen Creek and Apache Junction.

Family: Flake is a fifth-generation Arizonan who is descended from Mormon settlers. He and his wife, Cheryl, have five children.

Quote: “I can assure you that I have been called many things during this effort to shine the light on some federal earmarks and to try to promote a little accountability.”

Source: Times research

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Pork groaners from Flake

Pork groaners

Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) routinely derides congressional earmarks with his signature eye-rolling puns, adding insult to injury for the lawmakers who sponsor them.

On $100,000 for the Hunting and Fishing Museum of Pennsylvania in Tionesta: “I have never had a hard time fishing for earmarks that seem to be fiscally irresponsible, but this one seemed to be a particularly easy catch.”

On $6.3 million for a wind demonstration project: “This process of challenging earmarks on the floor is often described as tilting at windmills, so I suppose it is only proper that we start today with an earmark for the wind demonstration project.”

On $300,000 for the Bronx Council on the Arts: “I would ask members of this body: ‘How would you define irony?’ I define it as providing a federal earmark to the Bronx Council on the Arts, which is advertising an event called Pay to Play. . . . It is sadly ironic that we are funding artistic parodies of congressional earmarking with earmarks.”

On $100,000 for the Punxsutawney Weather Discovery Center in Pennsylvania: “I feel like Bill Murray in ‘Groundhog Day.’ Every year, it’s the same thing: Congress passes spending bills loaded with pork projects.”

On $500,000 for a swimming pool in Banning, Calif: “I know the desert can get awful hot, and there is nothing better than taking a swim. But I do not know why we ought to give the federal taxpayer a bath every time somebody wants a swimming pool.”

On $150,000 for the Actors Theatre of Louisville in Kentucky: “It would be nice if Congress started acting more fiscally responsible.”

On $500,000 for the Burpee Museum of Natural History in Rockford, Ill.: “This pork project is enough to give anyone indigestion.”