Chet Edwards For Congress - Congressional Earmarks

Brazos Valley tallies $41 million in earmarks

econnor — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 22:09:42 -0700

Saturday, December 29, 2007

BV tallies $41 million in earmarks

The Bryan College Station Eagle

By JANET PHELPS |Eagle Staff Writer

More than $41 million will be poured into Brazos Valley projects next year, thanks to earmarks by U.S. Rep. Chet Edwards, D-Waco.

President Bush criticized special project money as "wasteful government spending" when he signed the $555 billion bill Wednesday that funds the Iraq war into 2008 and keeps government agencies running through September.

The money will go to 16 projects in Brazos, Robertson, Madison and Grimes counties. The projects range from high-profile aerospace engineering and biofuel research at Texas A&M University to a small, church-based drug prevention program.

Edwards said Friday he was proud of the federal money he secured for local projects because it's an effective way to encourage local growth.

The Constitution gives Congress the power to make appropriations, he said, and earmarks allow local leaders to identify and receive funding for projects they see as important.

"I believe [locally initiated projects] make more sense than letting some bureaucrat in the Office of Management and Budget in Washington, D.C., make decisions about what projects to fund," he said. "I would challenge anyone to criticize agricultural research at A&M or emergency response training that help make our cities safer."

A majority of the $41.6 million will go to Texas A&M, including $985,000 for biofuels research and $705,000 for aerospace engineering projects that are used by NASA for lunar and Mars exploration.

Ken Peddicord, director of Texas A&M's Texas Engineering Experiment Station, said the funding is an important step in advancing research into new energy sources.

Texas A&M's BioEnergy Alliance -- a partnership between the Texas Agricultural Experiment Station and the Texas Engineering Experiment Station -- has developed groundbreaking research in alternative fuels such as sorghum that do not come from food sources, he said.

"This money allows the program to strike off in new directions, to move away from corn and ethanol," he said.

St. Joseph Health System also received money for repairs to its Madisonville hospital.

Gentry Woodard, director of legislative affairs and grants for the St. Joseph Health System, said employees at the 57-year-old hospital have volunteered on weekends to make repairs themselves.

Edwards said the staff dedication is one reason he allotted $117,000 to pay for repairs to the roof and emergency room upgrades.

"It was terribly important to that community," he said.

The earmarks come on top of the 2008 defense appropriations bill that was signed into law in November, in which Edwards secured $6.8 million for Texas A&M defense projects and $2.6 million for Lynntech Inc.

Other local earmarks include:

$392,000 to repave County Road 172 in northern Grimes County.

$196,000 to make improvements to Collard Street in Madisonville.

$376,000 to improve communication technology equipment at the Navasota Police Department.

$12.5 million to train emergency first responders at the National Emergency Response and Rescue Training Center at Texas A&M.

$2 million to fund research at the Nuclear Security Science and Policy Institute at Texas A&M.

$21.9 million to 23 farming, forestry and animal health research programs at Texas A&M.

$1.39 million to provide anti-terrorism training to educators and local law enforcement through the Texas Engineering Extension Service's Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training program and Texas A&M's Project Protect.

$588,000 to Brazos Valley Transportation Management Center to study local traffic solutions and plan for future growth.

$150,000 to Project Focus, a drug- and alcohol-abuse prevention program at Shiloh Baptist Church in Bryan.

Edwards Praises Ag Research at Texas A&M

Kat — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 14:00:10 -0700

U.S. Rep. Chet Edwards Praises Ag Research at Texas A&M, Tours Labs

Dave Mayes | Ag News | July 3, 2008

COLLEGE STATION – U.S. Rep. Chet Edwards of Waco on Wednesday praised the agricultural research accomplishments of the Texas A&M System, then toured some campus labs to get a first-hand look at efforts aimed at world solutions to food and energy needs.

"I feel like the water boy who is finally getting to meet the football players," Edwards told a crowd of 60 researchers and administrators. "You are the real stars … accomplishing great things."

People tend to think that if they aren't farmers or ranchers, that agricultural research has no relevance for them, he said, but that's not true.

On his tour, Edwards met with Dr. Keerti Rathore, an AgriLife Research plant biotechnologist, whose ground-breaking work on removing a toxic compound from cottonseed could make it a high-protein food available to an estimated 500 million people a year.

He also was shown 20-foot tall sorghum stalks that show great potential as high-tonnage biomass for the production of cellulosic ethanol. The sorghum stalks, which resemble bamboo canes, could be grown throughout much of the South and produce an estimated 20 dry tons per acre, according to AgriLife researcher Dr. John Mullet.

Such high yields, Mullet explained, mean that 2,000 gallons of ethanol, instead of 500 gallons, could be produced per acre.

Edwards said as he visits with constituents in his 17th Congressional district, which runs from Cleburne south through Waco and Navasota, the issues people are most concerned about – high food prices, high fuel prices and health care, for example – are the very issues that Texas AgriLife Research scientists are working on.

As high as food prices seem, Edwards said, the truth is that Americans pay less for food as a percentage of income than any other people in the world. Without the long history of agricultural research in partnership with farmers and ranchers, he said, he couldn't imagine how high food prices would be – "double, triple, who knows?

AgriLife researchers are also working on a wide array of alternative fuels, from algae to sorghum, he said, "to find new sources of renewable clean energy that in the long run can bring down the price of gasoline and energy."

Edwards also praised the work of the Vegetable and Fruit Improvement Center at Texas A&M, which is working to develop more healthful foods that will help people fight diseases or prevent them altogether, thus lowering health care costs. Referring to his water boy analogy, the congressman said he felt privileged to play a small part in helping bring the "water" – some $23 million in federal funds for agriculture and energy research at the Texas A&M System in 2007.

But Edwards also pointed out that all of this funding came from "earmarked" legislation, which directs funding to a particular project in a Congressional district, a practice that has been criticized as wasteful. He said there's a positive side to a story that has been portrayed negatively nationally. "We shouldn't let the one bad (earmarked) project overshadow the 99 others that are making our quality of life better, our economy stronger and our nation safer."

"If we were to end all Congressional earmarks," he warned, "if that became the policy, it would devastate our AgriLife research here at Texas A&M, our engineering programs and some of our nation's defense programs that are so important to the military."

"So these are earmarks that I am very proud to be associated with," he continued, "and I didn't come up with these. Many of them came from here (at Texas A&M), from some of the world's finest researchers."

Congressional Earmarks

econnor — Thu, 22 May 2008 13:45:36 -0700

Congressional Earmarks

In 2007, the House passed unprecedented earmark transparency and accountability rules. One of the rules requires the listing of the names of supporting Representatives next to each project that is funded in Appropriations bills. I voted in favor of this new rule.

While only a small percentage of the funds in most appropriations bills are designated for locally advocated projects, I will continue to fight to include local priorities in appropriations bills to ensure our district receives our fair share of funds.

To see a list of projects that were funded in the 2008 Appropriations bills please visit here.