At the height of what many in DC affectionately term "Appropriations Season" Congressman Porter sat down with Porter Group's own Chris Porter and Ben Rosenbaum to discuss the complex federal funding process, including the rebirth of 'earmarks' as Congressionally Directed Spending (CDS) or Community Project Funding (CPF) requests in recent years.
Join our expert panel for a discussion that serves as a guide for communities and organizations aiming to navigate the federal funding maze.
At the height of what many in DC affectionately term "Appropriations Season" Congressman Porter sat down with Porter Group's own Chris Porter and Ben Rosenbaum to discuss the complex federal funding process, including the rebirth of 'earmarks' as Congressionally Directed Spending (CDS) or Community Project Funding (CPF) requests in recent years.
Join our expert panel for a discussion that serves as a guide for communities and organizations aiming to navigate the federal funding maze.
Welcome to Politics Aside. Hi, my name is John Porter and I appreciate you joining us today on just that topic. Politics Aside, the only thing I ask is that you put Politics Aside, sit back and relax. The purpose of today's webinar is to talk about some things that are really current happening in Washington DC, and the topic we picked today is current most any year, and it's been going back since the literally since the 1790s. So we're going to talk about pork barrel spending, and there's different titles, there's different names for it, and it's about let's bring home the bacon. At least, that's how I've heard it for years. So again, welcome to Politics Aside. The title is Appropriations Deep Dive, and we're going to address federal funding process, and today I've got the Porter team, who I will introduce here in a moment, but I think, a little historical context of earmarking and, believe me, I am not making this up. Many of you are on the line today Probably are far bigger experts than I am, but, generally speaking, earmarks are for a specific purpose.
Speaker 1:Okay, now there will be lots of titles that we're talking about how it's evolved into today on Capitol Hill, but earmarks are really a livestock term, believe it or not, and it was a way for ranchers and farmers to be able to distinguish their cattle and their farms and their stock from others in a particular field. So they needed to create a mark, so they created a certain earmark on that livestock so they could tell again which one was there. So, specifically hogs, and this is where the term pork barrel spending has come from, because of the earmarks on hogs. Now, the first instance was the Lighthouse Act of 1789. And Ben no, I was not around in 1789. And so I can't prove it. And this was not AI. I did look it up and it was to fund and construct lighthouses along the Atlantic coast. Seems reasonable 1789.
Speaker 1:And then the end of the 19th century, earmarking as a term and pork barrel spending really became the common language to use. So there was then a surge in 1994 through 2005, give or take, when a moratorium was put in place, and then after the moratorium, 2021, both sides Democrats, republicans said hey, you know, we probably ought to take a larger role in funding projects across the country. And as a former member of Congress and having had those conversations and those debates, I always felt that a member of Congress who runs for reelection every two years or a US senator every six years Knows a lot more about their district than someone. Bless our friends here in the administration, whoever the administration, I've always felt that members of Congress have a pretty good idea when money should be spent, and it's a small part of the federal budget which we're going to talk about here in a moment. But let's, let's really begin.
Speaker 1:I'm your use or team. You're Chris Porter, some of you may know. He's vice president of the Port of Group and the original member of the Port of Group. Thank you, chris, for being here and Ben Rosenbaum, vice president, also the Port of Group, with years of experience in the Senate and in the house. But, chris, tell us, how does it work today? How does the appropriation and what is the difference between appropriations and earmarks and you know Congressional Directive Spending? What's the difference?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for the introduction. And in general, appropriations process is how Congress funds the government and all their programs. There's 12 appropriation bills. They'll pretty much lay out how much money each federal agency can spend in the upcoming physical year. So we're now talking about FY 25 in this particular conversation, even though we're still waiting on FY 24 to be passed and I'm sure we'll get into that later. But those appropriate, those 12 appropriations bills, detail how much money goes to each program under those agencies.
Speaker 2:So during this, during the appropriation process, there's a couple different ways that people and organizations can request money from Congress. One of those that I'm going to kind of lump them together, called programmatic and language requests I mean generically it's the programmatic requests is asking for money to be increased to a federal or to a certain agency. Perfect example is maybe a special interest group that's really big into the National Park Services. They've required request an increase to their overall funding levels for FY 25. So that again very generic, but that's one good example that what a programmatic request is. Another one is a language request and language request is really using appropriation process. Typically if you put in a language request it's a make a request to change a law or certain part of that particular law. So again going back appropriation processes, more about increasing and decreasing funding more than changing the law itself. Now the third option, which is which came back about earmark process, poor, barrel, barrel spending, everything else, so Pretty much congressional project funding, or in the Senate is called correctionally directed spending, is really a political, politically correct way of saying.
Speaker 2:Earmarks, cps now or or CDS requests have been around for 3 cycles now and it is is what the earmark process has involved to. The reason for that is I think dad touched on it earlier Is earmarks were really popular back in the early 2000s. There are a few high profile cases where millions and millions of dollars were wasted to bridges to nowhere, which is, I think, everybody's popular. My my paper one was funding to study plankton on underwater treadmills. I thought that was also a pretty good one. But those, those and similar requests received a lot of bad press because again, money was wasted At least it was perceived that it was wasted on these programs. So over the next 10 years I'm sorry we're going to back it brought all that bad press, brought about an end to the earmark process, and I was done under speaker Paul Ryan at the time, since that period of time is really up to the executive branch to make the decisions on on where those priority funding projects went to.
Speaker 2:So that's when you always hear the saying is I'm not going to let DC tell me how I should spend my money locally. Dad brought it up earlier as a member of Congress. He, he thought he, he knows, he knows how that money should be spent better than someone back here in DC. So Congress wanted to take back that authority to say I want to make these decisions on how money is spent in in my district. So they brought back CPF or earmark funding with a lot more guardrails and a lot more transparent transparency than it had before. So there's a lot more restrictions and there's only certain pots of money you can request from, and basically what they are is they took grant programs from previous grant programs and current grant programs and created the earmark process using those programs.
Speaker 1:So thank you, Chris. So then, can someone just walk in off the street and ask for a congressionally funded programs, or how does it work? How does someone go about applying? Yeah well, thanks, Garceman.
Speaker 3:So it's a unique process and, as Chris kind of pointed out, you know, it is kind of a catch-all for a number of these programs. Some of them are existing, some of them may be usually done through a discretionary grant program that an agency may hold, Some of them may go through a formula fund that are sometimes distributed to states, counties, what have you. But in the purposes of sort of the modern-day earmarking process you know, members of Congress solicit from their communities what are the priority projects and, as Chris alluded to, there's only so many accounts they allow you know are available. This is this isn't like you know, in some situations and some state legislatures they may get a slush fund. You got, you know, $20 million. Decide what pet projects you want to fund into who.
Speaker 3:This is a very transparent process now whereby members offices will put out a form. There's certain information they're looking for certain accounts that are available to apply for, and then it goes through this entire process by which an office looks at the projects, decides what they think are worthy, not worthy, they submit it to a committee, the appropriations committee. They make determinations as to which things, kind of check the boxes. Some things that I want to lay out in this process is that, as Chris pointed out, these are all things that are already kind of authorized under the federal laws, and so there are requirements and rules and regulations that an organization must follow if they're going to get some of these dollars. So let's say, for instance, you know you have an interest in getting some resources for your community. There's a form that an office will put out. Each office kind of runs their own solicitation process, so you have to really have an understanding of you know, am I even eligible? Am I a nonprofit? Does my member of Congress allow nonprofits to apply?
Speaker 2:Does my member of Congress even solicit for appropriations request.
Speaker 3:Not every office does. And so there's all these processes that you have to determine whether or not you qualify. Are you going to meet some of the requirements that the federal government has on this money on the back end? And then, if it moves through the entire process, which I know we'll get into a little bit more, you know there's the regulations and things that you have to do on the back end that you're responsible for.
Speaker 1:Oh, sorry you're muted. Sam, Ben and Chris, we talked about some of those perceived projects through the years that may have been an abuse of authority, although whatever the earmark, whatever the project, there are people that were reaping the benefit. But can you kind of bring it into context today? What are some of the things that are being asked for? To give everyone listening, when is this money going under the new rules today?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I can take that. You know the vast majority of the funds and, as Chris pointed out, there are 12 appropriations bills that cover all the different agencies, departments and programs of the federal government. Some of them are quite large, some of them are quite small. Not all of them are available to be to have funding directed under this community project funding, this earmark process. So there's a handful of accounts that are available.
Speaker 3:The largest ones fall under transportation, housing and urban development, which you know, Department of Transportation housing programs, and another one that has very large amounts of money that go through it are under labor, health and human services, which also covers education funding, and so there's a number of projects that kind of go through those two appropriations bills. We also see large amounts of money perhaps go through the Department of Defense. The vast majority of that is directed at, you know, institutions of higher education that may be involved in defense-related research programs. So that's kind of the focus there. And then we do see some big ticket appropriations that may go through for water infrastructure. That's another popular area that a lot of communities request for money from.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and if I can add to that, Ben, we also see a lot in the healthcare and law enforcement accounts as well, especially for those communities that are lacking funding. And these programs are CPFs great for, like maybe phase one, phase two of a project, right, it's pretty tough to find those big ticket items like they did in the past where they would receive 20, 30, 40, 50 million dollars per project. These are now more designed to be I don't want to use the term shovel ready, but shovel ready, I'm just going to throw it out there something that we can get, the member can get success on and see the community reap the benefit within a year's period of time, even though it does take a little time to get that funding down and that money actually spent and other things going towards that as well. So again, for communities it's a great thing, and also for road infrastructure. And then to Ben's point again, a lot of wastewater and clean water projects are funded to this program.
Speaker 1:So what I hear you saying is one once you make the request and provide the proper information to a member of Congress, they then will work with a constituent to see which particular budget it may fit into, if it would qualify and what it would fit into. But once approved, then there are steps even to see it through the finish line. Right. What happens next, after it's been approved by the member, by Congress, by the White House? Then what happens?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, you know, sort of start to finish, the form has a that most offices utilize. Again, they all have kind of their own process for doing this, but there is some basic information that is required in this process. But then each account has certain questions and regulations associated with it. Some information may be required for certain types of projects and accounts that isn't required for others. One great example of this is transportation projects. Chris mentioned roadway projects is a major interest area for a lot of communities and counties and states, but there are requirements associated with that that are not required for others. So you know, if you're familiar with transportation infrastructure, there is a state or local regional transportation improvement plan that all communities have and if they are to be considered in this process, a project let's say I want to do a lane expansion on a highway is this even on the regional or state transportation improvement plan? Has it kind of been vetted through this budgetary process so that they know that there is, that they have a plan to build this out, they know what the budget impacts are going to be, and so that's one example of how you know certain projects have additional requirements and then on the back end you know you may have cost share requirements. Not all projects have that, but a number of these accounts require you have a local share and so communities are required to be able to make up that difference.
Speaker 3:In some situations you may not get the full amount you request. How scalable is this request? If you only got half the amount you requested, are you going to be able, as Chris kind of pointed out, in that year's time where this is supposed to be taking effect, is this going to be able to advance that project in a way? Or, is you know, is they half amount, not going to cut it? So there are certain things you have to think through. You know, obviously these are taxpayer dollars at the federal level so they have to adhere to a number of federal requirements. You know NEPA, environmental regulations, workforce requirements, that some certain agencies and projects would have to fit under. All of those things are under consideration and so being able to kind of navigate that can be quite challenging for applicants if they're not kind of familiar with what they have to be doing on the back end of all of this.
Speaker 1:Well, how complicated is the process to submit something. You know I think many on the call I've heard about grants and realized that you have to dot every I and you may have 50 pages. You have to turn in and some of the smaller organizations or communities may not have a full staff of people. But how complicated is that request that someone is turning in and how can it be simplified for that request to be submitted to a member?
Speaker 2:I would say this that probably the most complicated part of this, since we do have to sometimes, or most of the times, put a square peg in a round hole, depending on what the request is or the need of the community or the nonprofit is, trying to navigate the regulations behind whatever pot of money or account that we're going for. So I would say that would be one of the more challenging pieces, and then getting the data to back up the request as well.
Speaker 2:A lot of times there's needed if it's a study that we're trying to find, at least to get the project rolling, there's got to be a lot of detail of the who, what, when and why, and again those all have to fit into the regulations within each account. So I'd say, if anything, that's probably the more difficult part of the whole process.
Speaker 1:Yeah, compare that to the grant process. Then if you would compare that grant.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean it is. So, as we said at the outset of this, a lot of these programs are standing within the federal government, so there already are requirements you have to do. So basically, this allows you to jump the queue in some of these grant programs. Congress is saying this is a worthy recipient of those dollars, and so it's kind of part before course. You know, the city of wherever Johnstown is going to receive a million dollars towards this water project. They're still going to have to fill out a lot of that same paperwork that they would do and applying for a grant, but they're going to do it as kind of a recipient as opposed to an applicant. So that's kind of the way that it's set up.
Speaker 3:I mean, there are some additional things that I think communities have to take into consideration, because members of Congress are thinking through these things when they're making these determinations. You know, is this a good use of federal taxpayer dollars? What is the nexus? Are they able to fund this without this additional funds? And so they're going to have to make those determinations. So that's a lot of the information that offices are soliciting are to make the determination Is this a worthy project? Does it? Does federal investment necessary for it. And so, you know, one of the things that often that I have to accompany these applications that go into these offices are letters of support from the community. It has to.
Speaker 3:You know, if I'm representing a community and trying to help them get resources, are their neighborhood organizations, nonprofits, other municipal governments that have an interest in this.
Speaker 3:They're not going to be the recipient of the dollars, but they understand the needs there and are they supportive of this, and that is information that the committee now requires. To be able to demonstrate this, and, members of Congress, they have to post all of this online. They have to say what they requested and how much they requested, and they have to stand behind this. You know, it's not. It's not that they just get to go with a big check or be able to cut a ribbon in the back end. They have to stand behind these things and, as we've seen, with the bridge to nowhere and some of these other requests that you know kind of made the news back in the day the media opposing campaigns. They love to go through these lists of projects and say is this a worthy investment? You know what is their, what is their connection to this, why is this something, and so being able to demonstrate that community support and that interest is really critical for members of Congress to feel like this is a good use of taxpayer dollars.
Speaker 1:I'd like to share just for a moment my experience, whether it was earmarks in the Nevada State Senate or as a member of Congress, to give you an example of the media, what they or your opponents can say or do. I'm going to get more into the downside of this in a moment, but my experience. I had requested funds with another member of Congress from Nevada for a charter school I think it was about $300,000 with Congresswoman Shelley Berkeley, good friend, for a charter school. Some of my friends decided to use my request as an example of a waste, fraud and abuse. I explained to them this is a charter school that needed help. The bulk of the funds about $30 million at the time had already been invested by an individual to help with individuals that need help the most. Bottom line is there has been a lot of politics On that. What really does happen in a member's office when they're making the decision? Does regional projects matter? Does it matter if it's a community or a school? What really is in their decision? It's 10,. Is that correct for House members?
Speaker 3:No House members currently have a requirement that they can only submit up to 15 projects across all 12 of those appropriations bills. The Senate doesn't have a number requirement. They can submit as many as they want. Now they do have to put them in a priority order when they do submit them to the committees. But having spent a lot of time looking at these lists and reading through these applications to determine what is a worthy project or not, the first thing you do is you make sure that they've actually filled out and got all the right information in there, because committee will reject out of hand. Don't waste a spot for somebody who have completed an application. You don't have the required information. So first are you checking all those boxes? The second consideration in this every office will do this differently. They may have a large geographic area that they represent in their district. They may want to say, okay, well, every county is going to get one of these. So we have to think through how are we covering geographically to make sure that there's diversity there.
Speaker 3:Sometimes you may be approaching this of what's the biggest need. Well, we've had a huge increase of usage at our airport. There's a big demand for increasing the infrastructure at our airport. So if the airport brings me something that expands access to the ticketing hall or for the terminal, that may be something I want to invest in because there's a big need there. As Chris pointed out, water projects are a huge one.
Speaker 3:We see that associated with a lot of communities, especially out west, that have grown so much in the recent years, especially rural communities that oftentimes do not have the tax base to be able to do that on their own, or bonding is out of the question, so they may look at that as the biggest bang for your buck. So there's a lot of things that determine. And then politics does come into this as well. As you mentioned, house members are up every two years, a Senate every six. You may be looking at the election November and you want to be able to demonstrate that you were hitting those constituents that you want to see turn out for you. So there certainly may be a political discussion, but offices will work with their district staff who have a lot of on the ground experience with this, and then they will decide amongst all the projects they get which ones are the most worthy and submit them, and then they have to stand behind that throughout the process.
Speaker 1:Chris, can you take a moment and share your experience, as you've seen, earmarks sorry, congressionally directed spending, or whatever the title earmarks how they've come back onto the hill and how it is transitioning even today from where it was a couple years ago.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think, just going back to how, in the past earmarks, they could ask for money from which almost anything, and not have any accountability, truly any accountability of how much was asked for, how much was given and where that money went exactly. I think this process has been one. Initially, one CPF hit the streets and we started working with the members offices on him. I think we were all a little like, well, how come it's not as easy as it used to be? What's going on? What are? What are these accounts we're really looking at and what are these regulations saying? What does it mean? And then how are the agencies going to? Once they're approved and once they're passed and they're appropriations and get signed into law by the president, what do we do now?
Speaker 2:Because the agencies also didn't have the staff in place to handle these requests because they were a large amount of requests. So I think what was nice is that we were on the ground floor as we went through this process, so we were learning as the staff was learning, on what's acceptable, what's not acceptable, what's the committee really looking for, and then how does that all fit into the priority of the members office? So again, I think there's I think there's the optics of CDS requests or CPF requests have come a long way from where they were, which is, you know, there's those huge earmark earmarks go into special interest groups or or companies or whatever. I just think that the the transparency is there and I think it's appreciated by the communities, now more than ever.
Speaker 1:We have a really great question in the in the chat room and that is is there a timeframe for the fiscal year 25 request? Has that been scheduled yet?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so that's a great question. As we, as Chris pointed out, we're still kind of working through the FY 24 process that was supposed to be completed last September. You know, over about a year ago we were working on last year's requests Most of those. You know that both the House and Senate have put forward their bills and listed out which projects were being selected, and we're supposed to be in the process of reconciling those 2. But the FY 25 process is already getting started.
Speaker 3:Offices are now putting up their forms.
Speaker 3:In some cases Some of them are waiting for the president's budget, which sometimes kind of kicks off this process each year. At the moment we're expecting President Biden to submit his budget to Congress on March 11th and which time we may then receive guidance from both the House and Senate appropriations committees, and sometimes offices will utilize that that as kind of their kickoff process. It'll likely be a pretty quick process. We are anticipating that it could be a very short turnaround window, but we, you know, sometime between now and the next 2 months is when we expect the fiscal year 25 request process To be completed, at least on the initial part where you're submitting them to the offices. Offices will then be going through their own process of submitting them to the committees. The committee will then do its process of determining which ones it wants to pick, and then Congress you know, both the House and Senate will determine which bills they want to advance and are they going to make any changes to those lists. So it is. It's just we're in the very early stages of this whole whole thing.
Speaker 1:So for either one of you but say you have the House making requests and then you have the Senate making requests, would there be duplications? Or do they then compare notes? What happens when with both houses? How does that all come together?
Speaker 3:Yeah, well, typically the house goes a little sooner than the Senate. But I can tell you that there's a number of places where you will see requests that are filed by both the House and Senate get funded. They may be filed, they may be funded at different levels and they're going to have to reconcile those numbers. Do they take the higher one or the lower one, or a different number altogether? But you know, both the House and Senate sometimes offices will work in coordination, Sometimes delegations will work in coordination.
Speaker 1:but sometimes they don't get a lot, sometimes they don't get along at all right, exactly Well, I hate to say that this is becoming the norm, but I'm in a very serious note saying that it is. You know, government shutdowns there's been 21 or more in the last 50 years, I think, when the longest was under President Trump, for 34 some days, and there are a lot of members of Congress and the Senate that have made choices on how to fund the government, how not to fund the government, and we'll leave that for politics another time and not during politics aside. But what does it mean? Again, shutdowns have become the norm, they're not unusual. What happens to earmarks per se during a quote shutdown?
Speaker 2:I'll give you, I'll give the earmark answer to that. At least historically over the past couple of cycles. I mean, they've been delayed, they've, they've, they have not historically again, historically being a short period of time in this case They've never been pulled from an appropriations package. So we are thinking positively, that's going to be the same for FY 24. And then also moving into FY 25. So at least we have that to look at in for FY 23. There was a delay so that that didn't. The appropriations package didn't pass until March, or was that 22. So that didn't happen till March. So there was a. There was a delay in getting those earmarked funds or CPF funds to the recipients because of that delay in the voting.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean we've. We've been operating under Canadian resolutions since the end of September. The projects typically aren't the reason why there's a delay. It's all the other politics, political writers, language things that they want to include in there, even though these are not supposed to be language bills, are supposed to be just funding bills. But that that's what's caused a lot of the delays, and so you know, we'll see when they complete that process. Again, as Chris mentioned, it's going to delay, you know, the recipients from receiving those because the agencies have to do their work once this is signed into law. But as we understand it, all those projects are are just waiting for the for the larger bills to be finalized so that they can move forward to the president's desk.
Speaker 1:We talked a little bit earlier about the philosophy Whether Congress should have a say or whether it should be strictly through the administration when it comes to funding projects. And course, now that funding is available, who? Who's opposed to this process? Is it constituents? Is it the business community? Is it public? Is it public agency? Who's opposed?
Speaker 2:Putting on my Democrats hat. I was about to be talking publicly.
Speaker 3:I'll say, you know, I worked for two Democratic members of Congress one of them, one of the Senate, one of the House and we loved earmarks because we were able, as you kind of said of the outset, to make determinations. We've been meeting with these folks at the local level. We have an understanding of what's going on and anything we can do to direct resources towards those who need it most, to make projects that advance and allow for economic development to occur, or workforce development or support education. That's what we were going for.
Speaker 3:There are a number of members who believe that the federal government is too large and they want to cut spending. This is one spot, one that gets a lot of attention, way more than it probably deserves, because I think last year or pending, we've got I think the request account for maybe around half of a percent of the federal budget. It's not a huge number. You know, when you're talking about trillions of dollars in federal spending, we're talking about maybe a few. You know 10 to 20 billion. It's much smaller than the overall federal government but it has a bigger impact for a lot of these smaller communities.
Speaker 3:I mean, there are certainly folks in the House, freedom Caucus and the far right who are opposed to increased spending. They want to see decreases. I will say you look at this year and what's still pending in FY24, a number of members associated with those positions requested hundreds of millions of dollars in spending. If that's come about it, they say well, I don't want an unelected bureaucrat determining how these taxpayer dollars are going out. So you know, you can say one thing on a Monday and another thing on a Tuesday.
Speaker 2:Well, at the end of the day, I mean, the money is going to be spent somewhere, so it's appropriated. And where's it going to be spent? And it's going to. I mean, if I were a member of Congress, even if I was opposed to that level of spending, I'd still want, you know, to bring back the share that should belong to the community that I'm a part of.
Speaker 1:So online we do have clients at times and friends that do not believe in accepting federal assistance correct.
Speaker 2:Thank you. Was that a yes? I thought so. Yeah, of course we did yes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because there is a philosophical difference out there, where individuals and communities have decided that they too don't want to share or be a part of the problem. When it comes to federal spending and, as you mentioned, ben, it's 1% of the full federal budget. And from the politics here for a moment, politicians bless all of us, always looking for a common enemy, and it's really easy to pick on their marks because they're visible, they're accountant and, by the way, there was accountability, but it's fairly easy target. But again, my philosophy is, I think, that, as an organization, whomever is on our webinar today and we have about 9,000 followers out there, so I'm not sure how many are paying attention but my perspective is that, as communities, as organizations in the communities, I encourage that you speak to your member of Congress and your senator.
Speaker 1:There's a project that is near and dear to you. It does not hurt to go see your member of Congress to talk to them about what you think would be best for your community, for your organization. Members of Congress really want to make a difference, and the Senate when I say Congress, it's both houses, but the members of Congress really do want to make a difference. In fine projects. One, regional significance is always a positive, but also that can really help individuals that need help the most. So I encourage you, make an appointment and go see your member of Congress or your senator Before we conclude, ben, of course, anything else that you guys would like to add today. I appreciate you being with us.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, I'll just add. I mean this can be a challenging process. It changes from year to year. The requirements change, the accounts that are available change and the powers that be change, which has an impact on how all of this goes. And it oftentimes takes folks who have a kind of a finger on the pulse to be able to really, you know, see this through. And so if we at the quarter group can be of any assistance to folks, that's what we're here for. But yeah, I mean that's that's all. I'll leave it with.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I'll echo what Ben says as well. I mean that's. I mean we're here to support, we're here to help. Please let us know. But also stress too that the members office have I mean they've been in now a few cycles, so their staff is very educated on the process and can be an amazing resource to you If you're a nonprofit or even a government entity. But just know that they do have thousands of requests and we just make sure that it has the best shine on it to get to get past that initial, that initial vetting stage.
Speaker 1:Well, with that, again, I want to say thank you to Chris and to Ben for being a part of this, and I know you work with this process every day and seeing as it evolves and is molded by the particular Congress in session, so I want to say thank you. So thank you for joining politics aside. My goal is to try to bring individuals that know a lot more than I do to the table, so you have a chance to listen to some of the experts. We've had multiple topics, but today, I think is very timely that we talked about bringing home the bacon. So, with that, thank you again for joining politics aside. My name is John Porter. I really appreciate you spending time with us today. Thank you.
Speaker 2:Thank you, thank you.