R
Roger
Guest
Unrelated Items Part of Iraq Bills Since War Began
By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, April 4, 2007; A03
To President Bush, they are "pork-barrel projects completely unrelated to
the war," items in the House and Senate war-spending bills such as peanut
storage facilities and aid to spinach farmers that insult the seriousness of
the conflict and exist only to buy votes.
But such spending has been part of Iraq funding bills since the war began,
sometimes inserted by the president himself, sometimes added by lawmakers
with bipartisan aplomb. A few of the items may have weighed on the votes for
spending bills that have now topped half a trillion dollars, but, in almost
all cases over the past four years, special-interest funding provisions have
been the fruits of congressional opportunism by well-placed senators or
House members grabbing what they could for their constituents on the one
bill that had to be passed quickly.
"Frankly, I don't see a lot of vote-buying here. And if that was what they
were after in some cases, it didn't seem to work," said Scott Lilly, who was
a longtime senior House Appropriations Committee aide and is now at the
liberal-leaning Center for American Progress.
The president's own request last year for emergency war spending included
$20 billion for Gulf Coast hurricane recovery, $2.3 billion for bird flu
preparations, and $2 billion to fortify the border with Mexico and pay for
his effort to send National Guardsmen to the southern frontier.
The Republican-controlled Senate tried to load the 2006 bill with $4 billion
for agricultural subsidies, $1.1 billion for the Gulf Coast fishing
industry, $594 million for highway projects unrelated to Hurricane Katrina,
and $700 million for rerouting a rail line in Mississippi.
In the face of a veto threat, many of those programs fell out of the final
bill. But there were some noteworthy survivors, said Brian M. Riedl, a
budget analyst at the Heritage Foundation, including $176 million to rebuild
an Armed Forces retirement home in Mississippi that critics called absurdly
overpriced, $500 million for agriculture relief, an extra $1 billion for
community-development block grants, and $118 million for reviving the Gulf
Coast fishing industry.
That fishing industry is getting a second shot this year, with $120 million
in the House-passed war-spending bill earmarked for shrimp and menhaden
fishermen. This earmark has earned the public scorn of Republicans.
The 2005 emergency war-spending bill included $70 million for aid to Ukraine
and other former Soviet states; $12.3 million for the Architect of the
Capitol, in part to build an off-site delivery facility for the Capitol
police; $24 million for the Forest Service to repair flood and landslide
damage; and $104 million for watershed protection -- the lion's share meant
for repairing the damage to waterways in Washington County, Utah, at the
request of the state's Republican senators.
The fight this year over $120 million for shrimp and menhaden fisheries in
the Gulf, $74 million for peanut storage facilities in Georgia, and $25
million for California spinach farmers devastated by an E. coli scare is
louder than past disputes but is substantively not much different, budget
analysts said. Virtually all of the $3.4 billion in agriculture spending in
the House bill had been worked out by farm-state lawmakers long before
Democratic leaders settled on the Iraq troop-pullout language at the center
of the White House's showdown with Congress, Lilly said.
"These war supplemental bills have always had wasteful domestic spending
added," Riedl said. "The difference is only in magnitude."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/03/AR2007040301736.html
By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, April 4, 2007; A03
To President Bush, they are "pork-barrel projects completely unrelated to
the war," items in the House and Senate war-spending bills such as peanut
storage facilities and aid to spinach farmers that insult the seriousness of
the conflict and exist only to buy votes.
But such spending has been part of Iraq funding bills since the war began,
sometimes inserted by the president himself, sometimes added by lawmakers
with bipartisan aplomb. A few of the items may have weighed on the votes for
spending bills that have now topped half a trillion dollars, but, in almost
all cases over the past four years, special-interest funding provisions have
been the fruits of congressional opportunism by well-placed senators or
House members grabbing what they could for their constituents on the one
bill that had to be passed quickly.
"Frankly, I don't see a lot of vote-buying here. And if that was what they
were after in some cases, it didn't seem to work," said Scott Lilly, who was
a longtime senior House Appropriations Committee aide and is now at the
liberal-leaning Center for American Progress.
The president's own request last year for emergency war spending included
$20 billion for Gulf Coast hurricane recovery, $2.3 billion for bird flu
preparations, and $2 billion to fortify the border with Mexico and pay for
his effort to send National Guardsmen to the southern frontier.
The Republican-controlled Senate tried to load the 2006 bill with $4 billion
for agricultural subsidies, $1.1 billion for the Gulf Coast fishing
industry, $594 million for highway projects unrelated to Hurricane Katrina,
and $700 million for rerouting a rail line in Mississippi.
In the face of a veto threat, many of those programs fell out of the final
bill. But there were some noteworthy survivors, said Brian M. Riedl, a
budget analyst at the Heritage Foundation, including $176 million to rebuild
an Armed Forces retirement home in Mississippi that critics called absurdly
overpriced, $500 million for agriculture relief, an extra $1 billion for
community-development block grants, and $118 million for reviving the Gulf
Coast fishing industry.
That fishing industry is getting a second shot this year, with $120 million
in the House-passed war-spending bill earmarked for shrimp and menhaden
fishermen. This earmark has earned the public scorn of Republicans.
The 2005 emergency war-spending bill included $70 million for aid to Ukraine
and other former Soviet states; $12.3 million for the Architect of the
Capitol, in part to build an off-site delivery facility for the Capitol
police; $24 million for the Forest Service to repair flood and landslide
damage; and $104 million for watershed protection -- the lion's share meant
for repairing the damage to waterways in Washington County, Utah, at the
request of the state's Republican senators.
The fight this year over $120 million for shrimp and menhaden fisheries in
the Gulf, $74 million for peanut storage facilities in Georgia, and $25
million for California spinach farmers devastated by an E. coli scare is
louder than past disputes but is substantively not much different, budget
analysts said. Virtually all of the $3.4 billion in agriculture spending in
the House bill had been worked out by farm-state lawmakers long before
Democratic leaders settled on the Iraq troop-pullout language at the center
of the White House's showdown with Congress, Lilly said.
"These war supplemental bills have always had wasteful domestic spending
added," Riedl said. "The difference is only in magnitude."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/03/AR2007040301736.html
