Where I Stand — Mike O’Callaghan: McCain roasts pork bill

Tuesday, Nov. 3, 1998 | 11:34 a.m.

TWO WEEKS AGO in a 65-to-29 roll-call vote, the U.S. Senate passed a 4,000-page, 40-pound, nonamendable spending bill. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., went to the floor to point out that only a few senators had actually seen this bill prior to voting on it.

Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., refused to vote for the bill which he and a majority of others had no time to study. McCain also voted no on the bill and told his colleagues:

"The bill exceeds the budget ceiling by $20 billion for what is euphemistically called emergency spending, much of which is really everyday, garden-variety, pork-barrel appropriations. The bill is loaded with locality-specific, special interest, pork-barrel spending projects, which are paid for by robbing billions from the budget surplus."

McCain, a POW during the Vietnam War, is especially upset because the true needs of our starving military forces weren't met. Even some of the large sums of money designated for Pentagon use isn't for the needs of our men and women in uniform. McCain pointed out, "Instead, we bought three Gulfstream executive passenger jets, bought helicopters for the Colombian anti-drug effort, and padded the budget to pay for burying utilities at Keesler Air Force Base. We have another $210 million of defense money to the Coast Guard to pay for its drug interdiction mission.

"We did give the Services $200 million for military health care, but that's less than a quarter of what's needed to ensure military personnel and their families receive the care they need. ..."

The senator from Arizona made clear that the spending problems Congress sent to our military leaders was just the tip of the spending iceberg. He went on to say:

"Obviously, the waste in this bill does not stop with defense spending.

"Here is just a sampling of the egregious pork-barrel spending in this bill:

"$250,000 to an Illinois firm to research caffeinated chewing gum;

"$750,000 for grasshopper research in Alaska;

"$1 million for peanut quality research in Georgia;

"$1.1 million for manure handling and disposal in Starkville, Mississippi;

"$5 million for a new International Law Enforcement Academy in Roswell, New Mexico;

"$1 million for Kings College in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, for commercialization of pulverization technologies;

"$250,000 for Hawaii Volcanoes Observatory;

"$1.2 million for a C&O Canal visitors center in Cumberland, Maryland;

"$250,000 for a lettuce geneticist in Salinas, California;

"$500,000 for the U.S. Plant Stress and Water Conservation Lab in Lubbock, Texas;

"$162,000 for research on peach tree short life in South Carolina;

"200,000 for research on turkey carnovirus in Indiana;

"$64,000 for urban pest research in Georgia;

"$100,000 for vidalia onion research in Georgia;

"An additional $2.5 million for the Office of Cosmetics and Color; and

"$200,000 for a grant to the Interstate Shellfish Sanitation Commission."

It's no wonder that senators the caliber of McCain and Reid voted NO on this spending bill. Even Sen. Robert C. Byrd, D-W.Va., considered a big spender, announced a week before the vote that he would hold his nose and vote for it. When it came time to vote, the stench had become so bad that Byrd became one of the 29 who cast votes against the bill.

The New York Times told its readers: "No institution honors its own the way the Senate does. The bill provides $1.2 million for the Mitch McConnell Conservation Fund, in honor of the Republican senator from Kentucky; $12 million for the Patrick Leahy War Victims Fund, in honor of the Democratic senator from Vermont, and $6 million for the Robert Dole Institute of Public Service and Policy at the University of Kansas, named for the former majority leader and 1996 Republican presidential nominee."

And by now you must have figured out why Georgia had big bucks appropriated for onion research, urban pest research and peanut quality research. Yes, and Speaker Newt Gingrich also got even more dollars for aircraft the Pentagon doesn't need or want but which will be built in Georgia.

Yes, this is the same legislative body that says it wasn't told about military needs but continues to prevent the closing of expensive and unnecessary military bases. Remember what former Navy Secretary John H. Dalton wrote in an editorial last month, "The Department of Defense is saving $5.6 billion a year from the first four rounds of base closings. An additional two rounds promise to save us another $3 billion per year. Those savings can go a long way to restoring the important balance between readiness, quality of life for our men and women in uniform and modernization of the armed forces."

Congress refused to act.