Rock 'n' roll, baby food get funds from strapped federal budget

WASHINGTON -- Despite soaring deficits, the government spending plan awaiting President Bush's signature is chock-full of special items for industries and communities. Consider $443,000 to develop salmon-fortified baby food, or $350,000 for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Lawmakers from both parties who approved the $388 billion package last weekend set aside plenty of money for projects certain to sow good will in their home districts.

The time-honored practice flourished despite the ballooning deficit, less money for federal programs and rising unease about how government will finance the futures of Medicare and Social Security.

For instance, there was $50,000 to control Missouri's wild-hog problem, $1 million for the Norwegian American Foundation in Seattle, $335,000 to protect North Dakota's sunflowers from blackbirds, $4 million for the International Fertilizer Development Center in Alabama.

There's little mystery about why such spending survives in good times or bad.

"They do it because they can get away with it. They do it because it's the thing that allows them to do a good press release back home and be able to say to folks, 'I'm delivering something for you,"' said Frank Clemente, a spokesman for the private watchdog group Public Citizen.

When Bush took office, he promised to cut pet projects from the federal budget, but the president has yet to veto a spending bill. He is expected to sign the new plan as well.

Within hours of the bill's passage, lawmakers were promoting the projects they had brought home to constituents. In federal budgets, what is derided as pork-barrel spending by one constituency is embraced by another as well-deserved local aid.

Oregon's senators, Democrat Ron Wyden and Republican Gordon Smith, put out an 11-page news release Sunday sharing credit for several hundred million dollars headed to their state. Projects the money will finance include "wood utilization research," a barley gene-mapping project, remodeling of a cafeteria at Crater Lake National Park and the West Coast Groundfish Observers undertaking.

Ohio Reps. Stephanie Tubbs Jones, a Democrat, and Steven LaTourette, a Republican, boasted about the $350,000 for music education programs at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland.

Nicole Williams, a spokeswoman for Tubbs Jones, said another lawmaker requested the funding but Tubbs Jones supported it. With a deficit in Cleveland's public school system and music education among the programs being cut, the museum funding could benefit the city as a whole, Williams said.

Alaska Republican Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Ted Stevens claimed credit for channeling federal money to the state's salmon industry, including the money to research use of salmon as a base for baby food.

"The goal is to increase the market for salmon by encouraging the production of more 'value-added' salmon products," Murkowski's office said in a written statement.

Michigan's two Democratic senators, Carl Levin and Debbie Stabenow, released a statement Monday with news that they had won $4 million for an environmentally friendly public transportation system in Traverse City.

"The population of Traverse City, which is approximately 150,000, swells to nearly 250,000 during summer months, and this influx of tourists puts strains on the local infrastructure," their release said. "The traffic congestion and related pollution has increased the demand for a public transportation system that does not increase diesel emissions or noise in the community."

Sen. Richard Shelby, an Alabama Republican who serves on the Appropriations Committee, won dozens of special items for his state, enough to fill 20 news releases.

In a release aimed at northern Alabama, Shelby took credit for $4 million budgeted for the fertilizer development center: "In addition to the important research conducted at this facility, the facility employs numerous Muscle Shoals-area residents."

Many of the special items that made the cut were promoted by lobbyists hired by interest groups, companies or communities to convince lawmakers that money was needed for their projects.

"All members of Congress have many more requests than they could ever honor, so it's the job of the lobbyists to bring those reasons to the member, to educate them about the nature of the request and why it's important," said Jim Albertine, a lobbyist who successfully pressed for research and development money for the superconductor industry.

"No, a bike trail in X, Y, Z part of the country doesn't benefit the country as a whole, but the people in that district or community (also) put their money into the pot," he said.

The targeted spending was so prolific that Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., had no problem filling a half-hour floor speech with examples before the Senate vote on the measure, such as a plan for $1 million for the Wild American Shrimp Initiative.

"I am hoping that the appropriators could explain to me why we need $1 million for this -- are American shrimp unruly and lacking initiative? Why does the U.S. taxpayer need to fund this 'no shrimp left behind' act?" McCain asked his colleagues.

McCain's query went unanswered in part because spending documents don't identify who proposed each item or why.

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On the Net:

Congress' conference report on the budget: http://www.house.gov/rules/stmgrh4818ttext1.htm

Public Citizen: http://www.publiccitizen.org/