Year-end spending bill contains pre-Christmas goodies

Republican congressional leaders may bristle at the suggestion that the year-end fiscal 2001 appropriations package is just another get-out-of-town omnibus spending package that fiscal conservatives loathe. But while GOP leaders have steadfastly avoided the term "omnibus," language made available Monday in the Congressional Record nevertheless includes millions of dollars in members' projects as well as authorizing language to enact a variety of pet projects for well-placed representatives and senators alike.

In addition to the final FY2001 Labor-HHS, Treasury-Postal and Legislative Branch spending bills--as well as the Commerce-Justice-State bill, which was sent to the White House in tandem with the omnibus--the package includes key legislation to restore funds to Medicare providers, expand Medicaid, authorize the New Markets/community renewal program, and modernize the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. The package passed the House Friday by a 292-60 vote and the Senate by voice vote.

Less heralded--but no less important--to securing votes and cooperation from both sides of the aisle are a host of other, smaller bills.

Among them are the Gulf Islands National Seashore, to buy land along Mississippi's Gulf shore and Cat Island, Miss., for a national park; amendments to the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, including language to reduce fishing capacity for several Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands crab fisheries and to transfer from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric administration to local control Alaska's Pribilof Islands; language calling on the President to request an expedited investigation of the dumping of steel imports, a particular concern of Senate Appropriations ranking member Robert Byrd, D-W.Va.; and the Colorado Ute Settlement Act Amendments, to settle claims of the Ute tribes on the Animas-La Plata Rivers water project.

Then there are the Dakota Water Resources Act of 2000 to authorize and fund irrigation projects in Upper Midwest; and the Erie Canalway National Heritage Corridor Act.

The package also includes increased funding authorization for numerous water projects in the annual Water Resources Development Act.

And among the line items sprinkled throughout the multibill package are the following: $9 million to the Alliance of Boys & Girls Clubs of South Carolina to establish the Strom Thurmond Boys & Girls Club National Training Center; $5 million for the endowment fund of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, run by former Rep. Lee Hamilton, D-Ind.; and authorization to use funds in the FY2001 Foreign Operations bill from the "other bilateral economic assistance, economic support fund" to compensate the Chinese government "for property loss and damage arising out the May 7, 1999, incident in Belgrade, Federal Republic of Yugoslavia," when the United States mistakenly bombed the Chinese embassy during the Balkan air operation.