Budget ruckus looming
in Congress

The administration wants to cut
many home district projects

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By Alan Fram
Associated Press

WASHINGTON >> Democrats are defending lawmakers' home district projects that the Bush administration is putting on the chopping block. In the process, they have provided a peek at what is usually closely held information: who sponsored 1,612 of them.

Members of the House and Senate inserted the projects into the $123 billion labor, education and health bill for this year. The measure passed Congress overwhelmingly in December. The projects -- worth $905.8 million, according to congressional figures -- are mostly for day-care centers, after-school programs and other health and education programs.

The listed sponsors run from A to Y, starting with U.S. Rep. Neil Abercrombie (D-Hawaii), who won $300,000 for a globalization network program at the University of Hawaii-Manoa. At the end is House Appropriations Committee Chairman Bill Young (R-Fla.), listed as the sponsor of 17 projects, mostly in Florida, worth about $37 million.

Congressional Democrats took the unusual step of releasing the list to defend the projects from administration cuts and criticism. They say such spending -- sought by most members of both parties -- is valuable because lawmakers know what is needed back home.

Critics deride the spending as "pork," and President Bush has been trying unsuccessfully to eliminate many of them. According to the White House budget office, there were 7,803 such projects in the regular spending bills Congress passed last fall, compared with 6,454 the year before.

When Bush releases his new budget on Monday, he will propose including the projects in a group of programs he wants to cut to free $1.3 billion for the Pell grants program. The home district projects are called "earmarks" by lawmakers.

"It is this administration's clear position that earmarking undermines carefully crafted laws and procedures governing how to distribute federal funds designed to ensure that taxpayer dollars support national interests," the Education Department said in a written statement on Wednesday announcing the proposal.

Firing back, Rep. David Obey of Wisconsin, top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, said yesterday in a written statement that targeting the projects "slapped both parties in Congress across the face and said, 'Your priorities don't count, only ours do.'"

In some instances, members of the House and Senate Appropriations committees sponsor a project on behalf of other lawmakers. The appropriations panels write Congress' spending bills.