An Inclusive Litany

11/9/98

The Internet Tax Freedom Act included a $3 million provision to establish a "Mark O. Hatfield Fellows program" at Portland State University, $3 million for the "Paul Simon Public Policy Institute" at Southern Illinois University, $10 million for an endowment fund for the "Howard Baker School of Government" at the University of Tennessee, and $6 million for the "John Glenn Institute for Public Service and Public Policy" at Ohio State University.

The fiscal 1999 omnibus spending bill also included a $6 million item to help start the "Robert Dole Institute for Public Service and Public Policy" at the University of Kansas. In all, the spending package exceeded the Republicans' previous budget "pact" by $21 billion, and 30 percent of the year's budget surplus has already been consumed by "emergency" spending and other such mysterious provisions not included in the original House or Senate version of the bill. These include $27 million for mohair, wool and honey subsidies, a program ostensibly killed in 1993; $2 million for West Virginia's National Center for Cool and Cold Water Aquaculture; $5.1 million for wood-utilization research; $500,000 for manure handling and disposal in Starkville, Mississippi; $250,000 to an Illinois company that makes caffeinated chewing gum; $750,000 for grasshopper research in Alaska; $2.5 million for the Office of Cosmetics and Color; $20 million to limit domestic competition in Alaskan fishing by buying back three boats; $200 million to prevent record-high dairy prices from falling at some point in the future (an "emergency"); $400,000 for sturgeon-conservation efforts in Alabama; $100,000 for the Women's Rights Historical Trail; $100,000 for the Steel Industry American Heritage Area; $17.5 million to refurbish a lift bridge at the now-closed Philadelphia Navy Shipyard; $35 million for Army National Guard distance-learning projects; $5 million for an international law enforcement academy in Roswell, New Mexico, that will only feed rumors; $600,000 for the 1999 World Alpine Ski Championships; $246,000 for an Ohio "income-enhancement program"; $5 million for repairs at the soon-to-be-sold Alaska Power Administration; $3.9 million for outdoor recreational facilities at Ponce De Leon, Florida; $320,000 for replacement of toilet facilities in the Ouachita National Forest; and $500,000 for the Eros Data Center.