Pork-Laden Bills on Way Despite Line-Item Veto

WASHINGTON — If President Clinton is looking for more opportunities to exercise his line-item veto this fall, Congress is winding up to toss him a few fat pitches.

A couple of million bucks for covered bridges in Vermont. A million to set up a Coral Reef Institute in Florida and another million for a similar study center in Hawaii. A couple of hundred thousand for the Beluga Whale Committee.

All that--and much, much more--has been tucked into the 13 annual appropriation bills Congress is preparing to send Clinton after it returns from its August recess next month. Despite budget constraints and some efforts to scale back the most questionable forms of pork-barrel politicking, Congress is still lacing many spending bills with the kinds of parochial projects that now are vulnerable to presidential veto.

Administration officials say they hope Clinton’s use of the line-item veto on two big spending- and tax-cut bills last week will discourage lawmakers from putting such pet projects in this fall’s appropriation bills.

“When you know the president is prepared to use the line-item veto, that tends to operate as a deterrent against the most egregious kinds of projects that would otherwise not be funded,” Clinton said last week.

But it is not clear how powerful the preventative will be in the coming battles with Congress. Many of the money bills are already far along in the legislative process. And asking members of Congress to stop bringing home the bacon is a little like asking Winnie the Pooh to forgo honey.

“What is generally regarded as pork barrel is a matter of great importance to people in a member’s district,” said Richard Fenno, a political scientist at the University of Rochester in New York.

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What’s more, the lesson of Clinton’s sparing first use of the veto--he excised only two tax items and one spending provision from two sweeping bills--may be that special-interest provisions have a darn good chance of surviving.

“They had 79 limited tax benefits [in the tax bill], and after his work there are still 77,” said Louis Fisher, a senior policy analyst with the Congressional Research Service. “Both branches of government participate in giving favors to small groups.”

The line-item veto, which is sure to face a court challenge and may yet be struck down as unconstitutional, gives the president new power to strike specific items within spending and tax bills. In appropriation measures, however, the veto can be used only on money provisions, not policy riders--such as abortion restrictions or environmental regulations--that have often been the biggest bones of contention between Clinton and the GOP Congress.

The line-item veto has long been promoted as an important tool for trimming unnecessary spending that is often slipped into money bills by lawmakers for their own constituents or to win support from other members.

Congress is already deep into the process of writing appropriations bills for the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1. Most have whisked through Congress with relatively little opposition this summer, largely overshadowed by higher-profile controversies such as the budget-balancing deal and the House Republican leadership intrigue.

Elizabeth Morra, spokeswoman for the House Appropriations Committee, said the effect of Clinton’s new veto power on the number of special projects in the legislation may be limited because the panel has already taken steps to reduce the amount of parochial earmarking in its bills. The House transportation bill, for example, includes no earmarked highway projects.

But that doesn’t mean the bills are pork-free, especially after they have gone through the Senate, where lax amendment rules make it easier to decorate spending bills with home-state ornaments.

“If anything, there’s more of it because there is lots more money this year than last,” said Keith Kennedy, a former staff director of the Senate Appropriations Committee. “The reason these bills are going through with such huge bipartisan votes and little opposition is there are a lot of people getting a lot of things in these bills.”

Indeed, while Clinton and GOP leaders have been crowing that their budget deal was putting the government on a strict fiscal diet, the deal actually makes room for non-defense appropriations to grow from about $230 billion this year to $252 billion in 1998, according to the House Appropriations Committee. Some of that extra money is supposed to go to Clinton priorities such as education and environmental programs, but some of it is also going to members’ own home-state priorities.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a self-proclaimed scourge of pork, has analyzed each of the appropriations bills that has come to the Senate floor. He estimated that the 10 bills approved by the Senate by the end of July included about $10 billion for “wasteful, unnecessary, low-priority pork-barrel projects.”

“It is difficult for me to see the logic of wasting $9.9 billion in these 10 appropriations bills and then hastening to pass a balanced-budget . . . bill to reduce federal spending,” McCain said. “If we could just avoid pork-barrel spending in the first place, we would not have to go through the painful process of eliminating it in later years.”

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McCain’s estimate is based on a broad definition of “pork”--one that includes policy directives that Clinton would not be able to veto.

But Clinton would be able to veto the $2 million provided for a covered bridge restoration project in Vermont. Or the couple million for coral reef institutes. Or the $500,000 earmarked to hire more scientists at the Bee Laboratory in Texas. McCain also criticizes the proliferation of funding for arcane or redundant study centers, such as the $7 million earmarked for the Center of Excellence for Research in Ocean Sciences--”just in case there was any risk of funds being spent for a center of mediocrity in research in ocean sciences,” said McCain in a wry aside.

But Clinton’s veto could also apply to much bigger items involving broader policy issues, such as the $150 million provided for the Seawolf submarine, which critics say is too expensive and unnecessary, or the $200 million the Senate provided for a military aircraft the Pentagon does not want.

McCain’s adversaries deride his long lists of wasteful spending in their bills as a demagogic attack on legitimate projects. But his catalog makes one thing clear: The administration will not be wanting for possible line-item veto targets this fall. The challenge will be to find a principle for deciding which things to veto and which to let pass.