Senate Fattens Its ‘Ice Tea’ With Porky Politics

WASHINGTON —  After several years of slashing government spending, Congress is reverting to form as a gigantic public works transportation funding bill nears Senate passage this week before heading to the House.

With the deficit all but gone and a huge budget surplus looming, lawmakers are engaged in spirited competition to bring home election-year bacon.

And most are not the least bit bashful about it. In fact, quite the opposite.

“The funds are there, and we have a lot of unmet needs,” said Sen. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.). “It’s taken us awhile to get to this point.”

But as the original $141-billion price tag of the six-year highway bill--commonly called “ice tea” because of its acronym--continues to soar (the Senate version now stands at $173 billion), the measure has become a test of the will of Congress to stay within the self-imposed confines of last year’s historic balanced-budget agreement. Because the legislation would spend more than previously planned, lawmakers would have to make cuts in other, as yet unidentified, programs.

The House version of the highway bill carries a price tag of $181.9 billion, which may climb higher still when the Senate sends its bill to that chamber this spring.

Congress’ collective, long-deferred impulse to spend is beginning to unnerve some members, all the more so because of the spenders’ refusal to specify where they would make cuts elsewhere.

“The numbers keep going up every time I look,” fumed Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.).

“This is not Congress at its prettiest,” added Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.).

But amid the stampede to spend, key officials are simply deferring questions about the cuts.

“That’s not going to be difficult,” declared Sen. Pete V. Domenici (R-N.M.), chairman of the Senate Budget Committee. As a possible source of offsets, Domenici, while not being specific, mentioned savings of between $10 billion and $17 billion from a change in President Clinton’s budget that would deny benefits to veterans for certain smoking-related diseases.

Others, however, are not so sure that the offsets will come easily.

“We’re really getting carried away on this highway bill,” Gregg said in an interview. “This is an old-fashioned log-rolling exercise and I’m very concerned.”

The bill being considered in the Senate is officially named the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act. But everyone on Capitol Hill calls it “ice tea” because of its acronym, ISTEA. It is perhaps the largest public works bill in U.S. history.

No one disputes that America’s transportation infrastructure--highways, bridges, mass transit systems--needs modernization and expansion.

As Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) put it: “I wouldn’t say it [spending the money] is fun. But it does address the backlog. So it’s a good thing to do. And it’s certainly better than cutting.”

Others are far less reserved.

“I’m a happy camper. I’ve got to discipline myself,” said one Democrat known for his free-spending tendencies.

“We’re doing all right this week,” Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) added with a big smile.

Liberal Democrats have plenty of company as lawmakers giddily disperse billions of dollars, some of which will land in each of the nation’s 435 congressional districts.

To date, the most effective home-state harvesters have been two legendary practitioners of pork-barrel politics: Sens. Phil Gramm (R-Texas), who once boasted in jest that he suffers from trichinosis, and Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.), formerly the Senate majority leader and chairman of the Appropriations Committee who, in the past, has managed to relocate entire federal bureaucracies to West Virginia.

Backed by most governors, Gramm and Byrd persuaded the Senate to add $26 billion to the measure, which will provide an extra $1.7 billion for Texas highways and $1.8 billion for roads in Appalachia.

Every region of the country will benefit from the $26-billion increase, including California, which along with other Mexican-border states, will receive $450 million over the next five years for roads showing wear and tear from increased truck traffic since the North American Free Trade Agreement was passed.

The Gramm-Byrd provision also included an additional $850 million over five years for roads--mostly in the West--that run through national parks, Indian reservations and wildlife refuges.

Then Gramm and Byrd made certain the world--as well as folks back home--knew of their efforts, issuing a joint press release hailing their “victory for common sense.”

Sen. Alfonse M. D’Amato (R-N.Y.) also scored big.

He led closed-door negotiations last week that added $5 billion in extra mass transit funds to the bill. (California is expected to get hundreds of millions of that sum.)

D’Amato, who is up for reelection in November, quickly called a Capitol Hill press conference to trumpet that breakthrough. He was joined by seven other senators eager to accept a share of the credit.

“Republicans feel very strongly about infrastructure. It’s an area where we feel real comfortable spending money,” said Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.).

Although pork-barrel spending is nothing new, it traditionally is tucked into the nooks and crannies of the 13 big appropriations bills that Congress passes each year. But the concentrated burst of spending over ISTEA is striking, especially given the austerity mind-set of recent years.

As Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) put it: “It’s a relief.”

The overarching question is where Congress will make the spending cuts to offset the increased transportation spending, Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) conceded.

“I do think we have to be concerned about the offsets,” he said. “Economic growth, of course, will provide some of the cushion. . . . But, clearly, offsets are going to be a major challenge.”

The old transportation funding bill expired last year but lawmakers passed an extension, which expires May 1.