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McCain: Special interests fatten war bill
From Jonathan Karl
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A $500,000 plan to save fish in Lake Champlain on the New York-Vermont border is included in a nearly $80 million emergency spending bill to fund the U.S.-led war in Iraq. It's just one of several projects in the bill with no direct ties to the fighting, according to Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona. McCain has compiled a list of more than two dozen provisions he calls objectionable because they were not requested by the Bush administration nor authorized by a congressional committee. One of them is funding for a program to control an alien species called the sea lamprey, an eel-like parasite that is threatening to kill Lake Champlain's native trout and salmon. "This funding was not requested by the administration, nor do sea lamprey[s] pose a clear and present danger to our national security," McCain said. The sea lamprey provision was included by Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont, a senior member of the Senate Appropriations Committee. A spokesman for Leahy defended the provision, saying Congress should have included it in regular federal spending legislation, which was passed in February. "If you skip a season controlling invasive species, the invasive species can quickly get out of control and decimate the population of the native fish," the spokesman said. Other special interest provisions cited by McCain in the Senate version of the emergency spending bill include: • $98 million for the construction of an agricultural research facility in Ames, Iowa. Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said the facility would do important research on protecting the food supply from terrorism. But McCain asked, "Why is a war supplemental bill paying for the construction and modernization of an agriculture facility in Iowa?" • $12 million to be spent on military airfield improvements in Alaska. • $3 million to build a rifle range for the South Carolina National Guard. • $3.3 million for repairs to a dam in Waterbury, Vermont. The bill also mandates several policy changes that appear to have nothing to do with the war, including one classifying fish caught in the wild as organic food. Currently such seafood is not considered organic because it is impossible to determine what the fish have eaten. The change is important to the salmon industry in Alaska, which is home to the Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Sen. Ted Stevens, a Republican. Congressional negotiators must work out differences between the House and Senate versions of the emergency war spending bill. Final approval is expected later this week.
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